The CWL Zone Blog Pages
Graduation - 26-Mar-2006 
It’s official, and I have pictures to prove it here, here and here. Thanks to De’Lynne for taking the pictures, and for everything else. The CWL Zone Blog Pages, 2006-12-11 04:49:25
It’s official, and I have pictures to prove it here, here and here. Thanks to De’Lynne for taking the pictures, and for everything else. The CWL Zone Blog Pages, 2006-12-11 04:49:25
A Downside of Offshoring - 12-April-2006
We’ve been working on a high speed serial port chip, and it’s just about ready to tape out (i.e. go into production). But the schedule is going to slip for a day or so - our Bangalore team is having trouble getting into the office due to rioting as a result of the death of a famous Indian film star (details here). I don’t recall ever missing a tape out date due to riots. Ah, globalization. Our colleagues in Bangalore are a great bunch of folks, and so we hope all is well with them, and that things get back to normal ASAP. The CWL Zone Blog Pages, 2006-12-11 04:49:25
We’ve been working on a high speed serial port chip, and it’s just about ready to tape out (i.e. go into production). But the schedule is going to slip for a day or so - our Bangalore team is having trouble getting into the office due to rioting as a result of the death of a famous Indian film star (details here). I don’t recall ever missing a tape out date due to riots. Ah, globalization. Our colleagues in Bangalore are a great bunch of folks, and so we hope all is well with them, and that things get back to normal ASAP. The CWL Zone Blog Pages, 2006-12-11 04:49:25
Blogging for Professionals - 06-May-2006
It’s been almost a month since the last entry. I promised myself that I would be consistent with updates on a regular basis. If the content doesn’t change, they won’t come back, as they say. Not that many people stop by here, but if you’re going to run a blog, you should, you know, blog once in awhile. I have two excuses. The first is Dissertation Burnout. We (the wife and I) seriously need a vacation. I must put my mind to that ASAP. Equally important, though, is this: what should this blog be doing? I tend to do a lot a political and social raving here; perhaps this is not the best venue, given that the site is allegedly professional in nature. OTOH, if you’re interested in employing me, you need to get a handle on how I interact, socially speaking, so this blog is an insight into my personality, for better or for worse. Hey, if you don’t like what you read here, our professional relationship would probably suck, and life’s too short for that. As there appears to be not much else that I can do to influence the social and political fabric of our country, I guess I’ll continue to "rage against the machine", and accept the consequences. Of course, I should also post "value-added" stuff once in awhile, whatever that means. The CWL Zone Blog Pages, 2006-12-11 04:49:25
It’s been almost a month since the last entry. I promised myself that I would be consistent with updates on a regular basis. If the content doesn’t change, they won’t come back, as they say. Not that many people stop by here, but if you’re going to run a blog, you should, you know, blog once in awhile. I have two excuses. The first is Dissertation Burnout. We (the wife and I) seriously need a vacation. I must put my mind to that ASAP. Equally important, though, is this: what should this blog be doing? I tend to do a lot a political and social raving here; perhaps this is not the best venue, given that the site is allegedly professional in nature. OTOH, if you’re interested in employing me, you need to get a handle on how I interact, socially speaking, so this blog is an insight into my personality, for better or for worse. Hey, if you don’t like what you read here, our professional relationship would probably suck, and life’s too short for that. As there appears to be not much else that I can do to influence the social and political fabric of our country, I guess I’ll continue to "rage against the machine", and accept the consequences. Of course, I should also post "value-added" stuff once in awhile, whatever that means. The CWL Zone Blog Pages, 2006-12-11 04:49:25
Wine Ramblings - 06-May-2006
I have always enjoyed drinking wine. During my undergraduate days in Boston, I discovered decent Italian wines. I’m old enough to remember the California White Zinfandel craze, and I have watched California wines go into the stratosphere, price-wise, moving to Australian Shiraz vintages as a result. We have belonged to a wine club for something like 15 years now. Just a bunch of folks who get together at somebody’s house and taste different wines. (It’s been pretty amazing watching everybody’s kids go from pre-school to college, but I digress.) You would think by this time that I’d be pretty good at identifying wines. You would be wrong. Last weekend we did blind tastings of six different red wines, the object being to correctly identify each one. The wines were one each of Zinfandel, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Cabertnet, Sangiovese, and a Shiraz. My score: Zero, Zippo, Zilch Point S—t. (We had a tie for first place by two people who guessed three wines correctly.) I estimate that I try maybe 50 different wines over the course of a year. The folks at Wine_Spectator taste literally thousands of wines every year. That must make a big difference in your level of expertise, yeah, that’s it. And nice work if you can get it. The CWL Zone Blog Pages, 2006-12-11 04:49:25
