Transcript from Episode 504: The Robot Was Expecting It with Chris White and Elecia White.

Hello and welcome to Embedded. I am Elecia White, here with Christopher White. It is just going to be us, talking to each other. You know how these go.

CW (00:00:18):

They have not even heard how it already has gone.

EW (00:00:21):

Yes. Nothing like, "Take two," on the intro. How are you doing?

CW (00:00:27):

I am doing adequately.

EW (00:00:30):

All right. I told somebody to poke a robot with a stick this morning, so I am doing a little bit better than average.

CW (00:00:37):

Was the robot expecting it?

EW (00:00:39):

I believe the robot should always be expecting it <laugh>.

CW (00:00:44):

Is this a mechanical poking with a stick, or a attempt to anger the robot?

EW (00:00:51):

Why not both? Por qué no los Dios?

CW (00:00:54):

Hmm.

EW (00:00:54):

Dos.

CW (00:00:58):

Dos. <laugh>

EW (00:01:01):

<laugh>

CW (00:01:01):

Why not God? Why not God!

EW (00:01:10):

<laugh> Right.

CW (00:01:10):

<laugh>

EW (00:01:10):

One of those mornings. I hope you are having a better day.

CW (00:01:14):

Well, this is the mistake. We are actually recording in the morning, which is against our general principles. So both of us are punchier than usual.

EW (00:01:24):

So last time it was just us, William had a question and we-

CW (00:01:27):

Punted it.

EW (00:01:28):

Did not answer it.

CW (00:01:29):

And then I have not thought about it at all since then, even though I promised to.

EW (00:01:33):

Well, now is your chance.

CW (00:01:34):

Aha.

EW (00:01:34):

William says, "It would be interesting to somehow do a show on or talk about who key people in your life were. From school to college to work. Key people that may only have done or said a small thing, that made a big impact on your life."

CW (00:01:55):

Al right. Have you already thought about this, and have answers?

EW (00:01:58):

I actually did not think about it either. But I do have an answer. I have actually a really good answer.

CW (00:02:03):

I have a few answers that come to the top of my head. Probably with greater thought, I would come up with more people. Yes, I have some answers. But you can go ahead, because you are more prepared than me.

EW (00:02:18):

I went to the Grace Hopper Conference, which is a conference for women in software. It is a pretty big deal. I presented. I also took almost all of the women who were at my company, which was ShotSpotter at the time. I ended up sitting at a table one night without all of them, but with a bunch of senior women. I had been a director at that point. I definitely should be at the seniors table.

(00:02:51):

I was talking to a professor. I can make my career sound relatively amusing. I said what I had done about inertial measurement units, and gunshot location systems, and applications and thinking about software. The professor who was a professor from Australia, whose name I do not recall, said, "If only you wrote a book about it, you would have a PhD."

(00:03:18):

It was years later that I wrote my book, but that was always a kernel. It was a total throwaway comment from her, but it did have an effect on shaping my, "I could write a PhD about my experiences." I mean, not a memoir. That is how we ended up with "Making Embedded Systems," the book.

CW (00:03:45):

Oh! Okay. I think I remember that story, but I have not heard it in a while. Kind of forgotten about it.

EW (00:03:51):

Actually talked to her years later. Again, I do not remember her name. It is going to come to me like 3:00 AM. She was like, "I do not even remember that."

CW (00:04:04):

<laugh> Well, most people do not remember offhand comments. Yeah.

EW (00:04:05):

Because it was just a random dinner.

CW (00:04:07):

Yeah. Or jokes that they made. Yeah. Yeah, that is true. Most people do not understand the impact they have on other people sometimes. We tend to take things in, that other people are not intending to be profound or life-changing.

(00:04:23):

But sometimes it is not even necessarily something they said. It may be just shifting your perspective that you had in your own mind, in a way that takes a little bit of leverage to move you to a different place.

EW (00:04:40):

Yeah. I was not ready to be moved right then, but...

CW (00:04:44):

Yeah, but it stuck with you.

EW (00:04:45):

It provided enough leverage that when the opportunity came, I was like, "Yeah, okay. I could. Yeah." Have you thought of anything like that? I mean, that was kind of special for me.

CW (00:04:57):

Not like that. Yeah. Not like that. I would have to think long and hard about stuff like that. Yeah. No, I was just thinking of more traditional people, who through their own- Well, two classes of people. People who through their own interest and enthusiasm about something, had it push me to also become enthusiastic about it. And then just mentor type people.

(00:05:26):

One person that comes to mind was- I had the great privilege of going to a very small private school for high school. Which was good in some ways. It was very diverse, which was weird for a private school. So that was really good for me.

(00:05:41):

But once you got to senior advanced classes and things, there were not that many students taking them. So calculus. I got to take calculus as a senior, I think. Yeah. My class was only four or five people.

(00:05:57):

They had an instructor, his name was Sid Raffer, who was this guy. He was from New York, and he smoked. Chain smoker. He always wore these black suits. He was a really interesting guy to talk to. He had very strong opinions about things, and was very clearly into what he was teaching.

(00:06:25):

He was excited about calculus, and teaching it to students. It was different from the other teachers I had had in a lot of ways, who were just doing the teaching. They were good teachers, but they were not engaging in the same way.

(00:06:42):

I remember him, as we took- There was the AP class, and I remember finishing the AP test. I remember finishing the AP test, and we all took it. It was at our school. We all came out of the exam room. He was standing there waiting for us, and really anxious to hear how had we had done.

(00:07:06):

I remember telling him, "Well, I was nauseated the whole morning, so <laugh> I have no idea." I woke up feeling really sick. Which now that I think about it...

EW (00:07:16):

Anxiety started long before you recognized it?

