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MichaelDavidCrawford (2339)
MichaelDavidCrawford
mdcrawford@gmail.com
http://guacamoleroad.com/
I can slice, dice, julienne and puree.
mdcrawford@gmail.com
http://guacamoleroad.com/
I can slice, dice, julienne and puree.
Journal of MichaelDavidCrawford (2339)
The Fine Print: The following are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Wednesday February 15, 17
02:40 AM
My client asked me to bid on a second job. It requires a deep understanding of USB. I didn't understand much of the spec, so I ordered "USB: The Universal Serial Bus" by Benjamin David Lunt.
Just now I emailed my client to tell them that I'd need to study the book before I could produce a sensible bid. I said of course I would charge them for reading it, but I needed some time before I could produce that bid and get started on the actual job.
I expect they'll respect me for being honest but I fear they'll shitcan me for being an idiot.
It couldn't be any more difficult than firewire, which I was once quite good at.
I'm Too Clueless To Do My Client's Job
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Everything bows to success, even grammar.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday February 15 2017, @02:43AM
what a relief.
He suggested that I get some training from their windows/linux programmer. I think that's a good idea but didn't ask for it up front as I didn't want to be a burden to him.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday February 15 2017, @12:02PM
Very thoughtful. The book will probably give you a better understanding than the person training you, but he'll probably be able to teach you what you need. I find you're generally okay looking things up as you need them and making assumptions if it's a good spec, but sometimes the specs do ... starnge things that do not align with the way that you would have done them. Not sure about USB. It's probably mostly sane.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday February 17 2017, @05:50PM
Just watch out for version 3.
I have not looked into it in detail yet, but they apparently standardized all the non-standard things people were doing to abuse the USB spec.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 15 2017, @02:19PM
I expect they'll respect me for being honest but I fear they'll shitcan me for being an idiot.
Need more empathy, buddy. Think about it kinda inductively, from their point of view they'd never have hired you as a contractor initially if they thought they could catch up without you, because you're probably not working for free. So the wizard in the tower needs to obtain and study a new spell tome because its an even bigger task than everyone initially thought, so they're more likely to want you as an expert than ever because now they're even further behind you, and the wizard in the tower is going to be even more powerful than when we hired him so we're getting an even better deal. From their point of view I think you're in better shape than ever as long as you don't sandbag them or mess it up of course. They can't measure how much smarter you got from reading a book in order to help them out or how much better your code will be, but they can measure being late on a due date or whatever.
As a general shout out, speaking of books by Lunt, anyone read Lunt's FYSOS series? Sorta looks like dude wrote his own OS kinda like minix.... or templeOS... Sounds like the kind of thing I'd really dig although I'd be more the type to implement it on PIC32 or maybe something retro like an emulated pdp11 than on legacy x86. I don't know if I'd dig dropping $100+ to buy and read the entire series. I suppose I could obtain .pdf formats from the usual hives of scum and villany and then pay for it if its any good. So anyone read it? If Lunt's USB book you refer to is any good I suppose that bodes well for his FYSOS series, or vice versa LOL.
Somewhat off topic when I look at your new USB book, amazon is pitching a USB book by Jan Axelson whoa major nostalgia hit almost fell out of my chair I remember she wrote a series of microcontroller articles in the 80s or at most very early 90s on using a 8051 with mask programmed BASIC and I built it all along with her magazine articles, wire wrapped, and I still have the system and probably the articles I cut out of the electronics magazines. I see she productized the article series into a book in the mid 90s. It was an interesting system, basically an 80s home computer experience connected by RS-232 actually more like a 70s computer experience, I wonder if I can find that board and if it still works. It failed in the marketplace (the 8051-BASIC because the software licensing made the chip cost like $40 while a contemporary "basic stamp" was like $10 and had a development system somewhat superior to "connect a RS-232 terminal and start typing". Nothing ever being new in IT last weekend I was screwing around with ESP8266 board shipped running LUA and I flashed it to run natively hosted Python, holy cow its just like 1991 again except I'm typing in python instead of basic... Oh and the ESP8266 board was like $7 in 2017 money whereas the 8052AH-BASIC chip was like $40 in 1990 money. And my ESP8266 has wifi and 4 gigs of flash whereas my 8051 had like 32K ram and 8K (K not gigs or megs, K) of flash. I'd have to check the board of course to be sure.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday February 16 2017, @03:40AM
LOL - I want to read more of this! I like wizards and stuff! ;^)
But, yeah, I agree. People in management say things like "I need to get up to speed on $issue" and they still retain whatever respect their peers think is due them.
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday February 16 2017, @02:31AM
I understand the problem with USB is, or at least was, there are standards and then there's the actual way that Microsoft implemented them and most USB device drivers are originally written to run on Windows. At least that is the hearsay I've heard.
Might be best to do both, read the book and get tutelage from the companies programmer.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday February 16 2017, @04:14AM
I would not be at all surprised if the device had windows quirks in it, so that I had to support those same quirks from OSX.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]