CH- CH- CH- CHAAAANGES! Probably a good thing. But I really don't like changes.

[Note: This is going to be long and boring with very few interesting pictures. Honestly, there are much better ways to spend your time than reading this.] [Although there might be a few interesting bits here and there.] [Probably not though.]

Back in June of 1977, I graduated from the San Juan Basin Vocational-Technical School's two-year Electronics program. We spent as much time learning about vacuum tubes as transistors, and a very small amount of time learning about those newfangled integrated circuits. And no time learning about microprocessors since, for the most part, they didn't exist. 

I studied and got my First Class FCC license, which meant I could legally work at any broadcast station. But mostly I learned to fix TVs and other electronic things. I loved (and still love) having that as a super power, although it makes me sad that many things are no longer repairable.

Our class of '77 that went to Denver for FCC certification tests. (I'm in the center back row.) We made the local newspaper!!!

When I graduated, I went to Colorado Springs where my buddy Kcir (not his real name) was already working. I looked in the help wanted section of the newspaper and saw an ad for an employment agency. I went there and they set up two interviews for me: A long shot one with a company that was really picky and another with a store that needed someone to install car audio bits and CB radios.

I still have a CB radio (collecting dust in the garage). I was "The Cosmic Cowboy" in southwest Colorado. I once talked to the Rubber Duck - CW McCall!

The long shot worked out (much to the surprise of the employment agency), and the rest is some odd definition of history.

It has always boggled my mind that I managed to convert my vo-tech education, that included absolutely no writing classes, into a job as a technical writer for Apple Inc. Granted, this didn't happen overnight, but this is not how you envision career arcs to work.

I'll get into that career arc in a bit, but the main news is that I'm now retired. After a bit over 46 years working various jobs in the tech industry, I'm now able to just sit in a recliner and watch game shows all day. My initial goal was to wait until I turned 65 and could get Medicare, but then I realized that a more practical goal was to wait until Mrs. Notthat turned 65 (yes, I robbed the cradle a tiny bit - I'm nearly a year older than her). That happened this spring, and I finally took the leap at the end of November.

This wasn't a slam dunk of a decision - I had a pretty sweet setup, getting to work full-time from home on things that were mostly interesting and challenging. But I was noticing that I didn't attack new challenges with as much zeal as I used to. It was becoming harder for me to do some of the more boring and tedious bits of the job. 

But it's done. I flipped the table and walked out on November 30. 

There was a cake. A REALLY nice cake. It was not on the flipped table.

OK, let's get to that career arc thing.

June 1977: Ampex Corporation (Colorado Springs)

This was that long-shot job. There is an excellent chance you've never heard of Ampex Corporation. There is an even better chance that you have benefited in one way or the other from the things they invented. 

The area they hired me to work in was as an electronic technician on their new one-inch video tape recorders. (Up to this point, broadcasters had to rely on video tape recorders the size of a Ford Pinto that used two-inch wide tape - these were reel-to-reel machines where an hour of tape could weigh 30 pounds.)

Ampex VPR 1 one-inch video tape recorder - my introduction to professional video!

This was well before VHS or Betamax. 

After a year or so, I started getting opportunities to travel a bit for work - I spent several month-long stints in the Bay Area (where the Ampex headquarters was) helping to bring up new products. I even spent a month in Rome, Italy as a try out for being a field service engineer there (I bailed on that after realizing I wasn't as much of a hotshot as I thought I was). 

Finally, in…

August 1980: Ampex Corporation (Bethesda Maryland)

… I took the leap and became a field service engineer for the Mid-Atlantic region. This was an awesome job (for a while). I quickly knew where all the TV stations were in the area (Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and DC), as well as all the government facilities that had Ampex equipment (there were a LOT). There are many stories I could tell from this period, from having my company car stolen on April 1 (it made the news), being quickly ushered into a safe room due to an "issue" at the US Chamber of Commerce, spending enough time at the CIA headquarters that they got me a badge, spending enough time at the Pentagon to be able to find my way around proficiently (and standing in the center area while a newly elected Reagan gave a speech) - this was not a dull place to work.

It has always amazed me how often name gets spelled incorrectly.

Better than all of that though, is that this is where I met the soon-to-be Mrs Notthat - she worked in the same field office. Soon enough, our daughter (destined to be Weird Haired Mom) was born (oh man - another story) and the erratic-ness of the job got to be a challenge.

So in…

November 1984: Ampex Corporation (Redwood City California)

… I became an instructor, teaching one or two week classes to people that bought our stuff, showing them how to use and repair it. This position involved a fair amount of travel, often for two or three weeks at a time, but it was almost never spur of the moment type travel - it was planned and manageable. Occasionally Mrs Notthat and WHM got to come along on the international trips.

The sign along 101 that had been there forever, which is sadly now gone.

This was a pretty awesome job, but Ampex started to flounder a bit (they had totally missed the boat on consumer video recording, even though they held many critical patents on the process, and were missing the boat on the new digital TV boom that was just starting). So in…

September 1987: Abekas Video Systems (Redwood City California)

… I was lured away to an upstart competitor that was formed by three previous Ampex people - a company that there is even less of a chance you have heard of - Abekas. 