CW (00:07:21):

<laugh> He did not really appreciate that response from me, but I think we all did very well. But I remember seeing him being anxiously waiting for his four students. Or however many, four or five of us, to come out and hear how had we done. Immediately! He was waiting outside the door!

EW (00:07:38):

And yet, it was at your school?

CW (00:07:41):

Yeah. Yeah. Well, there was a lot of-

EW (00:07:43):

So the cost to him-

CW (00:07:44):

Yeah. Yeah.

EW (00:07:45):

Was minor.

CW (00:07:46):

Yeah. I do not know if it was a weekend or not. But yeah, it was not a big deal for him to be there.

EW (00:07:50):

And yet it really has had an impact on you.

CW (00:07:57):

Yeah.

EW (00:07:57):

Just showing that level of enthusiasm and care.

CW (00:08:02):

That was my first experience of what college courses were like. Many of the college courses we took were like. Small. For us. You were also privileged to go to a small school, just later.

EW (00:08:16):

College was small. High school was very large!

CW (00:08:18):

Small intimate courses, where sometimes the professors were just incredibly ebullient. Is that the word I am thinking of? Excited about the thing they were teaching, even though they had been doing it for 30 years, some of them.

EW (00:08:34):

They were excited about the topic, or about the teaching, or about both.

CW (00:08:38):

About the students, and- Yeah.

EW (00:08:40):

That could make a huge- I mean, we went to a teaching college, as opposed to a research university.

CW (00:08:48):

I think partly that experience at the end of high school hurt me for college, because the first year was not like that. It got to be that way, once you got out of freshman year. In sophomore, things started to shrink down. You went to your major. Classes shrank. Professors were more interested in teaching hundred and above level material, instead of CS1.

(00:09:15):

So I came out of that jazzed about learning, and then crashed a little bit. But I still remember that experience.

(00:09:24):

Other people. My first job, I had some good mentors. Some people who really- Now when I think about it, why did they go to bat for me? I was a terrible, terrible coder who did not know what I was doing. Kept making mistakes.

EW (00:09:36):

You were new.

CW (00:09:38):

Yeah. But they acknowledged that, and they saw that there was potential, and they were willing to put up with it. Which a lot of people I think these days, are maybe not able to do so easily.

EW (00:09:52):

I do not know. There is some fun in teaching people.

CW (00:09:55):

There is, but it takes the certain people. There were definitely people who were not interested in that, who I have come across in my career.

EW (00:10:00):

Oh, definitely.

CW (00:10:01):

And those people, some of them, continued to act in a mentor capacity for a long time.

EW (00:10:10):

Including encouraging you to write papers, go to conferences...

CW (00:10:17):

Yeah. But I would have a better answer, were I able to think about it longer.

EW (00:10:23):

You had four weeks.

CW (00:10:25):

"Think about it longer," meaning, "If I had remembered to think about it."

EW (00:10:32):

<laugh> William went on to say that there were many, many teachers that helped him. One being a physics high school teacher, who showed that science was interesting and fun, and that William could understand it.

(00:10:49):

Then William shared a personal story, which he did not mark private. "I think the person that made the biggest impact on me, was the guy I met on a ferry while backpacking through Europe, after I graduated and had been working for a while. I was super down in the dumps, feeling I was useless, and was not good enough at my current job, and everything was getting me down. I felt like just quitting everything.

(00:11:16):

In a short hour on that ferry ride, he managed to motivate me to get myself confidence back, that I was able to go on and apply for jobs around the world I never thought possible. I never got his name and I never saw him again. To him, I really want to say, 'Thank you.'"

CW (00:11:36):

His comment about physics- Did you say, "Physics"? Or something?

EW (00:11:42):

High school physics teacher.

CW (00:11:43):

It reminded me that this teacher, the calculus teacher, also- My extreme privilege. There was nobody who wanted to take computer science at my school-

EW (00:11:50):

<laugh>

CW (00:11:51):

Except me. I think maybe one other person. Yeah. He teamed up with another teacher there who taught physics, and they both taught me CS. I took a CS course, and I was the only person. Which basically meant I was just messing around with Pascal <laugh>, and doing assignments that they gave me. That they were willing to do that. I am sure they got paid or whatever, but it was not- I do not think I had a class period. Like I had to do it after school, because nobody is going to-

EW (00:12:27):

Did you get shnookered into making a CS club, and you did not even know?

CW (00:12:32):

No, because I got credit.

EW (00:12:32):

Oh, all right.

CW (00:12:33):

<laugh> It was a real class. But, just again, they were willing to go out of their way, because somebody was excited about something. Unfortunately, it has led to me being surrounded by computers. So thanks a lot, Mr. Raffer!

EW (00:12:50):

I had a high school teacher- I guess I had a lot of good high school teachers. I did speech and debate, and DeGraf was always very hands off. You could do whatever you want. Very hippy-ish. I think he taught history as well, but I never took that from him.

(00:13:14):

It was a little weird having a teacher who had high expectations, that when you met them, you could tell. But did not push you. Did not mark you down, for slacking. It was like you were rewarded for succeeding, but not punished for slacking. It was a different model than many of the other high school classes I took, where for the most part you were in trouble, unless you did something right. It was a different model and I liked it.

(00:13:59):

Speech and debate. It was a elective, that trashed my whole AP schedule, for which totes worth it.

CW (00:14:08):

Oh! No! <laugh>

EW (00:14:10):

Yes. I was so in that little track. Then when I finally got out of it, it was pretty cool.

(00:14:18):

I had a bio teacher who gave us science papers to read.

CW (00:14:26):

That is cool.

EW (00:14:28):

It might have been that I was the only one doing it, but I loved it. It was about gene editing. I still remember parts of that paper. It was so hard. But she was pretty much like, "Okay, we will talk about it, and go through it." That was AP bio, so that was pretty cool. That was a small class.

