gtaylor@astroatc.UUCP (Greg Taylor) (03/12/86)
"King Belshazzar held a great banquet for a thousand
of his nobles and drank wine with them. He gave ord-
ers to bring in the gold and silver goblets that
Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken, so that every-
one could drink their fill therefrom."
Aw...I *hate* reading these things--I'd always rather tell
it myself.
You know the kind of party....the one where the guards'
arbitration logic eventually gets so messed up that every
gatecrasher from here to Babylon either has their "guest
bit" set high when they walk in the door or else they get
compared with some spurious entry in the lookup table and
OK'ed. It was strictly "Party Out Of Bounds" Time for ol'
Shazzar.
So the room is a smoky tangle of pizza, munchies, mucky-
mucks, minglers, and party types. All of a sudden, this
*hand* appears from out of nowhere--pop! Not content with
appearing from who-knows-where, the hand proceeds to start
drawing on the wall, right next to where that big, tasteless
lampstand used to be.
You can imagine just how well *that* went over: Dead silence
and that spooky kind of quiet that you get when something
really frightening or miraculous occurs in the middle of
some serious escapism. Everybody said, "Be cool. Chill out
and this will all just go away...." We were half right: The
hand didn't stick around. It just popped back to wherever it
came from, but all that stuff on the wall stayed. *Nobody*
could figure out what all those little lines and dots and
circles were. Belshazzar had the biggest scare of all of us.
The guy that wrote the book put it this way:
"The king watched the hand as it wrote. He was so
frightened that his knees knocked together and his
legs gave way. Then he quickly called for all the en-
chanters, astrologers, and software engineers to be
brought and said to them, 'Whoever reads this writ-
ing and tells me what it means will be clothed in
purple and have a gold chain placed around his neck
and he will be made the third highest ruler in the
kingdom.'"
Anyway, the king's wife finally remembered about Daniel, who
was adept at that sort of thing--having bailed out ol'
Shazzar's dad Nebuchadnezzar more than once. So they brought
Daniel in. Nearly everyone who had seen the big hand at the
party found *some* excuse to be hanging around when Daniel
showed up. He just stood there looking at the stuff on the
wall, and then this big grin started up and spread all over
his face. He turned to the king (and all the rest of us as
well, standing there with studied disinterest) and said,
"Oh, that's easy. This is a bunch of diagnostic cir-
cuitry. Funny thing, though. Looks like whoever laid
this out tied this VCC to a ground pin. We'll have
to lay out some of it again."
AND NOW, A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR:
Astronautics Technology Center
5800 Cottage Grove Road
Madison, Wisconsin 53716
608-221-9001
Astronautics Corporation of America (ACA) is a firm with
over 25 years of high technology expertise. ACA's research
and development facility is currently expanding the
corporation's technology base into the areas of high-
performance computer development. An immediate opening
exists in the area of Printed Circuit Board Layout (CAD).
Any applicant for this position should expect to be involved
in the challenging task of laying out a number of large
boards (200-500 ICs per board) using the SCICARDS CAD tools.
2 years or more of experience with SCICARDS tools is pre-
ferred. Since this is precise, demanding, and creative
work, hand layout experience is also a BIG plus. Other CAD
experience would also be considered. For this position,
experience outweighs formal training.
Familiarity with the VALID Systems CAE design tools is also
a desirable trait.
As the capital of Wisconsin and the home of the University
of Wisconsin, Madison is known for its high standard of edu-
cation and its quality of life. Madison is a city built on
the shores of five lakes and with the beautiful state of
Wisconsin offers many recreational activities, including
sporting, bovine-spotting, and cultural events.
If you are qualified and interested in this position, submit
your resume in confidence to Mary Burnett at the above
address or via E-mail to
{ihnp4,seismo,harvard}!uwvax!astroatc!maryb
An Equal Opportunity Employer, Astronautics Corporation of
American offers a comprehensive benefit package including
relocation.joseph@orstcs.UUCP (03/15/86)
Could someone tell if this was intended as a job posting? I tired of reading after 3 or 4 screens.