email: harvey.sugar@nerd1951.com
Professional
I work as an embedded systems software engineer. Most of my career I’ve developed software for telecommunications and data communications equipment. Some of the products I’ve helped to create include carrier grade switching and carrier systems, business office data communications equipment, fixed and mobile satellite communications terminals, and communications test equipment. More recently, I’ve been developing high performance networking applications for Linux based servers.
I’ve had the good fortune to work mostly for small companies in multidisciplinary product development teams. I’ve been involved with several products from conception through deployment and maintenance. My product development roles include gathering requirements from customers, systems specification, software architecture, software design and development, technical, team and project leadership, and mentoring junior members of the technical staff.
I have been a representative to the ANSI T1/EI committees, the ATM forum, and the DSL forum. I’ve worked with various carrier and safety testing labs in obtaining certification and acceptance of new products. As an Instructor at the Embedded Systems Conference, I’ve presented classes in using C++ efficiently for communications protocols.
What I do for fun
I’m a 99th percentile nerd and like most hard core nerds, I’ve always enjoyed playing with computers. As this blog shows, I like to spend a bit of my spare time tinkering with new technology and software applications.
I like to collect scifi ‘B’ movies, mostly from the fifties. I like saucer movies, bug-eyed monster movies, and early space travel movies. I think that recent scifi with so much big budget special effects just aren’t as much fun as a good story and schlocky special effects.
I like to get outside too sometimes. When I do, I enjoy hiking and backpacking but especially trail running. Officially I am an ultra-marathoner, barely, having completed two 50K trail races. Next for me is a 50 miler. Beyond that – who knows? Maybe some day I be qualified to run Badwater, 135 miles from Death Valley to to Mt. Whitney, California and considered to be one of the most demanding and extreme running race offered anywhere on the planet.
