Wednesday May 11, 2005 Alan Perry's Blog
Wednesday May 11, 2005 Who am I and what am I doing here?
Hi,
My name is Alan Perry and I am a software engineer in the Solaris x86 kernel group. I work on the Firewire support in Solaris. Firewire is the Apple tradename for a serial bus protocol described by IEEE standard 1394. Right now, that means working on the dcam1394, av1394, scsa1394 and hci1394 drivers and the underlying framework driver (s1394) and drivers to support protocols (like sbp2). Firewire support for x86 and SPARC is available in Solaris 10. For more information about Firewire, check out the 1394 Trade Association website.
I also compete in a form of motorsports called stage rally. In stage rally, cars race against the clock on roads that have been closed. The driver has typically not seen the road before and is driving by what he sees and what he is being told by his co-driver. I am a co-driver. For a rally, I am given a book containing a detailed set of directions for all of the roads and that I use that to let the driver know what is coming up next on the road. Stage rally has an international following and is sanctioned in the US by Rally America and NASA.
Hope this ends up being interesting. ( May 11 2005, 01:15:00 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]
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I guess I'm just trying to figure out how one moves around from area to area and aquires the knowledge needed for it, if that makes any sense?
Posted by Jeff on May 18, 2005 at 06:05 AM PDT #
I started working on Firewire because I was asked to by my manager back in 1996.
As far as the general question, I think it works both ways. It is easier to work in a new area if your manager asks you to (since one is usually more actively supported when that happens), but a lot of cool and useful work gets done because someone took some initiative.
Posted by Alan Perry on May 26, 2005 at 09:48 AM PDT #