Bell Northern Research (Part of Nortel), My First Co-op Job

At this job, I was a gopher. I was basically useless so I shouldn't even put this up. I did a lot of paper pushing, artwork reviews, and general documentation grunt work. I did a lot of system specifications data entry and drawings. I helped figure out how to wire stuff. I went to the factory to talk with people on the assembly line. I spent a LOT of time running to the other end of the building to get parts or units out of the stock rooms (it was a very long building).

I think I was very helpful in the work I did, but overall I wasn't much use since I had only one ciruits class when I took the job.

Alcatel Network System, My Second Co-op Job

This job was much more sucessful. They hired me for one task, but I got pulled within a week of starting work. They needed help in the ASIC emulation group. They needed someone to build a SONET test pattern generator and receiver. Basically this was supposed to put out data in various forms and then look to see if the system did the proper thing with them. This was to test the ASICs that the ASIC group was making.

My generator had to be able to put fixed patterns, rotating patterns, and pseudo random data into the headers and payload in any combination. In addition, each of the control bytes had to be provisionable and then a control of whether to use it. On the receiving end, the circuit had to be able to detect corruption in any of the places and it knew what mode the transmitter was in. This system had the ability to peek and poke all the control bytes and when the ASIC under test changed something or acted innappropriately then this was noted for the investigators.

This was a fun project and took a long time ... but it was very useful in uncovering bugs in the ASIC. I learned a LOT of Verilog HDL.

PairGain, My First Real Job

My first work for PairGain was intended to be my third Co-op job. I was the 13th employee (approx) in the Raleigh Design Center. I think they are now up to around 100 employees. They loved me so much that they converted me to a full time employee. I loved working there and I loved most of the people who worked there.

I started working as Jack Romain's lab grunt. He and I worked on the power converters that converted 140-280V input to +5V output and another converter that took 140-280V in and put out -48 and -24V. These were around 5-20W converters. I also blew a lot of them up in the development :). I got REALLY good at fixing them.

Seeing my value during this they hired me and I eventually helped on various designs, did EMI compliance, UL testing, BellCore testing, and everything and anything else that needed being done.

Since they loved me, they gave me a new board to design. Clark Tollerson and I designed the EBS system for the PG-Plus product line. I had a hand in the re-design of the motherboard on the remote side as well as being the chief honcho on the EBS daughter card. I adapted the filters we got from another project, picked a new Subscriber Line Interface Circuit (SLIC), did the board designs, designed the processing FPGA, and got the board into production.

I then ended up moving with Barbara to Kansas City and had to leave the company. I was getting tired of some of the "big company mentality" that had to accompany growing. We were at around 50 employees when I left and it just wasn't the same despite having an ultra cool management team (who helped at shielding us).

Of course I hear that our product sold so many units (6) that they cancelled the product. Sigh. I just did what I was told, but I sure wish it had sold more.

Nexus Applied Research / ThinRoute Technologies, My Second Real Job

Part of dealing with the EBS design was interfacing with Mark Rosen of Nexus Applied Research. When he heard I was out of work he offered me a job working for Thin Route Technologies designing their new product, the Triad 2002/2008. This was an interesting opportunity since I would get to work from home and go into the office when needed (office being California and home being Kansas City). I was also going to be the whole team (well, I had managers to make sure the vision was being implemented and then the software help). Basically I did everything from picking the chips to adapting designs to backplane interfaces (with input), to developing protocols, to designing the FPGA, to designing framers and CRC blocks, to testing the analog circuits, ... you name it I did it.

Unfortunately we designed using the AMD programmable CODECs. This was a nightmare. It costs us months and months. We never did get them working acceptably. I was also being forced to stay in California often 2 weeks out of every 3. This was very expensive (making company unhappy) and I was going nuts from being out of town so much. So I had been getting ancy feet about finding a local job (yeah right), but I had a deep commitment to stick it out and finish the product and teach my employers everything I knew.

Then one of the companies who owed my employers a very significant amount of money went bankrupt and my empoyers were about 2 weeks from going bankrupt. So, about half the staff was let go and the other half went on very reduced salaries. I was one of the let go half because I was very expensive and I had been complaining a LOT about the constant travel. I think they're back more stable now and I am quite glad. I considered them friends as well as co-workers (even though I don't hear from any of them anymore).

Oh well, that cleared the way to my current job which is perfect :). I don't have any intentions right now of ever looking for another job. Life is not that predictable but that is the plan.

And for the super geeks: