Was anyone able to make it to the symposium on time? I was held up getting a few other things done, but I did make it to the book signing, but I didn't have a book for him to sign, and didn't have the cash to buy one. Instead, I compromised:

10/27/2007 11:37:13 PM

I dated a Wozniak... bitch.

10/28/2007 1:21:18 AM

you have to be a huge nerd to lug a damn oscilloscope to a book signing.

10/28/2007 1:23:28 AM

I couldn't pass up the opportunity to have a great engineer sign it; I just think that I need to have a few professors sign it as well. Perhaps Dr. Bitzer, Dr. Conte, Dr. Dean, Dr. Byrd... definitely Dr. Bitzer though.

10/28/2007 1:41:05 AM

^^
[/thread]

10/28/2007 1:41:58 AM

where'd you get that damn oscilloscope

and at least now we don't have to look at all of those damn ego posters with nothing but his huge head on them

10/28/2007 1:46:32 AM

Got the scope off eBay, works great, use it weekly at the least. While I'm not a cult follower of Wozniak, I have to admit, he did a lot for the computer as an engineer.

10/28/2007 1:52:01 AM

yeah man that'll be worth something, especially if you get bitzer in on it, none of the other guys are really that notable though

10/28/2007 1:54:02 AM

the Woz signed my MBP

10/28/2007 1:46:34 AM

I've seen 3 of Woz's speeches and he always manages to make them slightly different each time. I learn something new about him or Jobs or Apple that I didn't know before. I'm a huge Apple whore though and I eat that stuff up.

I have yet to have him sign something of mine, but I did get to take a picture with him.

10/28/2007 2:12:18 AM

Forget selling it, I just want to find a Tektronix 2220F12 Option 12 field upgrade kit to add RS-232 communications to it, I could do the FFTs on a computer then, get a bit more use from analysis anyhow. The stock model only has an analog output for plotting to an x-y plotter.

As far as value, it was ~$150 in the auction, but ~$50 shipping, about $200 total. I don't think Wozniak nor Bitzer's signatures can add much value to it. It is neat because in non-storage mode, it's completely analog. In storage mode, it isn't even 60 MS/s, but it can do repeated average sampling for a signal good enough for 60 MHz.

As for the other professors being on it, they're generally good professors, and I wouldn't feel bad about them signing it

Fry, was that you that he signed the MBP with my sharpie?

10/28/2007 2:22:16 AM

i think he used his own but idk... blue sharpie is all i know

10/28/2007 3:34:33 AM

I went to a Woz speech in 1987 and got to meet him afterwards.

10/28/2007 7:49:51 AM

i would pay good money to see the woz sign dr. lunardi's boob

[Edited on October 28, 2007 at 2:06 PM. Reason : ibtm]

10/28/2007 2:06:30 PM

was the symposium open to the public?

i wanted to stop in and listen but thought i saw it was name tag only so i didn't bother

10/28/2007 3:37:58 PM

There was an adjacent student overflow room that was meant for students that didn't have name tags. I just wasn't able to get there until it was almost over anyway, so I went straight to the book signing. There were a lot of people there, however he didn't have a sharpie to start with. I took one with me (why the hell would I lug an o'scope across campus and risk him not having a sharpie?) and he signed my scope then a couple macbooks with it. I still have the sharpie if anyone wants it

10/28/2007 3:46:22 PM

It would be more interesting to get Bitzer sig on some sort of plasma screen.

10/28/2007 4:03:52 PM

^ yeah, that, and if Woz signed an Apple ][

btw, here's an interesting Wozniak and Jobs story i read this week

Quote :

"Breakout, a discrete logic (non-microprocessor) game, was conceptualized by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow, after the latter had "rejoined" Atari after the merge of Atari subsidiary Kee Games. They had an idea to turn Pong into a single player game, where the player would use a ball to deplete a wall of bricks without missing the ball on its rebound. Bushnell was certain the game would be popular, and the two partnered to produce a concept. Al Alcorn was assigned as the project manager, and began development with Cyan Engineering in 1975. The same year, Alcorn assigned Steve Jobs to design a prototype. Jobs was offered USD$750, with an extra $100 each time a chip was eliminated from the prospected design. Jobs promised to complete a prototype within four days. Jobs noticed his friend Steve Wozniak—employee of Hewlett-Packard—was capable of producing designs with a small number of chips, and invited him to work on the hardware design with the prospect of splitting the $750 wage. Wozniak had no sketches and instead interpreted the game from its description. To save parts, he had "tricky little designs" difficult to understand for most engineers. Near the end of development, Wozniak considered moving the high score to the screen's top, but Jobs claimed Bushnell wanted it at the bottom; Wozniak unaware of any truth to his claims. The original deadline was met, and 50 chips were removed from Jobs' original design. This equated to a $5000 USD bonus, which Jobs kept secret from Wozniak, instead only paying him $375. Atari were unable to use Steve Wozniak's design. By designing the board with as few chips as possible, he also cut down the amount of TTL (transistor-transistor logic) chips to 42. This made the design difficult to manufacture — it was too compact and complicated to be feasible with Atari's manufacturing methods. However, Wozniak claims Atari could not understand the design, and speculates "maybe some engineer there was trying to make some kind of modification to it". Atari ended up designing their own version for production, which contained about 100 TTL chips. Wozniak found the gameplay to be the same as his original creation, and couldn't find any differences.[1][2][3][4][5][6]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout

10/28/2007 4:20:06 PM

I went, was a great talk. Wozniak seemed a lot cooler than I actually expected him to be. It's pretty awesome to listen to a guy that has done so much in the world of computing

10/28/2007 5:26:35 PM

i give this thread 8/10

10/28/2007 5:39:57 PM

heh, i've played XBox on Bitzer's plasma before

10/28/2007 5:46:10 PM

oh man

this is like, the raddest fucking thing I have ever seen

that is AWESOME, Nitrocloud

10/28/2007 6:24:08 PM

Quote :

"There was an adjacent student overflow room that was meant for students that didn't have name tags. I just wasn't able to get there until it was almost over anyway, so I went straight to the book signing. There were a lot of people there, however he didn't have a sharpie to start with. I took one with me (why the hell would I lug an o'scope across campus and risk him not having a sharpie?) and he signed my scope then a couple macbooks with it. I still have the sharpie if anyone wants it "

They ended up not even needing the overflow room. They let everyone that showed up sit in the main room with Woz.

10/28/2007 8:12:34 PM

wish I could get me a Chuck Peddle signed C=64... now there's a REAL engineer

10/28/2007 9:02:50 PM

and here comes TheCoz in 5....4....3...2....

10/28/2007 9:52:25 PM