"I never met the CPU I didn't like"

If you read a newspaper, pay for a purchase with a credit card, buy a meal at a¨ fine dining establishment (or a McDonald's) -- or even set a thermostat -- you¨ may run some of my code. I'm completely responsible for a Call Center that is¨ scattered around North America, and was chief architect for a restaurant system¨ running under Unix. I've had my hand in word processors, optical scanning¨ systems, laboratory acquisition devices, one of the black boxes that keeps the¨ Boeing 777 in the air, and black boxes changing the time (and prices) on gas¨ station signs. I've been dealing with computers for a third of a century.

I'm also a Software Prostitute. What that means is that if you pay me¨ enough, I'll do just about any kind of Software, no matter how kinky. I plead¨ guilty to committing quite a bit of C, a little Fortran, PL/M ... I've even done¨ Basic, and I don't mean Visual. There are some forms of Software I've never¨ performed, but I learn very fast. A recent contract position had me writing a¨ Unix driver, the contract before that had me doing C++, and for a while I had a¨ private affair with JAVA ... even though it was underage and barely developed at the time.

When asked I will give a truthful account of my affair with Linux

I'm old enough to be your grandfather. I'm married to Maris, who is much¨ younger and nicer than me, and we have three offspring: Amber, married and¨ living in Arlington (near Dallas); Holly, in the Air Force in San Antonio and¨ raising a 5-year-old daughter; and Andre, Gold Star recipient and president of¨ his 4-H Chapter, and a National Honors Society member when he graduated from high school last spring -- and now doing well at Northeast Texas Community College.

Probably the most dangerous and destructive critters we have here (besides certain people) are feral pigs.

Geographically we are in Northeast Texas. We can cross¨ into Oklahoma, Arkansas, or Louisiana in an hour or so on good roads. We live in¨ the upper end of Franklin County, where there is no town; but our mailing address, the new "911" address now mandated in Texas, is:

(Talco is actually in the next county east - see map)

Our telephone numbers are (903) 632 5226 & 0114, which puts us local with¨ people west of Paris, TX and right up to¨ the Oklahoma border (more than 50 miles northwest). Strangely, until recently we¨ had to make a toll call to reach our kid's school, doctor, insurance agent,¨ sheriff ... anything in the nearest town, which is Mt. Vernon. There is still a toll-call pocket south of town, then another thirty miles of local calling area!

This doesn't matter to me any more, though. We got on a flat-rate long distance¨ plan and it doesn't matter who I talk to, or how long, 24/7, the bill is still¨ the same. So if for some strange reason you'd like to actually talk to me, send¨ an e-mail with your number and I'll call you! It won't cost either of us a¨ dime.

It is a strange fact that for most people here, if your neighbor¨ happens to live in a different calling area it is cheaper to call someone in Hawaii, have¨ them call your Texas neighbor, and conference the calls, than to make the call¨ the usual way.

Of course there's email: hardsoft@peoplepc.com.

We moved to Texas from Connecticut a dozen years ago. We miss our noisy river¨ and the fall colors ... but are very grateful to be here instead. The people¨ here have to be some of the nicest on Earth. (The folks in North Carolina weren't half bad, either. Then I worked in New York ...)

We don't miss shoveling snow at all. But we could do without the tornados¨ (we've been hit by one, which spared our buildings) and the summer heat ...¨ which has sometimes topped 100ŗF/38ŗC every day for weeks in a row, though not¨ last summer.

LAST summer we were in a prolonged drought! This seems to have broken now, though; as I write this there is as much in the rain guage from the past couple of days as there was all that summer.

RÉSUMÉ

John Miller
149 CR NE 2140
Talco TX 75487

(903) 632 0114 Office
(903) 632 5226 Residence
hardsoft@peoplepc.com

Updated 13 January 2007

TECHNICAL SUMMARY:

2001: Last contract, NEC America, Irving, TX

2000: SMSC, Hauppauge, NY

1999: Gilbarco Inc., Greensboro, North Carolina

1998: S&P Comstock

1996 - 1997

All four contracts involved direct co-operation with hardware engineers and¨ analysis using in-circuit emulators.

PREVIOUS:

Chief architect for Unix-based restaurant order system. Wrote Unix device¨ drivers and other low- and mid-level code (both C and Assembly Language) for¨ system to run on IBM 386. (Control Transaction Corp. NJ, three years.)

ANCIENT HISTORY: A software engineer since 1973

Wrote Data General Nova-based "Restaurant Operating System", a multi-terminal¨ operating system and fine-dining restaurant order-entry package in use at¨ hundreds of locations world-wide.

Wrote complete telephone polling system to query electronic cash registers of¨ California/Hawaii fast-food chain, convert data to EBCDIC, and put on diskette¨ for IBM mainframe. (Later learned that a highly regarded consulting firm had¨ earlier abandoned this particular task as "impossible" because existing methods¨ could not meet real-time constraints.)

Wrote all software for sub-system of semi-intelligent terminals with¨ sophisticated video scanning capabilities. This required accomplishing¨ "technically infeasible" task of concentrating data from 32 9600-baud¨ asynchronous serial ports into a single data stream using a single Z80 CPU at¨ 2MHz.

Wrote embedded firmware for printer attached to complex multi-processor system:¨ Received ASCII, output pulses directly to pin drivers with compensation for¨ varying head speeds, producing nicely formed characters on paper with no delays¨ or time-outs to host.

Produced software to specification for embedded Intel 8048 and Zilog Z80¨ microprocessors used in laboratory data acquisition devices and in advertising¨ sign controls. (The 8048 is in the 8051 family and saw widespread use as the¨ embedded processor in older keyboards.)

Worked at all levels in typesetting and word processing software, with special¨ emphasis on time-critical operations. For example, wrote code for Ashton-Tate¨ product converting internal format to the justified video representation using¨ 32-bit(!) character widths and numerous control characters, and producing a line¨ of text in less than four milliseconds on a 4MHz IBM PC. (Also wrote same code¨ for the Mac -- much easier and faster!)

Wrote BIOS for WS III F, a Z80-based typesetting computer with paged memory,¨ hard disk on SCSI bus, floppy, serial and parallel ports. Implemented CP/M 3.1¨ on this computer with many enhancements circumventing CP/M limitations and¨ supporting a large body of pre-existing, non-CPM software.

Interfaced major-firm telephone accounting system with numerous Hotel Management¨ systems in compliance with their own (usually non-standard) protocols.

Produced complete stand-alone telephone accounting system. Single Z80 CPU drove¨ several terminals and printers concurrently with no discernible delay.

Plenty of experience writing 386/486/Pentium Assembly Language code at systems¨ level and at higher levels in Real, Virtual, and Protected modes.

Experience writing Assembly Language code for Motorola 68x00 processors in the¨ Macintosh environment, on VMEbus, and in stand-alone embedded systems.

"I never met the CPU I didn't like"

AVAILABILITY:

•¨ Now

Part-time "moonlight by modem" any time. I was "telecommuting" before the term¨ was invented, and when modems generally operated at 300 baud. With today's¨ high-speed internet access, this is the way I can best be of service.