Paul's blog

Archive for the ‘Diary’ Category

“What are you looking at?” asked my wife while she walked up behind me, looking at my computer screen.

Me: “something I absolutely NEED!!!”

She: (The look!)

I sighed, and answered “A Digitech RP250 Multi-Effects/Modeling Processor”

“What’s THAT?”, she wanted to know.

Now, HOW does one explain an RP250?

I thought about this for a while …

… do you start by explaining the ‘68 Marshall® 100 Watt Super Lead (plexi) Amp module?
*salivates*
or tell her about the mild-to-wild classic distortion stompbox models including TS-808, DOD® 250, ProCo Rat, Big Muff® Pi?
*sigh*
but then, suddenly, there is Jimi Hendrix and his Vox® Clyde McCoy Wah.
*swoon*
the “USB connectivity for recording, preset editing archiving and downloading and more.” is very cool, but then ..
you spot the “‘81 Mesa/Boogie®* Mark II C”
*heavy panting*

But wait! There is more!

There is the ‘65 Fender® Blackface Deluxe Reverb!
24 bit, 44.1kHz Sampling rate!
A high quality drum machine with 60 patterns.
The new AudioDNA2 ® DSP super-chip.
A 30-preset Quick Start Effects Chain Library.

And and and ….

And then there is the spousal verdict, very loud, very clear:

“If you don’t know what it is, YOU CAN’T HAVE IT!”

 

Link

— Link —

Last year, on August 4th, I wrote, although not immediately apparent, about the launch of a Delta rocket that would put the Phoenix space craft on its way to Mars.

After having traveled some nine months at around 74,000 miles an hour, Phoenix is almost at the end of its 423 million mile journey:
Tomorrow afternoon it will make its landing attempt: when is starts its harrowing descent to the Martian surface it will be flying over 12,000 miles per hour (relative to Mars).
Seven minutes later it should be touching down on the cold rocky planet.

Unlike the previous rovers, this is not a big airbag that is dropped and bounces around for a while: this is a real lander that is supposed to make a controlled soft landing using a parachute, retro-rockets, radar, lots of computer power and … quite a bit of luck: so far, only 55% of all Mars landings have been successful.

Is the Phoenix team confident they will pull this off?
Not quite:

I do not feel confident. But in my heart I’m an optimist, and I think this is going to be a very successful mission,” said principal investigator Peter Smith, an optical scientist with the University of Arizona. “The thrill of victory is so much more exciting than the agony of defeat.

The number of things that can go wrong in the seven minutes it takes the lander from going from almost 13,000 mph to gently stepping on Mars’ surface is mind boggling. One single small failure will make the difference between success and Mars having yet another impact crater. This is why the Phoenix team refers to this landing event as “The Seven Minutes of Terror”.

I will be watching the landing coverage tomorrow on TV and it will be a nail biting experience.

And if we’re lucky and Phoenix survives this mission critical maneuver, we’re in for yet another nail biting experience.

After all, Phoenix’ mission is to hopefully find a conclusive answer to that centuries old question:

Is there life “out there”?

I just returned from signing an employment agreement with High Fidelity Engineering, a small (less than 10 people) startup here in Melbourne, that is active in integrated ubiquitous national two-way, low-speed, data communications networks,  utilizing HF frequencies and FM or XM radio as the inbound and outbound communications, respectively. 

So, yes, I’m employed again. As of Feb. 25th that is. I’ll be their firmware guy and I will start by porting an 8051 based system to an ARM7-TDMI-S processor based one.

I already know a thing or two about 802.11, and in a few weeks from now you can ask me anything about 802.15.4 (ZigBee) as well! 😉

Really looking forward to it!

Today was the first WORK day of my unemployment. And what did I do? Yes … I had an interview!

I was on my way to the interview, singing and just enjoying the nice weather, the small flock of Sandhill Cranes that flew by and just realizing it’s not so bad to be unemployed when your wife still has a very well paid job.

And then the phone rang (gotta love cars with bluetooth enabled ‘entertainment’ centers).

This is a blog, not a novel, so let me just skip to the facts: she lost her job too (military, contracting, bidding for new contracts, blah blah).

I was a bit concerned. I had several irons in the fire (one of which I particularly liked) but hadn’t heard back from any of them.

The company I would be interviewing with today … I don’t know. A colleague of mine showed me their job ad and I emailed him my resumé which he forwarded to them: hey: I AM a fimware engineer! (and I have seen and done it all!).

I didn’t quite get what they were doing, making, selling. But hey .. a job is a job.

The very first thing that impressed me with these folks was the fact that they called me, only TWO hours after I forwarded my resumé to this co-worker of mine. And they wanted to talk to me ‘tomorrow’! (no ‘telephone’ interview!).

