Quotes from Early Developers – Carlos Escobar

Quotes from Early Developers – Carlos Escobar

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I got to meet Al Lowe, a developer from early Sierra adventure games, at the Adventure Game Fan Fair. He talked at a panel and I got him to sign some of my copies of his games. During his talk, he mentioned a fabulously quotable coworker named Carlos Escobar. Carlos was known around the office for always having a smile, his friendliness – and especially his witty commentary. His coworkers at Sierra even put these quotes into an autoexec.bat script that would print one of his pearls of humor randomly on each boot.

  • “There’s a fine line between my friends… and the people I get stuck working with.”
  • “He is a legend… in his own mind.”
  • “I like you just as much today as I did yesterday.”
  • “Happy thoughts, phony smile.”
  • “Why be nice when you can be honest?”
  • “I’m not trying to save the world… but maybe I should — it would be easier.”
  • “I almost care.”
  • “Don’t get married. Don’t have kids!”
  • “I hear DOS is making a comeback.”
  • “It could be worse; it could be me.”
  • “I’m mildly impressed.”
  • “Good enough for who it’s for.”
  • “You know you’re lost if you have to make a printout.”
  • “What good are friends if I can’t take advantage of them?”
  • “A fool and his money soon become my close personal friends.”
  • “I share my bitterness with everyone!”
  • “If I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you.”

His off-hand comment about a coworker brought up a lot of memories for me because I used to keep a quote board on my wipeboard at my first software engineering job. It got pretty hilarious at times – and there were some real doozies much like the ones Carlos said.

I think it was kind of like the military or any other organization that’s tight knit, full of comradery, and yet full of funny snark because the job you’re doing has long hours and lots of stress. It came from an environment where you were still young and adventuresome, full of amazing people doing amazing stuff, working crazy hard, but really having fun and trusted/liked your coworkers.

I feel really blessed and lucky to have had such a great set of first jobs at Intel – with at the time – were some of the best engineers in the world.

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Portland schools drop to nations worst

Portland schools drop to nations worst

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Oregon’s education system is now ranked as the 5th worst school system in the country. Continuing a long trend of continued declines and disastrous statistics for failing Oregon schools. This despite decades of complete Democratic party control of the state and school systems that have some of the highest funding per student in the country.

As it turns out, removing requirements to prove basic skills in reading and math hasn’t worked out so well. While Oregon leaders try to do a victory lap because the results are better than they were, the end result has been bad for all students. Ironically, it has been particularly bad for students of color, students that specifically targeted by activist educational policies:

Only 11% of Portland Public School’s Black students scored as proficient in math — akin to getting an A or B grade — the state tests indicated, and only 19% met that level in reading and writing.

And to show just how bad Portland itself is:

Proficiency levels for Black students were roughly twice as high in most of the four surrounding districts… In Beaverton, 35% of Black students hit proficiency goals in reading and writing and 23% in math, followed by Hillsboro at 34% and 25%, Tigard-Tualatin at 33% and 24% and North Clackamas at 29% and 22%.

Sadly, the one thing the teachers union has done is come under increasingly activist leadership. They held strikes that were proved to be without merit, union leadership encouraged pro-Palestinian messages and flags during strike marches, the union publish Pro-Palestinian teaching handbooks for classrooms that encourage students to pray to Allah. All of this has led to numerous lawsuits against the union and schools for being anti-semitic. Add to this fun Portland hosted the 2025 National Educational Conference in which Portland members openly harassed and threatened Jewish attendees from other parts of the country.

Meanwhile, Mississippi has gone from one of the worst schools, to one of the top performers by bringing back tried and true methods of education. They require 2 hours of daily reading from grades 1-4. They separate groups into skill level of reading and provide remedial reading assistance for those struggling. Those who fail – really do fail. It’s a system of accountability and phonics that is leading to dramatic improvements compared to what has been called the ‘soft racism’ of lowering or removing requirements to improve poor statistics.

It seems the Democratic governor has finally agreed and is now forcing science-backed phonics-based approaches instead of activist backed agendas.

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Set up Windows 11 without an annoying Microsoft Account

Set up Windows 11 without an annoying Microsoft Account

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Being required to connect to the internet while installing Windows 11 has been one, in a long line of reasons, why many users refuse to update to the new OS, even though it has been out for 4 years (since Nov 2021). After finally reaching an adoption rate of just over 50%, it has since dropped to 49.08%

The most popular bypass to having to log in with an internet connected Microsoft account was to use “oobe\bypassnro” which, when typed into the command prompt during the Windows 11 setup experience, would enable a button that let you skip connecting to the internet

Unfortunately, Microsoft is removing that trick, but user @witherornot1337 on X found that typing “start ms-cxh:localonly” into the command prompt during the Windows 11 setup experience will allow you to create a local account directly without needing to skip connecting to the internet first.

Or you could, you know, actually give customers what they want instead of the kind of backwards thinking that gave us the universally hated Windows 8.

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The Old Church Free Halloween Organ concert

The Old Church Free Halloween Organ concert

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Michael Barnes, a professional pianist and organist, and has been Senior Organist at Westminster Presbyterian Church since 1992. He puts on his Halloween concert during the free noon Wednesday concerts at the Old Church in Portland at this spookiest month every year. He plays spooky music from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV 565 all the way to sing-a-longs of favorite tv theme songs.

This year’s show was Wed, Oct 22nd at noon (video not up at the time of this posting). Here’s the show from 2024.

HAGAMOSphere

HAGAMOSphere

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The HAGAMOSphere is a spherical drone prototype with eight propellers mounted on a cubic frame,
allowing it to move both horizontally and vertically while maintaining level flight- like many thrust vector systems.
It is also designed to roll around on the ground by housing itself inside a geometrically shaped sphere guard.

X-ray backscatter with compressed sensing

X-ray backscatter with compressed sensing

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Compressed sensing is an image/signal processing algorithm that allows you to re-construct an image/signal even when you’ve lost up to 95% of the samples. It’s so good that it can even be cranked up to restore images even above what would normally be the Nyquist limit.

Applied Science walks through using an X-ray backscatter device to reconstruct images as near to x-ray vision as you can get at low doses.

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Oregon has the highest rate of mental illness in the country

Oregon has the highest rate of mental illness in the country

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The study ranks Oregonians, youth and adults, as having the highest prevalence of mental health challenges among residents of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Mental Health America’s newly released 2025 annual report.

Despite complete Democratic party control for over 30 years and spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year – the latest annual report on mental health shows Oregonians have the highest rates of mental health issues in the country. Rates have increased every year for the last 5 years and Oregon has been above national averages since 2015.

How many Oregonians suffer from mental illness? 30% of the adult population.

There’s lots of finger pointing. Many blame normalizing homelessness and living on the streets for people who often struggle with addictions and mental health issues. Others point at attempts to normalize mental health issues and neurodivergence as simply ‘lifestyle choices’.

No matter how you look at it, the decades of policies we have today are clearly failing – and failing worse than anywhere else in the country.

Welding class

Welding class

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When I was on a 8 week sabbatical a number of years ago, I took an artistic welding class. It was a ton of fun. Sugar Metal Customs does custom ironwork, but also teaches some classes from making metal roses to giant metal flails for your medieval fantasies.

Maybe pick up a skill that AI can’t replace?