D
dave
Guest
When I was 10 years old my dad gave me a Radio Shack 50-in 1
electronic project kit for my birthday, and the first time I
heard my voice come out of the speaker I was hooked. I
started buying electronics magazines to read about all the
kit projects I couldn't afford, let alone assemble with
dad's soldering iron (gee it fixed the plumbing though), and
I was excited.
At 14 I bought my first data book, a National Linear. It
was blue and orange, and full of IC's and the schematics
that would make them do cool things. Then I learned about
logic and got a CMOS data book as well. While my friends
probably had a pile of Hustler mags under their beds, I
would sit up until 3AM poring over my data books and
dreaming about all the amazing devices I was going to design
one day. When I got my first circuit working with an LM555 I
knew there was no stopping me.
And so I abandoned my plans to become an architect and
enrolled for engineering instead. Most of the money I
earned pumping petrol, I spent on new output transistors for
the kit amps I kept blowing up, or new speakers for the ones
I didn't. I had started designing my own basic circuits,
mostly by adapting schematics out of magazines, and I came
up with brilliant ideas like automatic rain-sensing
windscreen wipers. (That one worked, well in a downpour
anyway, so I guess it needed a little refinement. About 20
years later Puegot started using the same idea, so I wasn't
completely misguided, just too ambitious).
But still I wanted to learn more and more about design so I
studied and read and soldered and found out what 240V
through the heart felt like. I had brains and enthusiasm
and ideas, and I knew that combination would one day make me
rich and respected and I'd get to name some cool circuit
after me, just like Butterworth or Schottky or Colpitts.
The electronics industry seemed to have an obvious hole in
it - the salesmen knew nothing, and the geeks couldn't sell
anything, so all I had to do was graduate, choose my weapon
and devour the world.
Two years out of university and things were on track. I had
my own business and at least one good customer and I spent
my spare time designing a range of products. The first few
were rubbish and I still feel guilty for accepting money for
them, but people seemed to have faith in my enthusiasm so
they kept coming back and I kept improving, and some of the
stuff we made actually worked quite well. Something wasn't
right though. My discrete designs never performed that well
and books didn't tell me how to fix them. I started taking
circuits from magazines instead, or borrowing ideas from
competitors products, and in the end I gave up and just used
I.C.'s and the trusty old collection of National and
Motorola data books. The bills got paid, even if it did
take 80 hours a week at the bench.
Things grew, things changed. Some things worked and others
didn't, we did some stupid projects but nobody got killed or
sued me. Gradually I started to find that good ideas or
hard work don't amount to shit when you're up against
salesmen and spin doctors, and so my disillusionment grew.
The more complex our products became, the more complex their
problems, and nothing is quite as crushing as delivering the
first run of a new device, only to receive a phone call to
say "they work fine on the bench but they all oscillate on
site, fix them now!" And so the miracle of xanax began to
help me through those difficult projects.
I was mostly honest, but I got screwed. Nobody sent me broke
but it all wore me down. Designing didn't seem such fun any
more when anything I could design, could be bought from
China for fifteen dollars. We made our money in contracting
installation services to the building industry, brute work
with the twin evils of Site Managers and Unions, while I was
always trying to design that ultimate range of critically
acclaimed products, making batches of 25 or 50 or 100 and no
too batches the same.
I got engaged to a doctor. I was 38. My parents were
overjoyed.
And then one day, after 15 years in business, one particular
guy stitched me up in a very ungentlemanly fashion and cost
me my biggest customer. There was absolutely nothing I
could do about it, agreed my psychiatrist, and wrote a
repeat for Zoloft. Nothing was fun any more and I found
myself sleeping on the floor of my office on Saturday
afternoons, when I should have been tweaking my new designs.
Working late was downloading porn off that new thing, the
internet, and I couldn't be bothered designing anything new.
Nothing ever worked the way it was supposed to anyway, and
besides we were still analogue in a world going digital.
Between the panic attacks and depression the only thing that
appealed to me was picking up girls on the net and I had
affairs, which out of guilt I confessed to my fiance and
that was the end of that.
