Somewhere between 1995 and 2000, I was sent to teach a pSOS+ class to Westinghouse engineers in Savannah, Georgia.

For a short, four-year period in the 1960s, the man sitting to my right was a High School teacher. I knew him for two of those. None before, and none after.

Inspired by “Why Does E=mc^2” by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw, I admit to giving my imagination considerable free rein in this essay.

Open Source

Basically it means that the item, commonly a piece of software, is usually available in source code form, you can get a copy, read it, and modify it. It also says that, if you change it, you must also make those changes available to anyone and that you must do so without charging them anything.

Curiosity is on it’s way this morning to Mars for the next eight months. Launched this morning atop an Atlas V vehicle, Curiosity is the size of a small car, several times the weight, and carries many times the scientific instruments of its predecessor rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

Once upon a time, there were three RTOSes named VRTX, pSOS and VxWorks.

A holiday, an extra “sick” [of work] day, two days of “office” and one to figure out some demos for a web-based class, that was my week.