My personal data
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Birthday: 10/26/70 (mm/dd/yy).
Height: 1.76 meters (5' 9-5/16")
Weigth: 70 kilograms (156 pounds)
Street: Curapaligüe
Number: 2124
City: Caseros
Province: Buenos Aires
Country: 
Postal Code: (1678)
Telephone: +(541) 759 0013
Take a look at these pictures to see where I live
| Electronics Technician (Instituto Leonardo Murialdo 1989) (First escort of the flag) |
 |
| Universitary Electronics Technician (Universidad Tecnológica Nacional 1994) | |
| Electronics Engineer (Universidad Tecnológica Nacional 1997) (Standard-bearer) |
|
I work in the National Institute of Industrial Technology (in Argentina). The
name in Spanish is Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Industrial
(INTI). This institute consists of
many sections; I work in the CITEI (Electronics and Informatics Tecnologies
Investigation Center = Centro de Investigación de Tecnologias
Electrónicas e Informáticas). CITEI itself has several groups;
I work in UTIC (Instrumentation and Control Technical Unit = Unidad
Técnica Instrumentación y Control).
As you can see, its title is a mouthful INTI-CITEI-UTIC.
I work with both software and hardware. The software is oriented to
PCs and to the firmware of the hardware that I design. The hardware
is in general involves PC boards, instrumentation, control and
microcontrollers (mainly PICs:
RISC microcontrollers).
In my spare time, I am also writing a commercial Clipper program.
Note: Some dishes are described in English, but perhaps the
the translation could be better. Other names are in Spanish.
The following aren't traditional Argentine dishes, but I like
them very much:
"Chiken breasts a la Maryland" or "Supremas de pollo a la Maryland"
chicken breasts fried with bananas (the bananas are fried, too) and corn in
a white sauce.
"Beef (loin) Stroganoff" or "Lomo a la Strogonoff".
("Lomo" is a part of the animal which is not just the loin.) The "lomo" is
cooked with rice in a delicious sauce.
Some very good traditional dishes are:
Asado (my dictionary says roast),
which is meat barbecued
over live wood coals. The meat picks up the smoky flavor from the wood,
so both the choice of wood and how the fire is started are important.
You can't kindle the wood using gasoline or some other inflammable fuel,
because the meat will pick up the taste and that's horrible. (Some
people will still do that, though.) If you are in a hurry you'll use
charcoal instead of wood, which may save a lot of time but the
results are just not the same.
The meat is arranged on a parrilla (barbecue grill) and then put
over the live coals, but only after the flames have subsided.
We roast mainly beef often using the ribs (the ribs are usually called
asado). We also cook viscera; I know that's prohibited in US, but
not here, man! The most common are the small intestine ("chinchulín")
and kidneys ("riñón"), "chorizos" (similar to pork sausage) and
"morcillas" (a form of chorizo made with blood - yes, a lot of blood,
but cooked, of course) are very common too, but are more difficult
to describe. Additionally we use pork and chicken sometimes.
Locro is another traditional food that I like; it's made with corn,
any of several different meats (beef, pork and chicken are the most
common), "chorizos," "chorizos colorados" (a hotter version),
chickpeas and some other ingredients. These are all put into a kettle
and cooked for several hours.
Other dishes:
I'm fond of "milaneses," which in this case are not people from Milan,
but a dish consisting of beef which has been dipped in a batter of eggs
and bread crumbs -"breaded"- and then fried) and pizzas.
Breakfast here in Argentina is eaten early in the morning and is very
light. I drink a cup of coffee or tea, sometimes mate cocido. (The
leaves of the mate shrub, which grows in South America, are gathered
and brewed as a tea.) I eat some cookies or bread, too.
Lunch, eaten at noon, is an important meal of the day. Around 17 hs
(5 pm) or later if I'm working I drink coffee or tea again with cookies
or sometimes a pastry called facturas.
My dinner (supper) is usually a big meal. I don't drink
alcohol normally, but I like liqueurs, cider and sweet wine. I drink
water or juice when I eat; I like natural fruit juices a lot. Coke?
No, I much prefer juice.
I like program computers and microprocessors.
- What the hell do you do when you're not programming?
Well, I like to ride my bike. I ride it to work, 14 km (8.73
miles) almost every day; that's more than 3000 km each year,
or around 1870 miles. From time to time I make side trips on my bike,
often 80 km (= 50 miles) and one day I went crazy and rode 190 km
(119 miles)! Of course I got very tired ;-). [I use a mountain bike,
not the best for the route].
Here are some photos from my last trip in Mendoza.
I'm an electronics engineer so I like electronics very much. I work
on electronics at my job, but it's also my hobby at home. Just for fun, in
the summer of 1992-93 (summer is in December here) I developed a simple
sound card for PCs that can both play and record. In 1995 I designed a
more elaborate one (with dual DMA) for the University. Now at work I'm
building something similar, but this time it's an "Acquisition board"
with a 16 bit DMA.
I like gardening, too, but I don't have much time to spend at it.
I collect stamps, coins, cigarette packages, money (no longer in
circulation), train tickets and other stuff. I'm not a fanatical
collector, so I simply pick up these things from time to time; I don't
spend a lot of effort looking for them. If you have any of these
things from your country that you can spare, please send them to me!.
Well, I like a lot of different music, so here is a list of artists in no special order:
Take a look to some of the CDs I have.
My great-grandparents are from: Italy 75%, France 12.5% and Euzkadi 12.5%
(Basque, Vasco).
My father's name is Salvador José Tropea; he was born in 1939 and
is a lawyer.
My mother's name is Lucía Beatriz Paulina Portillo, she was born
in 1947 and is physician specializing in endocrinology.
I'm the eldest of four children. My sisters and my brother are:
Some people tell me: "Your name sounds like a country". That's
correct; there is a country called "El Salvador" in Central America.
The meaning of Salvador is the man who saves according to the
Appleton's new Cuyas dictionary:
salvador, ra n. savior, rescuer, redeemer.
The Spanish version of the Bible sometimes speaks of Jesus as "El Salvador,"
just like the country.
My second name is easy for Americans and Europeans; it is just the Spanish
version of `Edward.'
My last name is the name of a beautiful small beach town in the south of
Italy.
My computer is not the latest model that is loaded with memory and
peripherals, because computers cost too much here (in comparison with
incomes) and lose value too fast. Here is what I use to
do my work:
Primary computer:
Here is a photo of my PC and the room where I used to write my programs and to design and build my circuits. Now I have moved the stuff to my bedroom ... so matters are now somewhat worse ... ;-))
Do you have any questions or would you like any more information? If that's the case, just contact me by e-mail, by s-mail (too slow) or fill in my feedback form.
Thanks to George Arndt for your corrections and sugestions for this page.