I have always enjoyed drinking wine. During my undergraduate days in Boston, I discovered decent Italian wines. I’m old enough to remember the California White Zinfandel craze, and I have watched California wines go into the stratosphere, price-wise, moving to Australian Shiraz vintages as a result. We have belonged to a wine club for something like 15 years now. Just a bunch of folks who get together at somebody’s house and taste different wines. (It’s been pretty amazing watching everybody’s kids go from pre-school to college, but I digress.) You would think by this time that I’d be pretty good at identifying wines. You would be wrong. Last weekend we did blind tastings of six different red wines, the object being to correctly identify each one. The wines were one each of Zinfandel, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Cabertnet, Sangiovese, and a Shiraz. My score: Zero, Zippo, Zilch Point S—t. (We had a tie for first place by two people who guessed three wines correctly.) I estimate that I try maybe 50 different wines over the course of a year. The folks at Wine_Spectator taste literally thousands of wines every year. That must make a big difference in your level of expertise, yeah, that’s it. And nice work if you can get it. The CWL Zone Blog Pages, 2006-12-11 04:49:25
SEKE'2006 - 06-May-2006
My dissertation work has earned me a spot at the SEKE2006 Conference. Accepted as a short paper - in other words, distill 4.5 years of research into a four page paper. Still, it was pretty cool getting accepted, so it looks like a trip to San Francisco in July, with a side trip to Wine Country, no doubt. The CWL Zone Blog Pages, 2006-12-11 04:49:25
My dissertation work has earned me a spot at the SEKE2006 Conference. Accepted as a short paper - in other words, distill 4.5 years of research into a four page paper. Still, it was pretty cool getting accepted, so it looks like a trip to San Francisco in July, with a side trip to Wine Country, no doubt. The CWL Zone Blog Pages, 2006-12-11 04:49:25
RailsConf 2006 - 09-Jun-2006
I have somehow managed to convince my employer to let me do some Ruby_on_Rails work, i.e. I’m getting paid to do Rails apps. Yeeeeha! Nothing spectacular, just some one-off apps that improve productivity a bit: a web page showing software license usage, and a disk quota monitor, stuff like that. Still, it’s terrific that my interest in Rails has been upgraded from the hobbyist category. Having said that, I still seem to be having a hard time with some of the basics, and that’s begining to annoy me. So, what’s the best way to fix that? Write more code, of course. To that end, I’m off to RailsConf June 22nd - 25th. Although the conference sold out in less than a week, I was able to get in anyway by virtue of submitting a conference talk proposal. The proposal was turned down, but after seeing the talks that made the cut I’m in no way resentful - there is some incredible stuff that is going to be presented there. Over 500 of the world’s hottest programmers in one place (not counting me) - cool! I’m sure to be intimidated, but I intend to pass out all of my business cards and be in full "information sponge" mode for the whole weekend. I’ll be doing a special RailsConfBlog while I’m there, so stay tuned… The CWL Zone Blog Pages, 2006-12-11 04:49:25
I have somehow managed to convince my employer to let me do some Ruby_on_Rails work, i.e. I’m getting paid to do Rails apps. Yeeeeha! Nothing spectacular, just some one-off apps that improve productivity a bit: a web page showing software license usage, and a disk quota monitor, stuff like that. Still, it’s terrific that my interest in Rails has been upgraded from the hobbyist category. Having said that, I still seem to be having a hard time with some of the basics, and that’s begining to annoy me. So, what’s the best way to fix that? Write more code, of course. To that end, I’m off to RailsConf June 22nd - 25th. Although the conference sold out in less than a week, I was able to get in anyway by virtue of submitting a conference talk proposal. The proposal was turned down, but after seeing the talks that made the cut I’m in no way resentful - there is some incredible stuff that is going to be presented there. Over 500 of the world’s hottest programmers in one place (not counting me) - cool! I’m sure to be intimidated, but I intend to pass out all of my business cards and be in full "information sponge" mode for the whole weekend. I’ll be doing a special RailsConfBlog while I’m there, so stay tuned… The CWL Zone Blog Pages, 2006-12-11 04:49:25
Why Ruby (As Opposed to Perl) - 26-Jun-2006
I respect Dave_Thomas's opinion, particularly when it coincides with mine. 8>) He pretty much nailed the reason why I prefer Ruby to Perl - with Ruby code, I can actually read and still understand what I coded six months ago. And Dave agrees with that as well. Not to misunderstand here: Perl is a good, solid language. Ruby is a good, solid readable language. The CWL Zone Blog Pages, 2006-12-11 04:49:25
I respect Dave_Thomas's opinion, particularly when it coincides with mine. 8>) He pretty much nailed the reason why I prefer Ruby to Perl - with Ruby code, I can actually read and still understand what I coded six months ago. And Dave agrees with that as well. Not to misunderstand here: Perl is a good, solid language. Ruby is a good, solid readable language. The CWL Zone Blog Pages, 2006-12-11 04:49:25