CW (00:14:50):

You mentioned bio, and now I am remembering my bio teacher, who was weird! Weird! I had some weird teachers too. <laugh> I will not mention their names, but there were some weird times. It was the eighties, folks.

EW (00:15:04):

Yeah! Looking back and thinking of-

CW (00:15:05):

Things were a little different. < laugh>

EW (00:15:06):

Thinking of my high school teachers, more as people. Some of them I actually got to know as people, mostly my English teachers.

(00:15:11):

So you had more role models in your work starting up, and your role models tended to continue through them.

CW (00:15:25):

Yeah.

EW (00:15:26):

I had a few people, but I have not had as much long-term...

CW (00:15:34):

I say "long-term," but- Yeah, the hands-on kind of mentoring was only a few years. And then they were- I think they would consider themselves peers later on, who were like, "Do you want to work on something together?" That kind of thing. But. Yeah, you had similar.

EW (00:15:56):

I guess so. But there was never somebody I would have said, "Okay, this person is my mentor."

CW (00:16:04):

We did not use that word back then, really.

EW (00:16:05):

We did!

CW (00:16:06):

Did we? Oh. All right.

EW (00:16:07):

Yes. I went to several "Find a mentor" sessions.

CW (00:16:11):

Oh. Okay.

EW (00:16:11):

And several chats and coffees with people.

CW (00:16:16):

At the early stage of your career?

EW (00:16:18):

From the beginning, through ShotSpotter. So, yeah.

CW (00:16:25):

All right. Yeah, none of them were formal. They were people I worked for, or with, or around my team, or were senior people. It is the senior engineers turning junior engineers into future senior engineers, kind of thing. People who actually took an interest in that.

EW (00:16:39):

I had a manager who was really good. But we became friends and then we tried to do the manager relationship again, and it did not work for friendship either. Boof!

CW (00:16:50):

<laugh>

EW (00:16:50):

Anyway. I think this was an interesting question, not only because we got to talk about people who matter to us, and how little a thing you can do, can have a huge impact on someone else. How showing your enthusiasm for things, can have a huge impact on people.

CW (00:17:15):

Next time we can talk about anti role models, because I have got some of those. People who are in mentor positions who screwed it up. No, I am not going to talk about that. But there were a few people like that.

EW (00:17:25):

Oh yeah! Definitely. Oh! Yeah!

CW (00:17:27):

<laugh>

EW (00:17:27):

Let us name names. Let us not. Okay, so that is actually interesting. What are some of the things that people who should be role models do, that make you feel worse?

CW (00:17:51):

I think it is very difficult to motivate people, without knowing them very well. Certain people. Maybe some people are easy to motivate, but some people are difficult to motivate.

EW (00:18:02):

You can't just throw pizza at everybody?

CW (00:18:04):

And when your advisee or mentee or whatever is struggling, and you are not experienced in helping them resolve those struggles, that could be a real problem. I had trouble with my master's research advisor, who did not motivate me and help me properly. So I basically crashed out of research. That is one example. There are others like that, where by trying to be encouraging, it backfired.

EW (00:18:47):

It is funny. I think it is easier to be this butterfly that wanders in, gives some encouragement and wanders off. When you have a more formal mentoring or managing role, that is where you really get to screw people up.

CW (00:19:06):

Yes. Well, you occupy a place of authority. You occupy a place of, "This person has succeeded and they know what they are doing. Therefore, what they say has import." And as a junior person or an advisee, what they say carries a lot of weight.

(00:19:28):

It can be, like you said, a small comment, that does not encourage you to write a textbook. It encourages you to say, "Well, screw this!" <laugh> Yeah.

EW (00:19:41):

And as you get to know people more, it is easier to see their dissatisfactions, which you can easily acquire for yourself.

CW (00:19:51):

Maybe there is a lot that comes from me too. You know me as a person who easily gets frustrated, has a streak of being unsatisfied if I am not accomplishing something to my satisfaction.

(00:20:03):

There was a period in grad school where there was this dichotomy. I was excelling at the classwork, and research was not making any progress at all, and did not make any sense. Stuff was being thrown at me, that was far in advance of where my classwork was. I was expected to meet that, but I did not have the...

EW (00:20:27):

Tools?

CW (00:20:30):

The tools, the explanation, the acknowledgement, "Yeah. This is really hard, and here is how we get there. I am giving you something beyond your classwork." There was not the pathway to get to where I could get solutions to problems. And it was original research too, so it was like, "Maybe there is not an answer." Right? That is always-

(00:20:50):

So getting some counseling from that side of things like, "Yeah, this is new. Let us see where this goes." Instead of, "Nope, that is the wrong answer. Nope, I do not see that. This does not make sense. Nope, you are doing it wrong. Oh, you got that. Well, do not rest on your laurels that you got something right. Keep pushing harder." It just did not jive.

(00:21:16):

Those kinds of relationships are one-on-one. Oftentimes they do not work, for no fault of either side.

EW (00:21:22):

Yeah. Is there something you could have told past Christopher, that would have helped him get through it?

CW (00:21:32):

"Do not do research."

EW (00:21:35):

<laugh> Not, "Research is hard"?

CW (00:21:37):

No, I do not think I am temperamentally cut out to sit at the kitchen table for hours at a time, with textbooks, MATLAB, and a notebook, by myself and figure stuff out.

EW (00:21:53):

So changing topics. You have been unhappy with engineering, and you and I have been talking off and on, and I did not prepare you for this topic.

CW (00:22:06):

Cool!

EW (00:22:06):

It is not like you read the last one, which was totally in the show notes. Mmyum, mmyum, mmyum, mmyum, mmyah. <laugh> We have talked before about roles in our personal lives. Like, I always ask artists, "When did you first start calling yourself an artist? When did you take that title?"