My life sucked and I would sleep until midday and expect the
guys at work to hold it together for me. Which they mostly
did. And so one day I rang a guy I knew and asked him to
contact my competitor, and see if he would buy me out.
Two years later it finally happened, he bought most of the
business for not much more than the value of the stock but
it was something. I had no plans but a guy I met on the
internet had started a porn site and asked me if I could
come up with some ideas, so I did and he started paying me
money. Before too long I was feeling much better and coming
up with some cool ideas for web sites of my own, so he
helped me start one and gave me a desk in his building to
work from. I spent more and more time there. It was great
fun, thinking up ideas for photo shoots and hanging around
with cool nekkid girls, while the last 2 guys left in my
fading electronics empire limped along churning out small
quantities of stuff at the old factory, the part of the
business I couldn't sell.
Very late one night I got a call from the security company
that there was an alarm at the old building. So I hauled my
arse down there to find it was a soldering iron left on, or
some such thing. I hadn't even been there for many weeks
and I noticed my desk looked unfamiliar. It had piles and
piles of papers, 10 years accumulation, that didn't seem to
matter any more, and the walls were covered in personal
things which didn't seem to be a part of me any more either.
My bookshelves were stuffed with references that suddenly,
I realsied, I would never again open, and they smelled a bit
musty. And right up the top in a neat row was my complete
collection of National Semiconductor data books, right down
to the 1973 Linear edition, the one that kicked all this
off, the cover held on with tape.
I wandered down the back, past the other offices and through
the workshop. Everything seemed much older and dirtier.
The wall is covered in hundreds of bins of parts, IC's,
switches,relays and every passive value you could get, in
reels of 1000 no less. This was the likes of which I could
only dream about at age 15. Oh to have all this at my
disposal so I could dream up cool things and just sit down
and MAKE them without having to wait for my next $12 pay
packet and queue up at McGrath's for my piddling shopping
list of resistors and diodes! But it didn't matter to me
now. I thumbed through the drawers and pulled a few open,
and eventually I came across a little set of 8 clear plastic
drawers in a tin cabinet. I remember buying this with $2 my
grandma gave me when I was 14, and inside I found a little
jumble of parts, some half watt resistors and even a
germanium transistor or two, and a ferrite rod wrapped in
wire by my own teenage hands; among the first components I
had every bought, nearly 30 years ago. Like a seed they had
germinated all THIS, I thought, but maybe spread more like
weeds? And so I realised, after 20 years, that I had ruined
a perfectly good hobby by turning it into a profession; that
was really the problem. And so I cleared my desk into the
dumpster and locked the door for the last time.
Two years later and my web sites are doing very well. They
may be porn but they are good porn, respectful to the models
and customers alike, and I employ 8 people. The old
electronic business is still hanging in there but I only
stop by to use the workshop for some hobby welding or to
sign documents. I can't tell my mother what I do, in fact
most of my friends don't know either, but my sites are good
and I'm proud of them, in a pervy way. Tonight I was
interviewed on the radio from the other side of the world
and I came home to my beautiful wife, who is a photographer
and model, half my age, and we talked about the new house
we're going to buy. I turned on the computer to check my
sites and answer some emails, but I don't look at porn any
more. (After only 2 years, I have ruined another perfectly
good hobby.)
I opened my news reader and came across this group, where I
used to post perplexing questions and some of you kindly
helped me out. I read a few posts and answered a few too,
but they were very simple things, and I still feel no more
knowledgeable than I did at 15, and everybody else seems to
know more. It's funny how time works, you never actually
feel any older, you just feel sort of dumber and less
useful, but nothing seems to matter as much. Nobody cured
my nervous breakdown from the late 90's, least of all the
drugs, I guess I just grew out of it. I am still the same
person I was at 14, but I can't help wondering how all this
happened; how a "boy genius" high achiever with good
intentions and enthusiasm, with a grammar school education
and from a middle class home, with parents of impeccable
morals and the highest community respect, with a university
degree in engineering; became a 44 year old professional
pervert.
