In Another life

As if in another life, almost another world, and certainly when I was a much different man, I wore many different hats. They have been ball caps, hard hats and hats that weren’t hats, like suit jackets and ties. Each has been a composition of time, place, circumstance and opportunity and each has formed who I am today. And, today, one of those lives has decided to make a reappearance. It was a “white-collar” time, a time when I moved, not exactly comfortably, in and among the Silicon Valley brain trust, the engineers, primarily, who would drive innovation and determine future production.

 

I wasn’t part of it “at the beginning,” not of Silicon Valley proper, but I do remember when the Santa Clara Valley became Silicon Valley. It was in the 70s, I was still a kid. My dad, a Ph.D. chemist by trade, worked for SRI International (formerly, the Stanford Research Institute). He had contacts and friends who were very much involved, in some way, in the semiconductor industry. While chemists are certainly employed by these companies, they are mostly after the engineers. One of those contacts at some time in the 70s asked my dad if he could solve a problem – a chemistry problem – that was within his realm of expertise.

 

It was not for a semiconductor, exactly, but rather for a means of handling their semiconductors. They were called “beam-lead diodes” and were made from the far more expensive semiconducting compound of GaAs (gallium-arsenide) because silicon would not operate effectively at the microwave frequencies required for the military applications these diodes were needed for. (I know I am getting into the technical weeds here, but bear with me). The name of the diode, “beam-lead,” is an appropriate description of their tiny leads; they look like beams protruding off of the diode. These tiny diodes are fragile enough, their even tinier “beams,” so easily knocked off, are even more-so. One broken lead renders the entire device worthless. At about $1,000 per diode, so small they are hard to see without magnification, every damaged beam was a lot of money.

 

The way they came up with handling them was to use a rubber-like “gel,” a silicone (not silicon, that is something entirely different) applied to a two-inch square glass slide that the diodes would “stick” to, but still release from with a dab of alcohol. It seemed to work, when it worked. The problem was that they could not get the gel to cure consistently. It is a two-part resin and when applied that thin, it is difficult to get the curing agent to react properly. Someone from either Hewlett-Packard or Raytheon (I don’t remember who was first) asked for help and my dad solved the problem. Then, since they had no desire to be in the chip handling business in the first place, they asked if he would just make these damned things for them. After crunching the numbers, my dad and mom saw it would be a profitable part-time endeavor. “Beam-Pak” was born – in our garage. And our kitchen. And our family room.

 

This is where I am going to fast-forward – a lot. I don’t remember exactly when the first Beam-Paks went out the door, although I do, very distinctly, remember the first Beam-Paks going out the door. Eventually, though experimentation, the “gel” in the Beam-Pak found its way into other applications and, as the market grew to more than just beam-lead diode manufacturers, the name was changed to “Gel-Pak.” While our market was still primarily high-value GaAs semiconductors – FETs (field-effect transistors) and MMICs (monolithic microwave integrated circuits) – the business outgrew our garage and our home. Over the years, the business moved to larger and larger facilities in Mountain View and Sunnyvale, employed more than 20 full-time employees and employed several family members, myself included - two or three different times.

 

At one point, my dad was faced with not so much a chemistry problem, but an engineering one, a physics one. It had to do with automation. While Gel-Paks did an outstanding job holding these fragile, high-value chips in place during handling and transport, they still had to be manually transferred out of the package to wherever they needed to be. Automation used vacuum wands to handle chips, and a vacuum is not enough to break the surface tension formed between the bottom of the chip and the gel. Between my dad and his partner at the time, they came up with, and patented, a unique way to temporarily break that surface tension when needed, on demand. The new system was called “Vacuum-Release” because a vacuum drawn under the gel would pull it away into recesses that would allow the chip to only be in contact with bumps of gel, not the entire surface. And it was reversible, when the vacuum is released, the gel becomes flat again.

 

Armed with this new technology, Gel-Pak (eventually incorporated as Vichem Corp, still family owned) was able to sell the advantage of complete safety during shipping and handling along with ease of removal for automated assembly. It was the best of both worlds. However, because our product was considerably more expensive than the competition, we were still limited to only very expensive chips and, at the time, that meant not silicon, but GaAs. However, in the late 80s, Intel was getting ready to introduce its new processor, the i486. I ran into an Intel engineer at a trade show (probably Semicon West) and found that, in the early production, these chips had very low wafer yields and were being packed and transported prior to assembly. And that was a problem. This was damaging what was left of their already low yields.

