Cow chips to computer chips… I graduated from the University of Utah in a program that should have introduced me to computer chip technology, but frankly the lab that specialized in it was a scary place: full of dangerous materials and cobbled together with duct tape and baling wire. Stuff I was already familiar with for other reasons. After a master’s degree I still felt like I did not know diddlysquat so I lumbered on for more… …at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. I loved Colorado from my elementary school years when Dad worked at the Rocky Flats Plant and still loved it enough to go back. Materials Science was a brand new program then and I was the third graduate, having also scored an internship at IBM-Boulder. The semiconductor industry was blossoming at the time and many companies were hiring. VLSI hired me as a chip failure analyst and I stayed for seven years, living just a few blocks from where, as a fourth grader, I had lived while dad was on a rotation with Lawrence Radiation Lab, in Livermore, CA. I enjoyed several job roles there including chip pathology and microsurgery (prototype repair), as well as a stint in the cleanroom developing new technologies. What a fantastic culture and environment to work with a diverse group of professionals and literally invent new ideas in the hallways between cubicles and then go make it work in the cleanroom. I bounced from CA to UT so I could bring my family closer to grandparents, cousins, the ranch and my horse. Bourns sent me all over the world in my program manager capacity and later as a staff engineer developing new technologies. I had a lot of time in hotel rooms and airplanes to begin a new interest in writing… Then 9/11 hit and the company panicked and closed down three manufacturing plants in Utah, offering me either a position in Riverside, CA or a layoff. Well, I guess as a friend told me, I was looking for a job when I found this one… Some wonderful people picked me up on an NSF-funded program at the University of Utah and told me to build a lab where I had previously feared ever setting foot. Now we have a nice new facility that is the technological crown jewel of the state of Utah (state-owned, that is).
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