CW (00:22:33):

Mm-hmm.

EW (00:22:36):

I introduced myself as an engineer. Embedded software engineer. Sure. But engineer is part of my identity, in a way that- We started very early. It is not as much a part of your identity, although it is part, definitely.

(00:22:52):

I was asked the question recently, "If you took that identity away. We took that word away, and not replaced it with 'developer' or 'programmer' or whatever word might work there. But took that semantic identity away. What other identities do you have?" For this, it was a professional sort of question. But do you have other words that you respond to?

(00:23:30):

I was surprised at how much, if you took engineer away, it would affect me. I actually do not really claim author. I do not claim artist, for sure. I do not think I ever will. Maker is something I like, but it is not something I am.

CW (00:23:51):

Why do you not just be a person? Why do you have to have a label?

EW (00:23:57):

The identities help.

CW (00:23:59):

Okay. I do not think that way. I may have used to. I think I used to, and got excited about that. But I do not really think that way anymore at all. If you took engineer away from me, I am like, "Oh, okay. I will fill that with donuts."

EW (00:24:13):

<laugh>

CW (00:24:13):

I would like to think that- If you forced me to answer that question, I would prefer to be an artist. Musician, artist, in some fashion. I think I have met the minimum requirements to claim that mantle, having recorded several records, and played gigs for not an insignificant number of people. I am probably the bottom rung of being able to claim that mantle. But that would be what I would prefer to anything else.

(00:24:53):

But other than that, I think as I get older, that stuff is not as important to me. I am more interested in- I am in a transitional period, where I am trying to figure out what I am more interested in, in terms of identity. Which again, I am not super thrilled with declaring myself an X, Y, or Z. I think at this stage of my life, I would like to be considered not harmful.

EW (00:25:28):

All right. I will give my answer, and then we will go to the next question, since you just led into it. Researcher.

CW (00:25:38):

Hmm! That is a good one.

EW (00:25:40):

Where you said you did not want to sit at the table with books.

CW (00:25:45):

Well, that is a different kind of research. That was-

EW (00:25:47):

Oh no. That kind of research I am in for.

CW (00:25:49):

Yeah. I might be in for it now. I do not know. I have not tried again.

EW (00:25:52):

And I do not think it would be as lonely, as you think it would be. But-

CW (00:25:56):

Yeah.

EW (00:25:58):

That is because I see the communities that I am on the outskirts of, that I think would be fun.

CW (00:26:04):

Those communities did not exist. There was nowhere for me to reach out to. It was 2004. 2004. Maybe there was a physics forum I should have been on, but that was pretty much it. There was no Slack or Discord or- I think Usenet still existed at that point. But yeah, it would be a different experience, and there would be other people to reach out to. And, perhaps a different situation would have had other collaborators. But anyway.

EW (00:26:40):

Yeah, your research advisor should have partially a collaborator. And if he had had other students, maybe-

CW (00:26:46):

He was. He was inexperienced. It was not entirely his fault. Yeah. But. Yeah, it is not a research school. <laugh> The right path was what I eventually ended up doing, which was do the oral exam at the end of the degree, and do not do research.

EW (00:27:06):

And how big are chickens?

CW (00:27:09):

Ten kilograms.

EW (00:27:14):

We have been talking about... No. Let me go back.

CW (00:27:19):

Let me sum up. It is too much.

EW (00:27:22):

It is too much. Do you regret any of your jobs?

CW (00:27:27):

Yes.

EW (00:27:29):

And if so. So. Does the learning, does the information, whatever you did and got out of it, make it worth it, if the application was not worth it alone?

CW (00:27:44):

Yeah. So my first real embedded job was at the dermatology laser company. Which was weird company, weird product, weird people. But I learned a lot. I learned I was not really cut out for management. I learned a lot about embedded development, by being thrown headfirst into, "Here is a device, not a computer."

(00:28:03):

I mean, I did routers before that. But routers were basically computers with no monitors, right? They were running bespoke operating systems, on slightly different kinds of CPUs back then. But it was not like embedded, as most people would consider it.

(00:28:20):

So yeah. The laser was very embedded. There were safety control systems. I did FDA. I learned a ton! But the application was blergh, the company was...

EW (00:28:30):

You should see his face.

CW (00:28:30):

<sigh>

EW (00:28:30):

These eyebrows are going back and forth, and up and down.

CW (00:28:34):

Extremely weird. I worked with some very nice people there, very smart people.

EW (00:28:38):

And at least one weirdo. Two weirdos.

CW (00:28:42):

There were at least a half a dozen weirdos. Many of the non weirdos who I worked with and enjoyed working with, acknowledged it was a strange place and things were weird. Yeah. It was a good experience.

(00:28:56):

That was a job I took, tying things back, once I realized I was losing my mind, trying to do research. So I said, "I am going back to work. I cannot do this! I have spent a summer trying to solve fluid flow equations by myself, and I cannot do it."

(00:29:16):

So I went and got a contracting job there, and then they hired me full time as a manager. I did enjoy it for a while. But in hindsight, weird company, weird product, very weird product space. I do not think we harmed anybody, but I do not know that we really helped anybody.

EW (00:29:39):

Do you remember that little Italian restaurant, that was impossible to find?

CW (00:29:42):

Oh! Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

EW (00:29:45):

Sorry. <laugh>

CW (00:29:48):

<laugh> No, there were good things about it. And it is a very long-term retrospective thing. If you asked me right afterwards, it is like, "Yeah, that was kind of strange, but I got some stuff out of it." Now I am like, "Hmph. Maybe I should have looked around a little bit more, since I was open to work at that point."

EW (00:30:05):

You were pulled in by people you knew.

CW (00:30:07):

Yes. Which commonly happens to me, and I need to stop doing that.

