Terry Poulin

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For work related reasons, I’ve found myself using a Mac for the past two weeks rather than my aging Latitude. Along with whatever the sale related winds happen to be when Stark finally retired, I suppose this will influence whether my next laptop ends up an XPS or a MacBook, lol.

Having adapted an iPad and fiddled around with old-ass PowerBooks, I’m already well aware that Apple has its own standards when it comes to keyboard shortcuts, and that it’s probably as old as anyone else’s :P.

One of the most annoying points of transition for me isn’t the control, option, and command thing — rather it’s the differences in use. For the most part these modifiers are what you’d expect compared to control, alt, and super (windows). The part that will corrupt my muscle memory is some everyday control+shortcuts are control+shortcuts and some are command+shortcuts. Unlike a simple difference in modifier layout: this calls for learning which ones are and aren’t different modifiers; not just different key positions.

While the pattern is pretty straight forward for application specific shortcuts, e.g., cntrl+t to open a tab will almost always be cmd+t instead and changing tabs remains the control+tab of a PC; it’s the cursor movements for hopping by words and lines with the arrow keys that are harder to muscle memory. Those feel to have much less rime to reason to me. To balance that out, macOS comes with a version of vim pre-installed!

My relationship to Mac OSX was mostly focused on the unix layer. BSD with bits of GNU, and a little fruit on the side. Apple’s GUI itself never interested me much when I was getting deeper into computers.

As a consequence: I find the macOS window manager very “Different”, but surprisingly interesting. An early source of confusion for me was control+up versus control+down. One of these effectively shows the windows on the desktop and one of these effectively shows the windows for the current application. That’s the key.

macOS’s window manager is decidedly modern but it has rather classic notions!

Another source of such confusion is differences between cmd+tab and cmd+`, a distinction between applications and windows quickly becomes a “Huh” when you start having handfuls of terminal windows intermixed with handfuls and handfuls of other application windows. If I hadn’t played with the classic MacOS, I’m not sure I would have figured that distinction out as quick since no modern platform really does the difference between application window group and windows of the current application that way.

Actually, it’s surprising how much macOS has retained from the ‘90s and ‘80s era system software. Both in spirit and in direct function. While at the same time embracing UNIX, which typically takes a more “PC” approach to things once you leap from minicomputers to microcomputers.

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Taking Greek inspiration for lunch, I’m reminded of one of the things I love about living in the US: the food! I remember a German friend describing our approach to eating as a giant “Salad bowl” because you can find a little bit of everything in America.

Being a nation made up of immigrants, people of course brought their tastes in cooking along. It’s like if there is anything we can all gather around and enjoy together: it’s food. Different families may have different preferences in baking bread, but it’s still in breaking bread together that we find joy.

In terms of cuisine, traditionally “American food” is not that different from western European countries. In fact, I’m pretty sure a Frenchman just rolled over in his grave somewhere at that very thought :^o). The subtleties of cooking in such countries are often lost upon us, IMHO. Which makes sense given that so many early colonists came from Europe, and the concepts of cooking came along with them and then mingled together and became adapted to what the home cooks had to work with. The same is often true of other island nations and former territories.

As time moved on more and more delicious food has become common. I find it somewhat amusing that whenever people here are on the search for food, it often is discussed in terms of a type of food (e.g., sandwiches; fried chicken; etc), or in terms of ethnicity (e.g., Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai) that best describes what they are in the mood for. In my area: there’s a particularly broad range of food to choose from. We always end up adapting what we cook to what is available to work with, but what form it takes is always shaped by some point of reference.

Growing up, I was fortunate that ma went with a broad range of food. My mother’s cooking was heavily influenced both by our shared ancestry and the people we knew. My mother learned to cook from her grandmother, who didn’t even speak English. Obviously, Italian food was a big thing to them — as a child, arguably the pallet of her parents and grandparents were the biggest influences. That had both positive and negatives for my mom, such as the war between her and her mother about the definition of gravy and the occasional horrors of her family eating whatever her grandfather brought home. At the same time, she also loved dinner with friends and neighbors. That could be mean anything, and as a side effect my mother’s pallet was far broader than our ancestors. I in turn, benefited from this very much, lol.

It’s also kind of funny that often the best home cooks are named grandma, in whatever language the terms of endearment may take.

Note to self: I should definitely make ma’s spinach lasagna when the holiday season comes around.

