Dear Joseph and Lucia,

I’ve had a fairly good week at work.  I upgraded another test cell to my new version of the control software.  Three out of seven done so far. There was a minor bug I fixed this morning, so now it looks like it’s ready to start steamrolling through the tests.  I was also requested to write control software for a blower motor in LabVIEW.  The current control software is compiled from a 3rd party and we don’t have any way to interface with it.  This one might take a while.  The first challenge was the checksum.  That’s a value at the end of a serial data packet you use to make sure all the information is correct.  It’s normally done by adding all the bytes together ignoring the overflow, or using an exclusive OR.  This one uses Fletcher’s Checksum algorithm.  I’ve never heard of it.  It took me two days to get it to work.  So now I’m slowly building all the commands to control it.

I told you I was geeky on this post.

In the back of my head I keep thinking about this upcoming weekend.  It’s going to be a big walk down memory lane.  The Ren Fest is only a few miles from our old house in Dobbin.  I hope to stop by with Michèle to see how it looks now-a-days.  My time at the festival is going to be in celebration of Papa Gene. All the while, I know I’m just a hop skip and jump away from your guys… I’ll be feeding my emotional hole the entire time.  That’s the place where you two used to be every day.  I’m so glad I’ll have Michèle holding my hand.  She is my best friend and supporter.  You should never fear about love and understanding when you finally reach out to me.

Until then, I’ll keep waiting for you.  I’m not going anywhere soon. Just search for me. You’ll find me.

Love,
Dad