Bill Latura


Curriculum
Vitae:
Age: Cenozoic
Height: Tall
Weight: Enough
Hair: Some
Eyes: Two
Marital Status: Tried it


Mailing
Address:
259 Cunningham Lane
Bloomingdale, IL 60108-1915

No, it isn't a picture of my house.

Email: blatura@xnet.com


Education:
Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, 1977 (oops, just dated myself)

For all you friends and alumni of CMU, yes, I know this isn't a picture of the campus. But it gets the idea across, more or less. Hey, lighten up, its the best I could do.


Occupation:
Senior Engineer
Nalco Chemical Company
Applied Services
1001 Frontenac Road
Naperville, IL 60563

Music I
listen to:
A wee bit of most anything : Tori Amos, Liz Phair, Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morisette, Counting Crows, the Pretenders, Sarah McLachlan, Steeleye Span, Deep Forest, Garbage, and Blues Traveler.

As well as the Eurythmics, REM, Beethoven, Peter Gabriel, Dave Brubeck, Kronos Quartet, Vivaldi, Police, Enya, 10,000 Maniacs, Roxy Music, Mozart, Patrick O'Hearn, Ray Lynch, Led Zeppelin, Talking Heads, Cranberries, Wagner, Albioni, King Crimson, Dire Straits, Clannad, Traffic, Weather Report, Rippingtons, Handel, Correlli, Jefferson Airplane, the Who, Bach, Acoustic Alchemy, Moody Blues, Genesis, Tangerine Dream, Tchaikovsky, Tom Petty, Pink Floyd, Ravel, and Lou Reed among others. Like I said, almost anything. What can I say, I'm a child of the 60's and 70's, but I don't believe in stagnating.

I can't stand bands like Aerosmith, (ugh, those lips) and 99.9% of what passes for "heavy metal" on the radio these days. I never liked Elvis, the Village People, the Monkees or Michael Bolton. The death of disco was well deserved. Rap (and it's bastard child, hip-hop) may be many things, but you'll never convince me it's music.


Books I
read:
I read very little "popular" fiction, however I do confess to having a soft spot for Tom Clancy novels (though he's starting to preach), and science fiction.

Most of my reading lately has been current events, skeptical titles, higher criticism, and science. I also enjoy the occasional biography of historical figures. I've never understood peoples' fascination with tv, movie and sports personalities. Way too ephemeral, and what do they really have to say that anybody should care about?

I've read a lot of history because anyone who expects to know what's going on in the world today had better have a good understanding of history and geography. You can't know where you are if you don't know how you got there.

Most recent titles include: The Beak of The Finch by Jonanthan Weiner, Holy Fire by Bruce Sterling, The Fifties by David Halberstam, The Sparrow by Mary Russell, Satan's Silence by Nathan and Snedeker, Executive Orders by Tom Clancy, 3001 by Arthur C. Clarke, Not Out of Africa by Mary Lefkowitz, The Medusa and The Snail by Lewis Thomas, Bible Prophecy by Tim Callahan, The Pinball Effect by James Burke, The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan, Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte, Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, Round in Circles by Jim Schnabel, James Dobson's War on America by Gil Alexander-Moegerle, Gospel Fictions by Randall Helms, Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett, River Out of Eden and Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins, and Idoru by William Gibson.

I have a lot of computer-related titles, but I can't honestly say I sit down and read them. They're reference books, like a dictionary (which I also have).


Computer
Setup:
A while back I took a whole pile of pieces and parts, and built myself a new computer from scratch (OK, not quite scratch, but you know what I mean).

Pentium PCI motherboard with 512K pipeline cache, in a tower case, with 133MHz Intel Pentium processor, 64MB EDO RAM, three (3) 1.0GB Seagate SCSI hard drives, Adaptec 2940 PCI bus-mastering SCSI adapter, ATI 2MB Graphics Pro Turbo PCI, Sony Multiscan 17se monitor, Panasonic 8x SCSI CD-ROM, US Robotics Courier V.34 Dual Standard fax modem, Logitech MouseMan 3 button mouse, SoundBlaster 16 SCSI-II soundcard with ASP, Acoustic Research Powered Partner 42 speakers, HP Colorado T1000 tape drive, Hewlett-Packard LaserJet III printer, and a KTI 8-bit Ethernet Adapter.

