[rescue] Bigger Iron at Home (was: SNMP, Baby!)

[Sheldon T. Hall]

Quoth Dave McGuire ...

>    You're not going to like this, Shel, but I won't sugar-coat it.
>
>    She can't have the zebra without its stripes.  Speaking entirely
> idealistically, it is evil, bad, cruel, and just plain wrong to say "I
> like this person, but I don't like this and this and this about him, so
> I'm going to marry him and make him stop doing those things."

Nah, she's actually pretty good about that stuff.  Most of the conduct to
which a sane woman woman would object I quit already, on my own.  This zebra
still has quite a few stripes.  I've been married for 25 years, although not
to the same woman, and even I learn a little something in that amount of
time.

She just wonders why I want something as big and loud as the Challenge, and
what I'm going to do with it.

>    Well, I make my living on mine.  I design embedded systems, write
> software, maintain a marketable skill set, and generally try to do my
> best to make my life useful to the world by advancing the state of the
> computational arts wherever I can.

Yeah, but does it really require a Cray to do all that?  I don't expect you
could do it on a FeeCee, but maybe on something more modest than a Cray?

I don't know that I'm likely to "advance the state of the computational
arts" much.  I've been doing this for quite a few years, and I don't think
anything I've ever done would be considered for the Hall of Fame.  Neat
stuff, sure, but nothing I'd call a "breakthrough."  Well, OK, maybe a few
things, but they passed unnoticed at the time, and I didn't have the wit to
patent them.

I won't be shy about claiming that's what the Challenge is for, though!

Thanks.

-Shel