About the author...

I'm no philosopher, but I think it's safe to say that we are each a product of our life experiences. Our interactions with family, friends, and lovers shape our lives in ways we can't predict. I recently thought about how the people I've known have made me what I am today, so I decided to write an article I've been meaning to write for years. Want to know more about the author of dvatp.com? Read on.

On Business and Family...

I grew up in central New Jersey and have continued to live here for some strange reason. I was born to two teachers. When my father retired from teaching in the early 80's, he dedicated himself full time to the family's electrical contracting business.

I worked both in the office and out in the field beginning in 1985. I learned a lot about business and the trials of working in a family business in particular. Today, watching Paul Sr. and Jr. of Orange County Choppers squabble is like watching reruns of the fights between my father and brother. The most important thing I learned at this time was the causal relationship between the business phone ringing in the kitchen of our house and the food that I ate every night. Our family and business lives were intertwined. We ran our family like a business and our business like a family. Strange, but it worked.

Over the many years I worked in the business, I learned what a 140 degree attic felt like in the summer, what the early stages of frost-bite felt like in the winter, what fiberglass insulation and cobwebs felt and tasted like, and what roaches, fleas, and other awful creatures look like up close and personal. I've been in thousands of homes and have seen how all kinds of people live. Needless to say, I learned to thank my mother for being so anal-retentive in her never-ending quest to keep a clean house. I've stepped in my share of dog shit while walking around customer's homes, which probably explains that while I love animals, I will never own a dog. I've also managed to work so hard with my hands that I couldn't hold a pen and write my own name at the end of the day. Arthritis, here I come.

But on the positive side, I learned what it means to be part of a team that's driven to do a good job because our name is on the truck and our reputation is on the line. We were more expensive than the average contractor, but only because we used English-speaking labor and installed only the best quality equipment we could find -- not the crap other contractors would throw at the job just to make the sale. Over time, I also also learned a trade that has come in handy. I can wire a new house and fix the old one when the lights go out. I've heard some women say that they find a confident pilot sexy, and a guy who can fix things sexier. Please, ladies...don't all line up at once.

As a result of my experience in the electrical trade and my interactions with other trades, I've developed the utmost respect for all tradesmen. While all are not necessarily artisans in their chosen field (and I've met some real wing-dingers, let me tell you), they've all stepped in dog shit at one time or another. I can appreciate that.

My father passed in 1998 and so did ownership of the business. It lives on with my brother at the helm and offices in the Somerset, Freehold, and Princeton areas.

On Technology...

I presently make my living as an Embedded Systems Software Engineer with most of my experience in the telecom and datacom industries. You can read more about that in my treatise on Nerdvana.

I started messing around with computers as a hobby in high school when my father managed to bring home an Apple II each weekend from his school. I had the operating manual read in about an hour and my interest grew from there. Like most kids, I didn't appreciate the effort at the time, but looking back I now realize loading that system's separate monitor, cpu, dual 5 1/4" disk drives and boat-anchor of a dot-matrix printer into the car every Friday afternoon must have been a royal pain in the ass. But without my father's effort, I'd never have become computer literate or a fan of Apple computers and my life would be very different than it is today. My father never found a friend in technology, but he used to marvel at the dinner table about how technology was going to change our lives. Including mine. Thanks Dad.

For several years in the late 80's and early 90's I ran the Synergy BBS on a Macintosh using "FirstClass" software -- a corporate conferencing application licensed at reduced cost to BBS operators. In its heyday I networked the system every night with a BBS in California called Channel Z (ode to the B-52's song -- "I-am-livin-on-Channel-Z!!!"), who in turn linked with a board in our 49th state called Alaska Mac, which turned out to be a refuge for residents forced to live with six months of near total darkness. Not surprisingly, we didn't hear much from our friends up north during the summer months -- they were all busy playing outside!

Those were great (and not so great) times. We were networked during the Northridge quake and Channel Z found itself far too close to the epicenter. I still remember looking at the connection logs the following morning, seeing that the connections had failed, and wondering what happened to my friends out there. Fortunately, in a few days I managed to make contact with the sysops via phone. A few weeks after that our network was back up and life was good. I was the original owner of the synergy.org domain (yes, I'm still kicking myself for letting it go) and had the system tied to UseNet before the Internet became known to millions of non-technical people as the WWW.

