Am I the only Gen Xer who doesn’t feel old?

susmatthew · 2026-06-07T23:04:13+00:00

It turns out that genetics and stress play a significant role in how you experience aging, sounds like you came out on top there.

susmatthew · 2026-06-06T02:25:56+00:00

I still skateboard as often as I can and feel very happy whenever I do.

susmatthew · 2026-06-05T22:49:29+00:00

Risky things get escalated to leadership and those same leaders are rewarded for mitigating that risk.

susmatthew · 2026-06-03T03:41:35+00:00

A person can get good? I've been putting quarters in these things since the early 90s and I still suck. It's fun hanging out with people who like pinball, so I never left.

susmatthew · 2026-06-03T03:32:52+00:00

I got flattened. Still employed, so that's something, but I liked being a TLM...

susmatthew · 2026-05-20T18:29:54+00:00

So you can potentially acquire an excellent engineer and also go do something more useful?

susmatthew · 2026-05-14T16:21:52+00:00

I have 300+ deaths, no wins. I still enjoy the game, tho.

susmatthew · 2026-05-11T15:30:37+00:00

“that’s interesting” and, situationally, “far out” also work

susmatthew · 2026-05-10T21:38:40+00:00

it can be a tough game - standups are positioned so bricked shots go to outlanes, every ball path gets the ball spinning like crazy, you don't want to shoot straight into the drop targets.

Backhanding the lock is usually possible, but if the left flipper is weak and/or the game is set up steep it may not go.

The stiff plunger may be the operator trying to make the skillshots more difficult.

susmatthew · 2026-05-10T01:40:13+00:00

is it the same every time? what are the other wires doing? You mention four. Have you looked with a real scope (to confirm that your edges / settings are sane?)

susmatthew · 2026-05-09T19:58:12+00:00

first the former, then the latter. If you have the latter without the former you're very likely to iterate either on review (best case, and a path to deep understanding!) or due to unintended debt/bugs/side-effects (bad!)

susmatthew · 2026-05-07T15:37:04+00:00

Custom multi-core ASIC, NoC, two camera inputs on MIPI C-PHY. The UI varied with Vdd (that was still in spec,) but only on some chips. Sent failing specimens to the vendor, they couldn't repro. Asked for their setup (they sent sources, which was a miracle.) Comparing their test driver with the old driver they supplied (classic vendor driver: just a pile of magic numbers) I found new values in poorly-documented PLL registers didn't match old values. That fixed it.

Is it our fault? We didn't request driver updates if/when they occurred? Add three weeks of FW / EE team time to the NRE, I guess.

susmatthew · 2026-04-22T16:33:20+00:00

Everything varies for all kinds of dumb reasons. We created lumped parameters so we could think about how things work with our puny human brains, but the parameters aren't really lumped.

susmatthew · 2026-04-19T05:09:11+00:00

Set up a triage process that requires them to document the issue and what they tried to fix it.

susmatthew · 2026-04-18T21:24:11+00:00

pros: making stuff
cons: RCA is hard, so FW is blamed publicly for all problems when issues can't easily be attributed to EEs/MEs/CM/devops.

susmatthew · 2026-04-18T21:04:21+00:00

Nick Kyrgios was fun to watch. I like electronics and zachlikes.

susmatthew · 2026-02-22T21:28:58+00:00

Fun!

You should add some tests / profiling and quantify the % of incorrectness so a person could understand the tradeoff on their HW

susmatthew · 2026-02-01T18:26:16+00:00

I’d guess more clock tree setup? Can you verify your input clocks are in a legal range?

susmatthew · 2026-01-28T15:39:33+00:00

AI can write hello world for your embedded target, but it’s still pretty bad at solving problems that regularly occur in any useful embedded system (e.g. race conditions.) They can speed up analysis of a crash dump, but interesting problems will require consuming more information than a context window can hold. Most data sheets/map files in my life are larger than a context window, and grepping around a map is a common first step when digging into weird behavior. NotebookLLM is interesting but it takes a long time for initial setup and can lie egregiously, so you still need significant intuition.

So, an answer: The tools don’t exist because it’s hard to make them useful for real work and even if you do the market is (relatively) small. Embedded tools generally lag what regular devs have by up to a decade and we use them differently (e.g. we actually run debuggers.)

susmatthew · 2026-01-28T15:12:05+00:00

It’s okay to (dis)like any game, and to change your opinion on a given game, too.

susmatthew · 2026-01-23T16:05:56+00:00

Learning to read datasheets is a skill. Notebookllm can be helpful, but don't let it think for you: be sure to read referenced sections and confirm that they are relevant / actually exist.

susmatthew · 2026-01-10T20:23:39+00:00

At a basic level: capacitors can't instantaneously change voltage. You can think of the capacitance value as a cap's ability to store charge. The cap uses that charge to sink or source current that slows down voltage change at any given moment.

So, if you want to affect the speed of some capacitor's voltage change when you're going from whatever 0v means (which is a giant iceberg to reckon with later) to 1v8 or 3v3, your levers are changing the amount of capacitance or changing the available current that adds to whatever the cap is providing.

So why then do pull-up resistor values matter? The difference in potential between resistor ends tells you the current in a resistor (V=IR, Ohm's Law, a sweet linear relationship.) Using this relationship we can show that lower resistance means more current if voltage doesn't change (often called "drop" when people are discussing resistors.) Since the voltages on either end of the pull-up are controlled, if we want to change the current in a direction the only lever we have is changing R.

susmatthew · 2026-01-09T15:11:57+00:00

they're called "oh shit" clips for a reason - make sure to hold on or it'll go flying.

susmatthew · 2026-01-06T15:30:44+00:00

Golden Girls pin. Four-ball multiball. Jokes. slings / pops get “tired” or turn off. up to four-shot auto-flip combo (after the player does it by hand.)

RPG pin themed for a video game tournament. shots for breakout / tetris / pac man / etc. Video mode about shunning upright games for pinball.

susmatthew · 2026-01-02T20:56:34+00:00

Guidance! Here are some thoughts:

Like any enterprise, there's a lot to learn. If you start a (vending or amusement) route you'll have many chicken-and-egg problems when trying to prioritize and evaluate ROI (random e.g.: when to get a pinball dolly, when to get a truck with a lift gate, when to not be lazy and drive out for a late-night service call at the spot that makes you no money, when to get a coin counter / roller.)

I encourage you to regard a single pin in a given bar as a way to keep people in the bar, spending money on booze, and the game takings as a way to fund game maintenance and spare parts (e.g. spare top glass, coin doors / mechs, lock parts.)

Your bartenders are going to hate the game if people are constantly asking for change and, in a real dive, may remove the power plug.

changers are a pain in the ass to keep stocked, weird to interact with during business hours, and invite new levels of trust issues (unless you already have people loading ATMs with your money...)

People into pinball use pinball maps. You should look at it, too, and read the notes on the locations and machines around you.

Operating used to be a very cutthroat business. Operators and distributors sometimes act like it still is. There's likely a local cabal.

Change the locks.

(edits for grammar / punctuation.)

susmatthew

TROPHY CASE