About

I originally created this site as a place to write about:

  • Linux and related programming interests
  • Housebuilding
  • Other problems I’ve solved and want to remember

In the spring of 2020 came the world-wide tyranny of the Covid Cult, and for a couple of years I engaged in a hopeless attempt to counteract the Cult with some rather lame sarcasm.

The name “bloovis” comes from a coworker at Digital Research in the 1980s, who used names like blivot, blotz, and bloovis for variables in test programs.

I have worked as a programmer since 1976 for these companies:

  • National Semiconductor microprocessor group (numerous projects) (1976-1979)
  • two defunct startups (operating systems) (1979-1984)
  • Digital Research (operating systems) (1984-1990)
  • Borland (C runtime libraries) (1990-1992)
  • MetaWare (C runtime libraries) (1992-1995)
  • two more defunct startups (1995-2001)
  • Cygnus (GDB) (later acquired by Red Hat) (1996-2000)
  • Borland again (debugger) (2000-2003)
  • VMware (virtual machine monitor testing) (2003-2015)

I retired from paid programming work in June 2015.

I studied computer science (back when it was called “information sciences”) at the University of California at Santa Cruz from 1974 to 1976. (My previous two years at UCSC were wasted in a failed attempt to be physics major.) These were the years when fees were so low for state residents that I was able to pay for a year’s tuition by working a crap summer job in a warehouse. Now, fifty years later, I would not be allowed to attend UCSC due to its unscientific and unethical injection mandate, and the fees would require huge loans that would take years to pay off.

This is static site generated by Hugo, using the Hextra theme.

I am not on Facebook, WhatsApp, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat.

I have an account on X/Twitter/whatever they’re calling it this week, but I use it only for reading, and do not post.

I have an account on Substack here, where I write about the Scamdemic, classical piano music, and other non-tech subjects.

My email address is marka [AT] pobox [DOT] com. Feel free to send me hate mail.