Category Archives: Teaching

The Wiring

Gallery

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East encompassed kindergarten through senior high school. The elementary, East Elementary School, had the right half of the building while the high schools, junior and senior collectively referred to as East High School, had the left. I started there with … Continue reading →

Poor Sod!

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What follows is an email to an associate about to travel to Cedar Rapids Iowa from which I just returned. He’s a martini man, by the way; Loves his martinis.

 

Dear name_withheld,

Bring your own food (and martini mixings) with you to Iowa.

And plan on either fasting or abandoning meals after no more than a spoonful.

Truly, if you expect nothing more than nationally known chains with, at best, mediocre cooks, you won’t be too disappointed. But looking for more than that, you’ll be crying in your martini and it’ll undoubtedly be a piss poor one at that.

We’re talkin’ wholesome, mid-america, rail center of the continent with millions of animals on their way to slaughter houses. (Ever wonder what’s left in mid-america after Omaha Beef ships all the good cuts everywhere else? Well, you’re about to find out.)

Envision pigs, sheep, corn and soy in every direction for five hundred miles. Today’s futures will headline the 5:00AM news and get more air time than how much rain the land *isn’t* going to get today, and that will be followed by a brief traffic report to help you avoid the tractors moving from one field to another. Something like a pancake breakfast at St. Andrews Catholic Church may lead off the “real news” when they finally get to it. For national news, that’s what they call the doings way out west in Des Moines.

Cedar Rapids downtown was flooded two years ago and, as far as food is concerned, it’s still sunk. (Nobody knows that the Cedar River actually has some rapids not very far from downtown nor how that might be connected to the name of the town. Hello?)

But, alas, I hear you’re on-hook for a visit to there in a couple of weeks and, let me say this, dear friend, we will all look up to your memory, taking one for the team like that.

“Good man, that chap, what?”

“They said his lip never quivered sipping that pond scum in the goblet they served him.”

“Solid Old School. What a mate!”

Here’s my brain dump with the “avoids” first.

Avoid: Biaggi’s – Very pricey, snooty and terribly ignorant servers — they live in Iowa, you know — and anything from mediocre down to just plain burnt food. This place is only for those marketing and sales types who want to impress clients with how much they can spend while not wincing at the taste.

Avoid: Vito’s, 4100 River Ridge Dr NE, Cedar Rapids IA 52402, http://www.vitoson42nd.com/, sports bar, pizza etc — Someone sucked me into this one. I wanted to take him to the shooting range later and persuade him to hold the target while I shot at it but didn’t, much to my later distress when he suggested another place that was “much, much better,” the Irish Democrat Pub and Grille.

Avoid: Irish Democrat Pub and Grille, 1st Ave and 32nd St (NE), Cedar Rapids, IA 319-364-9896, looked promising with Guinness and such “on tap” but apparently coming from rotting kegs presumably bobbing in the Cedar River and connected to the restaurant underground by five miles of lead-lined pipes. The BBQ ribs tasted the same the following day each time I burped them up again and again. The flash-burnt formerly frozen vegetables … Well, let’s say no more about them.

I *did* find two restaurants worth repeat visits. Indeed, after sampling many places that looked worse than the above (and determining that my eye is spot-on in this regard), I ended up at the two restaurants that follow for lunch and dinner on all possible occasions. (In other words, considering Cedar Rapids Iowa, these two are — I hate to risk saying it — not that bad. Some might even say “good” but, well, that may only be in comparison with the rest of the town’s offerings.)

Good: Siam Ville, 3635 1st Avenue SE, Cedar Rapids Iowa, 52402, http://siamville.com/default.aspx, I was there twice recently and twice again on my previous trip to the area. Your customers will know it and some may want to join you. It’s quite good. I’ve had half a dozen different dishes from their menu and enjoyed them all.