EW (00:30:11):

<laugh>

CW (00:30:11):

There is that one. There is a short thing I will not discuss. There are a lot- There are a few short things I will not discuss. There are definitely contracts I wish I had not taken, but I will not talk about those.

EW (00:30:31):

Contracts are hard, because you never-

CW (00:30:33):

Yeah, that is different. That is different.

EW (00:30:34):

Are sure that you are going to have the next one come through anytime soon, and you do not want to be out for too long.

CW (00:30:41):

I do wonder, from a purely selfish standpoint, whether I should have left Cisco to go to the startup. The first job change I made. I learned a lot there.

EW (00:30:51):

A lot! And fast!

CW (00:30:53):

Everything crashed out with the dot-com boom. And I went back to grad school. And I was really burnt out. I wonder, had I stayed at Cisco as a bore, would I have been more happy? I do not know.

(00:31:06):

But yeah, the medical laser one is the only one I can really say was not great. There was another medical one later that was more stressful. But I felt like the application was, at least at the time, was super important. They just finally went out of business. I left there to become a contractor in 2009, so that is how long they sailed along. But they went out of business.

EW (00:31:36):

But that one, you had stories of people...

CW (00:31:43):

Yeah. It sounded like we were helping people. <sigh> The trouble with stuff like that, is it is science. You have got the company doing the research, trying to prove that its stuff works. It is difficult to get long-term kind of comparison thing. So yeah, we had evidence that that was helping people, but I always question like, "Okay. If it is helping people that much, why is it not..."

EW (00:32:10):

Being used?

CW (00:32:11):

Being used. Yeah. Why is this-

EW (00:32:14):

Being bought.

CW (00:32:14):

Not being bought? Everybody is going back to their old techniques, to do similar stuff. So I think on balance, it could have been helpful, had it gotten to where they really wanted it to go. But there was not solid evidence they could get there.

(00:32:30):

So the application they ended up with, was a different application. It may have helped people on balance, but it was probably one of those marginal things, where it is like, "Hmm. Maybe it is better than current care standards, maybe not. But it is going to take a lot of time to figure that out." Those are fine things to work on, because you have to figure those questions out.

(00:32:51):

Those kind of companies are at the border between research and product, and it can be difficult to tell until very much later, whether the thing you made was actually doing what it said it was going to do.

EW (00:33:05):

Did the learning make it worth it?

CW (00:33:07):

That place?

EW (00:33:09):

That one was mostly output for you. You were providing all the information. You were not acquiring a lot, that I remember.

CW (00:33:18):

Well, there was a lot of physics involved in that place. I did have to read some papers, which was good for having my degree for. There was a lot of management intrigue and drama and schedule stuff. I met some very good people, and unfortunately brought some very good people in to suffer along with me.

(00:33:45):

Yeah, I think that place would have been fine with different management. But as it was, it was very sort of a confluence of Silicon Valley and medical. Both of those worlds coming together, was a maelstrom of <laugh> chaos and frustration.

(00:34:10):

You did not answer the question.

EW (00:34:13):

No! You have to ask it back, if you want me to answer.

CW (00:34:16):

Were there any- What was the question? Jobs you regret?

EW (00:34:20):

Yeah. For the most part, I did the best with what I knew.

CW (00:34:29):

That is it. Right? And hindsight is <laugh> real.

EW (00:34:36):

Okay. So LeapFrog. On one hand, I made toys that are plastic that went into landfills. On the other hand, I taught kids to read! It was not like I theoretically taught kids to read. I remember that karaoke toy, that was awful! I hated it. And yet the boy in the kindergarten took it home and he was so far behind, and then he was not. He could sing and identify all of his alphabet. He used the same stupid tune. I hated that karaoke.

CW (00:35:18):

<laugh>

EW (00:35:18):

So how many things go into landfills? I cannot make that decision. But it was worth it to me. And it was worth it to learn how to make things like that.

CW (00:35:37):

A lot of things go to landfills. I do not think that is a dispositive. <laugh>

EW (00:35:42):

ShotSpotter has been something that has been difficult, because they have been in the news. The police. The profiling. And yet I know that we saved lives. Did we save lives more than we could have, using different funds, putting that funds in different locations? That I do not know. But I know the people did not bleed out, because the police were called in time.

CW (00:36:11):

I do not know.

EW (00:36:12):

And I know that the police officers I personally worked with, cared a lot about the whole community.

CW (00:36:21):

What years were that?

EW (00:36:22):

2004. Around that.

CW (00:36:25):

Yeah. I think people probably do not realize that things change. I saw a lot of ShotSpotter. You saw a lot of ShotSpotter, obviously you worked there. I feel like a lot of the stuff that came out later, happened later.

EW (00:36:44):

Yeah. When we got a, "What happened in this situation?" we did not know who was who. The question was, "In which location shot first?"

CW (00:36:53):

The militarization of the police- I mean the police have always been police. But the militarization of the police, a lot of the corruption of the police, has only increased since 2004, 2005, 2006, whatever. Toward the end of the Iraq war and stuff, when material was brought back and sold to police departments, and that kind of thing. A lot of stuff changed.

(00:37:12):

So I can totally see ShotSpotter being captured by a different kind of policing, different ethos, especially desperate for money. It would not surprise me if you did not see any of that, because it was not happening at that time.

EW (00:37:31):

To be fair, I saw some of it.

CW (00:37:33):

Okay.

EW (00:37:33):

But I thought the good we were doing, outweighed the smaller portion of that.

CW (00:37:42):

Unfortunately, and do not take this the wrong way, but that is not a thing for engineers to decide. It is hard for us to understand sociology and politics, as engineers. Some of those things require study. From within the company, we cannot necessarily see what is actually happening in the city.