 

Our containers would have solved the problem, but their chips were too big and our packs were too small. We got busy and came up with a larger format VR package that would accommodate their processors and, sometime thereafter, Intel became our largest customer. We might have been selling packages for silicon chips before (and we had a variety of other applications, too), but this time it was big, literally and figuratively. We continued to grow, continued to explore new markets, continued to adapt and develop our technology for new applications and, no matter what the economy was doing, we remained very profitable.

 

Eventually, a combination of personal issues in my life, corporate changes in the company and a bunch of other bullshit – some of it my doing, some not – led me to depart the company for the last time. My title when I left was “marketing manager,” but I did a lot of everything. I, still, have seriously mixed feelings about it all. A couple of years later, my dad sold the company, consulted for it for another year, and retired. It’s still around, still making the same products we developed. I don’t know if it still seeks the opportunities the way we did, I don’t even know if that world still exists. That time in Silicon Valley was heady; it was fast, new things were happening all the time. It was a full-time job just keeping up with what was going on, staying ahead of the curve… finding out what the Intels needed before they knew they needed it.

 

So, what brought all this back? Well, in the news recently, Google unveiled its new quantum chip, “Willow.” I don’t pretend to understand what all it means other than to understand that quantum computers are the next big thing, and this is a step towards that. In stories about it, there is a photo of this new chip, on a gloved hand. Between that chip and that hand is a Gel-Pak VR tray. It is exactly the same thing I used to show to potential customers back in the late 80s and early 90s. It is still doing what it was designed to do – protecting a high-value, fragile chip while still allowing it to be released from its captive state on demand with a simple vacuum. The technology is no longer protected by its patent, but it is the same patented technology developed all those years ago. 

***Correction: Beam-lead diodes were actually fabricated from silicon, not GaAs. They were still fragile and expensive, but not GaAs. Fets and MMICs were GaAs. Some other small details are also subject to minor errors due to my aging memory.

 

every.single.fucking.day

Twenty years ago today I “celebrated” my 42^nd trip around the sun. Why the scare quotes? There are two reasons, really. The first is simple history. My birthdays have never been all that – ever. Where I once had expectations for actual celebration, I no longer do and, ironically enough, I prefer it that way. I have come to see these things as more pomp than circumstance, more superficial than real. The same can be said of most socially created days of recognition, but this day 20 years ago was particularly bad. This day twenty years ago warrants the ”scare” in the scare quotes.

 

I don’t remember it in any specifics, but I do remember that part of my life – and there really weren’t any good days. Beyond being alive and not incarcerated, life pretty much sucked. I was at the end of a five-year downward spiral that began 25-30 years earlier. The end of the end had already come and gone; I was at the beginning of the beginning – again. I went from a near-death, self-inflicted wreck in 2000, to incarceration in 2002, to a six-month in-patient addiction recovery program in March of 2003 to getting my shit together and going back to school in the fall of 2003 to relapsing at the end of 2003 to violating probation and picking up a new charge in April of 2004 to two more incarcerations in the fall of 2004, finally getting released some time in late September or early October with about 60 days sober (or clean, if that matters to you). That’s a really long sentence and it reflects how long that last year and a half felt – the world’s slowest roller coaster. 

 

By this time in 2004, with about four months sober, it was worse than it was the first time. I was, this time, on my own. I did not have the structure or the community of a “recovery home.” I did not have the faith or trust of my family. I did not have a job, and I felt as though I flushed what was a shitload of promise in going back to school right down the toilette. I was miserable, but I knew that if I gave probation one dirty test, I could multiply that misery exponentially – the next step was not jail again, it was state prison. And here it was, my fucking birthday. Yet another shitty one.

