Deep Chip!
Wow, I wrote a report and got myself into Deep Chip. For my job I evaluated a couple of products. One from Atrenta and one from Mentor. My "paper" on the subject got posted!

But on the same day it was posted, Atrenta came to speak to me. They told me about fixes and new features coming down the pike. I sent a note to John over at Deep Chip the very next day:

John:

RE: http://www.deepchip.com/items/0468-08.html

You're emailing this post today is timely. I met with Atrenta yesterday and learned some new things:

* Atrenta does offer Formal verification engine for CDC checks.
* Spyglass CDC does offer automatic recognition of cdc constructs (fifos etc.),
but we need the "advanced" license. At the time I did my testing
I did not have access to one.
* Spyglass does have the ability to be informed that a cell is a
synchronizer without using patterns. But I'm not
sure this would work for us since I have not tried it. If it worked this
would be equivalent to "0in set_cdc_synchronizer custom" which
Mentor's tool supports.

IMHO, the rest of the paper is still valid.

-mike

So there you go, my work is fun.

This weekend we all went to my company's annual family picnic. We forgot our camera, but my friend snapped a couple with his iPhone. They came out real nice.

From Hula Hoops

The hulas were part of a contest - the winner went for a long time...I did not. Jake and I tried to do the burlap bag relay, but lost a close race. Jake won at knocking cans down by throwing bean bags. I won a basketball. Jake and I won a race tugging another kid on a tarp. I also won at "the fastest jump roper" contest. The DJ said he'd never seen a faster jump roper. I had to win because Amanda had not won anything. I gave her my prize.

Here are some photos from our trip to DC. We had a good time - especially at dinner. Check out that Thai food. Mmmmmm....

Jake and I started making a model ship. We plan to make a pirate ship of some sort. With no plans or experience we don't have any idea how it will come out. I've looked at a bunch of photos showing how to build a boat using a lap-strip method. So we've got that going for us.

Here Jake holds the ship still in the clamping jig:


And here it is out of the jig:


I think we'll just butt-join all the strips, fill in the cracks and then epoxy the whole thing together... Who knows, maybe we'll surprise ourselves and end up with a working model. I already have fantasies of cannibalizing one of his many unused remote control cars for parts to steer the rudder!

Of course the important part comes through pretty clearly in the smile on Jakes face.

Final set of photos from our trip up north! This is the third set from three total. These were shot in New York, Connecticut, and finally a couple from back home in North Carolina.



Too see all these photos at once, click me.

More photos from our trip up north! This is the second set from three total. These were shot in Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut.




Too see all these photos at once, click me.

Photos from our trip up north! This is the first set from three total. Shot mostly in Vermont.



The slide show above requires Flash. If you don't have that, you can see the photos here: Summer Trip Part 1.