EW (00:38:06):

True. True. Could ShotSpotter money have been more effectively used at preventative programs and community interfacing? I cannot even begin.

CW (00:38:19):

The flip side is also true. Since it is hard for us to do that, it is hard to expect us to always make the perfect job decision. We cannot go into a company and say, "Okay, I need you to do your due diligence here. Tell me everything about your product, and its impact upon society for the next 25 years. And whether or not you are going to pivot a little bit, or lean your finger on the scale when money is tight." We cannot do that.

(00:38:46):

So we have to do the best we can do. I think it is good that we talk about these things now, more than people perhaps used to. But I think it is unfair to expect every engineer- I mean, there are obviously companies where it is clear what is going on.

EW (00:39:09):

During the ShotSpotter times, I did some volunteer work at a girls' high school. I got one of the- The person I carpooled to Shot Spotter with, I got her involved. Or- I do not quite remember how it all happened, but she ended up doing a presentation at this girls' high school about ShotSpotter. It was very casual.

(00:39:33):

At the end, the teacher asked what the girls had learned. One of the girls raised her hand and said, "I learned what the word 'homicide' meant."

CW (00:39:46):

Great.

EW (00:39:49):

<laugh> Yeahh. Yeahh.

CW (00:39:53):

ShotSpotter always had the side-eye of, "There are microphones listening." And I know you guys worked hard to not make that a thing.

EW (00:40:03):

I have listened to those microphones. They had do not catch Jack.

CW (00:40:06):

They did not catch Jack in 2004. All it takes is someone deciding, "Hmm. How hard is it to shift this?"

EW (00:40:16):

Yes.

CW (00:40:18):

That is the thing that- It is the second order things like, "Okay, I am making this. Right now it is this. But what could this become, with not a lot of effort from somebody who wants it to do something I do not want it to do?" That is the trick I am trying to learn with taking on clients lately is, "This application is this. How many steps removed is it from something I do not want to be associated with?"

EW (00:40:51):

But you can dig yourself into it.

CW (00:40:53):

Absolutely.

EW (00:40:53):

"I do not want to do anything."

CW (00:40:55):

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. But applications matter. They both matter for exciting reasons, and for "do not want to be associated with" reasons.

EW (00:41:06):

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, applications matter. Ethics matters. You feel better about yourself if you can maintain your values. The second part of the question, "Did the learning make it worth it?" Oh my God, I learned so much at ShotSpotter. I got to apply so many cool things.

CW (00:41:25):

Oh, ShotSpotter was after Crossbow, right?

EW (00:41:27):

Yeah. Crossbow was IMU.

CW (00:41:29):

That was your first sort of real embedded job.

EW (00:41:32):

No.

CW (00:41:32):

No. Oh, right, Agilent. No, you done a lot of embedded before me.

EW (00:41:35):

Yeah, I went to embedded...

CW (00:41:38):

Pretty quickly.

EW (00:41:38):

Pretty quickly.

CW (00:41:39):

Okay.

EW (00:41:40):

Even the servers, I got down into the microcontroller levels.

CW (00:41:46):

Right. Okay. All right.

EW (00:41:47):

Yeah. Okay, so somebody, a few years ago I was showing off origami, and not as good as I am now. And even now this comment can apply. But they said something about wasting paper.

CW (00:42:03):

<laugh> Aha.

EW (00:42:06):

It is like, "Yes. Yes, I am wasting paper learning to do something, that in the end is probably a waste of paper."

CW (00:42:14):

Where did you draw the line with that? Are you wasting canvas when you are learning to paint? Are you wasting paper when you learn to draw? Am I wasting-

EW (00:42:20):

Are you wasting breath by breathing?

CW (00:42:21):

Look at all this wood on the floor I have got here. All these broken sticks. I am wasting wood playing- Look. At a certain point, you have got to make peace with your selfish- What was the line? <laugh> Selfish hippy clients.

EW (00:42:44):

Oh. Yeah. Selfish hippy clients. Ten points if you get that quote. Yeah. Exactly. And I think we have to give ourselves the same grace with work.

CW (00:42:59):

Oh yeah, that is what I was saying, is we cannot be expected to find the answer for hypotheticals. But we should consider the hypotheticals, at least at one remove.

EW (00:43:13):

You can also consider what you are getting out of this, as long as you are not- I mean there are a lot of financial things that I do not really give care about one way or another, but if I could learn a lot, okay, sure.

CW (00:43:27):

If Raytheon would give you a PhD, would you go to work for Raytheon?

EW (00:43:30):

No.

CW (00:43:33):

No. There is a balance.

EW (00:43:34):

There is a balance. I do not value a PhD that much. But I do not disrespect the person who does.

CW (00:43:39):

The PhD was a stand in for you learning a lot.

EW (00:43:43):

I get that.

CW (00:43:44):

Yeah.

EW (00:43:45):

But I do not disrespect the person who would make a different choice.

CW (00:43:51):

I am not sure I am in that place right now.

EW (00:43:52):

There might be limits.

CW (00:43:55):

Yeah. Yeah. I do not have to respect people who are making weapons.

EW (00:43:59):

I do not have to disrespect them.

CW (00:44:01):

That is fair. Everyone gets to make that decision.

EW (00:44:04):

And regretting things later, sometimes means you do not remember that you did not have as much information. So you do the best with the information you have.

CW (00:44:19):

This is what I am saying. But there are lines that I will not cross.

EW (00:44:23):

And that is fine, for you. I love that for you.

CW (00:44:28):

I think we are verging onto an argument here. So maybe we should change topics.

EW (00:44:35):

Woo-hoo! You are taking a Dogbotic course.

CW (00:44:38):

Yes, I am.

EW (00:44:40):

You make spooky music, that makes me thinks there are ghosts in the house.