Well, That Was Quick - 14-Sep-2006
I’ve been in the semiconductor business for over 20 years. Layoffs have always been a "feature" of the industry. At my last place of employment, I was able to dodge the layoff bullet for 14 years. At my current place of employment, I lasted all of 15 months. This is not a good trend… So - it might be time to try some other line of work, whatever that may turn out to be. One lesson learned: always be in job-hunting mode, because there’s just no guarantee anymore. I would like to thank my family, friends and colleagues for their support, sympathy and job leads. 8>) The CWL Zone Blog Pages, 2006-12-11 04:49:25
I’ve been in the semiconductor business for over 20 years. Layoffs have always been a "feature" of the industry. At my last place of employment, I was able to dodge the layoff bullet for 14 years. At my current place of employment, I lasted all of 15 months. This is not a good trend… So - it might be time to try some other line of work, whatever that may turn out to be. One lesson learned: always be in job-hunting mode, because there’s just no guarantee anymore. I would like to thank my family, friends and colleagues for their support, sympathy and job leads. 8>) The CWL Zone Blog Pages, 2006-12-11 04:49:25
A Free Virus Program - 14-Sep-2006
Once in awhile the Sunday fish-wrapper has something worthwhile for us techno-types. I usually glance at Bill Husted’s Technobuddy column just to see what’s shakin’ in the mainstream. The August 27th column pointed me to the AVG_Free_Edition virus software offered by Grisoft. It installed cleanly, and seems to be doing the job. But, you probably have an anti-virus program running already - what to do about that? Well, I may be a political anarcho-libertarian, but when it comes to computers, I’m a staunch conservative. The radical approach would be to uninstall your current anti-virus program, reboot, and install the new one. There is a safer alternative, at least for Windows XP anyway: your anti-virus program is probably installed as a set of XP services. You can shut down the virus services, configure them to stay disabled during boot-up, reboot, and then install your new virus software. If something glitches, or you just don’t like the new virus app, uninstall it, and re-enable your old virus services. This worked great for me with the Symantec (aka Norton) Antivirus software that I have used for the past three years. To get started, go to Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services and look for all the Symantec entries. Stop each service, and then use the Properties option in the pull-down menu (click the right mouse key over the Symantec entry) and set Startup type: to Disabled. Then reboot and install your new anti-virus application. The CWL Zone Blog Pages, 2006-12-11 04:49:25
Once in awhile the Sunday fish-wrapper has something worthwhile for us techno-types. I usually glance at Bill Husted’s Technobuddy column just to see what’s shakin’ in the mainstream. The August 27th column pointed me to the AVG_Free_Edition virus software offered by Grisoft. It installed cleanly, and seems to be doing the job. But, you probably have an anti-virus program running already - what to do about that? Well, I may be a political anarcho-libertarian, but when it comes to computers, I’m a staunch conservative. The radical approach would be to uninstall your current anti-virus program, reboot, and install the new one. There is a safer alternative, at least for Windows XP anyway: your anti-virus program is probably installed as a set of XP services. You can shut down the virus services, configure them to stay disabled during boot-up, reboot, and then install your new virus software. If something glitches, or you just don’t like the new virus app, uninstall it, and re-enable your old virus services. This worked great for me with the Symantec (aka Norton) Antivirus software that I have used for the past three years. To get started, go to Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services and look for all the Symantec entries. Stop each service, and then use the Properties option in the pull-down menu (click the right mouse key over the Symantec entry) and set Startup type: to Disabled. Then reboot and install your new anti-virus application. The CWL Zone Blog Pages, 2006-12-11 04:49:25
I'm Linux Enabled - 14-Sep-2006
Something I should have done a long time ago: I bought a cheapo used IBM NetVista desktop machine, and I downloaded all the Fedora_Core disks. Now I’ll start building my very own home-based Linux development platform for all the neat Ruby_on_Rails applications I’ll create to turn me into the next Bill Gates. I’ll keep a running commentary on my progress - stay tuned! The CWL Zone Blog Pages, 2006-12-11 04:49:25
Something I should have done a long time ago: I bought a cheapo used IBM NetVista desktop machine, and I downloaded all the Fedora_Core disks. Now I’ll start building my very own home-based Linux development platform for all the neat Ruby_on_Rails applications I’ll create to turn me into the next Bill Gates. I’ll keep a running commentary on my progress - stay tuned! The CWL Zone Blog Pages, 2006-12-11 04:49:25