Tom's Writings

When I was in grade school, I went to a Catholic elementary school called Saint Francis of Assisi. I lived in West Virginia, which is somewhat of a backwards state, but our school system was actually pretty solid. (Proof: A group from Japan visited our school system to gather guidance on how to improve their school system. 🤔)

SOCIALLY CONNECTED
It’s interesting because our house was close to the elementary school, and we had a pretty good connection with the school and church. Not only that, my siblings and I are pretty smart – and so the school teachers and other church/school workers would sometimes rely on us to help them out.

We had a pretty good connection with the Catholic priests at the church. Plus, some of my male siblings were altar boys — as I was. The priests would even come to our house and be social with us: pool, ping pong, etc. (Two of the priests made a little ‘too strong’ connections with some female church members, stopped being priests, and married them.)

MY ‘JOB’
I have a problem-solving / engineering head. For this reason, it was interesting to me that the school teachers would rely on me to solve problem situations. A few examples:

• Mimeograph — I’m an old guy. Back in the day, if you wanted to make paper copies of something, we didn’t have printers or copiers to accomplish this. Instead, there was something called a mimeograph machine. This was a device that gave you the ability to make copies of something — provided you properly created the initial input to do so. After creating the source ‘input paper’, you would turn a crank, and copies would spit out. One day, the mimeograph machine wasn’t working, so they asked me to take a look at it and see if I could fix it. It’s a little weird to ask an elementary school student to fix something, but they must have known that I had an engineering head, and could potentially make things work. I did fix it, and they were able to produce what they needed.
• Parrot — Another interesting situation was — there was a small parrot (maybe a parakeet?) that had gotten loose in a classroom. The classroom was empty, so it wasn’t really a major issue, other than they needed to get the parrot captured and put back in its cage. They asked me to do this — possibly because I was younger and able to stand on tables and desks and grab the parrot, but also because, again, I’m a problem solver. I did grab the parrot, and got it back in its cage. BUT, at one point, the parrot bit my hand when I grabbed it – and I still have some scars on my hand from that incident.
• Roof — They used to send me onto the roof for two different purposes: (1) to flip the church bell which could get flipped over and stuck if the rope to make it ring was pulled too hard, and (2) to recover kickballs that someone kicked onto the roof. The roof was two stories high (pretty tall), but was flat — so it wasn’t that dangerous to be on – as long as I didn’t get too near the edge.

AGGRESSIVE NUNS
Back in the day, Catholic nuns were allowed to manage the students using aggressive techniques. I was a generally well-behaved student, but I was smacked multiple times (sometimes with a wooden paddle) when I did something the nuns didn’t like. I remember during a fire drill, covering my ears with my hands as I was walking past the wall-mounted alarm device. A nun smacked me in the head with her hand because of this.

DANGEROUS PLAYGROUND
Decades ago, those building a school playground didn’t think about how safe it was. The playground at my elementary school had tall metal climbing structures — some with parts 10 feet off the paved ground. I played frequently on these structures and never got hurt, but I’m sure some kids did. Playgrounds today are more sensibly built.

SOCIAL WITH STUDENTS
I was connected with kids in my class who weren’t white skinned — partly because my parents didn’t teach me to think non-white people weren’t as good as white people (nice). I remember frequently hanging on the playground with a Chinese girl and a black boy. (I actually really liked the Chinese girl, but was too young to have a girlfriend.)

WHO IS THE BUTTHEAD?
I remember tripping a guy who was running laps around the playground. Why did I do this? I’d like to think that it was because he had previously done something bad to someone else. Strange.

SUMMARY
My elementary school experience was pretty unique and crazy. A lot happened (both good and bad) — but it definitely was a significant part of my childhood, and I strongly remember my time there more than at later schools.

HEAD

Math
As a teenager, I won a statewide mathematics contest. It was a multi-level progression — best in my school, best in my county, best in a group of counties, best in the state. I ended up in the newspaper, and on the TV news. Pretty cool.

Engineering / Creativity
I have a problem-solving ‘engineer’ head. I can look at something, understand it, and know how to fix/improve it. This ability has allowed me to enhance the houses that I have lived in, plus create crazy/interesting decorations for Halloween.

Over-Thinker / Pragmatic
I have a very busy head — which allows me to think through things before I do them. This talent actually helps me get past my dorkiness, and act more normal — which has helped my tech career.

My over-thinking head also allows me to be extra pragmatic about situations, and not be emotional about something I can’t change.

Songs
I remember thousands of songs — both new and old — and can sing along (for hours) with music being played. It’s a bit crazy to know so many songs, know all the words, and be able to sing along with them.

Double Attention
My busy brain allows me to pay attention to two different things at the same time. For example, I can watch TV and dork around on my phone at the same time — and fully follow both. Or I can listen to and sing along with songs, and also do something else — like work on my computer. When my wife talks to me, I sometimes look away (thinking about something else) — and though I’m still paying attention to her, she thinks I am not.

Complex Dreams
Pretty much every morning, I wake up from a crazy, complex dream. The dreams are like a whole different life/experience — often magical and science fictional, plus (sort of) work related. I’m often running/managing a group of people doing crazy, magical things. I should start verbally recording my dreams when I wake up, and possibly use them as the plot for written stories.