Perhaps the answer was there 30 years ago. If I had just
ditched the Linear Data Book and picked up a pile of
Hustlers like the other guys, maybe I could have saved
myself 20 years of grief. And just perhaps, the worst is
yet to come; but for now, I have never been happier in my
entire life.
electronic project kit for my birthday, and the first time I
heard my voice come out of the speaker I was hooked. I
started buying electronics magazines to read about all the
kit projects I couldn't afford, let alone assemble with
dad's soldering iron (gee it fixed the plumbing though), and
I was excited.
At 14 I bought my first data book, a National Linear. It
was blue and orange, and full of IC's and the schematics
that would make them do cool things. Then I learned about
logic and got a CMOS data book as well. While my friends
probably had a pile of Hustler mags under their beds, I
would sit up until 3AM poring over my data books and
dreaming about all the amazing devices I was going to design
one day. When I got my first circuit working with an LM555 I
knew there was no stopping me.
And so I abandoned my plans to become an architect and
enrolled for engineering instead. Most of the money I
earned pumping petrol, I spent on new output transistors for
the kit amps I kept blowing up, or new speakers for the ones
I didn't. I had started designing my own basic circuits,
mostly by adapting schematics out of magazines, and I came
up with brilliant ideas like automatic rain-sensing
windscreen wipers. (That one worked, well in a downpour
anyway, so I guess it needed a little refinement. About 20
years later Puegot started using the same idea, so I wasn't
completely misguided, just too ambitious).
But still I wanted to learn more and more about design so I
studied and read and soldered and found out what 240V
through the heart felt like. I had brains and enthusiasm
and ideas, and I knew that combination would one day make me
rich and respected and I'd get to name some cool circuit
after me, just like Butterworth or Schottky or Colpitts.
The electronics industry seemed to have an obvious hole in
it - the salesmen knew nothing, and the geeks couldn't sell
anything, so all I had to do was graduate, choose my weapon
and devour the world.
Two years out of university and things were on track. I had
my own business and at least one good customer and I spent
my spare time designing a range of products. The first few
were rubbish and I still feel guilty for accepting money for
them, but people seemed to have faith in my enthusiasm so
they kept coming back and I kept improving, and some of the
stuff we made actually worked quite well. Something wasn't
right though. My discrete designs never performed that well
and books didn't tell me how to fix them. I started taking
circuits from magazines instead, or borrowing ideas from
competitors products, and in the end I gave up and just used
I.C.'s and the trusty old collection of National and
Motorola data books. The bills got paid, even if it did
take 80 hours a week at the bench.
Things grew, things changed. Some things worked and others
didn't, we did some stupid projects but nobody got killed or
sued me. Gradually I started to find that good ideas or
hard work don't amount to shit when you're up against
salesmen and spin doctors, and so my disillusionment grew.
The more complex our products became, the more complex their
problems, and nothing is quite as crushing as delivering the
first run of a new device, only to receive a phone call to
say "they work fine on the bench but they all oscillate on
site, fix them now!" And so the miracle of xanax began to
help me through those difficult projects.
I was mostly honest, but I got screwed. Nobody sent me broke
but it all wore me down. Designing didn't seem such fun any
more when anything I could design, could be bought from
China for fifteen dollars. We made our money in contracting
installation services to the building industry, brute work
with the twin evils of Site Managers and Unions, while I was
always trying to design that ultimate range of critically
acclaimed products, making batches of 25 or 50 or 100 and no
too batches the same.
I got engaged to a doctor. I was 38. My parents were
overjoyed.
And then one day, after 15 years in business, one particular
guy stitched me up in a very ungentlemanly fashion and cost
me my biggest customer. There was absolutely nothing I
could do about it, agreed my psychiatrist, and wrote a
repeat for Zoloft. Nothing was fun any more and I found
myself sleeping on the floor of my office on Saturday
afternoons, when I should have been tweaking my new designs.
Working late was downloading porn off that new thing, the
internet, and I couldn't be bothered designing anything new.
Nothing ever worked the way it was supposed to anyway, and
besides we were still analogue in a world going digital.
Between the panic attacks and depression the only thing that
appealed to me was picking up girls on the net and I had
affairs, which out of guilt I confessed to my fiance and
that was the end of that.
My life sucked and I would sleep until midday and expect the
guys at work to hold it together for me. Which they mostly
did. And so one day I rang a guy I knew and asked him to
contact my competitor, and see if he would buy me out.
