About Me

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I grew up in the rainy city of Seattle where the winters were usually spent indoors. As a child I remember being drawn towards exploring the inner workings of things around the house by taking them apart. This was mostly driven by boredom and curiosity but I definitely remember the feeling of gratification when something made sense. Same feeling I get today. My interest in electronics began at the age of  nine when my father bought a pair of two way radios. "Can you hear me? How about now?" How did such a magical device work?  To figure this out I went to our local Columbia Branch library. I was fortunate that my father was an avid reader, I think fiction mostly, but nonetheless he regularly took me to the library and Shorey's Bookstore which brings back fond memories of simpler times in my life. On the flipside I also read a lot of comic books, watched too much TV, ate too much candy, and did dangerous things that are cringeworthy. Looking back I'm happy to still be alive. 

Image: Maunakea casting its own shadow during sunset taken with Lumix GF3 June 1, 2012

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 two summers I ended up finding a part-time job working at Holly Park Greenhouse.  Then I got a cushy job serving ice cream at Baskin Robbins on MLK Jr Way South.  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 majored in electrical engineering and because companies recruited on campus I had a job lined up with Boeing Aerospace in Kent Space Center before graduation. I had no idea what I was getting into and was assigned the task of designing an RF circuit board to down-convert and digitize a radio signal from a Navy JTIDS terminal. This 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 in-house circuit board fab and assembly, integration into chassis and racks, then delivering to a Naval facility in San Diego (NOSC) was intense and at the same time appealing to me. 

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 such as 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.