BODY

Running / Athletic
Maybe anyone can do this — but in college, I used to run 10 miles every other day. I ran with two of my roommates. It took me a few weeks to be able to run that far, but it was a lot of running overall. I also broke a leg toward the end of college (climbing a building), but I recovered, and still ran later in life.

I was also able to try various sports — soccer, golf, ping-pong, tennis, etc — and be successful at them. I captained a tennis team at my health club, and practiced ping-pong in college against the school ping-pong champion.

Also, my feet are very capable. I can do some things with my feet that I do with my hands — open drawers, pick things up, etc.

Eyes
My eyes are independent, and they used to not be pointing in the same way — but I had one eye surgically adjusted when young (pop it out, adjust the direction, pop it back in).

My vision is (barely) OK. I have one eye that sees near things pretty well, and another that sees far things pretty well. What’s interesting is that my vision isn’t improvable with lenses, but fortunately it’s good enough — I can read and drive.

Teeth
Minor thing, but — my teeth are very healthy and white. Every dentist visit, they ask me: do I drink coffee? (Assuming I don’t, but I do.) And they tell me that my teeth look better than most of their patients.

I wrote this about a year and a half go — but forgot to publish it.

It’s interesting how my career has evolved – specifically, the role I do for the tech companies for which I work.

Everybody is good at some things, and bad at other things. Everyone has a unique personality – which is a product of their genetics and their experience. And that personality, plus the natural talents that one has, usually determines one’s career path and how good they are at that path.

I am a ‘natural engineer’. What is that? It means that I am a problem solver. If I see something that needs adjustment/improvement, I can visualize multiple ways to make it happen, weigh these solutions against each other, and pursue the best path.

If I were sensible, I probably should have followed an ‘engineering’ career path – become a fancy technical architect, or maybe pursued engineering management. My challenge was – the first time I was a manager for engineering teams, I was in a difficult situation:

1. I worked for a purchased startup, where the company that bought us only wanted the technology and worldwide offices, and not the local (Silicon Valley) people.
2. I became the manager of a group where the previous manager had given most people bad reviews, and the company policy was: you needed good reviews for two years to get a promotion. One of my engineers was solid, but I couldn’t promote her because she had a previous bad review – she didn’t like that.

I kept a whiteboard tally in my work office of people who had left the company – and the tally grew to 100+, which is a lot for a small startup. I eventually left the company, but had such an unhappy experience managing teams (I managed a second team at the same time), that it made me not want to manage teams anymore.

My other two ‘dork’ factors are:

• I am not naturally social. I’m generally an awkward, unsocial person – who isn’t the most desirable person for people to want to hang with.
• I am ‘secretly smart’ (I use this term a lot). I grew up in a modest state, but once won a statewide math contest (not bad) – so my brain (over)thinks things well, which allows me to evaluate situations and decide the best/sensible path. I actually use my overthinking brain to decide the best way to compensate for (hide) my dorkiness.

At the end of the day, I come across as being smart/sensible (but slightly dorky), and companies like me.

So…

I have followed the path, in the tech companies I have worked for, of being a project/program manager. It’s sort of like being a people manager, but you don’t have people reporting to you.

Without getting too deep, I’ve had a good career. Two regrets:

• College Choice – I grew up in a family that didn’t focus on college. My parents didn’t go to college. Some of my older siblings went to college (some didn’t graduate). My next older sibling got a bachelors and masters degree – which steered me toward college – BUT no one really gave much guidance/weight to which college I should go to. I paid for my own college, but (wrongly) thought that the only important result was: the degree, and not whether it was a ‘fancy’ college. My grades (and intelligence) were likely good enough to get me into Stanford? MIT? I likely would have been regarded/hired better had I done so, but I went to University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign – not a bad tech school, but not a super fancy/well-regarded one.
• Working vs Launching – The other thing that didn’t occur to me was – starting my own company. There are people who start multiple companies, one company actually works well, and they make good money – I could have done that. Especially since I was ‘early’ in the tech timeline, and could have started some basic tech companies like: devices (Apple), internet (Google), etc. I’ve worked in tech for decades, and am approaching retirement – but I still have (modern/current) ideas that I could pass down to my kids – so they could do what I didn’t (start companies). (Maybe I could be the CTO for those companies…)

In summary, I am awkward socially, but ‘secretly smart’ – and use my overthinking brain to fix/hide my awkwardness. It has worked for me. My career has been good, but it likely could have been better had I been aware of other paths that could have landed me in a better place.

Oh well, you can’t fix the past…

My kids are all smart. I used to think that they inherited that smartness from me – but I’ve come to realize that my wife is smart, in a broader way than me. (Maybe I’m not as smart as I think I am…?)

The way I view things now, is that: — I’m smart in some directions very narrowly, and my wife is more broadly smart than me.

Some examples (me);

• I once won first place in a statewide math contest
• I have a ’problem solving / engineer’ head — and can view something, understand it, and determine the best path to fix or improve it (if needed)
• I took way too many classes in college, but still ended up with an OK GPA
• I worked in the tech industry for decades, was successful, but was a bit of a dork – so I never really bumped up the management ladder at any company

My wife:

• Is more generally sensible
• She might not be able to ‘out math’ me, but she has a broader perspective – and generally knows the best path forward

I’d like to think that our children got a combination of our capabilities. Maybe they have a ‘math capable / engineering’ head like me, but also have more common sense than me — and can have a more-successful career than I had.

We’ll see how this all turns out.