There's more of a description of what the paper is looking for below. Please answer the questions at length. They also need us to submit a photograph with each questionnaire. They prefer a candid image, shot with a digital camera... tif or eps format, 300-to-600 dpi. I'd like to strike while the iron is hot... so the deadline to submit entries to me is Friday, Jan. 19, 2001. Here's the quote from the PBT: "The feature is a really easy way to get a placement in our paper and a good way to feature these companies as hip places to work (as in, 'He/she seems cool, I want to work there, too') and could help in the company's recruitment of talent."
Name: Chip Patton, Software Engineer, Tpresence, Inc.
(title,:)
(company:)
Age: 38
Job (description and what the company does and why it is important or interesting): Radically improving the Internet by exploiting the modern desktop computer: CPU, graphics, audio, storage and bandwidth. The great thing about working on the Intellipresence Architecture is that we show up every day and do what most needs to be done in order to realize our vision of the World (the World Wide Web, that is). We allow few distractions from that task -- and our users appreciate it. Currently I'm ears deep in designing the next generation of our MUTech (Multi-User Technology) which will evolve our ability to share 3-D virtual worlds to support more abstract renderings of shared data. For example, what a customer might see as a 3-D immersive virtual car dealership, a (virtual) Sales Desk employee might see as a current inventory availability and options list for the cars being considered by all customers in the virtual showroom. The MUTech development has aspects of peer-to-peer computing, object orientation, data caching and real-time graphics. It's great fun.
Bookmarks(the URLs and why theyıre interesting):
- Code Guru; Great for standing on someone else's shoulders to reach higher faster, great C++ and Visual Basic coding examples and columns.
- 3-D E-Zine; News and links for 3-D on the Web.
- The North Alabama Table Tennis Club; I was the original Webmaster (1996-1999); lots of photos, history and tournament results.
- Books-a-Million, almost as many titles as Amazon, but cheaper.
- Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary; there's nothing like getting the words right.
- PriceWatch; still the best for finding the cheapest mail order computer hardware.
- Virtual Church of the Blind Chihuahua; Spiritualism for the thinking (and laughing) cybernaut.
- Yahoo! The granddaddy portal, my home for maps, weather, stock quotes and the other basics.
What do you read (and why): Everything. Think the film "Working Girl" here where a young Melanie Griffith foils Mergers and Acquisitions temptress Sigourney Weaver with tidbits from "People" magazine and "The Daily Post". For periodicals I read EE Times, Software Development, Computer Graphics World, OTC Investor, Forbes, Natural History, Esquire, Elle, etc. (actually that last one is my wife's). In books I find a lot of relevance to my work in "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson and other cyberpunk stuff. "Sandman" is a great adult comic book, as is most of Neil Gaiman's stuff. Lately I've been listening to a lot of non-fiction audio books in my car including "I am Jackie Chan" and "The Axemaker's Gift" by James Burke, this week I've borrowed my son's Harry Potter tapes.
Office computer specs: Dell 733 MHz Pentium III w/256 MB RAM, 64 MB Radeon DDR graphics
Home computer specs: Micron Millennia Max XP 900 MHz AMD Athlon w/128 MB RAM, 64 MB nVidia GeForce2 DDR graphics
Most commonly used application: Microsoft DevStudio (Visual C++)
Favorite keyboard shortcuts:
Preferred ergonomics: Wrist rest for the keyboard, left side mouse (but don't reverse the buttons) and a 24 inch HDTV monitor.
How many e-mails do you receive/read/send a day(Iım looking for three numbers here): 2 dozen/all but the 7 or 8 that are Spam/8-10, with about a third going to multiple recipients.
How much time spent surfing a day: This varies widely, at least half an hour but can be several hours if I'm doing research or chasing something on ebay.
Education: BS Mathematics SUNY Binghamton; MS Mathematics VCU; MS Management Fla. Tech.
At what age was first computer purchased and what was it: 19, IBM PC (48 K of memory, CPU was an 8088, storage was a cassette tape deck, I couldn't afford the 5 1/4" single sided/single density floppy drive)
(favorite) Stress relievers: Table Tennis; My four year old daughter (It's a whole different focus !)
(favorite) Survival tools: Luciano's (that's pizza), Hershey's Nuggets (Dark Chocolate w/Almonds), 5 minute walk-abouts.
Who would you most like to have dinner with(and why): Walter Cronkite; he's seen a lot, kept up with a lot, knows his own worth and yet still is unpretentious.