Chapter 24

Life is bullshit, unless you are a cat or dog. Dogs and cats, as many humans, are living and feeling creatures, guided by self-interests, instinctual pursuits, and the never-ending quest for the preferred warm spot on their human’s bed; none of which is bullshit, as these qualities define ‘living a good life’.

Some humans are sentient, thus being dogged by existential dogma (did you see what I did there?). It was a deterministic, a meta-conscious choice, that I always avoided the mind-fuck of existential pursuits. One of the joys of an engineering education and background and vocation is that it enables the mind to focus on the task at hand, with little regard to the complexities of the human condition. Thus, most engineers tend to relate well to dogs, cats, horses, etc. My little engineering mind had enabled my view of the human condition to be simplistic, amoral, debased, and deliberately ignorant.

It should be obvious, to any reasonable observer, that my choice was to remain firmly oblivious to the greater political and societal concerns of my two august mentors, Gunnery Sergeant S.A. Scott and Major H.D. Hegstrom, USMC, retired. My choice of ignorant bliss was dependent on ‘they’, of said unknown organization, providing interesting engineering endeavors and problems to be solved. As long as this condition continued, life was tits.

“Ya know what, gunny? Fuck it. Don’t tell me shit. I’ll be your trained monkey and systems engineer. Have never given a flying fuck about the grand scheme of things, so I’ll play on your team until someone fucks me over. Good enough?”

“You know what Charlie Hutzel said about you after he took you on your first Midway det?”

“Nope.”

“Charlie said that you were technically and physically perfect for the job, but didn’t seem to care about much of anything.”

“Yeah? Whatever. Ya talk to Charlie lately?”

“He’s at MALS-11; received his PCS notification for the senior Marine instructor billet at the Avionics ‘A’ schools in the new Pensacola digs; that is, unless he decides to retire this year.”

“Gonna recruit Charlie for this circus?”

“Negative. He would be ill-suited for our purpose.”

“Ya mean Charlie that has morals and I don’t?”

“That is part of it ... How is the re-design coming? A two-day window for system insertion will occur within forty to fifty days.”

“We got problems, gunny.”

“What are the problems?”

“The current injection points do not balance, so the resulting dissimilar propagation rates and cross-track impedance for both frequency bands, and the...”

“Jeezus fuck, Watson. Just give me a summary.”

“We got some problems with the FR4 being used. The effective impedance and propagation delays are influenced by the glass fiber reinforcement, which typically has a higher dielectric constant than the epoxy resin. So the number of fiber layers and the angular orientation between the fiber’s warp and trace directions are fucking with the dielectric constant.”

“Have test data?”

“Look at this, guns. This is the statistical distribution for production-level shit. Now add the influence of absorbed moisture in environments over fifty percent RH and you get a shit-load of unintended spurs and center freq drifts.”

“And the solution to your problem?”

“Ain’t my problem. Nothing I can do. It’s a production issue. If ya lock me into a specific board house, then we’re stuck with whatever stuff that factory happens to shit out.”

“This is not good. The only other place to make your PCBs, at least a vetted board house, would be in Mexico. But we could not get them stuffed there.”

“Why not?”

“Security. They would see the bill, so could reverse-engineer. That and this facility cannot wave dual-sided PCBs.”

“Fuck that, I’ll stuff them. I’ll make a small oven for re-flow.”

“By hand? How long will that take?”

“Dunno, never did a board that big by hand. Maybe a day or two per board.”

“If I got you some boards before the end of the week, how long until you can verify, and how long until you can build and test one or two.”

“Maybe a week, but only if I have the stencils.”

“Give me the gerber files. I am going to TJ.”

“TJ? Bring me some Tequila, gunny.”

“Study that print-out I gave ya, Matty?”

“Yes. So that is an array of pointers? Why?”

“For this program, it’s to associate a list of associated data structures. Look at how I have allocated the memory for each data structure pointed to by the array. Notice how the list is independent from the memory allocation?”

“Yes. So?”

“It’s the difference between static and dynamic memory.”

“This is that heap and stack stuff?”

“Yep. But there are other reasons. You’ll see a lot of stuff like this im embedded systems.”

“Embedded?”

“Think of it as software within hardware that other hardware talks to. Like the firmware on that SCSI controller board. Or the firmware loaded on that micro-controller that runs that printer.”

“Or the stuff in your airplane?”

“Yep. So how’s your project coming?”

“Okay, but my teacher is not happy. I don’t think he understands ‘C’ or what I am doing.”

“Yeah, probably the difference between someone that writes programs for the end user, and the people making tools and systems for other people to make stuff with.”

“Should I tell that to my teacher?”

“I dunno. Maybe. Just do your thing. Why do you care what the world thinks?”

“That’s not what mom says.”

“That’s the thing about parents. They only know what was taught to them. So when something new comes along, they may not be able to understand. Maybe you can explain the new thing, maybe not.”

“Maybe you can do that. I can’t. Did you tell your mom and dad about new stuff?”

“Yep. At least I tried. Didn’t work well.”

“But now that you have an airplane and all of this cool electronic stuff, do they listen to you now?”

“Don’t know. Haven’t talked to them in ... I dunno, probably over ten years.”

“Wow ... Wait, how old are you, Mark?”

“Uh, guess about thirty five.”

“You don’t know how old your are!? ... You’re old as my mom. You really that old?”

“Sometimes I think I’m a hundred. Sometimes I think I’m ten or eleven.”

“I’ll be twelve next month.”

“What ya gonna do for your birthday?”

“Probably be at the lawyers office or the county recorder’s office with mom.”

“Sounds fun. What for?”

“Mom, is selling half of our property. I think she is wrong, the three circles on it make over half of our money.”

“That’s weird. Who’s buying it?”

“A rich guy from Texas. My history teacher says that oil tycoons out of Texas and Oklahoma are stealing Colorado.”

“Probably true. There’s no bigger asshole than an oil man ... Ya find the bug yet?”

“I’m not sure. Tell me again about DOS interrupt two one.”

“Still having problems with extended and conventional memory allocation?”

“Yes. The direct calls you showed me aren’t working.”

“Yeah? Let’s take a look at how you’re using XMS...”

“So the bank bamboozled the woman into a quit claim in exchange for an unsecured debt? What the fuck, over? No one is that stupid, Mister Salik.”

“Perhaps not. There may have been malfeasance, such as a misrepresentation of the supposed default.”

“So what can ya do?”

“Me personally? Not much. The California bar does not have a reciprocal relationship with Colorado. You would have to find local counsel.”

“That, sir, is what I’m paying you for. Find me a local legal beagle. Send him these documents. Do your magical mumbo jumbo stuff and stop that transaction.”

“I will do my best.”

“Good. Next, Mister Salik, tell me about my money.”

“I will continue and repeat the conversation we had three months ago. Assuming the current inflation rate, with all non-liquid in conservative venues, your annual yield will be approximately one point three million. Higher risk, meaning much more aggressive investitures, could yield over four point three million per year. These numbers, of course, assume that your associates do not continue to purchase more land in Idaho and elsewhere.”