I also built a second PC to be used as a network workstation so that I can play around with things like TCP/IP, NetBUI and NetBIOS networking, IP masquerading, and Novell Netware. It's just a souped-up 486 with el-cheapo components, but it does what I ask of it. It runs Windows95 (ugh) and Linux, and has a two-user version of Netware 4.11 on it. The two machines are connected via 10base2 coax.

I installed WindowsNT 4.0 Workstation and apps on two of my 1GB drives, 'cause you can't fight City Hall (and the folks at work don't appreciate it when I give them a wp doc or spreadsheet done with ApplixWare). I have another 1GB drive formatted under ext2fs to run Red Hat's Linux release 4.0.

With Linux I run kernel version 2.0.29, including the C compiler, Tcl/Tk, Perl, and a full suite of X Window apps. I currently use the fvwm95 window manager.

I connect to the Internet through XNet, a local ISP, using a PPP account. When I use NT the clients I use are the built-in TCP/IP stack, Netscape 4.01, NetTerm as a telnet client, Eudora Pro for email, Anawave Gravity for news and FTP Explorer for ftp. When running Linux (which is about half the time), I use the built-in TCP/IP networking along with dip, Xterms, and Netscape compiled for Linux. I usually read mail and news in an xterm with Pine and trn. Linux file transfers are done with NcFTP run on my machine.


Current
projects:
I've just about gained UNIX certification, and I'm in the process of working towards becoming a CNA (with later upgrade to CNE) and MCPS (with later upgrade to MCSE). I'm taking a number of evening classes in LAN administration and configuration. It's a networked world out there.

On the side, I do a lot of World Wide Web development work, primarily page building, but I spend some time with server configuration also. I spend a lot of time updating and revising my own pages, which now number about 30, as well as doing a little outside consulting. Given my objectives in the previous paragraph, I also play around a lot with TCP/IP, NT and Novell networking.

Real work-wise, most of my time is spent designing custom chemical feed systems, pumps, valves and piping, and doing that bane of modern man, administrative paperwork. Automated control systems also up a lot of my time. Distributed controls and data acquisition, man-machine interfaces, and data communications.

On a more domestic level, now that the house has a new roof, and I've spent a small fortune getting the landscaping back in shape, I can tackle that deck in the back that's becoming a serious safety hazard, and work on the driveway, which looks like an LA freeway after the quake. I just love the freeze-thaw cycle of a typical Chicago winter.


Politics I
subscribe to:
At one time I could probably be best described as a moderate Republican, though that doesn't seem to mean the same thing as it did a few years ago. At the moment I don't belong to either political party, as I burned my Republican party card after listening to Pat Buchanan at the Houston convention in '92. Thus, as it was in the beginning, I have returned to my independent ways.

I use to say a lot more about my political beliefs, but I decided that that information, like my religious persuasion, is really nobody's business but my own. If you know me, you know where I stand, and if you don't, I don't see where any of this should matter.


Personal
Philosophy:
Mother Nature spent umpteen billions of years evolving that lump of grey matter between your ears. Use it or lose it.
Don't take yourself so seriously. Nobody else does. Laugh a little. Even at yourself. It aids the digestion and keeps you regular.
Try it, whatever "it" might be. You might like it. (Then again, you might not, but you'll never know unless...)
Always wear clean underwear, in case you get abducted by space aliens.


Organizations
I belong to:
American Society of Mechanical Engineers
Industrial Computing Society
Instrument Society of America
Uniforum Chicago (Board of Directors, no less!)
Chicago Computer Society
National Center for Science Education
Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims Of the Paranormal (Associate)
Skeptics Society
American United for Separation of Church and State
Nature Conservancy
Rails-to-Trails Conservancy
World Wildlife Fund

No, I don't speak for any of them. If you've read this far, you can understand why.

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Last updated July 6, 1997

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