CW (00:44:44):

So far.

EW (00:44:45):

Are you having fun?

CW (00:44:46):

Yes. I am trying to learn- Well we had- What was their name? Kirk. Kirk Pearson, on the show a few months ago to talk about Dogbotic. And they do-

EW (00:45:04):

Did you use our discount code?

CW (00:45:05):

No.

EW (00:45:05):

<laugh>

CW (00:45:08):

They do fun electronic music, mostly electronic music, but also film and visual arts courses, where- They are nine weeks long I think, and weekly for a couple hours. They are group courses on Zoom. They are remote. They send you all the materials. You get to work on a particular area of electronic music or visual arts, like I said.

(00:45:36):

I am doing one that is analog drum machine. We are working on the electronics to build up to an electronic drum machine, from circa the early eighties. The original drum machines that were not digital. So it is all analog.

EW (00:45:52):

You have an XOR, and a bunch of analog signals going to an XOR.

CW (00:45:57):

Yeah. We are using digital logic components, but I-

EW (00:46:01):

It is weird!

CW (00:46:02):

I consider it analog. So yeah, I am trying to learn electronics, to get my feet into actually learning electronics, to where I can do some projects for myself, and know what I am doing a little bit, through a project based course. Where it is very casual.

(00:46:19):

The electronics we are learning, it is explained well, but it is also like, "Do not sweat the details too much," kind of stuff. Because the kind of thing I want to do, I am not going to be making a product. I do not care about if I have got something wrong. I want to get to a familiarity with electronics enough, so I can have some fun. Maybe make guitar pedals or synthesizers, that kind of thing.

(00:46:46):

Anyway, it has been good. I have only done it for a couple of weeks. I managed to get in because it got delayed for two weeks. I just noticed it was starting on the day I looked, so I did not have the materials the first day. But yeah, after the first two weeks we have just made inverter based oscillators making square waves. A very simple circuit that I sort of understand now. Still have a question about it, but not- <laugh>

EW (00:47:11):

I have a Forrest Mims book, or six.

CW (00:47:13):

Well, I do not know if it answered the question, but. We are just to the point of making audio with those, and mixing a couple of them, using-

EW (00:47:22):

Four.

CW (00:47:22):

Well, I am only mixing two right now. I have four built. I did not get to the point of jamming them all together. And you can make some weird noises. It is going to progress and hopefully learn more stuff to do with making amplitude envelopes, and all the stuff you need to do to make sounds sound more like things, instead of whoops. But I am enjoying it.

(00:47:47):

Yeah, I am a little light on clients. That is sort of slightly by design, and I am trying to-

EW (00:47:55):

Slightly? Totally!

CW (00:47:57):

Trying to shift into doing more stuff that I enjoy, that is not work. Instead of feeling like, "I should be working!" even though I plan not to.

EW (00:48:06):

Yeah. It is hard as a contractor sometimes taking- It is not really a vacation, it is more like a sabbatical. In that you have other things to do. Your goal is not to just sit on the beach and read. It is to sit on the beach and read technical books. Wait. No. That is not right.

(00:48:28):

Technical books. I want to announce this, even though it is really late to join. We are reading "Data-Driven Science and Engineering: Machine Learning, Dynamical Systems, and Control" by Steven Brunton and Nathan Kutz. I came across this book. It is free online.

(00:48:55):

I was looking for a LQR controller, blah, blah, blah, fancy math. I liked the book. It came with code and they have videos. I wanted to actually read the book from the beginning. The Embedded Patreon Slack has a book club channel. So I decided I was going to take over the book club channel.

(00:49:24):

The book has a lot of gnarly math, linear algebra and ODEs. So I hired a math prof to help me through it. Do not tell her. She does not know that part. She thinks it is for everyone, but I guess the other people can participate if they want. Anyway, math prof is there to explain things like unitary transforms and stuff.

(00:49:54):

If you want to join, you support us somehow. Look, it is a buck. If you cannot handle a buck, let me know. But the goal is not to milk you dry, it is just to make sure you are serious and not a robot. So if you join the Slack, you can join the book club. We are even doing online meetings. No wait, yeah, online meetings. That is where you talk over voice, like Zoom or something. So we are doing that.

(00:50:25):

In fact, we are going to have to close out this eventually because I have to go do that, but not for a while. I am enjoying it. It takes the perspective- Okay. So there is physics and engineering. You handle, you solve things with math and Fourier and solving equations and ODEs. And then you have CS, which is about optimization and thinking how long things take, and finding shorter paths to get to good solutions.

(00:50:59):

And then they have this idea, "What if dynamic systems like PID systems are just data problems? Just like image classification is a data problem." So they are applying these two areas of engineering fancy math, and computer science fancy data handling, and putting it together.

(00:51:39):

Okay. So SVD, singular value decomposition. I have seen it before with classification. If you have ever taken Andrew Ng's machine learning class, you have seen it. It is a technique. It is not trivial. Blah. A bunch of linear algebra, not easy. On the other hand, it is just a Python command in NumPy, so not hard. What if this matrix thing you get from singular value decomposition, is also Fourier?

(00:52:11):

Part of me is like, "Okay. Basis functions. Yes, I get that." And the other part of me is like, "Whoa! You cannot do that!" So I am having a really good time, because I just keep getting surprised. That is how I learn. The surprise engenders curiosity, and the curiosity makes me go. So we have that.

(00:52:31):

We are going to be talking to Steve Hinch soon. His book is "Winning through Innovation: Lessons from the Front Lines of Business." Not a title I love, but the book seems pretty interesting. We will be talking to him in just a couple of weeks. If you have any questions, let me know.

(00:52:53):

And then, what else? I have a book about vectors. Pretty good. Weird mathematical history. Why do all of the mathematicians die in duals or suicide?

