User:Atlant



Hello!

I've been involved with electronics since I built my first crystal radio and have been seriously involved with computers since about 1970 or so when I started programming on a system running HP 2000C Time-Shared BASIC.

I spent 24 years working for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and had something to do with PDP-8s, PDP-10s, PDP-11s, VAXes, and Alpha systems. Along the way, I worked for Digital's PDP-11 Engineering Group, VAX Development group, and the Technical OEM group, later called Embedded and Realtime Systems. I spent my last few years at Digital working for the VMS Engineering Group in Nashua, New Hampshire.

From May of 2000 until June of 2008, I was employed by Teradyne (first in Boston, Massachusetts and later in North Reading), one of the largest manufacturers of semiconductor automatic test equipment. At Teradyne, I spent my first five years working with their largest testers where my primary task was to integrate the industry-standard SECS/GEM communications software into these testers and support customer's SECS/GEM factory automation applications. Later, I worked with Teradyne's newer FLEX family of testers (FLEX, microFLEX, and the various UltraFLEX systems) where I was responsible for the distributed hard realtime embedded system that controls the power and cooling of the testers.

For a while, I worked for Nokia on the team that developed the Avkon-based Web Browser for S60, a WebKit-based web browser running on Nokia's line of S60-based smartphones. Later, I worked on their Qt-based replacement web browser and Web Runtime framework. But with Nokia's recent jump from their burning platform, the group that did both of those things has been almost-entirely made redundant.

Fortunately, I had the good sense to voluntarily depart almost a year before the Nokia leadership acknowledged the platform fire and now work as a software architect for DEKA Research & Development in the Amoskeag Millyard in Manchester, New Hampshire (see the photo to the right). At DEKA I work on the development of cutting-edge medical devices with all of the emphasis on software reliability that you would expect. DEKA's software is developed using very robust processes, subject to a great deal of manual and automated review, and carefully archived to allow precise traceability, retrieval, and reproduction in the future.



I speak a wide range of computer languages plus a little English when necessary. I'm (slowly) trying to learn French and understand miniscule smatterings of a few other languages.

I've written a number of Wikipedia articles and submitted a number of photographs having to do with electronics, computers, and a few miscellaneous topics, I've kibitzed on many more articles, and I spend (waste?) a fair amount of time reverting vandalism and doing recent-change patrolling; since 18 October 2006, I've been an administrator on the English-language Wikipedia. I'm looking forward to the day when we can take Wikipedia and Google and from them, cobble together a self-aware computer. (Insert smilies as necessary, but this thought actually informs some of my editing choices.) Another reason I edit Wikipedia is best stated by paraphrasing Professor Henry Jones from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: I write things down in Wikipedia so that I won't have to remember them any more.

I'm quoted and my picture appeared in the 2 August 2006 edition of the Telegraph of Nashua in David W. Brook's article about Wikipedia and Wikimania 2006. 

In the recent past, I was a member of the Board of Directors of the NHCLU, the New Hampshire local affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. This apparently provoked the following rant from an anonymous coward (which you can still see on Archive 3 of my talk page):


 * "The ACLU: One man's promise


 * "This is for all of you seditious America-hating, baby-killing, communist, queer mafia-endorsing, self-indulgent, child porn-loving, thought-policing, communist, perverted, inciteful, Christian-hating, Jew-hating, Jihad, morally blind, dispicable, detestable, American and British soldier-killing, pansies: Your days are numbered."


 * 1) Who knew so many kids' school-chums were "GAY!!!"? And how do the folks making all those allegations really know, unless...
 * 2) Note to linkspammers: Just because I didn't remove their linkspam doesn't mean that your linkspam gets to stay. Point out "their" linkspam and I'll remove it, too!
 * 3) Ahh, another person who knows who the "pansies" are! Funny how it always comes down to someone shouting "You're gay!". (And won't my wife be surprised!)

An interesting article killed by the deletionists

 * User:Atlant/List of film and television clichés