Life During Valid

A parody of Life During Wartime, by the Talking Heads
Lou Scheffer, Nathan Hoover, Ron Ellickson, Roger Scott, Rodger Hughes, Pete Hackett, and others

Original
Parody
Explanation



Heard of a van that is loaded with weapons,
packed up and ready to go
Heard of some gravesites, out by the highway,
a place where nobody knows
Heard of a program, loaded with features,
hacked up and ready to go
Heard of some test sites, out on the East Coast,
some places nobody knows
Using an obscure customer for a test site
was often a good idea, since first versions
of software often did not work so well.
The sound of gunfire, off in the distance,
I'm getting used to it now
The sound of core dumps, off in the distance,
I'm getting used to it now
A core dump is the result of a catastrophic
failure within a program.  The program would
simply quit without any opportunity to save
your work or any indication of what was
wrong.  The sound of a core dump was usually a
ringing telephone with an irate customer on
the other end.
Lived in a brownstore, lived in the ghetto,
I've lived all over this town
They want some manuals, they want some app notes,
I ain't got time for that now
App note is an Application Note, telling
how to use a product for a particular task
Documentation often lagged quite a bit behind
the latest code,
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
this ain't no fooling around
This ain't no Daisy, this ain't no Mentor,
this ain't no fooling around
Daisy and Mentor were Valid's two biggest
competitors
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey,
I ain't got time for that now

No time for Apples, or PC-ATs,
I ain't got time for that now
Management had these projects to port to
what engineering thought were rather useless
platforms.
Transmit the message, to the receiver,
hope for an answer some day
Transmit a packet, into the ether,
hope for an answer some day
This is actually the way the Ethernet
works.  You send a packet and
hope for a response.
I got three passports, a couple of visas,
you don't even know my real name
I got three RealChipsTM, a couple of RealFastsTM,
Don't even know my RealNameTM
Valid had a lot of products that started
with the word "Real".  RealChip allowed a software
 simulator to work using a physical chip, without
a software model, by querying the chip when the
simulator needed the next state.  RealFast was
a hardware simulation accelerator.
High on a hillside, the trucks are loading,
everything's ready to roll

Down in production, the tapes are rolling,
everything's ready to go
"The tapes are rolling even as we speak"
was an often repeated line, from one of the
production team.
I sleep in the daytime, I work in the nightime,
I might not ever get home
I sleep in the daytime, I work in the nightime,
I might not ever get home

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
this ain't no fooling around

This ain't no Daisy, this ain't no Mentor,
this ain't no fooling around

This ain't no Mudd club, or C. B. G. B.,
I ain't got time for that now
This ain't no SouthCon, or A.D.E.E.
I ain't got time for that now
More or less useless conferences, at least from the
engineering point of view.  We wrote papers and
attended, but probably no sales resulted from it.
Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit?
Heard about Pittsburgh, PA?
Heard about Seiden? Heard about Crumett?
Heard about Orange at D.A.?
Seiden was fired after tussles with (rather
unreasonable and inflexible) engineering
management.  Crumett was very quietly let go
without anyone being told.  One day you
wonder where he is, and realize he is not
there any more....

Orange was an attempted marketing ploy
at the design automation conference (DA).  The idea
was that a customer could design a circuit, we
could get it built overnight (wire wrap) and show
it to him, working, the next day.  It took quite a
bit of work to set up and we never got a single
customer interested.
You oughta know not to stand by the window
somebody might see you up there
You oughta know not to scroll in a window
It's gonna take you all day
Systems with windows became popular after
Valid built its hardware.  It was possible to make
windows work on the graphic terminal, but just
barely.  Despite the heroic efforts of John Reiser,
(one of the world's best programers) they were
slow, agonizingly slow, especially when scrolling.
I got some groceries, some peanut butter,
to last a couple of days
I got a truckload of Dr. Pepper,
to last a couple of days 
The IC group, in particular, (where many of the
parody authors came from) drank a LOT of Dr.
Pepper.
But I ain't got no speakers, ain't got no
headphones, ain't got no records to play
Ain't got no speakers, only blue
headphones; can't hear no music that way
There were these heavy blue noise-absorbing
earmuffs that people sometimes wore when
either the computers were too loud or they did
not want to be distracted.
Why stay in college? Why go to night school?
Gonna be different this time
Why stay in college? Why go to night school?
Why get a CS degree?
It's not like we were using any fancy computer
science. 
Can't write a letter, can't send a postcard,
I can't write nothing at all
Can't read no FORTRAN, can't write no Pascal,
I can't do either in 'C'.
Fortran was easy to write but hard to read; Pascal
was harder to write but easy to read. C could be both,
sometimes it was hard to write (at least correctly),
and often it was hard to read.  There's a reason
you never heard of an obfuscated Pascal contest.
    In all fairness, not everyone in Valid shared this
view.  Some thought C was far superior to Pascal.
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
this ain't no fooling around
This ain't no Daisy, this ain't no Mentor,
this ain't no fooling around

