User:Neilrieck
Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
web (new): https://neilrieck.net (new home since 2017)
web (old): http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/ (home since 1997)
email-1: n.rieck@sympatico.ca (old but still active)
email-2: n.rieck@bell.net (new)
Location: The twin cities of Kitchener and Waterloo are located 100 km (62 miles) west of Toronto and 100 km east of London. All three grew together in 1973 so are now collectively known as "the golden technology triangle" which host schools like the University of Waterloo, Wilfred Laurier University, and Conestoga College. Waterloo is home to hundreds of start-ups which include companies like Black Berry (formerly RIM), Sandvine (formerly PixStream), OpenText and Teledyne DALSA (almost all optical sensors on NASA's Mars rovers came from here). Kitchener is home to companies like ATS (Automated Tooling Systems) and Christie Digital. Cambridge is home to companies like Toyota Manufacturing Canada and Honeywell Aerospace (formerly COM DEV International). Nearby Guelph is home to the University of Guelph.
Employment: I am employed as a computer technologist by Bell-ATS (Advanced Technical Services) which is a department within "Bell Canada". (Caveat: All my postings here are my own and have nothing to do with Bell Canada). I primarily develop applications for RHEL and
AlmaLinux systems on the X86-64 platform, as well as OpenVMS applications on "Itanium and Alpha" platforms, and VMS applications on the VAX platform. (Click: here to view my OpenVMS resource page).
Vision 1: I often associate Wikipedia with the "Encyclopedia Galactica" mentioned in Isaac Asimov's "Foundation and Empire" novels although the author never envisioned it in this form (Asimov died just as the world-wide-web was taking off). I have financially contributed to Wikipedia every year since 2003 and challenge you all to do the same. Asimov fans might be interested in this: 15-Book Reading Order as Suggested by Asimov from "Author's Note" of "Prelude to Foundation"
Vision 2: I am convinced we can advance medical science while improving both the length and quality of our lives by participating in "folding@home". Visit the next two links to learn more: Guaranteed Human Life Extension
http://neilrieck.net/docs/folding_at_home.html
Sports: I earned a Black Belt (Shodan) in Karate (GoJu-Ryu) and Kobudo on 2012-01-28 (what an ordeal). Read the details about my 6-hour black-belt grading
Food for thought: I recently learned that the final price for the manned space program up-to-the end of Apollo moon missions was US$25 Billion in 1970 dollars. After reading books like "Journey to the Moon: A History of the Apollo Guidance Computer" I came to the realization that the US$25 Billion was an investment in the future, and that Western life is now very different from what it would have been without Apollo. So why does the USA continue to waste money in foreign wars? Click:
The $15 Trillion Dollar Wars for more information.
The US spent ~ $1000 billion in Afghanistan over 20 years. Money can be used either constructively or destructively. When will America wake up to the fact that no society can be handed democracy? Democracy is something a society seizes then nurtures when sufficiently mature for it. (American people know all about this when they dealt with British troops on their soil in 1776). Meanwhile, the world-wide-web (which you are using to read this post) was invented in 1989-1990 by European scientists in CERN who wanted to simplify document sharing. This is further proof that peaceful research is more productive than military force.