About Me

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I remember as a child being inexplicably drawn towards exploring the inner workings of things such as electric motors, clocks and the like.  And I did this by taking things apart as it was well before the internet and YouTube.  This behaviour was driven mostly by curiosity with maybe a little childhood autism at play, but I definitely remember the feeling of gratification when something made sense.  I think my interest in electronics began around the age of eight or nine when my father bought me a pair of two way radios.  How did such a device work?  In this case taking it apart didn't result in any aha moment so the local Columbia Branch library became my source of information.  I was fortunate that my father was an avid reader, I think mostly fiction, but nonetheless he regularly took me to the library and Shorey's Bookstore which brings back wonderful memories.  

I was raised in a working class family who encouraged my sister and I to find work from a young age.  After picking strawberries for a few summers I ended up finding a part-time job working at Holly Park Greenhouse which is still there!  Then I got a cushy job serving ice cream at Baskin Robbins on MLK Jr Way South (also still there!).  After high school I worked as a teller for Seafirst Bank for a short time before I was off to the University of Washington.  And while at the UW I worked as a copy machine operator for Rainier Bank in the basement of the Rainier Tower building.  I ended up majoring in electrical engineering and since companies recruited on campus I had a job lined up with Boeing Aerospace in Kent Space Center.  But I had no idea what I was getting into and was assigned, for what seemed at the time, the daunting task of designing an RF circuit board to down-convert and digitize a radio signal from a Navy JTIDS terminal. It was also my first exposure to surface mount components and microstrip/stripline designs but fortunately I had a good mentor (GWF). The engineering process of going from paper design to circuit boards, chassis and racks, then delivering and integrating at a Naval facility in San Diego was intense and at the same time appealing to me. Like putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle with pieces that you are inventing along the way. 

After 4 years at Boeing I moved to Los Angeles to work for NEC America doing cell site maintenance and upgrades. And shortly afterwards I ended up at TRW in Redondo Beach, California, courtesy of someone I used to work with at Baskin Robbins. It's strange how something seemingly innocuous like scooping ice cream can change one's future. TRW was a great place to work and I also found Los Angeles to be a fun place to live while in my 20s and 30s. I worked with a group of modem engineers and we specialized in the development of high data rate satellite ground station receivers. These experiences at Boeing and TRW (now part of Northrop Grumman) were my formative years as an engineer and played an important part of who I am today.  But in a strange way, those earlier experiences particularly at the greenhouse and copy center have shaped me as a person as well.