Good to Excellent: R. G. Books Lounge and Vino’s Ristaurant, 3611 1st Avenue SE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52402, 319-363-7550, dinner only, http://vinosristorante.com/. Expect $40-50 bill for a drink and an entre. The servings tend to be large so that’ll probably be enough food. The wine bar is fairly good in whites but avoid the Cabernets — but I know you’re a martini man and I suggest you start at the bar and size up the bartender’s credentials before risking it. The servers are pretty good but don’t forget you’re in Cedar Rapids Iowa — try not to expect much; it’ll be safer that way. The calimari appetizer was excellent but, with the entre, I had too much food. Beware: they’ll burn the garlic in most dishes — you might try asking for the garlic “underdone” but I’m not sure that’ll help so you might want to avoid such dishes altogether. Avoid the tira misu for desert; it was missing key ingredients such as the espresso that would’ve offset the syrupy sweetness. But the steak was excellent. And the pasta just about perfect. Even the seafood — for the middle of the country — was actually very nice. I was particularly impressed with the scallops. And they know how to cook a chicken, too.

These two good-to-excellent places are less than 100′ apart. You can park in the same spot for either.

Breakfast is a lost cause in Cedar Rapids Iowa. Utterly hopeless. Don’t even try. Bring bagels in your suitcase as well as coffee from Seattle if you can.

We’ll post your picture on the shelf and put an empty martini glass next to it to toast your memory.

“Here’s to ‘im, boys.”

“Bloody awful way to go.”

“Poor sod!”

Once Upon A Time

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Once upon a time, there were three RTOSes: VRTX, pSOS and VxWorks. VRTX and pSOS were written in assembler language, for assembler language programmers, and for systems that contained nothing but assembler language. They were “real” RTOSes for “real men” who carried processor reference cards in their shirt pockets and could divide 0×53662 by 05314 in their head.

VxWorks, on the other hand, gazed off to what it thought was the future, and what it could see was “C” (pun intended). And along with “C” it also saw Unix.

But that Unix was not the Linux we know today. That Unix — Linux — would not even be born for another decade.

No, the Unix that VxWorks saw on the horizon was the process-model of BSD and SystemV Unix.

Little VxWorks knew that was the future.

And so little VxWorks wanted to be like that.

So little VxWorks clothed itself in a C language wrapper so programs written in C would want to be near it.

And little VxWorks said, “Come, look, see what I have to offer!”

And the C programs looked and saw “exit()” and “environment variables” and “printf()” and they shouted with glee!

“Here is a home for us. Here is someone who understands what we want.”

And so the C programs found a home with VxWorks.

Even so, however, VxWorks could not deny her genes. She was related to, not only in time but also in inspiration, to those other two RTOSes.

So VxWorks had “tasks” instead of “processes” and, at least in her early days, she would say, “We don’t do processes because the memory and system call overhead are just too awful with this old clunky hardware.”

And many years would pass as VxWorks grew from child to youth and then through her teen years.

Today, after several decades of dealing with the uncertainties of life, of surviving the ups and downs in her life, and of learning to adapt herself to an ever-evolving and complex world of shifting priorities, needs and economies, she is a full-fledged adult.

Today, VxWorks shifts her look and demeanor to many different environments. Sometimes she will be seen wearing a blue collar work suit and tool belt. Other times she may be costumed in a flight suit and white silk scarf that she drapes over the cockpit’s edge to flutter in the slip stream.

At other times, she may act in more of an executive role, overseeing and sometimes chastising other operating systems that come to her for a safe and secure environment.

Today, VxWorks is an adult with all the complexities and dimensions that have accrued to her over the decades. Her roots and genes come from both the RTOS and the Unix world.

She is both, and she is neither.

In-transit to Dallas

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Assuming flights are on time today, I’ll be at the customer’s location late this afternoon to re-image the disk drives of our lab systems (via Ghost) with the correct contents for tomorrow’s class.

Tuesday and Wednesday will be “in the classroom” days before heading home again on Thursday.

Then, Friday will be post-class processing with student-written course evaluations to enter, an expense report to complete and the usual end-of-week time card and status report.

All in all, that’s a pretty light week.

Teaching a two-day class is nice because the travel days usually fall within the week unlike our much more common four-day classes when instructors must travel either the Sunday before or the Saturday after depending on which four of the five day work week the customer wants for “the class”.

There is no “comp time” in this job so those days, like my recently sacrificed Labor Day Holiday and its following Saturday, both of which were “in transit” days for a four-day class during that four-day work week, are just part of the job.

It’s a paycheck, gang.

I’ve been without.

It’s a paycheck.