Allow me to introduce myself

As promised in the last post, a brief introduction to your inhumble host, Chris Coughlin.

Proud to be Canadian, I've been living and working in the U.S. for seven years and five days. Originally here under the TN-1 visa, then the H1-B, finally became a permanent resident ("green card" holder) a couple of years ago under the National Interest Waiver program. Meaning that it would hurt America if I lived elsewhere. How's that for egocentric? :)

Deciding that "Doctor of Philisophy" didn't sound half as cool as MASTER OF SCIENCE, I opted for a MSc. in Physics. In Canada, unlike the U.S., you don't "lose" the PhD. and settle for the Master's, it's a genuine goal for academic programs up there. Focus of research was on Magnetic Flux Leakage (MFL), and how to use it to inspect steel pipelines.

I worked for a company called Pipetronix Ltd. for a year before they were bought out by their arch-rival, Pipeline Integrity International. Which was promptly bought out by General Electric. Before all that buying and selling, though, I was working on a multi-diameter pipeline tool (MDPT) for Statoil's Asgard and Norne-Heidrun North Sea pipelines. My main responsibility was "experimental verification of electromagnetic finite element analysis." Loosely translated, I told the computer jockeys whether or not their models of the MDPT even vaguely resembled reality.

Since then, I've been working for the Texas Research Institute. If you Google me, I'll most likely come up first as formerly of NTIAC, the Nondestructive Testing Information Analysis Center. NTIAC ceased to be in 2005, but I'm still involved with its successor.

These days I don't do much in the way of MFL, most of my time's spent on developing embedded health monitoring systems. I mashed together an immodestly-monikered embedded Linux distro towards this end you might be interested in if you're looking to "roll your own" Linux device.

Well, that's probably enough stalker fodder for now.