A quick post as to why I am the right guy for a Tech Blogger

This is a short entry as to why I deserve a position with Neverstill Media. When it comes to the world of technology it is what I live and breathe. I have been a part of the consumer electronics industry for over eight years with various electronics retailers. Working my way up from a part time sales associate to home theater installer and everything in between the world of technology permeates nearly every facet of my daily life. From waking up and checking up to five tech. blogs before I walk out the door to answering hundreds of questions and being considered the go to for nearly all questions around electronics at my current place of employment, I am destined to work in the tech. sphere.

My qualifications from a writing standpoint? Try writing a masters thesis while translating Fifteenth Century Spanish to present day English and still engaging the reader.

These excerpts aren't going to be tech pieces I have wrote but rather excerpts from my thesis because it is all that I have. But rest assured, one conversation with me on the subject of technology and you will see that there is no better qualified person to write and comment on all things technology related.

Consider me a technology Indiana Jones as I have dove to the depths of the Mayan Underworld and documented things that haven't been seen in nearly 800 years, traveled the continent of Europe solo while chronicling my entire journey via photo, and hiked the lush hilltops of the islands of Fiji.

Excerpt from The Eastern Entry

After trekking through recently hurricane wrought lands that assuredly would have snarled the Spaniards and their horses unrecognizable to their guides and practically impassible for their horses. The Spaniards arrived at one of the few hills that rise at the land, ascended this hill and placed their limited resources around the entrance to the hill with the mounted units being the first visible sign of the Spaniards for the Maya, effectively creating a trap using the land and elevated position, marking a change in the Spanish battle tactics against the Maya from their earlier battles. Upon viewing this sight of the mounted horses on the hill, the Maya dared not venture further out of the bush and instead hastily retreated while the Spaniards continued their own retreat back to Chetumal.
Saved at this time, those who remained worked their way through the territories and returned to Villa Real where they would nurse their wounds. But the Mayans of the region began to concoct a battle strategy that would serve for the following ten years of conquest in the region as their main manner of resistance. The Maya knew that the Spaniards were technologically superior in battle with horses, muskets, and crossbows, but they were not gods. They were men, and as such depended upon eating and drinking to survive. The problem for the Spanish in Yucatan in the middle of the Sixteenth Century was that their men were not accustomed to creating food stores and searching out fresh water, and the nature of the forced labor system of the encomienda was such that the Spaniards relied heavily upon tributes of the native populations, foodstuffs and goods, to grow and support larger populations. When faced with being “starved out”, which is effectively what the Maya did, more than likely the Spaniards were practically helpless.
Outmanned, starving, dying of thirst, with limited resources that were growing increasingly smaller by the day, and no means of sending for reinforcements due to the remoteness of the location and no ships to send for assistance, Dávila and his men faced an ever-increasing dire situation. Day by day the Mayans provided less and less food and those that did pay the tributes had increased demands placed upon them by the Spaniards that made them grow increasingly rebellious. Those warlike factions of the Maya began to encircle the Spaniards from every possible position by land and sea. After months of being effectively starved out, the Spaniards were faced with two choices: they could leave Chetumal or they could engage them frontally. The entire enterprise of the second entrada was essentially consuming itself.

Excerpt from The Harsh and Unyielding Terrain

Another example of the hardships faced by the Spaniards comes from Alonso Dávila. His accomplishments were astounding and included being the first to move on foot from Campeche to Chetumal. But what makes him famous in the eyes of many was his failure at Chetumal and the subsequent escape to Honduras by him and his men. The escape that Dávila and his small band of men made during their retreat to Villa Real plays out like a comedy of errors as they encountered one hardship after another while struggling to escape the clutches of the Mayan populations of Uaymil-Chetumal.
“…We crossed 15 leagues of uninhabited, bush covered land…and then found the way blocked by a very large lagoon two leagues across, the ends of which were not known, nor were even able to be seen…it was everywhere, such land that it was impossible for the men to pass forward or cross either on foot or on horseback.…Canoes were the only solution, and since
there were none at hand we retraced our route for a three days’ march and encamped in cultivated land…the Indians now took fine canoes to the lagoon by other waterways, and…thus crossed without difficulty… now entirely overgrown, on the other side of the lagoon and followed it with difficulty toward Aclan through a country which was everywhere close in by unbroken forests and woodland…”

