I was born in Santa Cruz California. I attended grade school at Galt School and Grant School. I attended junior high at Branciforte Junior High. I attended high school at Santa Cruz High. Santa Cruz was a small town back then, with a population of 25,000.
From high school, I went directly to Oregon State College - I was going to be a Pharmacist. It didn't take long to discover that counting pills was not for me. I changed my major to electrical engineering.
Since junior high, I was in love with photography. My junior high science and math teacher (Guy Cochran) started the photography club and taught us all how to take, develop, and print photographs. After OSC and electrical engineering, I enrolled in Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, CA.
I worked for a few years as a commercial photographer, then had the opportunity of switching into electrical engineering.
I was in the US Coast Guard reserves and one of the other officers in my unit was the employment representative at Lockheed Missiles and Space Co. I talked to him one evening after a reserve meeting and immediately got a job in Lockheed's main computer center in Sunnyvale. Within a year, I was moved to Lockheed's Computer Research Lab in Palo Alto. You can read my engineering resume by clicking here:
For exercise, I swim between 12,000 and 16,000 yards each week, usually Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Sometimes also on Sunday. I have a swim partner that used to be a college swimmer (read: very fast) and since there is nearly thirty years between us, she makes me work very hard to stay up with the workout. As you can probably tell, swimming is high on my priority list. For me, swimming = health. And without your health, all is lost.