Although working during the day for the family business and late into the night on the BBS kept me busy, I managed to acquire my FCC-issued Amateur Radio License, callsign N2WOL. I haven't done much in the hobby in recent years, but I still use the 2 meter and 70 centimeter bands, usually to coordinate visits with my friend Todd. I also routinely use morse code to identify aviation navigational stations. The dits and dahs that seem like gibberish to the average pilot are just another language to me. When I hear the station broadcast the letters I-T-T-N, I know I'm utilizing the Instrument Landing System (ILS) at Trenton-Mercer County Airport in New Jersey.

In 1994 I learned the hard lesson that try as we might we can't control everything in our lives, and I split up with the love of my life. After a few months of self pity and remorse, I woke up one day convinced I needed to make a radical change in my life. In the course of a few short weeks I shutdown the BBS, moved out of my parent's house, and left the family business to work for Bell Communications Research (Bellcore). It was a hard pill to swallow at the time, but without that kick in the pants, I would have likely continued to work for the family business and never have explored my potential in technical research and development. Our separation still irks me to this day, but sometimes blessings come in strange packages. Thanks Christine.

In spite of my 3.8 GPA, induction into the National Honor Society and graduation with Magna Cum Laude honors, I figured my non-traditional skills background would hurt my acceptance at Bellcore, but an old college friend who worked there told his director about me and I soon received an invitation for an interview. I wound up interviewing with four of the department's technical gurus, all of whom had at least a Master's degree in CS or EE. Needless to say, I was a bit intimidated, but I must have made a favorable impression because a couple weeks later I received news that they wanted to hire me at twice my current salary -- an offer I could not refuse. I distinctly remember reading the offer letter and smiling for the first time in months. I was renewed. Thanks Todd.

There, I honed my professional system administration and software development skills and worked with some of the smartest and nicest people I've ever met. At long last I had a roomy climate-controlled office with a window on the second floor overlooking the beautifully-manicured Bellcore campus and a $20K Sun Sparc 20 workstation on my desk. I got to work with millions of dollars of telephony equipment and computers every day so that the public could take their reliable phone service for granted. It was a great gig, and one that I'll always look upon with fond memories. However, like personal relationships, nothing good in the business world lasts forever, so not long after Bellcore was sold and became Telcordia Technologies, things there began to change for the worse as the focus changed from R&D to a more profit-driven consulting environment.

With the promise of a much larger salary and perks typical of the dot-com era, I soon left the security of Bellcore for a local startup. Within two years, that startup succumbed to the post-9/11 business climate and my life changed again. Not long after that I went to work for another startup and continued my work in embedded systems development. Nearly five years later, I'm still with that company.

On Aviation...

I'm a FAA Certificated Airline Transport Pilot and Flight Instructor. I've flown airplanes and gliders, performed intermediate-level aerobatics, towed gliders, supported skydiving operations and have been directly involved with the maintenance and upkeep of personal aircraft for twenty years.

I would not be a pilot today if it were not for my mother. One August evening in 1986 prior to the start of my senior year in high school I expressed an interest in flying at the dinner table. To my surprise, my mother offered to take me to the local airport for an introductory flight. I still remember coming down from the flight with a huge smile on my face -- a smile that has stayed with me to this day. I still smirk a bit every time I open the hangar door and look at the airplane before a flight. I took my mother up on the day I got my license the following spring, and impressed her with what was probably the most significant, if not the smoothest, landing of my aviation career.

While I was in training for the license, I satisfied the "long cross country" requirement of the Private Pilot curriculum by flying to two aviation-oriented colleges in New England. I think the fact that I arrived via airplane impressed the admissions counselors, as I was accepted by both schools in spite of my less-than-stellar performance on the SAT. I wound up going to Daniel Webster College in Nashua, New Hampshire, and there had four of the best years of my young life. In my junior year, I met a special girl at a party there and with her learned the most valuable lesson in life -- how to love unconditionally. She, naturally, learned how to tolerate an anal-retentive, all-to-often-self-absorbed, aspiring airline pilot. She might disagree, but I think it's safe to say that we both came away with something positive. :-)

Times have certainly changed since I first learned to fly, but I'm proud to say that aviation is (and hopefully will always be) a big part of my life. Just as the standby magnetic compass helps the pilot navigate when all else fails, aviation has been my life's compass -- giving me hope and keeping me on the right course during difficult times. As a technologist, I place more stock in science than religion, but I'd like to think that aviation has been my faith of sorts. I can't imagine my life without flying.