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I’ve always been a collection of oxymorons. Or, as a fan of Oscar, I prefer to say “I am an ox AND a moron!”; although sometimes I find it intriguing how that works out in practice.

Viewing plans for the weekend include both Eraser and Emily In Paris, which is probably a wide apart as you can get for genres.

On the flip side while Eraser is as technologically silly as it gets, and the CGI and compositing shots haven’t held up that great, it’s still as entertaining a collection of bullets and explosions as I remember.

Ahh, it’s been a busy few weeks.

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As such I mainly have two core objectives right now.

First is what I refer to as “Drool on the couch”. Rest and relaxation in the manner of Home Simpson. Except for me that tends to look more like Netflix or video games than a beer.

Second is to catch up on my backlog. Things that need to get sorted but don’t always make it into the week. Not to mention trying to get a headstart.

Actually, I find it kind of bemusing that grocery shopping is usually scheduled in terms of when the dogs food and snacks are getting due for refill, or when my own snack pool thins out 😋

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For a while now, I’ve resisted Disney+. Often, just barely. I kind of recognized immediately when it launched: if my mother had been alive there would have been no choice in the matter from the beginning. With Star Wars and Marvel joining the house of mouse, that beelines it straight into my interests. I already grew up in front of Disney’s content library being the son of Disney fanatic. Throwing in the franchises that most interest me: that just makes a dangerous recipe for a streaming service, lol.

The way I’ve largely resisted is the notion that I have enough of my budget devoted to such subscriptions, and don’t need another. Less about the cost, more about the principal.

And then I notice how cheaply this can expand my existing Hulu package….and darn it.

For bonus points, not only does this allow me to catch up on recent SW/MCU series, it has quite the back catalog. Including filling in the gaps in my Blu-ray collection. Seeing the back catalog has the old ewoks movies and Spiderman and His Amazing Friends series from the ’80s listed, somehow just makes me feel old more than tempted. But I’m pretty sure we’ve long since passed the point of “Pass the popcorn”. Sigh.

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 Famous last words? “Damn it, Amazon. Don’t show me coffee makers!”

Reflections upon my career

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For the most part, I’ve never been a big believer in bucket lists. At least not the kind you wait until you’re dying to start checking off. In thinking recently, I’ve come to realize that the work I’ve done over the years probably checks those kinds of boxes on my career in software engineering.

Over the past 16½ years of programming: I’ve …
Followed as part of a larger group where the big picture issues were someone else’s problem, been the mythical programmer doing it all, led small groups where the big picture is my domain, and been the contact point for small groups.
Learned that I like design and architecture. Both creating them anew and studying existing projects.
Somehow ended up the guy everyone asks when they don’t know the answers.
Gotten to enjoy coffee machines that may have had more moving parts than my car.
Worked on traditional application and system level software, but also many other pieces that were off the beaten path. Kernel level drivers that needed porting, microcontrollers that drive hardware interfaces, developed libraries, tools, and frameworks.
Discovered those are all less magical than you think when you’re a young padawan. It’s less that it’s drastically different from normal software development and more that it’s important that you not screw up, explode, or paint yourself into a corner.
At times been both the smarted and the stupidest person in the room.
Made features people loved that were based off my ideas. Especially the curious ones when I wanted to know how something worked, and then found an imaginative use case for what was learned.
Made features people loved that we based off other people’s ideas. Especially the ones that made the product better for the customer.
Been one of the engineers that gets called when a customer goes down on a Sunday.
Been deemed the expert on some problem domain. Actually, I don’t want to know how many times that’s happened.
Seen code that I worked on make the magic happen and seen the results on a scope, even though I’ll never be able to spell oscilloscope from memory!
Been grateful for hardware engineers and technicians and their skill sets. As well as gladly working alongside them.
Had my hands in more than pieces of internal infrastructure than I can count. As a coworker recently pointed out, while “IT guy” has never been my job title at any of the places that I’ve worked, he noted that I could probably run an IT dept it I had to. The part of that bugs me, is he was serious, and others agreed.
Been a webmaster, not that I miss that job.
Gotten to work with equipment that I always thought was so expensive that I would never be allowed to touch it.
Seen more than one 8-inch floppy diskette.
Oh wow, satellites!
Been one of the guys who knows too much about what needs doing after the power comes back on.
Both saved the day like Mr. Scott and reminded people that I am not in fact Scotty.
Quoted Jurassic Park more times than I ever thought possible.
Had to wear both my red shirt and my brown pants.
Kept working on a problem everyone else gave up on, and actually found a solution.
Written code to handle parsing existing formats and data streams, including at least one parser of MPEG2 Transport Streams and various propriety things.
Written code, specifications, and documentation for formats and data streams I’ve created. Sadly, more often for propriety things.
Debugged more than a few weird problems.
Been the guy that gets to solve a problem because the team that should fix it in their project decided it’s too much work to do the right thing.
Solved problems at both ends so a system is tolerant if only upgraded one end.
Will probably forget more about the X Windows system as I get older than younger folk will ever learn.
Will never forget there was a character encoding named EBCDIC because test equipment was so much older than I was, defaulting to EBCDIC rather than ASCII made sense when it was manufactured.
Worked on existing and developed new products that actually get used and deployed.
Never got to go to tradeshows and conferences related to my fields but was the chief code monkey on a product that got an award at one.
There will probably be at least letter from a customer in my keepsake box.
Ahh. I’ve got to admit, it hasn’t been a dull career to date.
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It’s been an unusually full weekend. A couple friends were in Atlanta making for a nice chance to hang out. As someone that already passes for a potato during my time off, this was probably the most time out I’ve spent since the pre-COVID age. Between work and medicine schedules it’s been difficult to get very far on the weekends, even after being vaccinated.

