Back to work
Tuesday, September 9th, 2003Today’s my first day in several of feeling like normal again. Whew, nasty cold. I don’t get sick very often, but when I do I make it worthwhile. OK, now where was I? 
Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category
Fall temperature changes trigger colds?
Thursday, September 4th, 2003It’s going to be 109 degrees again here today in Phoenix and I have a nasty cold. Go figure.
Hooked on Fuji apples
Thursday, August 28th, 2003Once you have Fuji apples no other apples taste quite the same.
My first lunch post
Tuesday, July 29th, 2003Bryan and I shared a pizza lunch with Keith today. Like old times. Through Keith, Bryan and I started writing how-to computer programming books in the late 80s. I eventually ran out of words, but Keith and Jeff blossomed the informal group, dubbed the Coriolis Group, into Arizona’s largest publisher
Tracking people in a museum
Friday, July 11th, 2003I asked Robb what he was up to. He emailed back that he’s working on a new museum project “that will deliver audio content to people walking around artifacts. It tracks their location in the space using RFID tags. When they get close to an artifact, they use a color coded cube to navigate more specific details about the artifact. The cube is viewed by a camera and depending on what face of the cube is shown, the user navigates through audio content about the artifact.” Cool. No Rubik’s cubes need apply.
My uncle’s photos
Thursday, July 10th, 2003I didn’t realize my uncle has his photos available at Amazon. What cool cars!
Oh, those aren’t his cars. He just takes their pictures. Creative types have some of the best jobs, don’t they?
Birthday wishes
Tuesday, July 8th, 2003Happy Birthday Lora!
A stroll down computer memory lane
Thursday, June 12th, 2003A week or so back there was a blog chain forming around the topic “What was your first experience with computers?” Here’s my contribution:
Somehow in 1976 I heard that my school allowed students to use their teletypes (connected to a PDP-11) after hours. So my brother and I did. We had no idea what we were doing. We wrote in BASIC. No one taught us to program. We taught ourselves by reading discarded print outs we found in garbage cans. For backup, we saved our programs on paper tape. It became a bit of a competition between my brother and I to see who could generate the longest tapes.
It’s funny how some things stick out in my memory: This is where I discovered random numbers. My brother and I were writing baseball games at the time so we randomized everything. It was lots of fun. We moved that year, so the programming ended for a while.
My next hands-on experience with computers was my senior year in high school in 1978. Framingham North High School was offering a new shop class in micro-computers. So I took it. I didn’t know the difference between a resistor and a capacitor, but as a group project we bread boarded an 8080 with 1K of 21L02 static RAM, 8K EEPROM (I think, or maybe 1K), 8 switches for input and 8 LEDs for output. It didn’t do much until a student named Steve Rosenthal took home the 8080 manual for the weekend and came back with an EEPROM burned with a Tic-Tac-Toe program he wrote. It worked. The first time! Amazing
Bryan has a blog!
Thursday, June 12th, 2003Bryan takes the plunge with his first blog post! Bryan’s my programming mentor.
Last year I tried to convince him to chuck his other programming aspirations (and paying job) and join the Tablet PC development train. But, Bryan being Bryan, wanted a sign that that’s what he should do. So we went to the Tablet PC launch event where Microsoft was giving away a Tablet PC. Bryan affirmed, “If I win a Tablet PC, that’s a sign that I should switch over and work on the Tablet.” We waited for the drawing. Flushed faces. Pounding hearts. Doh! He didn’t win. I could tell he was disappointed. Boy, Microsoft was soooo close to getting a top-notch developer to write awesome software for the Tablet PC platform! Oh, well. Such is the way of the world.
Actually, Bryan helps me out all the time working through algorithms, streamlining designs, and building tools that I use (his nickname could be Mr. Tool, although he once dubbed himself Dr. Syntax).
I look forward to reading his posts.
Scoble’s favorite things
Thursday, May 22nd, 2003With a Tablet PC and weblog, Scobleization may be soon to follow. Cool. Made my day…eh, week.
Where have I been?
Monday, April 21st, 2003I just realized this morning that all of my nieces and nephews have blogs too:
My 9-year old niece Kim, just set her blog up. She has it all planned out, with categories for Barbie, BMX, and so on. Love her blog name: Ditz Wits.
Here are the blogs for Elizabeth, Sarah, and Cameron.
All of a sudden I feel behind the times.