Saddle Sore in St Louis
Missouri needs to build a few more rest stops.
This morning I was greeted with a visit from my Aunt, Uncle, Grandfather, and cousin.
My Dad got out some pickled onions, salted black radishes, some sausage from the local butcher, and some apples off a nearby tree for everyone to snack on. We stood there talking, my trip today being a major subject.
I made sure to remind everyone I'll be coming back, eventually, once I get my work to the point where I want it. I'll try to visit for the holidays. I'll give Grandpa a call whenever I can, he needs the attention with Grandma gone now.
Somehow I kept guiding the conversations to how much the Great Lakes need container shipping. About how this part of the country has so much going for it, good reasons why the Great Lakes states alone were 25% of the planet's economy 80 years ago. We're sitting on something amazing, it's a shame it doesn't live up to its potential anymore. It's a shame I can't build my dreams here right now.
Austin isn't a permanent thing for me, it's just where I need to go to get where I really want to be. The search for high computing efficiency is an attractor for exotic ideas, but such exotic ideas are blocked by poor tooling. I know I can build such chips, no I don't trust VC funding to get me there, I will bootstrap a full TSMC tapeout all from zero if I have to. The tools for weird hardware are bad, but the tooling we have for everything else isn't much better, not nearly as great as they're often considered, especially not compared to what could be, and a little effort and the right ideas can go a very long way.
If I want to make the kinds of tools that I know must exist for this hardware, and to build the tools that I know everyone should have in the 21st century, and if I want to get them to be actually useful for ordinary engineers as quickly as possible, I need to be where all the engineers are. Hence, Austin.
I stood there with my Dad, watching my cousin and my grandfather fishing in one of my parents' ponds, my Dad knowing every fish in there on a first name basis. The dogs - an older dog and the new puppy - ran around the edge of the pond sniffing out mouse holes. We all laughed, expecting the dogs to fall in from playing too close to the water.
After a little while I said my goodbyes and headed out in my 22-year old car with a dash that lights up like a Christmas tree.
I had to make a stop at the bank before it closed. I opened this account when I had been living in Madison, knowing full well that the bank had no locations out of state. I expected to build my personal empire in my backyard just about, rather than some major tech hub. I’m not sure if this decision was the result of too little ambition or too much.
The bank had a location in Milwaukee, which was along my way. I drove past PKWARE just for fun.
Wisconsin to Texas is a long drive, 20 hours. I need something to pass the time.
Among other things, I've mostly been listening to some music, mostly old stuff. I turned on an obligatory Tom Waits song on my way into Chicago.
The seeds are planted here
But they won't grow
We won't have to say goodbye
If we all go
Maybe things will be better in Chicago
To leave all we've ever known
For a place we've never seen
Maybe things will be better in Chicago-Chicago, Tom Waits
Chicago is a bigger version of Milwaukee, which is a bigger version of Sheboygan, which is a bigger version of Manitowoc. Rust Belt port cities built where a bunch of rivers meet, with old native names. Milwaukee means “good, beautiful land”. Chicago means “wild onion”.
Illinois is a long, flat state. Chicago is neat, though watch out for the tolls when passing through. Google maps will desperately beg you to please take a toll road whenever one is coming up, like the lives of the families of every Google employee depends on it.
I made myself the goal of getting to St Louis before bed. This gave me plenty of time to think, and to listen to some old songs.
I like a little Stan Rogers from time to time, his singing voice matches mine pretty well.
So I bid farewell to the Eastern town
I never more will see
But work I must so I eat this dust
And breathe refinery
Oh I miss the green and the woods and streams
And I don’t like cowboy clothes
But I like being free, and that makes me
An idiot, I suppose-The Idiot, Stan Rogers
I'll be back in Wisconsin though. I promised my family that. And I'd rather not work in a factory again if I can avoid it.
I considered a while back trying to find a job at Tesla down in Austin, though a company that looks for shipped work from their engineers probably wouldn't appreciate the years I've spent on scrapped projects that nevertheless taught what I know now, nor the large volumes of code I've written for my relatively stealth-mode startup.
I've considered Neuralink too, but I'm not sure that would be much different.
Once I get to Austin, I might couchsurf a little, or just sleep in my car. If I would have waited for an opportunity to safely prepare - having more money, a job lined up, a proper place to stay that doesn't worry my mother to death, it would take far too long.
And there's so much uncertainty. It's hard to plan when you're diving into somewhere new. I'm not fully sure how things will go, but I'll make it work.
Outside St Louis is the Cahokia Mounds - the remnants of an ancient city. Despite being separated by a thousand years in time, the geography is an attractor for big cities. Something big was always going to exist there, and no matter how far things collapse, the meeting of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers will manifest a city again.
Though St Louis now is not the important city it once was, and its long rivalry with Chicago has been vastly overshadowed by bigger rivalries.
I made it to St Louis around 2am. I'm a bit sore after all this driving, I need to get out of this seat and walk around.
I expected to write this article 2 hours ago, but alas, I spent those two hours in a state of misery in the state of Missouri, as it took nearly two hours of driving past St Louis to find a single rest stop.
Tomorrow I drive to Memphis, and then to Austin.
Thank you for reading my drowsy, late-night ramblings. I was going to write an article on the ways in which I find CPU branch predictors to be more impressive than deep learning, but I thought I'd try something a little different instead.