Born
in 1954, that makes me 45 years old (as long as I update this page before
the year is up). I joined the Navy in spite of a college scholarship because
of the Vietnam war. A braver man might have fled to Canada. After two years
of electronics schooling, the war was over and I got my first assignment
aboard the CVA-43, the Attack Aircraft Carrier Coral Sea. My job was "Data
Transmission". I made sure the ship-to-ship and ship-to-air computer links
stayed up. There were only a dozen people in the world who did what we
did. We had nowhere else to go but the carrier, so when a problem came
up, we worked on it until it was fixed. All day, all night, all shifts.
We slept together, ate together, and held each other up when we were drunk.
It was an ethic that stayed with me. Work hard. Play hard. Never quit.
Eventually they offered me a shore assignment and I traded it to a married
guy so he could stay with his wife. I got the CV-61, the aircraft carrier
Ranger. I loved being at sea, and when we pulled in, I loved being ashore.
Although I worked with some of the greatest guys and served under the best
officers, I came to realize the Navy wasn't for me. I was at the mercy
of an incompetent and unfocused bureaucracy, and the more I advanced, the
more I would have to become one of them. I resolved never to work for the
government, a labor union, or a large company. They offered me a position
as an electronics instructor. I turned them down.
I spent a few months working in Las Vegas repairing pagers, then bummed
around California for a while checking out the colleges and universities.
Eventually I settled on Sacramento. One day while shopping at the mall,
I decided I needed a job. My substantial savings were running low. I stopped
at a pay phone and three phone calls later had an interview and a job.
Virtually nobody teaches communications. I knew jobs would be easy to come
by. Frontier Radio was just what I was looking for. A small, aggressive,
privately-held communications company. We grew fast. Eventually we got
big enough to be bought out by Nextel Communications. At the time of the
buyout, we were the biggest collection of people they had ever tried to
assimilate. Real bummer that they bought us just before the recession in
the early nineties. Three quarters of us would be gone within two years.
I decided to try a new approach. I applied for a transfer into the "new"
company.
Now I take care of the cell sites that make up the bulk of the Nextel system
(The Nextel system is a blend of cellular phone, two-way radio, display
pager, and packet data transmission all in one unit). I also get to play
with the workgroup webserver and write little problem-solving utility programs.
I'm never bored. I've had a chance to see a lot of California. I've covered
everything between the East Bay, Sacramento, and the Grapevine. We've grown
so much I can now cover the same number of sites just in Citrus Heights.
Nextel is the biggest "small" company I've ever seen. The company handbook
is filled with phrases like "Nextel does not have overall guidelines on..."
and "Your manager will consider...". There is an actual corporate philosophy
to let the regional and department managers manage. The result feels
more like a small business. We're growing so fast nobody has the time to
micro-manage.
I spread my time between my daughter Kira, my wife Mary, and my work.
And this computer. Life is uncomplicated.