 

I almost said “Fuck this!” on Thanksgiving (another socially constructed superficial celebration) just a couple of weeks prior. I would again on New Years eve. But I managed to stay sober and stay out of prison, and, with the help of a school counselor, I found a path back into school. In January 2005 I went back with a plan to transfer to California State University, Sacramento in the fall. Things started to get better. I started to succeed. I was getting good grades again. I was enjoying the fruits of my labor, and those fruits were not monetary. One day, I realized that it had been some time, several days at least, that I was not angry. It hit me like a bolt of lightning. I spent most of every day for I could not remember how long being pissed off about everything. Being angry all the time is fucking exhausting. 

 

What I was experiencing was a taste of freedom. It was not a permanent state, but it did grow. The days, weeks and months went by. Birthdays came and went. Some were better than others, one (my 48^th), in particular, was actually kind of cool, but mostly they were just another day. Today, my 62^nd, is that – just another day. It has been 20 years since I literally started my life over again, since I literally rose from the ashes. I didn’t do it alone, I had a lot of help along the way from friends, family and two different 12-step fellowships, but the simple truth – for all of us phoenix’s – is that without the effort we put into our own lives, our own resurrections, it will not happen. 

At 42 years-old, there was no light; I moved forward anyway – on faith, because there was nothing for me in the rearview but more bad. I could not, in a million years, have predicted where my life would take me. While I do, sincerely, appreciate the well-wishes that inevitably come to me on this day every year, I don’t need a bunch of minions celebrating the day of my birth – I celebrate life every.single.fucking.day.

 

 

Home Again - Redux

 

My hometown high school in Los Altos was part of a three-school district called the Mountain View Los Altos Union High School District. The fist school opened in 1902 but moved to Castro Street in downtown Mountain View in 1924. The next one was opened in Los Altos on Almond Ave. in 1954. Finally, in 1961, Awalt High School opened on the Mountain View-Los Altos border near Grant Rd. The mascots were, respectively, the Eagles, the Knights and the Spartans.

 

The last graduating classes for the Mountain View Eagles, the Los Altos Knights and the Awalt Spartans was 1981. The district decided to close one of the schools and it was decided that it would be the oldest (and probably most valuable real estate asset), Mountain View High School. Beginning with the 81/82 school year, Awalt would become Mountain View High School, but not the Eagles - it would keep the Spartan. And while Los Altos HS would keep its name, the Eagles would fly there. The respective school colors would follow the mascots; Awalt-turned-Mountain View would remain the same, Los Altos would get the colors of the Eagle from old MVHS.

 

I graduated from LAHS in 1981 - the last of the LAHS Knights. That was the end of a 27-year reign of the Knights. It probably isn't a big deal to anyone in Los Altos or Mountain View today. In fact, where Mountain View High School once stood, all that is left is a park called "Eagle Park" where the football field once was. The rest is all gone. But it all happened 43+ years ago. Although the initial transition was huge, the majority of these schools' histories are from then to now - by a lot. And, it goes without saying to anyone who came from a Silicon Valley small town from before it was Silicon Valley, everything has changed. Everything.

 

Almost 15 years ago, I started a group on Facebook called "Los Altos High School Knights" dedicated to LAHS alumni from that era. In it we reminisce about our time in high school, the time we spent in a town that barely resembles what it is today, and we try to keep alive and appreciate the idyllic place and time we grew up in. For better and for worse, the world is not like it was 50 years ago. Yes, there have been major improvements in countless areas, but along the way we have lost so much. And some of what we have lost is an innocence that made growing up, somehow, much more authentic.

 

My parents still live in the same house I grew up in. I go back a handful of times every year to visit for various different occasions. I went yesterday for Thanksgiving. The following is what I posted in our group. To say it resonated would be a huge understatement. It blew up.

 

Home again

 

I am currently sitting on the front porch at my parents house, the same house I lived in all the years I attended Santa Rita, Egan and LAHS. It has changed over the years, the neighborhood has, too. But, overall, both are similar enough to be recognizable. A time traveler dropped here from 1970 would know this place.

 

I drove here, for Thanksgiving, from Sacramento earlier this afternoon. I’ll be returning tonight. I came straight here, off Bayshore, down Old Middlefield, San Antonio… and here. Some of what I passed looks eerily the same, much more isn’t remotely so. And I know what most of the rest of Los Altos looks like. I’ve been, it’s not likely to have changed back.