A fun thing was that, in addition to teaching classes much as I had at Ampex, I actually got a computer, and for the first time, started writing user manuals. (Ventura Publisher ring any bells for any of you? This was pre-Windows.) I still did a lot of travel, but the writing bit was a nice change. I had no real background in writing at all, but there was a great editor there that was able to point out how bad I was at this, but even better, point out ways I could get better.

One thing that happened after a few years was that I became a manager over a few people. Any of you that have successfully managed people, especially while doing a real job at the same time, are heroes. That was a rough time for me - I really didn't enjoy writing reviews and such and I didn't enjoy working with budgets. 

But I got better at it. I learned some survival skills. And then in…

December 1998: Accom Inc. (Menlo Park California)

… Abekas was bought by Accom, which was interesting since Accom was largely founded by the same people that founded Abekas (but had been bought out of Abekas by another company a few years previously). 

Many at Abekas were laid off at this point, and I was actually hoping to be one of them. But I was retained. I told the owner of Accom that I would likely quit rather than join them doing the same thing I was doing at Abekas, and he assured me that he had other plans for me.

Abekas had previously bought a Polish company that was in the cutting edge of virtual studios, ELSET. The idea was you could have a set with a green screen as the background and maybe a desk for the people to sit at, but then use a computer to generate a virtual background. This was all very clever and VERY complicated, but I enjoyed jumping into it and learning all of its peculiarities. 

This person is standing on a plain, green stage - SGI computers are providing the background. The trick is having the background track any camera moves and setting objects to be in front of or behind the person.

This was a tough job though - many long nights and weekends spent working through all of this, plus a LOT of travel. By now, our son had been born, WHM was getting older, and travel, even planned travel, became hard. This was an amazing experience - working with the Polish engineers was a highlight of my working life - but it took a pretty huge toll.

In December of 1999, Abekas sold ELSET to a competitor based out of Israel, ORAD. That would guarantee an even heavier travel load, so I bowed out, and in…

January 2000: Spruce Technologies

… I became a tech writer (almost no travel!) for Spruce Technologies, a small company that made DVD authoring software for professionals. DVDs were a hot new thing - at the time I started there, I did not own and had never even watched a DVD. I had no idea about how you could do all kinds of clever things with them using menus and other tricks to create some pretty wild experiences. 

One of the user manuals I worked on for Spruce.

This was a great job - it was a fairly small company so I ended up doing a lot more than just writing user manuals and online help. It was a blast. 

In 2001 rumors started that we were up for sale. People were nervous. Some ambitious plans had not born the fruit that had been expected. There was serious competition. There was a layoff. (I survived it, and gained the office plant that I still have.)

Our authoring software was based on Windows NT, so it felt likely that we would logically end up with a Windows-based company. So naturally, in…

July 2001: Apple Incorporated

… we found out that Apple, who had their headquarters just down the street from us (I did not know that at the time - I was seriously into Windows at the time), had bought us. This was a massive surprise, but Apple's current DVD authoring software, DVD Studio Pro, was based on their OS 9 operating system. The new OS X operating system was going to require a complete rewrite, so it wasn't that big of a deal to start with a bunch of Windows engineers.

A lot of people were not kept as part of the acquisition, and I had large doubts that I would be kept, but I was - I think a few people said nice things about me, although I joke that there was an accounting error involved. 

Starting at Apple was really something:

• It was the first time since Ampex that I was at a company with several thousand employees. It took some adjusting to get used to that.
• It was the first time I was working at a company most people had heard of. I started getting contacted by people I hadn't talked to in years, asking about employee discounts.
• I had to learn to use a new operating system. Ever since Abekas, where I first started using a computer, I worked with Microsoft DOS and, later, Windows. My home computers had all been (and were still) Windows. We had an iMac at Spruce for testing our authored DVDs, but that was the extent of what I knew about them. 

I started in the help writing team for the Pro Apps - Final Cut Pro, Compressor, Motion, Cinema Tools, and mostly, DVD Studio Pro. After a few years, I moved over to the tech writing part of the Productivity team, which started with the iWork apps then slowly grew to include several other apps.

My first, and most obscure, Apple user manual.

I loved working at Apple - there were normal challenges like long days and weekends, and office politics like at any large company, but there was also the huge satisfaction of working on applications that were used by millions of enthusiastic people. (Granted, that also means that millions of people are going over the help and user manuals, and will eagerly point out any issues they find.)

All of that makes it amazing I got away with my proudest accomplishment at Apple:

My primary editor at the time ("Hi Nitsirk, not your real name") would not shut up about two things: The Giants (which was OK by me), and lemurs. All lemurs. Anything that had anything to do with lemurs. 

(Fun disturbing fact: A bit after this manual was out in the wild, I had a dream that the Lemur Preservation Society sued Apple over this since it was spreading wildly false information. When I talked to them, they said that they actually thought the text was funny, but they had to make a point, and were sorry that I was likely to get fired over this. It was not a great dream.)

And that's about it. A bit over 46 years of working in technology (I left out all the jobs I had in high school and before that. Many of those are worth their own posts.)

The obvious question is what am I going to do now. I don't really know. There are lots of projects around the house that will keep me plenty busy. It will be a period of adjustment, and I'm confident I will adapt.

But for now, there are game shows to watch.

That's it - move along…