I can also say with certainty that I would not be as involved in aviation if it were not for a family friend and student of my father's 8th grade history class back in the 50's. He and my father had a shared interest in photography and the friend went on to become a professional photographer. They stayed in touch over the years and one day my father told the friend that I'd recently started flying. The friend then offered to take me up in his newly-acquired Cessna 150, and I'll never forget the feeling that came from flying an airplane without a Hobbs meter. We flew to a couple local airports including one for a filling lunch and didn't care how long it took because this wasn't a rental and we didn't have to get back to let the next guy fly it. That was my first $100 hamburger and my introduction to what aviation can and should be. Adventurous, enjoyable, and yes -- frugal. Thanks Larry.

I later went on to fly that airplane all over creation, including regular trips to that special girl's house near Cape Cod. I struggled to pay the mere $20/hr it cost to fill the tanks on my electrician's salary, but she was worth every penny. In a time when DUAT was accessed via 2400 baud modem, I learned how to interpret weather and make quick go/no-go decisions. Early on, the airplane was equipped with only a single nav/comm radio and a transponder...and I flew it (legally, mind you) under IFR. Later, as the airplane became better equipped and confidence in my piloting skills increased, I dodged lines of thunderstorms to spend my 21st birthday with her. Fortunately, my hormones never got me into any real trouble but they did "encourage" me to make full use of an airplane and not naively cancel a flight just because I found the word "thunderstorm" in the forecast. I may have uplinked weather radar at my disposal now to make things a bit more predictable, but today I apply the same resolve to each and every flight that I did when there was a beautiful girl waiting for me at the destination.

From the time I achieved my private pilot certificate in 1988, I thought I would pursue a career with the airlines, but when Pan Am and Eastern folded in the early 90's and put thousands of skilled pilots out on their ass, I saw the writing on the wall. I didn't want to believe it at the time, and kept the dream alive by pursuing various ratings including my CFI. A few years into my stint at Bellcore I noticed airline hiring had picked up again, due largely to the economic upturn of the dot-com era. I gave my dream a last ditch effort by sending out several resumes and carefully worded cover letters to some cargo carriers and 135 operators because I figured I could serve them at night as a relief pilot and maintain a lifestyle that did not involve ramen noodles. Predictably, I received nothing but PFO letters and the false hope that I could "reapply in six months".

I think I was on the toilet at Bellcore the morning following receipt of the last batch of rejections when I realized I really liked making good money, dressing in something other than a polyester uniform, having reasonable hours and holidays off, sleeping in my own comfy bed every night, and owning a nice home with a BMW in the garage. I also came to the startling revelation that being a pilot failed to massage the intellectual muscles I was flexing regularly at Bellcore, and I wondered if I'd really be happy flying on anyone's terms but my own. So, sometime in 1998, I reluctantly decided to make aviation an avocation rather than an occupation. And in retrospect, given how the US airline industry has fallen into such extreme disrepair in recent years, I know I made the right choice.

To bring things full circle, after acquiring my ATP in October 2005 I asked my mother to join me in the airplane again, this time for a crisp fall leaf-peaping flight down the New Jersey coast to a favorite lunch spot in northern Delaware. On the way back home, I surprised her by putting her in the left seat and taking her on an introductory flight much like the one she provided for me 20 years earlier. After a brief instructional session, she took the controls and I sat back and watched her fly. And fly like a pro she did. I remarked to my crew partner who was sitting in the back seat "She's a natural. It must be genetic!" After landing, the magnitude of what she'd just accomplished finally hit her, and she lit up with statements like "I can't believe I did that" and "that was great". For a brief moment, I couldn't help but see my younger self in her eyes. The expression of delight on her face made every sacrifice I've made to fly worth it. And there I learned yet another of life's lessons. Give and you shall receive. Thanks Mom.