Page type: staff

Bolo;Bolo;Greetings! I'm Bolo, although my parents;christened me Josef Thomas Burger when I rolled from the ways.;Call me;bolo... everyone, including my parents, does!;I'm not quite sure who I am or what I do; here's the best;explanation I've developed so far.;In many ways the question who is a person is defined by;what that person does.;In my case, I'm a software engineer who develops semi-real-time;operating systems and utilities.;I've been doing that for the last 5 years.;Before that, I was a BSD Kernel Hacker and Unix system Administrator.;I create things, and that's why I'm an engineer.;An engineer applies science to the design and construction of "things",;and that's what I do.;You can't really call me a scientist, though I have a;Computer Sciences degree.;I'm more of ... a Mad Scientist!!!;The guy who pays me, David DeWitt,;(who is a scientist) shudders at my methodology.;On the other hand, I'm right most of the time.;It works for me, eh?;When I'm not designing, architecting, and implementing new;operating system type things, I'm often doing the same;to other things.;Some of those other things are my FORTH system, Woodworking,;Home Control, Drawing, and Brewing Beer.;To completely relax, try sleep -- it works wonders!;But sleep is not enough, although my;roommate disagrees with me.;Other pursuits which I enjoy are;flying, reading science fiction,;comic books, railroading (both prototype and model), and;role playing games.;You may notice images of the most sublime striped creature, the;Tiger in appearing throughout my WWW pages.;Tiger has taken me for his own.;William Blake's poem;Tyger! Tyger!;puts words to the wonder of Tiger.;On the Road Again;In a tremendous leap of insanity :-) I've purchased a;house!;The address of my new place is;Josef T. Burger;6301 East Gate Road;Monona, WI 53716-3910;The new voice number is 608-223-0486.;Boring Work;Work at work drives me bananas.;It used to be fun, but now it's a grunge.;Either I've matured, or the jobs has changed over the years, perhaps;some of both.;It seems like we get new parallel computers every other;month, and I have to beat them into;submission, while doing everything else under the sun, moon, and;stars.;I'm currently working on the following projects for;Dave DeWitt, a world-;(in)famous database hacker!;Gamma: A parallel relational database.;OQL: An SQL-like query interpreter for object stores.;Paradise; A Geographic Information System implemented with Shore.;Shore: An object-oriented data store.;WiSS: The WIsconsin Storage System.;And whatever else needs to be done!;All this, and a whole lot more, occurs at the;Computer Sciences Department;of the;Madison Campus;of the;University of Wisconsin.;The campus is located in Madison, WI (USA) on a peninsula between;two of Madison's five lakes.;Not so boring work;In addition to my work for the UW, I also consult.;I don't provide solutions, but rather advice and technical;expertise.;Helping out Internet Providers, porting software to new;systems, reviving old computers, and other oddball tasks;are the kinds of things I do.;I'd tell you to;visit my web server;but I haven't had time to do anything there, so it's mostly;empty, except for the home pages of some friends.;Other activities;Uwvax;I operate the uwvax Usenet News;and UUCP site in my free time. "All the news thats fit to;print", or something along those lines. uwvax,;a CS department computer, has been part of Usenet, UUCP,;and the internet for longer than I've worked here.;Along the same lines, I am also the Computer Sciences Department's;volunteer news master.;Much of that goes hand-in-hand with running uwvax.;However, trying to take care of 3 or 4 news readers across 5 or 6 different;architectures is a trying task.;I don't have much time to take care of that software.;Organizations;I am a member of the following organizations.;I don't always agree with what they do, but they often;have a lot of good benefits, for both members and other users;of their communities.;AOPA (the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association).;EAA (the Experimental Aircraft Association).;Usenix Association.;Blitz-Drinking;When I was in school a horde of friends;and myself visited a local pub every Thursday night.;This place, The Essen Haus, imports beers from all over the world.;Slowly we worked our way through their entire selection.;Over the years we've developed new acquaintances, and many;of them became part of our loftily-labelled;Blitz Drinking Society.;We're rather diverse ... some of the members don't drink!;We meet once a year at the Essen Haus during the time of;Octoberfest to have a weekend of fun.;Chud has accumulated;a short history and whatnot;of this charade.;Bolo's Home Page;Last modified:;Tue Apr 2 23:31:48 CST 1996;Bolo (Josef Burger);<bolo@cs.wisc.edu>;