But the land itself was not the only influence placed upon Dávila and his men. The weather which then summarily exerted its forces upon the land created great hardships for them during their escape to Honduras and striking an image of absolute incompetence that made the most seasoned of conquistadors at the service of the Spanish Crown seem like the freshest of recruits sent to the New World. One such event happened during the escape shortly before and after a brief downpour along the banks of modern day Belize:
“…Alonso de Luján who lead a strong detachment upstream in six canoes, and was directed against a pueblo which lay far inland. As Luján and his party proceeded, they ran into a cloudburst, which, along with the strong current they were fighting, made progress almost impossible. Nevertheless, thy finally arrived at their destination, only to find that the bank on which they had to land was over a canoe-length higher than the level of the river and that they could not get ashore. Then the full force of the flood caused by the cloudburst father upstream suddenly roared down on them, overflowing the banks and inundating the town, from which the Indians had already fled. The Spaniards’ canoes were overturned and swept away, and they were forced to climb trees to escape drowning in rushing waters…
A high, blustering north wind carried away their canoes, which were insecurely moored, and with them the captive guides and rowers fastened in their stocks. All these unfortunate Indians died, and the canoes were lost”.

The land of Yucatan on its surface today seems like a tropical paradise for many who are looking to escape into a tourist getaway. But the reality for the first Spaniards who attempted to conquer it and for the Yucatecan Maya who lived on its soils for hundreds of years was that it was a climate of extremes that could cause many hardships. The first one hundred years of Spanish exploration in the New World was far from a scientific exploration of new lands, and in many ways Yucatan presented a completely alien environment from anything that the previous of conquistadors had encountered. Yucatan was rich with many resources that offered advantages to the Maya and Spanish alike as long as they were managed properly and the subtle nuances of the regional specialization were recognized. Mismanagement of these resources was one of the main reasons why the Spaniards were unable to properly tame the land and why the Maya were struggling to maintain their way of life. Much can be said for the fighting between the soldiers of Francisco de Montejo and the factions of the Maya within Yucatan, and there is no doubt that this war of attrition played a role in what happened to both civilizations. But the land of Yucatan was the root cause of nearly all pain and suffering experienced by all sides.
 

Preface to A Comparison of 16th Century Landscapes

Climbing down into the darkness that lies below, it begins to envelop me. The echo of my feet moving across the rungs of the ladder begin to make the bats shriek out as their slumber is disturbed. Deeper into the abyss of the unknown, crossing from one ladder to the other, the unsupported structures begin to twist and invert as I climb deeper down. Touching the water offers a refreshing respite and calming sensation as I began to think that this descent would never end. I look up at the hole in the ground providing the only light to the cenote and yell out, “Listo”, ready, as the rest of my scuba gear is lowered to me. Turning on my tank and light and removing the air from my compensator I sink below the surface of the water and move into a different world that is illuminated only by my light in a tinge of white and aquamarine. This water is pristine and untouched and is by far the clearest visibility I have ever seen in ten years of diving. Not even fifteen feet below me lay the one thing I had never expected to see so soon after my dive had begun, a human skeleton.
Diving down one hundred and twenty feet to the edge of a cavern that had been visited before was the limits to the depths of my dive for the afternoon, but not before sighting six other skulls along the rim of the cenote. Paying close attention to the remains with careful consideration not to disturb them, they all seem to bear similar marks. When were these bodies tossed down into this sacred space, how old had these victims been when they met their watery fates, what were the circumstances that caused such a sacrifice of people, and how many of the near three thousand cenotes that dotted this landscape contained a similar story?
The journey continued. All of my experiences and dive training were to be tested to their greatest extent. As we entered a cavern that would prove to be the most dangerous underwater space I had yet to encounter. What was immediately noticeable when moving into this cave environment is the perfectly modified pathway made of stone that had been created hundreds of years earlier. The only way to continue this journey would be underwater, through crevices so tight that they could only fit a body with less than a foot of clearance above or below, a truly tight and sobering space to be in. After squeezing through the narrowest of crevices I have ever encountered we arrived to a break in the water into what appeared to be another modified cavern continuing in a perfectly western declination. What made this space unique was the remoteness of it, a location that was virtually impossible to arrive to without the aid of scuba equipment while we were still nearly forty feet below the surface of the original entrance of the cavern. It was at this moment that Professor de Anda turned to me and said, “Maybe I have spoiled you Josh. You are in a place that only a handful of people have had an opportunity to see in over eight hundred years”.