Hi,
I am in my late sixties, happily married with two daughters and two grandsons. Got exposed to electronics when I took a job converting 2-way mobile radios from 6 to 12 volts when the big-3 USA automakers upgraded electrical systems in 1956. Started in telecommunications in 1966 and provided "cover-all-job care" for a small exchange in the Florida islands. Later I lost a lot of my hearing in an Army training accident and took an interest in jobs a few clicks away from the end customers.
Picked up the edengineer name from a Telco Supervising Central Office Equipment (COE) Engineer using me as an example in his "how to" manuals. I am technically 85% deaf, do not hear all the letters in the alphabet and not a good writer. My way around this was to include an abundance of good diagrams and drawings with my engineering. In the USA Telco COE growth years, I was instrumental in bringing in CAD supplemented with markup tools, supporting drafters and workflow to circumvent the huge CAD learning curves. While these tools did increase quality of life for COE engineers, advances in technology have opened the doors for many improvements. Telco competition, mergers and acquisitions, industry "buy COTS and not build" policies, and a general lack of funding have slowed progress. I am optimistic that many application improvements can still be made without an extravagant budget. The possibility of improving quality of life for COE Engineers and Installers also plays into improving Telco infrastructure. While providing application support has been the best long-term money maker for me, I am looking forward to the days when retirement income will keep the wolves from the door and I can again focus on application development, and thus the connection with DaniWeb.