Two years later it finally happened, he bought most of the
business for not much more than the value of the stock but
it was something. I had no plans but a guy I met on the
internet had started a porn site and asked me if I could
come up with some ideas, so I did and he started paying me
money. Before too long I was feeling much better and coming
up with some cool ideas for web sites of my own, so he
helped me start one and gave me a desk in his building to
work from. I spent more and more time there. It was great
fun, thinking up ideas for photo shoots and hanging around
with cool nekkid girls, while the last 2 guys left in my
fading electronics empire limped along churning out small
quantities of stuff at the old factory, the part of the
business I couldn't sell.
Very late one night I got a call from the security company
that there was an alarm at the old building. So I hauled my
arse down there to find it was a soldering iron left on, or
some such thing. I hadn't even been there for many weeks
and I noticed my desk looked unfamiliar. It had piles and
piles of papers, 10 years accumulation, that didn't seem to
matter any more, and the walls were covered in personal
things which didn't seem to be a part of me any more either.
My bookshelves were stuffed with references that suddenly,
I realsied, I would never again open, and they smelled a bit
musty. And right up the top in a neat row was my complete
collection of National Semiconductor data books, right down
to the 1973 Linear edition, the one that kicked all this
off, the cover held on with tape.
I wandered down the back, past the other offices and through
the workshop. Everything seemed much older and dirtier.
The wall is covered in hundreds of bins of parts, IC's,
switches,relays and every passive value you could get, in
reels of 1000 no less. This was the likes of which I could
only dream about at age 15. Oh to have all this at my
disposal so I could dream up cool things and just sit down
and MAKE them without having to wait for my next $12 pay
packet and queue up at McGrath's for my piddling shopping
list of resistors and diodes! But it didn't matter to me
now. I thumbed through the drawers and pulled a few open,
and eventually I came across a little set of 8 clear plastic
drawers in a tin cabinet. I remember buying this with $2 my
grandma gave me when I was 14, and inside I found a little
jumble of parts, some half watt resistors and even a
germanium transistor or two, and a ferrite rod wrapped in
wire by my own teenage hands; among the first components I
had every bought, nearly 30 years ago. Like a seed they had
germinated all THIS, I thought, but maybe spread more like
weeds? And so I realised, after 20 years, that I had ruined
a perfectly good hobby by turning it into a profession; that
was really the problem. And so I cleared my desk into the
dumpster and locked the door for the last time.
Two years later and my web sites are doing very well. They
may be porn but they are good porn, respectful to the models
and customers alike, and I employ 8 people. The old
electronic business is still hanging in there but I only
stop by to use the workshop for some hobby welding or to
sign documents. I can't tell my mother what I do, in fact
most of my friends don't know either, but my sites are good
and I'm proud of them, in a pervy way. Tonight I was
interviewed on the radio from the other side of the world
and I came home to my beautiful wife, who is a photographer
and model, half my age, and we talked about the new house
we're going to buy. I turned on the computer to check my
sites and answer some emails, but I don't look at porn any
more. (After only 2 years, I have ruined another perfectly
good hobby.)
I opened my news reader and came across this group, where I
used to post perplexing questions and some of you kindly
helped me out. I read a few posts and answered a few too,
but they were very simple things, and I still feel no more
knowledgeable than I did at 15, and everybody else seems to
know more. It's funny how time works, you never actually
feel any older, you just feel sort of dumber and less
useful, but nothing seems to matter as much. Nobody cured
my nervous breakdown from the late 90's, least of all the
drugs, I guess I just grew out of it. I am still the same
person I was at 14, but I can't help wondering how all this
happened; how a "boy genius" high achiever with good
intentions and enthusiasm, with a grammar school education
and from a middle class home, with parents of impeccable
morals and the highest community respect, with a university
degree in engineering; became a 44 year old professional
pervert.
Perhaps the answer was there 30 years ago. If I had just
ditched the Linear Data Book and picked up a pile of
Hustlers like the other guys, maybe I could have saved
myself 20 years of grief. And just perhaps, the worst is
yet to come; but for now, I have never been happier in my
entire life.
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