User:Gus
From Alumni
Gus Baird
This stub is meant to provide a place to build a history of Gus and allow people to contribute their thoughts.
Contents |
Walt Ligon speaks
I had Gus for data structures and file processing. I think he inspired me more than any other teacher I had at Tech. My favorite story of his went something like this:
"I was working for a company developing the microcode for a tape drive. Now, the tape drive has two big stepper motors to wind the tape and two vacuum columns on either side of the head to control the tape over the head. The drive would move along reading a block at a time <we were learning about blocking factors in the file processing class> and it would check the parity bits with each block. If it got an error, it would back up and read it again using the vacuum column. If it kept getting errors it would keep trying 10 times, and if that still didn't work, it would wind the tape way back and then way forward again because usually there was some oxide on the head, and maybe you could knock it off so it would read. So it would go like this:
<Gus is standing with his hands up by his head, making little twisting motions, simulating the stepper motors> twit, twit, twit, twit, twit, twit, twit, twit <Gus moves his hands in front and alternates one up, one down, and vice versa, simulating the vacuum column> twiddle, twiddle, twiddle, twiddle, twiddle, twiddle, twiddle, twiddle, twiddle, twiddle <Gus moves his hands back beside his head, the winding steppers> whiiizzzz, whiiizzz, whiiizzz, whiiizzz! <then back to normal> twit, twit, twit, twit, twit, twit, twit, twit ... "
Obviously this doesn't do justice to the man. Maybe I should make a video of myself doing it or something.
Walt Ligon
Glenn Stone remembers
My first impression of gus was when he walked into what amounted to the Pascal for Non-CS-Majors class (1400?). "Indiana Jones," I thought, seeing the leather jacket and hat, "what the heck is Indiana Jones doing teaching my class?" And then the hat and jacket disappear, and here's this bald-headed guy with the rounded thick glasses, and it's like, what the heck, he's turned into Belloq... And then he opened his mouth, and I knew I had a live one on my hands.
I think I got his attention, though, when he made me go back and take 1411 after I switched majors. First, I caught him committing a cardinal error: He had told us never to change a global variable within the body of a function. Then he gave us a skeleton function to complete... and within it, blew the heck out of the input buffer pointer. gus was ticked. Not that I had caught him, mind, but that he'd committed such a schoolboy error.
Then I went and took the final cold turkey. I'd run out of time, and I figured if I was a junior CS major, I had darn well better be able to ace a Freshman final... so I did. I saw him the following Tuesday outside the Rich Building... he said, "You really screwed up your final." "Oh?" "Yeah. You made a 95." "You know I took that cold turkey." "You b----rd."
gus also re-taught us gun safety. The strange thing was, gus wasn't nearly as much into marksmanship as he was into the science of ballistics, specifically reloading. He considered a firearm a device for unloading cartridges so's he could reload them again. Once he told us about making rounds for his .308 Ackley Improved, a wildcat round. He'd gotten some babbit, or bearing metal. The stuff was *very* hard as bullet-making material went. He cast some bullets, and made up some rounds with a work-up load, and fired them off. Decent pattern. He started working higher with the loads, and the hotter he made the rounds, the better it shot. Finally, he loaded it just as hot as he dared... and the rounds all went into one little ragged hole.
Needless to say, gus was pleased with himself.
Then there was January 28, 1986. I'd forgotten to set my alarm; I woke 20 minutes before gus' 8am lecture, dragged on some sweats, and made it to class on time and with breakfast in hand. I don't remember what the topic was that day, but I remember it being a good class. But by the time I got back to my residence hall, Challenger was no more. gus' lecture was the only thing that went right that day.
Link to Annie Anton's eulogy
Eulogy for gus Baird's (July 24,1993)
The eulogy that Annie Ant
Allen Vance remembers
I had Gus for the file processing - data structures class also, around 1983. The main thing I remember was how much of practitioner he was as compared to a theoretician. His stories illustrated good development practices and always had a lot of grit to them - like riding around in a tank at Ft. Hood TX to test some embedded system he had written.
About that same time, my fraternity was putting in a PC with a modem (a big deal back then !) and Gus sold me his 1200 baud (that's right, 'baud' actually was the term in use back then, rather than bps - those who care about the distinction I refer to wikipedia. I bought his - used, mind you - Hayes Smartmodem 1200B with software, for around $ 500 (which today would be what, triple that in 2007 $ ?).
Gus is missed for many reasons, but for me, it was his ability in the classroom to model what a real software professional would and should do in the actual world of projects, invoices, milestones, customers, changing requirements, etc. Nobody else in my undergrad ICS experience ever talked about any of that stuff.
Mark Ciccarello remembers
I first met Gus around 1983 as well, but not as a professor. I was attending some introductory CS class in the old Textiles lecture hall in the fall and I noticed this odd-looking older "student" sitting in on the class. He was in a military jacket which had pockets on the sleeves at the shoulder, and the pockets had some sort of .30 caliber rifle cartridges in them. Suddenly he felt the need to scribble a note, so he pulled out one of the cartridges and used the lead tip to write on his notepad. This was long before the days of school shootings or I would have been more worried , I guess. I did think he might be nuts.
The next semester he showed up teaching one of my classes. He was a great teacher, and if it weren't for him I might have concluded that all C.S. types were boring drones and found another major.
