Steve’s Software Trek

The BACnet committee met in Salt Lake City at the end of June.  We had a large number of Addenda that had finished public review, and had lots of comments for which to respond.  Salt Lake City had some interesting sites and some street items that I had not seen before.  The “Look” on the pavement, as well as the flags used at some crosswalks.

I attended Mass at Cathedral of the Madeleine on Saturday night.  It was a beautiful church and a thought provoking sermon.

I ate some wonderful food in Salt Lake City, including a fabulous carrot cake at Squatter’s Pub Brewery, and some delightful salmon at Cucina Toscana.

I was invited to attend Sharkfest ‘08, a conference for Wireshark users and developers, held March 31-April 2 at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California. I had a great time, and am so grateful that Gerald invited me to attend. I attended as a Wireshark developer since I actively maintain the BACnet dissector. I went to the conference with several goals in mind:

1. Figure out how to do BACnet segmentation
2. Figure out how to get BACnet MS/TP into libpcap/winpcap.
3. Add a couple of BACnet dissector enhancements to Wireshark.
4. Learn about using Wireshark for problem network analysis.

I attended Laura Chappell’s training sessions, and learned a whole lot about Network analysis and the love-hate relationship between TCP/IP SYN, ACK, and Keepalives (#4 completed). I also wrote some Wireshark code during the classes which I promply submitted (#3 completed). Loris came into the activity center and sat down with my son Joshua and me, and so we discussed how to integrate BACnet MS/TP RS485 from serial port into libpcap/winpcap (#2 completed). On the last day and the last session of the conference, I attended a session by Richard Sharpe about file sharing protocols and learned about Wireshark conversations (#1 completed).

We were treated to an inspiration talk on Tuesday morning by Vint Cerf. After the talk, I went to Laura’s session, and Joshua talked to Vint. Vint signed Joshua’s Half-Life player guide, had photos taken with Vint and Gerald, and the Wireshark crew gave Joshua some swag.

Gerald treated the developers to dinner on Tuesday night at Trader Vic’s. I drove to dinner with Joshua and Jaap Keuter, and learned about PBX systems and Jaap’s passion for skydiving. At dinner I sat next to Ulf Lamping and learned about yet another division of Siemens and about Ulf’s love for motorcycle riding. Guy Harrris and Mike sat across from me.  Joshua ate with Gerald’s wife and daughter, and John Bruno’s wife.

The Foothill College campus was beautiful and on Spring Break. The food was awesome and plentiful.  The people were great!  The Wireshark sessions were helpful.  Maybe I will get to attend next year.

We had our Summer BACnet committee meeting in Long Beach, California. We mostly discussed new addenda or responses to public review comments on addenda that had been out for public review.

Our traditional Saturday evening BACnet dinner was held at the Rock Bottom Brewary.

We had time to shoot billiards after our dinner was served.

I stayed on board the RMS Queen Mary, a former cruise ship and former troop carrier during World War II.

Having just moved to San Diego, California, I’ve noticed some unique things about it that I wanted to write down before they became commonplace to me.

Traffic lights - only one light above two lanes.

Snails on sidewalks after watering - similar to worms on sidewalks in the East.

California Refund Value (CRV) - you pay extra for cans and plastic bottles, and if you take them to a recycling center after emptying them, you get money back.

Increased speed limits on surface roads - surface roads I would consider 35 or 45 mph limits are posted as 50 or 55 mph. The locals drive very fast.

Bike lanes, and lots of bikes use them.

Interstates and state highways are referred to as “The Five” instead of “I-5″ or “Interstate 5″; “The Seventy-Eight” instead of “CA-78″ or “California 78″ or “State Highway 78″.

Lots of pregnant women. I see more pregnant women here than anywhere I’ve lived. Maybe it is the weather. Maybe it is the water. Maybe it is the culture.

Lots of things are known to be toxic in the State of California. Proposition 65.

The traffic report includes delay time to get across the United States border to Mexico. The report also includes the delay coming into the United States from Mexico. Today it was a 2 hour delay.

Dr. Laura and Bill Handel are local radio hosts.

Sticks of butter in California stores have different dimensions than the ones I have seen in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Florida, Colorado, and Tennessee.   Wikipedia says that the sticks are known as Western-Pack shape and are common West of the Rocky Mountains.