vwpetree
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- How did you find PF?
- Searching for a concise explanation of the difference between absolute and relative probabilities.
Hello! My name is Vance Petree. I'm a retired software engineer (10
years older then Star Trek, actually).
I worked 38 years for what is now Dominion Energy, developing software
for the real-time systems that monitor transmission and distribution
grids. Eventually, I was the main software architect for an in-house,
from-scratch Linux-based distribution management system that ran for
20 of those 38 years. We did it all ourselves, with only a small team:
2 heavy coding lifters, 2 medium lifters, and me (writing unholy
amounts of library routines, utilities, multi-threaded scanners, and
databases to tie it all together).
24x7 reliability! Scanning thousands of devices! Years of archived
status and analog data!
Alas, as is the way with large corporations, they scrapped our system
rather than hire younger programmers to maintain and extend it, and
bought a (rather ponderous) replacement system from a vendor.
I took the hint and rode off into the sunset like Indy, John
Rhys-Davies, and Sean Connery -- fortunately, with a (moderate)
pension.
But enough about that. Besides, coding's no fun anymore with all those
chatty Claudes gadding about ...
In my twilight years, to ease my inevitable descent into senescence
and toothless pudding-hood, I decided to (re) self-educate myself in
all the physics I had to leave behind back in the (ahem) 1970s.
Online courses, videos, books, etc. are all fine and good, but
sometimes solutions manuals don't really provide much by way of
step-by-step explanations. I happened across this site a couple of
times while searching for solution help of my own; I saw people making
some of the same mistakes I had been making, and getting clear,
patient advice and concise explanations that really helped.
What could be better than that? (Apart from time-tunneling back to
1975 and never switching to computer science ... but I digress. :-))
years older then Star Trek, actually).
I worked 38 years for what is now Dominion Energy, developing software
for the real-time systems that monitor transmission and distribution
grids. Eventually, I was the main software architect for an in-house,
from-scratch Linux-based distribution management system that ran for
20 of those 38 years. We did it all ourselves, with only a small team:
2 heavy coding lifters, 2 medium lifters, and me (writing unholy
amounts of library routines, utilities, multi-threaded scanners, and
databases to tie it all together).
24x7 reliability! Scanning thousands of devices! Years of archived
status and analog data!
Alas, as is the way with large corporations, they scrapped our system
rather than hire younger programmers to maintain and extend it, and
bought a (rather ponderous) replacement system from a vendor.
I took the hint and rode off into the sunset like Indy, John
Rhys-Davies, and Sean Connery -- fortunately, with a (moderate)
pension.
But enough about that. Besides, coding's no fun anymore with all those
chatty Claudes gadding about ...
In my twilight years, to ease my inevitable descent into senescence
and toothless pudding-hood, I decided to (re) self-educate myself in
all the physics I had to leave behind back in the (ahem) 1970s.
Online courses, videos, books, etc. are all fine and good, but
sometimes solutions manuals don't really provide much by way of
step-by-step explanations. I happened across this site a couple of
times while searching for solution help of my own; I saw people making
some of the same mistakes I had been making, and getting clear,
patient advice and concise explanations that really helped.
What could be better than that? (Apart from time-tunneling back to
1975 and never switching to computer science ... but I digress. :-))