I couldn’t do ‘tomorrow’ (had procrastinated a bit with cleaning out my cubicle), but went there the next working day: today.  I was still not sure what to think about it .. still secretly hoping for the other guys to call me .. I went to the interview. I ignored my wife’s advice to ‘dress up’ and went in jeans. Glad I did. I was not the only one in that meeting room in jeans! Anyway …

My buddy and friend Eddy has been to MANY more interviews than I have (in fact, this was my first one), and he recalls interviews that went absolutely perfectly! Done deal. And then .. he would get a call, telling him he didn’t fit in with the team.

So… I probably shouldn’t get my hopes up too high …

But let me tell you .. the more I think about it, the more I understand the product, the more I understand the challenge … the more I think of the people I interacted with today … the whole package … even though I was hoping for something else (and the other guys DID email me today, after I got home) … the more I think THIS is a PERFECT match! With a very exciting future! (the many more things that can be done with THAT technology!).

The only dark cloud I can see is pay: I got VERY well paid in my previous job (6 figures), so I know I’ll have to take a heavy hit in the money department, but .. we’ll see. An interesting and fun job is worth something too (can’t say I have had too much fun the past few years!).

I know I shouldn’t (yet) … but I’m ‘pumped’!

(okay, okay, for all the smartiepants who pointed out that both Dawnell and I are wearing the same wrist watch … so, I did some very sloppy rudimentary photoshopping … just click on the picture to see the originals .. if you really must! Jeesh!)

Monday, September 2nd, 1974, was the first day of my career as a professional software engineer.

Today, for the first time in that 33+ year career, is my first day of my first interruption of that career: I’m now practically ^*) unemployed.

I’m sitting here today, a sunny Saturday in February, in my office at home, surrounded by boxes full of computer books and 33+ years worth of computer related junk.

I’m kinda sad it ^**) happened, but on the other hand … I’m ready to tackle something new and exciting.

Now … if only someone would offer me an opportunity to do just that …

I’ll keep y’all informed.

^*) I said practically, because technically my severance deal will keep me on the payroll till mid May. But my office is empty, the lights are off, I handed in my entry badge and we drank beer all yesterday afternoon at the local pub with the last diehards of the ‘transition’ team (clean-up crew) that I was part of.

^**) Conexant closes wireless division

Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play …  

Anyway, I promised to post here a picture of myself with long hair, if and when my bluddy Rob would post a picture of his recent, partly self-administered and self-maintained, crew cut.

He kept his side of the deal here: http://lagesse.org/the-crew-cut-photo/

So, here’s my part of the deal … (This was when I was a teenager and thought I knew it all … oh wait, I still do!).

I just got back from a trip to Amsterdam.

I booked my flight to Amsterdam with Northwest Airlines, the first leg (to Newark) was operated by Continental, the transatlantic leg by KLM.

Guess where my frequent flyer miles for this trip ended up.

Right! In my Delta Airlines account.

An odd thing happened to me the other day and I’m both puzzled by, and pissed at Microsoft.

Here’s what happened:

I built a PC for my daughter. Then I went to Best Buy and bought a FULL version (no upgrade: I’m an honest man) of Windows XP Home Edition (version 2002, so 5 years old!) for $200.

I installed it, but I didn’t activate it, since I first wanted to be sure I could get everything to work right (Windows didn’t recognize the integrated sound card).

Then I downloaded and tried to install Windows Live Messenger.

This failed, because it didn’t get past the ‘Genuine Microsoft’ test: it said something about the fact that this copy hadn’t been activated yet, which apparently is a requirement for this ‘Genuine Microsoft’ test.

And here it comes:

It said: If this is indeed a non-Genuine Microsoft copy (i.e. “if you are a thief”), then we would happily turn it into a Genuine Microsoft copy for you and send you a valid product key, no questions asked, for … 99 bucks!

So, here I am, with a $200 version of Windows XP, and Microsoft now tells me if I had STOLEN it, rather than paying $200 for it, I could have had it at half price.

Can you imagine a big sign at Walmart saying something like:

“If we catch you shoplifting, we will politely offer you to purchase the stolen goods at half the price honest and decent people pay for it: no questions asked”

That would certainly make for shorter lines at the cash registers!

The shuttle launch has been scrubbed again. Technicians have been unable to fix the faulty engine cutoff sensors since last Thursday. The same sensors that have plagued earlier launches too. Which suggests they were never fixed in the first place. Which is scary, because a bad sensor can result in cutting the engines before the shuttle is in orbit.

You don’t want that to happen.

From this CNN article, the following quote had me frown..

The sensors are much like the low-fuel indicators in an automobile. As the shuttle rockets toward space, the sensors monitor the amount of liquid hydrogen in the external tank and automatically shut off the main engines when the tank is empty.

I have a tip for NASA: remove those sensors!

That would fix the problem with them reporting an empty tank, while in fact it still contains fuel.

But, you may ask, how would they then tell when the tank is really empty?

Easy: the engines will shut off!