I'd like to hold you, I'd love you kiss you
I ain't got no time for that now
I'd like to change clothes, I'd love to shower,
I ain't got time for that now

Trouble in transit, got through the roadblock,
we blended with the crowd
We got computer, we're tapping phone lines,
I know that ain't allowed
Trouble in login, guessed the root password,,
Somebody said it aloud,
Now we got /dev/mem, we're patching UNIX,
We know that that ain't allowed
If you ever did get root access, even temporarily,
one thing you could do that was not really obvious
and could help you in the future was to reset the
permissions on /dev/mem, which allowed you (at
some future time) to write into any memory
location as an IO device.  This allowed a
non-priviledged program  to change arbitrary
memory and hence patch the kernal as desired.
We dress like students, we dress like housewives,
or in a suit and a tie
We dress like students, we dress like Dead Heads,
Never a suit and a tie

I changed my hairstyle, so many times now,
I don't know what I look like!
I changed my title, so many times now,
I don't know what my job's like!
As the organization grew, and reorg-ed, job
title changes were very frequent
You make me shiver, I feel so tender,
we make a pretty good team
We run on VM, we run on VAXen,
They make a pretty poor team
VAXen, of course, is the plural of VAX.
In addition to UNIX, we sold our software on VAX
(by DEC) and VM (by IBM) machines.  Some of
 these had pretty poor software enviroments.
File transfers and terminal emulation were wildly
different between VM and VAX machines, in
particular.
Don't get exhausted, I'll do some driving,
you ought to get some sleep
Got no debugger, have to use writelns,
Get printouts, ream after ream
Without a source level debugger, or in some cases
any debugger at all, and especially in the case
of core dumps, debugging often consisted of writing
out lots of intermediate results, then searching
through  the resulting output for the source of
problems.  (writeln is the Pascal command to
generate a line of output.)
Get your instructions, follow directions,
then you should change your address
Don't get exhausted, I'll do some coding,
you ought to get you some sleep
Coding is writing code - nothing to do with
encryption  (intentionally, anyway)
Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day,
whatever you think is best
Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day,
There'll be some food we can eat
The company cafeteria was subsidized, and
inexpensive, but some of the dishes were ......
creative
Burned all my notebooks, what good are
notebooks? They won't help me survive
Burned all my comments, what good are comments?
They won't help me compile,
Typical startup programmer...
My chest is aching, burns like a furnace,
the burning keeps me alive
My shortened program, core dumped in malloc(),
Guess I'll debug for a while
Programs that core dumped were particularly
hard to debug in the days before source code
debuggers.  A program that core dumped in
malloc() was even worse, because the usual reason
for this behavior is that some code, somewhere,
stomped on memory it should not have touched,
usually long before the problem becomes apparent.
A shortened program was one where the source
code had been run thorough a program that
shortened all the identifier and routine names to
cope with the limitations of some compilers.  This
made debugging harder as well, since you could
not even tell which routines were called or
variables used without a cross-reference table,
and at least initial versions of the 'shorten' program
removed comments as well.
So if your shortened program core dumped in
malloc(), you would indeed be debugging for
a while.
Try to stay healthy, physical fitness,
don't want to catch no disease
Try to be careful, don't take no chances,
you better watch what you say
Try to stay healthy, physical fitness,
don't want to catch no disease
Try to be careful, don't take no chances,
better not ride in the street
Pete Zakel got struck and nearly killed when
riding his bicycle on a street near Valid.