Congratulations, Reid. Pretty impressive project.
Thank you.
What kind of idiot would wire-wrap a home-brewed 3-processor
system running 13000 lines of code, duct tape an antenna to his head and
use it to stimulate an implanted device?
My kind of idiot.
You can’t be serious. What if it didn’t work?
Then I would now be dead serious.
Weren’t you scared?
I was terrified.
What did your audiologist think?
She was horrified.
You need to see a shrink.
I did that once. I am not merely normal: I am perfectly
normal.
OK ok. Enough! Third place? Aren’t you kind of slipping? Seems like you came in second a few weeks ago.
Yes. And to a dead man, no less. And this time, the competition
was just as stiff. I am as pleased as can be.
I can tell. So what exactly is a PIC?
The PIC17Cxx series, from Microchip, is considered a high end 8-bit RISC
family of microcontrollers. They are cheap, have lots of IOs, and really
easy to use, once you figure them out.
Where did you learn this microcontroller stuff, anyway?
I bought the databook, read it, and started making mistakes.
Works every time.
What kind of competition did you have?
I don’t know specifically. Past entries have run the gamut from
test equipment to engine control, antilock brakes, GPS, insulin delivery
and toys. It’s a very popular contest for geeks.
Well then you certainly entered the right contest. How long did it
take you to build this contraption?
A full year of my spare time.
How come you never talked about it?
You never asked. It was a dangerous thing to do. I figured that
if nobody knew about it, then I alone would be to blame for any damage
I might have done to myself.
How often do you use this thing?
I don’t. It doesn’t work with my new implant system, so it gathers dust.
How is your new implant working out? We don’t really notice
that the New Reid is much improved over the Old Reid.
Most people don’t, because they expect the wrong things and don’t
know what to look for. In fact, I’m pretty pleased: I have
no more tingling, pain, or problems with recruitment. My word recognition
is about doubled. They’ve given me a BTE unit. I am evaluating an investigational
encoding strategy. And some kinds of music don’t suck! Building that
post-processor was one of the best things I ever did.
What did you win?
A tidy sum, a blurb in the June issue, an invitation to write an article
and, most importantly, bragging rights.
You are certainly putting them to good use. I hope they expire soon.
I bet something like this looks pretty good on your resume. With salary planning
in full swing, do you think Management will take note and start paying you what
you’re worth?
It’s a good time to become famous, but I doubt that management
is that smart.
What are you going to do for your next trick?
What’s up my sleeve is my business. No peeking.
Now that you are a World Famous Award Winning Embedded Systems
Design Guru, shall we grovel before you, kiss your feet, and beg for
scraps of wisdom? Or may we bask in the reflected glow of your radiant
presence and boast to our friends that “I’m a friend of Reid’s”.
It’s not my feet that need kissing. You may bask in my glow.
Try not to get burned.
Where did I put my boots?
Want to suck up to Reid? Put him in his place? Send your comments to:
reidwistort@gmail.com