WORK

I joined the full-time workforce in 1989 after graduation from Brown University with a nice, shiny Math/Computer Science degree. I had summer jobs and part time college jobs programming in high school for the university of Delaware.

Now (July 2004)

Summer, 2003

Commentary from December 2000

And they made me a manager now. I've been a project and technical lead forever, every place I've worked. I'm the kind of guy who thinks of products and makes them happen. Conceptualizes, builds. Liberate (in the person of Coleman Sissions) has taken all of us natural leaders and made us into actual managers. I see managing as a serious and necessary thing. It sets the tone for everyone, and I can remove the roadblocks that cause people to be less productive.

The hard part is when I have to motivate people. I have always thought of people as being like me, who want to build stuff and work in the computer industry because of a desire to build. The people who I've worked with who aren't like that, well, I just ignore them. It's a manager's problem to make sure they work. Now I am that manager. After 6 months of doing this, I've finally got a handle on it, and it's less stressful.

Commentary from March, 2000

The company has come a long way in 4 years. We started out as Navio, a subsiderary of Netscape. Our CEO was the illustrious Wei Yen, from whom I learned much about how to be a CEO. He is an energetic, annoying person, but drives people to do their best. He's now the head of ArtX who is doing the CPU for the next Nintendo system.

We missed some early deadlines, and found that the team we had couldn't get into the consumer race fast enough. We were beaten by WebTV, which ran out of money and was bought by Microsoft at the last minute. As we tried to sell to cable companies, we found that the sales cycle was so long that we wouldn't survive. Bill Gates targeted us as the company he most wanted to crush in an article in Time Magazine.

Things were looking pretty good on the inside. With 70 first rate programmers we built a million-line monstrosity of a browser that ran only on cheap Intel based systems. The server solution was badly architected. This code base took years to tame, and is now the root of AOL-TV. A small group of us revolved, and created a new product line targeted at the cable systems of the time.

We didn't realize how low the company was in funds, and how Netscape was no longer interested in funding us. The merger with Oracle spinoff Network Computer came as a surprise, but it was clearly necessary. As I expected, Wei Yen was careful to structure the merger so that the employees were well taken care of. He then vanished, and left us with ineffective CEO Jerry Baker. Internal motions occurred, and Baker was ejected soon, to be replaced by Dave Roux, who turned the company around and is still the chairman of our board, after bringing on Mitchell Kertzman as CEO.  They are old Route 128 cronies, and are very smart guys with their heads on straight. Liberate went public in June of 1999, fulfilling the dream and making Larry Ellison a few billion richer.

In late 1998, my project was announced at the Western Cable Show in Anaheim. It's a software solution of HTML and JavaScript in the low-cost cable settop boxes. We supported the Explorer 2000 (aka Pegasus) settop box. If you are a cable operator fumbling with EPG systems and Internet and would like to see the synergy, without being locked into a particular on-line service, you should give us a shout. You can still see the press at CNet and ZDNet.

In late 1999 we deployed the first interactive digital cable solution. The customer was Cable and Wireless in England, with their Manchester and London networks. The solution uses a settop box by Pace Microelectronics. It has been rewarding to deploy real boxes into people's homes, and watch the usage numbers go up.

Ancient History

I used to work for Novell Inc. The company's plummeting downhill now, and I don't know anyone there anymore, but I'm proud of the work I did there, and had the opportunity to work for some darned fine engineers. If you used Netware for Macintosh, you've used my product.

What I love

The newest and most interesting protocols are the broadcast protocols used in broadcast TV systems. Intel's Open Intercast and DSM-CC carousels as specified under ISO/IEC 13818-6 are of current interest.