I’m also reminded that driving in Atlanta isn’t quite as bad as I remember, thanks to it being the weekend. But I’m still going with the accurate statement that Atlanta is a gravity well where cars go and pedestrians can walk faster 😅. Driving on the interstate doesn’t bother me, it’s just a case in methodical driving and trying to avoid the psychopaths. It’s more specifically the metropolitan gravity well that sucks.
Oddly the thing I’m most looking forward to about the coming week is coffee. I’m able to be a fully functional human being without caffeine, and did so the first twenty or so years of my life. Yet, I’m still in favor of an IV drip of espresso given how little coffee I’ve had this weekend.
As a side note, a entry in embarrassing life moments: wondering why the parking machine refuses to acknowledge my credit card exists, and then noting the machine is too old for chip cards which meant my mag strip was therefore on the wrong side. Or as my brain’s internal monologue phrased it, “Damn, I shouldn’t have skipped coffee”. Yes, never skip coffee. Something, something. Mm, coffee.
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Thus far, getting the 2300c up and running has proven to be a bit of a longer running side project than expected.

Part of the juggle:

  1. Most of my software base targets M68K and system 7: about the time PowerPC support began.
  2. Most of my media for installing MacOS 9 either can’t boot on older than a G3 or is media that can neither be booted nor readily connected to the older hardware.
  3. Which parts will end up in which machine.
Now that I have a second IDE to SD adapter, I can fit the 2300c with its own internal drive. I’m thinking the larger RAM card from my 230c will get swapped with the 8 MB RAM card from the 2300c. At least if I can get the machine running MacOS 9 or 8.x where memory use will probably be higher. I can’t say that I care as much about the modem card given the process to swap that and my lack of a local test loop.
I’m thinking that the 2300c will get nicknamed “Maxwell”, after Gundam Wing’s Duo Maxwell.
Looking like the next steps will be creating an image for the SD card via emulator or trying to arrange booting my G3 machine and seeing if it can run an install to the 2300c using Target Disk mode and a SCSI connection. In the meantime, I might just see if the 230’s system 7 install will boot on the 2300c. If so, a whole lotta Zip disk swapping and multiple partitions might be an effective solution.
While the 2300c has proven to be in much better shape than I expected, the fancier color screen looks like it would benefit from recapping far more than the 230’s B&W. Figuring out replacement capacitors though, may be a project for another year. When it comes to the trouble of dismantling that section of PowerBook, it would probably make a good opportunity to do the same to the motherboard. Especially if the PowerPC model also has most of the caps in the same zone near the DC input.
Actually, come to think of it, I believe the baseline floppy setup system 7 that I used for the 230c should be viable if I make a PPC disk utilities floppy to bootstrap from. Decades after the fact, I’m not entirely sure I want to know how well an upgrade process from System 7.x to MacOS 9 would work.

Random thought

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I think I can now say it is universally known that I love coffee.

That, or the only way to make it better known would be having coffee paraphernalia tattooed on my face….. lol