 

I have no plans to drive down any memory lanes. There are precious few memories left standing. I come here four or five times per year, but of late, it’s been only here. What was Los Altos still lives, but not in a physical space. It lives with me and with y’all. Sadly, when we are gone, all that will be left are these archives - our pictures, our words and our memories enshrined in binary bits on some server somewhere.

 

It was a good place to be a kid. Maybe it still is, but not in the same way. The world has moved beyond such simple pleasures. I am quite sure we are not the first nor will we be the last to reflect on the passing of our childhood fixtures - these are not new revelations.

Still, I am profoundly thankful to have had what I consider to be an idyllic youth, even if I did not recognize it at the time. I am prouder today than I ever was then to be a Knight. And, appropriately, this is Thanksgiving.

 

Happy Thanksgiving, Knights.

Semester's End... Again

Getting a spike in student emails at the end of the semester, right when the "big things" are coming due, is nothing new. It happens every semester and the variety and creativity of the excuses never ceases to amaze me. And I am not here to judge the validity or legitimacy of them. I actually do not care - produce the documentation necessary, as required by the university, and it is an "excused absence." Done. I don't give two shits if it is the third time your grandmother died this term.

However, an excused absence does not excuse a student from completing the required work. I think most of them understand that and that - excused and legitimate or not - they are just looking for more time, but there is a trend I'm starting to notice that indicates perhaps a new level of coddling is happening somewhere before they get to me. Some of these students seem to believe that if they have an "excuse" of significant magnitude, that is disruptive enough in their personal lives, that it not only excuses their absence (I almost never "take roll" anyway), but it also excuses them from doing whatever project was assigned to them when their lives were disrupted.

I am not sure what they expect. Am I supposed to just remove that project and the associated points from the total and calculate their grade on what they did do? Do I take their average of what they did do, insert that in the grade space for that project and then calculate their grade? Am I expected to recognize - and award credit for potential? Does "deserving grace" equal merit as shown by performance? And how is that going to be received by the rest of the class - you know, the ones who did do the work?

 

 ID 5291693 | School © Jimmy Lopes | Dreamstime.com

In every case, when I receive these emails of personal hardship, my response is empathetic (been there), but also pragmatic. I can both understand and explain that there is no way to award credit for work that was not done - excused or not, legitimate or not, documented or not, whether I believe it or not. None of that matters and at this very moment, there are exactly six days left of the regular semester before finals week begins. Time is also a factor. I get the feeling that there are students who were counting on their excused absence also excusing them from the work. This is not exactly new, but it is much, much more prevalent.

I don't know where this is happening, but somewhere they are learning this works. I hope it's not happening in college classes, but I'd bet there are some overly sympathetic professors who do give grades, that were not earned, because of circumstances beyond a student's control. But my students are mostly freshmen and sophomores - they are not learning this in college. It’s coming with them, from high school, from middle school - but ultimately, it's coming from their parents.

Stop it.

Constitutional Crisis?

I have remained silent on all my anti-social media platforms. As much as I have wanted to respond, correct, engage and persuade, I have resisted. In private, with friends, (real friends), family, associates and a few others, I have had “those” conversations and in those cases, while they have been cordial and respectful, they have also been unproductive. I have not convinced anyone of anything. I cannot compete against the machine that has created the polarization we are seeing today. It is the worst I have ever seen in my life, and of that, about five decades of political awareness. The results of it manifested once again last night.

 

This nation is a petri dish. It has been from its constitutional beginning (which was 1787, not what is, sadly, commonly believed to be 1776) when we became the United States of America. Prior to that, we were an unworkable, loose confederation of states; it was not working and our founding fathers, through a lot of debate and compromise formulated the government we have today. It is not perfect, and they all knew it, but they were confident that, because built into that Constitution is a means of amending it, we, the people, could and would adapt it. And we have, through much debate and compromise – and one terrible war.

 

Our grand experiment in self-rule is unlike any other in the world, before or since. It is precarious, always on the edge. It depends on us and our faith in those founding documents, our founders’ vision, and each other. It has been tested, many times. So far, our Constitution has proven stronger than any one person, party or outside influence. We have grown, not because of some piece of paper, but because of that faith in each other, into the strongest nation in the world. We have made mistakes, we have done some bad things, but we have also done immense good and made vast improvements. We have taken far more steps forward then we have taken steps back. 

