The longer version
The story says one disposition, many materials. These are the materials: the shop floors, side businesses, and stuck things the habit was trained on.
Twenty years of IT consulting
From 1994 to 2013 — through UCSD full-time and several jobs thereafter — I ran an IT consulting practice: around twenty clients at a time, many kept for fifteen years or more. Long-term system design, proactive maintenance, on-call troubleshooting. The discipline: understand the client’s actual work, then make the systems serve it.
The company named for a rescue
Five years at Sherpa Technology Guides, alongside my own practice. The founder had nearly died in a storm high on Everest; Sherpas carried him out and nursed him back in their village. He named his company for them and sent a share of its profits back: one footbridge across a gorge turned a three-hour walk into thirty minutes. He took us all climbing, constantly. That’s how I started. I still climb.
A traction battery, rebuilt instead of replaced
The hybrid said its battery was dying; the dealer said replacement. I said diagnosis: OBDII scanner and an app, disassembled the pack, built a load-test tool, found the failing cell, replaced and reconditioned it, reassembled — and drove on.
80,000 miles of road trips
Nine long trips across and around the country, plus many shorter ones: 80,000 miles of watching how people, machines, and infrastructure actually meet. Travel informs design.
E-bikes, before they were everywhere
Two years as service tech for an e-bike maintenance business: installation, troubleshooting, and repair of custom kits from varied vendors, preventative battery re-engineering and rebuilding, and the customer service that keeps a small operation alive.
The truck body factory
Early career at Morgan Corporation, the truck body manufacturer: assembler and production welder. Learned every position on the line in the first year. Ran the night shift past its quota to make up for the day shift’s lollygagging. Named to the Quality Control Board to improve the processes I’d been working inside.
High voltage
Engineering internship at Southern California Edison: rotations through the warehouse and yard, heavy equipment, and field operations — new high-voltage and service runs, repairs, emergency crew — plus circuit-map update production.
Tenth grade, county fair
Entered the engine-rebuild competition. Won first place.
Also in the pile: systems administration at Merrill Lynch, running soil-remediation equipment, and nine years at a small-town newspaper starting around age ten. Different materials, same job: find what’s stuck, make it go.
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