grumble...

blogger.com wouldn't let me log in (and therefore, not let me post comments) unless I "accept third party cookies" in my Firefox prefs.
I feel this could be a security hole, so I'm not very happy about this.

why...

I never thought I'd write a blog.

I rarely think anything that I think is notable, and feel it's somewhat presumptuous to think anyone would find my thoughts interesting. But now that one of my sisters and her older daughter have started blogging, I gotta get with the program! I admit that I like telling stories, and this is the modern way of doing it. Plus, I'm getting a bit older, and this is a place for me to jot down thoughts that may be interesting only to me or my immediate family.

What the heck is a gate slinger? It's what I do. I am a hardware logic designer in Silicon Valley. It's a bit hard to explain to someone not in the profession, but my job is to basically take a "function" and describe it in a way that can be built into one of those ubiquitous little computer chips. For example, if you've ever wondered how your PC knows how to correctly add two numbers together, I know exactly how it does it. I'll probably write about some things at work and some of the colorful characters I've encountered. Unfortunately, there's a lot of truth in Dilbert.

(I have to give credit to an old buddy for coming up with the term "gate slinger". I'll write about that at some point.)

I'd like to think I'm pretty good at logic design, since I've been doing it my entire career (almost 30 years now...). Other folks who've been doing this as long as I have, have either moved into management or into higher technical positions, but this is my calling in life. I don't have any aspirations to do anything else, and God willing, I will be able to do this for the rest of my professional life, about 15 more years.

As a happy coincidence I just noticed, GSM (Gate Slinger Musings) is also my dad's initials.

Cool.