 

We are at yet another crossroads, another constitutional test. There are forces at work – people – who see our constitutional protections as a barrier to whatever it is they see as “American.” It is almost laughable. The core of what is American is the Constitution and what it contains. However, if enough people lose faith in it, if enough people agree that certain elements of it are “in the way,” then they will no longer matter. The Constitution itself will no longer matter. 

 

In every constitutional crisis over the past 237 years – including that very first Constitutional Convention that formed the government we now have – it was the Constitution that prevailed. From the Civil War to the Great Depression, WWII, McCarthyism, civil rights, equal rights, Watergate and others – all of them presented serious challenges to the very fabric of our nation and, ultimately, we, the people said, “no, the experiment does not end here.” It has often come with great pain and angst, but in the end, our flag was still there.

 It is no secret that, for reasons that I will not elaborate on here, I am no fan of Donald Trump. But he was just elected be President of the United States, again. The people, enough of them, have spoken. We can talk about (and should) the liabilities of the Electoral College system, but that would take an amendment to the Constitution. The election was by the book, it was constitutional, he will be our president. The experiment, however, does not end there. Trump has made a variety of statements, some vague policy positions that I assume appeal to a large number of people, and that’s fair enough, but he has also spoken about doing a number of things that are absolutely unconstitutional. Prosecuting and jailing his opponents, shutting down media and free speech, using the US military on our own soil against citizens are just a few of his “musings” on the campaign trail.

 

Maybe this was just campaign bluster, the “bravado” that seems to appeal to a certain segment of his followers. Let’s hope that is all it is. If so, there might not be any crisis, just a lot of handwringing from the left when what they believe to be overly conservative policies are enacted into law. But that is how democracy works. Those policies, too, will be tested and if they prove unsuccessful, the Democrats will have the opportunity to put the brakes on them at the midterms. Whether people believe Trump crossed the line of Presidential privilege or not or whether they believe he acted unconstitutionally or not in his last administration is not the same as whether people believe the president is allowed to act unconstitutionally. If they do, enough of them, then we are in deep trouble.

 

My other hope is that the teamsmanship, the side-taking, taunting, the denigrating, the questioning of who is or what it is to be “American” will stop. The only team is Team USA and there is only one flag. All of our policies belong to the will of the people. We will get shit we don’t like sometimes. We will get shit we do sometimes. Ideally, we will get compromise where we get some of what we want, but not all. When government works best – check that – when government works, that’s how it works. 

 

I still have faith in our Constitution. I still have faith in the common sense of the vast majority of the people who are not on the extremes, despite what the echo-chamber tells each side about “the other side.” The fact is that most of y’all are a lot like y’all. If you would just talk to each other and stop talking at each other, you might find that the extremes are lying to you, manipulating you, and it is hurting this country. 

 

I know I’m going to get a lot of “what aboutism” in response. Save it. There is plenty of blame to go around. We have had enough of that. How about looking for consensus, for solutions, for places where we do agree and can get behind. Maybe we can start with the Constitution. It needs us. Indeed, it only has us. It always has had only us.

Dos Equis

Twenty years ago today, I would be turning myself in to the Nevada County Wayne Brown Correctional Facility for the last time. It was not the last time I would be incarcerated. After my 60 day sentence for a violation of probation (of which I served my customary two-thirds time of 40 days), I still had to report to another county jail for a 90 day sentence on the charge that got me violated in Nevada County. Fortunately, due to jail over-crowding in Calaveras County, that sentence was reduced to just eight days. All those days and every other day I served in jail was a direct result of my use of drugs and alcohol. I didn’t get in trouble every time I used, but every time I got in trouble, drugs and alcohol were involved.

On this day, 20 years ago, I did not drink, and I did not use any drugs. It was not my intention. I planned on having this one last day of “getting high” before reporting to jail. However, it didn’t work out that way. I did plan to get sober from the next day forward – I had about nine months of sobriety (or clean-time, depending on which 12-step program one is aligned with) that ended in December of 2003 – and it worked. But for whatever reason, I felt I had regained the ability to “control” my drug and alcohol use. I was wrong and found – quickly – that control was not within my grasp. I needed to be separated from that “life," and, while I did not look forward to being locked up, I knew it was an opportunity.

