Feeling old at work

[mtbc]

Today at work, I have been creating a diagram with TikZ. It's going fairly well, somewhat frustrating but the kind of thing I like to do. Years ago I would have rather preferred to use Basser Lout, that is a thing of beauty that, like Haskell, does what one hoped, LaTeX tends more to disappoint with various quirks when things interact badly, e.g., this works unless you're using beamer or whatever, however Lout never gained much currency and is now overly long in the tooth. This diagram's for a poster due on Friday. I hope to get at least another diagram done tomorrow, around other tasks.

Anyhow, I was thinking about a technology talk that I am to give on this coming Wednesday. I have plenty of freedom to choose the topic. I am tempted to try comparing a typical imperative solution for longest common subsequence with a purely functional implementation using lazy evaluation, I wrote one taking the latter approach maybe fifteen years ago as part of deciphering hand-typed locations in police reports. I don't know how easily my thinking on that comparison will make it into slides so a safe fallback is to give rather more detail about our CI/CD plans for our code repositories on one project that expands the simpler story that fits on this week's poster.

And, in considering what to talk about, it occurred to me that another thing I could still explain in plenty of detail is techniques for programming a forty-year-old graphics chip^*, my thinking partly being, Would this audience even be interested? Which, on the one hand, reminds me to be annoyed at the many recruiters who significantly penalize one's experience for having been back in the mists of time. I mean, I probably last used TikZ for something non-trivial at least a decade ago. On the other hand, it made me feel, goodness, forty years?! I sound like an old man, is the chip really from that long ago?

^*the MOS 6567 VIC-II, in case you were wondering

Comments

[thewayne]

Back before I was car-mobile, I used to ride the bus down to the local Heathkit store to hang out and ogle at electronics kits that I couldn't afford. Mid to late '70s. When I started working, before I got my amateur radio license, I bought their CMOS electronic keyer and built it, it's around here somewhere and works. Flash forward to 2001, I quit my job at the police dept, I was in charge of their SQL Server network, I quit largely because I had zero support from my boss and was completely burned out. When I turned in my resignation, she said "But I just hired someone to work with you!" Well, if you'd TOLD ME THAT YOU WERE HIRING SOMEONE A MONTH AGO, IT MIGHT HAVE MADE A DIFFERENCE!

Anyway, until I moved away from Phx in '05 when I married Russet and for a few years after, I continued going down there and meeting up with former co-workers for lunch. I met the guy who took over my roll. Turns out he was the former manager for that Heathkit store!

Pretty cool the things you get to geek out about.

Lovely story about my ex-boss: she went on to become the overall IT Director and was later given The Option of Quit or BE SUED! She had violated FMLA by denying valid medical leave to one of her IT workers, and I am pretty sure I know which one. The worker was threatening to sue the City, so they threw her under the bus in an attempt to come to a settlement before it went to the press. Boss was the wife of a former Assistant Chief of Police, but when 9/11 happened, he left the Department and went over to Iraq to help train police departments in better policing techniques, so she was left without cover from on high.

[mtbc]

That's a neat story, thanks. (-: I was amused to find that a guy who took a job I turned down turned out to be one I'd given an Atari 2600 system to.

Ah, yes, the press can be powerful. (-:

[wpadmirer]

I totally get that.

I had to explain how to use an electric typewriter to two college students a couple of years ago. They didn't even know what it was when we dragged it out of the closet.

They could not believe that I had written full-length plays and short stories on a typewriter for years.

Made me feel ancient.

[mtbc]

Ha, yes, I was recently chatting with someone my age about changing typewriter ribbons. (-: I worked at one place with an electric typewriter which defaulted to an auto-CR/LF once far enough along the line and I found I was the only one in the office who knew what was going on and how to adjust it! Am occasionally amused to see an old IBM Selectric in a junk store.