About

Engineers are born, not made. I don't know who first said it, but I agree with it completely. My favorite toys as a kid were my Legos and my erector set, and I spent my "idle" time designing and building the electronics that went into my model rockets and airplanes. These days that idle time goes into robots, UAVs, synthesizers — and on and on. Some things don't change.

I grew up in a small town, the son of an avid amateur radio operator who ran an electronics repair business, and that lit a fire in me early. My boyhood idols were Nikola Tesla, Robert Moog, and Albert Einstein (these days I'd add Dean Kamen and Steve Jobs). I was soldering little LED blinky kits by the age of five, had blasted through the Heathkit electronics and digital electronics courses by ten, designed and built an autonomous robot at thirteen — this was back in the 1970s, mind you — and by sixteen I'd earned my amateur radio license, built a complete 2-meter repeater with autopatch capability (fabricating the PCBs myself), and written the payroll system for my father's business on an Apple II.

At sixteen I was also asked to build, start, and run the electronics repair shop for our local music store — you can imagine the looks I got at factory warranty workshops where everyone else was nearly twice my age. Electronic musical equipment was one of my favorite pursuits then, and it still is. After high school I joined the Marine Corps to repair avionics; I already had my private pilot's license and wanted to put electronics and aviation together. Their self-paced avionics school usually takes twelve to eighteen months — I finished it in under three. When I re-enlisted I talked my way into the military's toughest electronics school: ninety of us started, seven graduated, and I carried the highest GPA.

I don't tell you these things to boast, but to explain where I come from and how much this work means to me. I'm always reading, always taking a class or sitting in on a lecture, always turning up to volunteer at events that pull the next generation into this field — there is simply nothing I'd rather do. Having lived in both electronics and software my whole life, I can hold an entire project in my head across both disciplines and explain it in plain language to anyone from either side. Over the last fifteen or twenty years I've branched into mechanical engineering, where I'm still happily an amateur and learning more every day. My electronics lab rivals the best corporate ones (with plenty of tube gear besides), and my shop runs four CNC machines, a small mill, a medium lathe, a 200-watt laser cutter/engraver, a fleet of 3D printers, band saws, drill presses, and much more.

This site is where all of it lives — every hobby, every build, every thing I've taken apart, fixed, refurbished, or dreamed up and made from scratch. Pick a room and have a look around. Fubsy Polymath or Wondering Fool — in the end, it's all the same.