Where I've been .. first thread
Where I've been ... second thread
What I find interesting ...

Where I've been ... first thread

• 1980-1985: Arctec - cold region engineering consulting firm - in Ottawa (now called Fleet Systems)

  • Instrumentation Engineer doing data collection and analysis on Canadian and US Coast Guard ships. Lots of fun coming up with instrumentation packages (in early days of Apple II's!) to collect real-time data while breaking ice in Arctic and Antarctic. Lots of software and 6502 assembler, data acquisition systems etc.

• 1985-1987: Siltronics - Bipolar design house - RF and in the pager business - built up a fab for bi-polar when times were tough and died under the weight of this and other expansions.

  • wrote diagnostics software to debug in-house PC based parametric testers, designed interface boards, managed building and debug of analog and digital boards and supported tester in-house.

• 1987-2004: Mitel-Semiconductor - later Zarlink Semiconductor - 17 years in many aspects of digital and analog development from test to design.
  

  • started as test engineer, worked as a design-for-test engineer in silicon design and eventually became an RTL designer and then project leader and then manager over 17 years across a large variety of projects

  • projects included phone chips (DFT,ATProgramG, adpcm (modeling), U-interface (DFT, verification), echo cancellers (RTL design, synth, atpg), Mitel custom DSP Core (RTL design, lex/yacc), VDSL datapumps (architectures, uport design, methods)

  • tool development for simulation environment (design and test users), (casper, tmenu and many others using C and perl mostly)

  • tool and methodology training for many groups in Mitel Semi

  • developed some innovative mysql tools to manage projects and capture corporate knowledge (product development methods)

  • lead xDSL and, more recently, echo canceller chips

  • managed growth of xDSL team hiring algorithm and software people

  • built a fabulous team spirit and convinced the team that they could do it .. and they did!

Where I've been .. second thread

• Linux server development

  • developed skills in linux systems and s/w development on home server .. perl/squirrelmail/fetchmail/mysql .. while building tools such as a family tree database shared amongst our families

  • developed a server for the Ottawa Outing Club to get them off of dbaseIII and into a web-based intranet solution that would be scalable and supportable for years to come independent of Microsoft OS migration and supportable remotely.

  • brought in some of the first Linux boxes at Zarlink to speed up simulations in algorithm group

• Perl/Tk

  • developed a database solution for the Peterborough Community Care Centre to get them off of dbaseIII and into a windows based system .. Perl/Tk with a windows perl compiler for easy distribution.

What I find interesting ...

• problem solving .. and it can be any problem .. I just like problems!

• writing software .. and creating solutions that surprise and please my friends and customers.

• focusing in on methodologies

  • how you do your work determines your success and pleasures

  • every problem/project often requires a different methodology .. that's why it's not easy to 'crank' out designs!

• working with people .. leading them in problem solving and helping them focus for success.

• taking people cross-country skiing in the Gatineau swamps on a sunny day in February and helping them see what's important in life.

Harold Blount

photos by Blount