Previous to Lockheed Martin, I was employed at the University of Central Florida as a Teaching Assistant for 2 semesters. After five months of unemployment (when Starburst shut down), I was happy to have some sort of additional income as well as the partial tuition waiver for graduate school that accompanied the position. The work load was not too difficult, but I definitely didn't enjoy grading papers, quizzes, etc.. Making it even more difficult was that I was enrolled in most of the classes that I was TAing for, so the people whose assignments I was grading were my peers. Even though I often felt like an a-hole in my grading harshness, I tried to be true to what I thought was fair and what the professors desired.
My first job out of undergrad school was at an Engineering Consulting firm called Starburst Technologies, Inc. which specialized in IC (integrated circuit) design. More specifically, ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) and FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) design. After 9/11/2001, when the economy went sour, the biggest Starburst clients started trimming the fat as many corporations do when times are lean, which includes consulting services. So in March of 2002, Starburst Technologies released all of its employees and closed its office doors for good.
I enjoyed working for Starburst and I find this particular field of Engineering quite fascinating. After the completion of my graduate degree in Computer Engineering, I hope to obtain another full-time position in the digital design arena, preferably in the Central Florida area. Yes, it's true that I've lived here most of my life and that I sure wouldn't mind experiencing other parts of the country. However, there are many reasons why I would prefer to stay put for the time being: Most of my family is here in the Orlando area. Amanda and I have been in this house, which we really like, for only 3 years. We have pretty decent neighbors and lots of great friends here too. It took us quite a while to find a church which we both liked and we are now happily involved in various aspects of serving God through it. Amanda started her job at Campus Crusade for Christ in January 2003, but has recently been promoted/transferred to a management position that she enjoys even more than her first. She is quite happy to be working there and also seem pretty happy with her presence and performance.
How it all began:
I think I've always had a pre-disposition for an engineering-related
field. As a child, I loved creating and building things with Legos,
Tinker-toys, Lincoln Logs, plastic models, whatever I was given.
I usually excelled in Math classes in school and I've always had a tendency
for tinkering.
I decided to become an electrical engineer because it seemed the most mysterious to me. When you look at a circuit board, there is nothing that can be ascertained as to its functionality. It's completely enigmatic, which is what makes it so interesting. In other words, it was the aspect of engineering that I knew the least about, so I pursued it.
I first became interested in digital design at UCF in Dr. Ritchie's 'Introduction to Digital Design' class. The more I learned, as basic as that class was, the more I realized just how incredible the possibilities are for creating, well, darned near any idea into a digital concept. So I took what few classes UCF had to offer in regards to digital design and/or HDL (Hardware Description Language) usage. I also attempted, with minor success, to program and implement a Xilinx FPGA into our Senior Design project. The success was minimal due to the fact that I received the necessary software (Foundation Series Express 1.5) with only 1 1/2 months left to complete it, no education on the matter, and minimal assistance from the staff, largely due to their lack of experience. In any case, the education that I had pursued on the matter, combined with the initiative I had taken to learn how to use the FPGA on my own earned me the employment at Starburst.