Pat Parseghian

A little bit about me . . .

In September 2007, I rode 100 miles, from Carmel Valley to San Simeon, to raise funds for Best Buddies International.

In the summer of 1996, I left my native New Jersey behind, moving to sunny California, where I had a downhill adventure on a pair of inline skates and finally experienced my first earthquake.

Since 1990, I have been an active volunteer with Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, where I record technical material from books in computer science, psychology, and related fields.

Past Projects and Affiliations

At Transmeta, I created the Transmeta Lab for Compatibility (TLC), the Quality Assurance organization that ensured that the Crusoe™ microprocessor would run any device or piece of x86 software you might feed it.

Over the years, I have contributed to various editions of Mark Sobell's A Practical Guide to . . . books; most recently, A Practical Guide to LINUX.

I managed XUNET 2, a cross-country ATM network that linked AT&T Bell Laboratories with several universities and government labs. XUNET 2 provided the infrastructure for the BLANCA testbed. I was also involved with the Plexus Project, providing 100 Mbps fiber optic network connections for two New Jersey schools:

• Columbia School, Berkeley Heights
• New Providence School District

Before that, I managed the Computing Facilities for the Dept. of Computer Science at Princeton University.

Improbably enough, my Erdős number is 4. You might enjoy Paul Hoffman's book The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth.

My bibliography in the Computer Science Bibliography Collection is pretty complete.

Professional Activities

On April 27, 1994 I did a "tour" of the Internet on live television as part of a six-hour science marathon, Live from AT&T Bell Labs! (What was I thinking?!) The workstation's window manager had a nasty habit of crashing when the color map filled up, as it did ten minutes before we went on the air. Luckily, we got through our segment unscathed. At the same time, I broadcast the entire show over the Internet to a world-wide MBone (Multi-cast Backbone) audience, much to the fascination of the professional TV crew.

How many of my early favorite Web sites, collected mostly during the summer of 1994, are still around?

On Saturday, April 8, 1995 I gave two presentations in the Murray Hill, NJ auditorium, as part of the AT&T Bell Labs World of Science Seminar series. The topic of my lecture was Cruising the Information Superhighway. The lectures in this series were geared toward high school students and teachers, and were open to the general public; see the World of Science Home Page for the current schedule.

My tour on the lecture circuit included Kauai in January, Manila in April, Memphis in May, Caracas in November, and many places in between. Here are some blurbs about the talks I delivered in Washington DC and Wilmington, Delaware.

In 2000, I completed a two-year term on the Board of Directors of the USENIX Association.

In 1994, I completed a two-year term on SAGE's first elected board of directors. SAGE is the System Administrators' Guild, the first special technical group sponsored by the USENIX Association.

Conferences

• 2002 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, Monterey CA
  Invited speaker
• 1997 USENIX Symposium on Internet Technologies and Systems, Monterey CA
  Program committee member
• 1996 USENIX Large Installation Systems Administration Conference, Chicago IL
  Program committee member
• 1994 USENIX Symposium on High-Speed Networking, Oakland CA
  Program Chair
• 1994 USENIX Large Installation Systems Administration Conference, San Diego CA
  Invited talks coordinator and program committee member
• Summer 1993 USENIX Conference, Cincinnati OH
  Program committee member
• Fall 1992 USENIX Large Installation Systems Administration Conference, Monterey CA
  Program committee member
• Winter 1992 USENIX Conference, San Francisco CA
  Program committee member
• Summer 1990 USENIX Conference, Anaheim CA
  Program committee member

Scrapbook

	MPEG clip (5.6 MBytes) from The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, broadcast July 7, 1995.
	Appearing in award-winning interactive CD-ROM Understanding the Information Superhighway: Envisioneering with Technologies
	Representing Telecommunications on the CD-ROM Changing Channels . . . Careers of the 21st Century

Other Activities

I love to read, and it's a privilege to exercise my knowledge and my voice through RFB&D to share the printed word with those who can't. Most recently, I read 22 pages from Preventing Violence: Research And Evidence-based Intervention Strategies, edited by Lutzger, finishing Chapter 11 (Bringing the Agendas Together: Partner and Child Abuse) and starting Chapter 12 (The Role and Function of Culture in Violence Prevention Practice and Science).

Every RFB&D studio can use more volunteers, especially those with expertise in content areas such as math, science (all areas), computer science, linguistics, economics, and psychology. RFB&D primarily records textbooks; the users are typically college students or graduate students. I volunteer at the Northern California Unit of Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic in Palo Alto; before I moved west, I worked with the Princeton Unit.

Please consider helping: Volunteering requires only 1.5 to 2 hours per week. For more information, call a studio near you!