On Home Projects as a Reentry into the Job Market

"You gave *ME* that difficult exam because I'm but you didn't give as difficult of an exam! "

The threat is real. If you make the interview about them it becomes much more difficult for their lawyer. ;-)

figure

that was what we called our old ovens at Microdyne. "Call the M.E., the pizza oven is down again". They finally replaced the pair with a computer controlled Heller oven.

And 18 months on parts released, within this week?

In 1996, while interviewing for a job I was told that one of the requirements was 15 years experience with Win 95. I pointed out that they were fools, and walked out. They weren't around for long. I guess they couldn't find enough experienced people. :)

talking

figure

Actually, the oven is fine for what it is. The RoHS profile is just asking too much from it.

talking

figure

The ones at Microdyne were old when I started there, over 13 years ago. They needed two, just to keep one running. They were going to overhaul the better unit after they bought the Heller, and set it up for engineering to play with, so they didn't keep disrupting production. Suddenly engineering didn't waste so much time, playing with Production's toys. :)

Hey, that's almost possible. After all, it's just MS-DOS with a GUI glommed on the top.

before,

Sure it is. There was no 'registry' in DOS.

before,

OK, so there's a bug that MS-DOS didn't have.

hey, if you are turning sand into gold, you don't need no stinkin engeneer job!

figure

Back in college our reflow oven was a Black & Decker. Only one temperature zone, but it did ding when the time was up.

Then I went on to my first job, found myself reflowing by heat gun, and longed for those more sophisticated days.

--
Rob Gaddi, Highland Technology
Email address is currently out of order

talking

figure

A guy I knew repaired Data general computer gear. He did Surface Mount repair with a B&D heat gun.

But on the other hand, in Massachusetts you might be burned at the stake as an unlicensed alchemist.

re,

u

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s

I wish a had a nickle for every engineer or hobbyist who wanted to recreate an old CPU design. Or better yet, a line of fully debugged and documented code on a new project with real world application.

I thought I was going to have a lot of free time this summer to work on an open source hardware design, but my time has not been so free after all. But if anyone is sitting around bored and wants to participate, I would love to have some moral support if not good, solid planning and design work. I want to develop an open source GPS receiver. The main goal is to allow a variety of sources of data to be used rather than being locked into maps from the GPS vendor. I've been inspired by USAPhotoMaps and OpenStreetMaps.

I'm not trying to knock retro-projects. I'm just saying I'd like to work on something closer to state of the art.

Rick

Hi Rick,

I think that's a great idea, but personally I'd be happy if I could simply

*buy* a program like Street Atlas USA for Linux... and that means including high-quality maps of the U.S. AFAIK the problem is that the commercial map guys like NavTeq and TeleAtlas are only willing to sell their maps to folks who'll take reasonable precautions to prevent the data from being trivially copied into other programs. (I don't know it for a fact, but I suspect the map databases in Street Atlas, Street & Trips, etc. are encrypted -- otherwise someone would have written an "extractor" by now so that such data could be used by the Linux mapping applications.)

The OpenStreetMaps guys seem to be doing a pretty good job, though... perhaps eventually they will be an acceptable replacement for the commercial alternatives.

---Joel

talking

figure

ships.

We don't play with their toys either. It's much easier to have them do the work. ;-)

I guess that counts as a free pass. ;-)

(only

talking

to figure

ships.

Engineering had a bad habit of thinking that everything in the building belonged to them. Like when they swiped the scope off my bench and took it with them for a couple weeks to a customer's site. When they got back they discovered that the Tek 2465B they had ordered, had replaced it. ;-)

Nice. :-)

Did you get to keep the 2465B?

Yes. For over two years. Even when I was moved to a new project, it went with me. :)

They tried to get back at me by banning me from entering or calling the engineering department, for life. That lasted less than a week.