By the time I was released from Calaveras County, I was about 60 days sober. I felt like my life had passed me by. During those nine months of sobriety, I went back to school and excelled like never before, attaining my first ever 4.0 GPA semester. However, I was in full relapse during my third semester, was arrested for my violating charge midway through it and my grades suffered accordingly. I was released after the fall 2004 semester was already underway – I could not return to school until the following spring, and I wasn’t even sure I could do that. I tried to find a job, but even that, something that was never a problem for me in the past, proved to be impossible. Without the financial support of family, I would have been homeless. I felt utterly useless, and just being “sober” didn’t feel like much of an accomplishment, especially since most of it was by force.

But, in retrospect, it was. It was because, unlike the first time when I was living in a “therapeutic environment” (i.e., a recovery home) for the first six months, I had to really want it. I did, but only because I felt I had no other choice. All my grand plans had failed me. I learned from those nine months that I could do things. The problem was that I was not back at ground zero – I was less than that. It was hard to stay the course, not throw up my arms and say, “fuck this!” I almost did, a couple of times. I managed through the holidays, pissed off most of the time, and by January, with nowhere left to turn, I returned to school. I didn’t really know where it would lead me, but it was something. With a lot of help from a counselor at American River College in Sacramento, I was able to put together a plan that would have me transferring to California State University, Sacramento after just one more semester.

I didn’t have enough college credits from just my three recent semesters at ARC, but over many years dating back to the early 80s, my forays into higher education did leave me with a variety of college credits – many were with lousy grades, but they counted. Many did not, but, combined with that one last semester at ARC, I had enough to transfer. However, while a path was before me, I still had to decide where it would lead. There were several options, but among the classes I took during that first nine months was an English writing honors class. That I even qualified, based on an assessment test I had to take, surprised the hell out of me – English was not my best subject – far from it. But, with some encouragement – and goading – I took it. It was amazing and the professor, recognizing some talent (I guess) and some deficiencies in mechanics, nurtured both. I aced the class and rediscovered a love for writing that I once resented.

My counselor suggested an English major, which I rejected. His second suggestion, however, immediately resonated with me. Journalism was also an early love. I remember with a great deal of fondness my days as a paperboy, reading my papers as I was folding them, preparing them for delivery. Journalism it was. The spring 2005 semester at ARC was a resounding success and the that fall would see my return to a four-year university after a 20-year hiatus (I dropped out of San Diego State University in 1985 with a 0.7 GPA). More importantly, at some point in the beginning of 2005, I lost the desire to say, “fuck this!” I found that continuing sobriety was, once again, working for me. And, one day, quite unexpectedly, I realized that it had been some days since I was angry about anything.

Since then, I have only been away from an academic institution for just one semester. I completed my BA in the winter of 2007 and took the spring 2008 semester off, working as a print journalist for a local newspaper. In the fall of 2008, I returned to Sac State to enter their MA program in communication studies, earning a Master of Arts degree  there. I then moved to Baton Rouge to enter the communication studies PhD program at Louisiana State University. Throughout my graduate career at both Sac State and LSU, I also taught undergraduates. While I did manage to advance to PhD candidacy at LSU, I finished there as “ABD” (all but dissertation), falling short of the PhD and coming away with another master’s degree. While that does represent a failure, it was not a decision I made lightly – and it is one I can live with.

Today, I am entering my tenth-year teaching at CSUS. I will be retiring from the job that holds the record for the longest I ever been in the same job, with the same employer and in the same career. That light that was so dim 20 years ago has been a beacon for many years now. But it is not the same as it was at five years, at 10 years or even at 15 years. I have read accounts of others who have traveled this path – often those who were already celebrities, those whose fame has enabled them to gain the access to sell their stories with greater ease. Too often, in what is, comparably, early sobriety, they simply don’t know what they don’t know. I know I didn’t. And, sadly, too often, they fall. Matthew Perry spoke glowingly about how profound his new-found sobriety was, he knew so much. Now he is dead. He didn’t know what he didn’t know.

Here's a little secret. I still don’t know - a lot. Those who have been doing this for 25 years, for 30 years, for 35 years and more – they know more. I still listen to what they have to say. It could just save my life.