CW (00:53:08):

It was the 17th century or 18th century. Everyone died in duals or suicide. You either died as an infant, or you died in a dual. Those are the two options.

EW (00:53:19):

I thought it was just mathematicians. And then, I love Libby so much. Why did it take me so long?

CW (00:53:33):

I told you about it.

EW (00:53:33):

I know! I have had an account forever. I guess there were some changes with how the Big Monster does their e-books, and I stopped buying their e-books. And now I am in love with my library again, and I am not even going. So yeah, Libby. It is an app in the US, for public libraries.

CW (00:54:00):

Digital books. E-books for libraries, basically.

EW (00:54:03):

And audio books! They have so many audio books. I am listening to Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, which is like Horatio Hornblower with dragons. I read them, and they were good. I enjoyed reading them, but they were not really on my "to reread" list. But the audio books are just awesome! The voice is fantastic.

(00:54:30):

I have been trying to read less, to give my eyes a break. So the audio books, I probably as you are doing now, I fold laundry and do chores and garden, whatever. Yes. Libby has been fantastic for audio books. They have huge selection. Then of course there are the other ones, there is Palace, and the whole bunch of library apps. It is amazing. And they-

CW (00:54:58):

Hoopla has a lot of movies, like-

EW (00:55:01):

Media.

CW (00:55:02):

Foreign movies and older movies and stuff. Yeah.

EW (00:55:04):

And then you go to Kanopy. There is a lot you can get from your library, without even showing up. Okay! Oh, and you are doing a Terry Pratchett reread.

CW (00:55:15):

Reread? I do not think I ever read all of it. But I am going in publication order through all of it. Yes.

EW (00:55:22):

Are you having fun?

CW (00:55:23):

Yeah! They are good. I found- <laugh> It is very odd to find that- Terry Pratchett writes- If you do not know, it is a very long series. It started in the eighties. I think he wrote 40 or 41 books, before he died a few years ago.

(00:55:42):

They are set in a fantasy world, that is very on its face silly. It is a flat world. It is a disc that-

EW (00:55:51):

Would you call it a disc world?

CW (00:55:53):

It is called "Discworld." Exactly. Sits on the back of four elephants, that are in turn sitting on the back of a giant space turtle. Anyway.

EW (00:56:05):

Silly.

CW (00:56:05):

It has got wizards. It has got witches. He has several kind of theme books. So there are wizard books, and witch books, and books about Death. Death being a-

EW (00:56:16):

Character.

CW (00:56:16):

A character, and other things like that. They are all kind of standalone, although they do link back to each other in small ways. So you do not need to read them in any particular order. They all have a theme that he is trying to do. In the depths of the humor, which is good, there is lot of commentary on human condition, which is kind of dry and very British.

(00:56:39):

But on top of that, he uses <laugh> a lot of words that I have to look up, which is very impressive for what is kind of a "silly" series. So I have to look up a half a dozen to a dozen words every book, that I have never in my life seen before.

EW (00:56:59):

It is easier now that they are e-books. You just push on the word, and it pops up the definition.

CW (00:57:04):

Yes.

EW (00:57:06):

Would you have done that, if you were reading it in paper? Would you just have context clued and-

CW (00:57:10):

Probably context clued. Yeah. Yeah, I keep meaning to- I have been slowly trying to get back into French. I keep meaning to find some books to read on the e-reader in French, because that is an advantage of reading foreign language books, that did not exist too, is being able to push on the-

EW (00:57:29):

Get the translation.

CW (00:57:31):

Which for me would be every sixth word.

EW (00:57:33):

That is how you learn. Actually got you a French book. Anyway. We will talk about that later. Well, let us see, what else do we have?

(00:57:44):

Shockingly, I have discovered that reading technical papers is easier, if you already understand most of the material. That whenever I try to go read YOLO and I just give up, it is because I need to read ten papers before I get to YOLO. And also I need practice, which is another reason for reading the "Data-Driven Science and Engineering" book.

(00:58:07):

I think that is actually all we have. Was there anything else on your mental list? Or anything you want to go back to?

CW (00:58:18):

No. No, I do not think so. That is a lot of stuffs.

EW (00:58:22):

All right! Well then I guess, thank you. Thank you for co-hosting and producing. Thank you all for listening. Thank you to JoJo for being quiet until just now. Thank you to our Patreon listener Slack group for doing the book club with me. I appreciate you, and I appreciate most of your other questions and comments and all of that. It is pretty cool. I do not think we are sponsored this week.

CW (00:58:52):

Good. All right.

EW (00:58:52):

So no thank you to the sponsors. Although, Memfault and Nordic. Nordic bought Memfault. So now I think we should be able to have one commercial for both of them. It is kind of like doing your homework, and turning it in to two different classes.

(00:59:13):

Okay. So "Winnie the Pooh." Are you ready? Oh, if you want to contact us, embedded.fm.

CW (00:59:23):

Sign up for the newsletter. Which I meant to send this week. I am still collating stuff for it, so I am getting some stuff for the next newsletter. But we do have a newsletter that infrequently posts, ostensibly biweekly, sometimes weekly. There is good stuff in it. It is small. It is quick.

(00:59:42):

If you have not heard about it, you can go to embedded.fm/subscribe. Down at the bottom, there is a little thing to put your email. We do not sell your email to anyone, because who would buy from us?

EW (00:59:53):

<laugh>

CW (00:59:57):

Yeah. People keep saying, "Oh. There is a newsletter." I am surprised that people do not know there is a newsletter.

EW (01:00:01):

Yeah. There is a newsletter. It is often really good, and really short, which is kind of weird.

(01:00:06):

Okay. So "Winnie the Pooh."

(01:00:06):

[Winnie the Pooh excerpt]

(01:05:12):

CW (01:05:25):