AB3A's Journal: Who I am

Just so people know, I don't usually hide behind pseudonyms. My name is Jake Brodsky and yes, that's my ham callsign. I've been a ham since 1975.

I'm also an electrical enginner, an industrial software programmer and analyst, an instrument rated private pilot, a beer brewer, kite flier, farmer wannabe, and happily married father of two pre-school children.

By the way, a "happy marriage" is not the same as a marriage without a strife, stress, or battles for limited resources such as time, money, or understanding. My wife and I have issues like that all the time. Learning to bend, negotiate, and respect one another is a big deal. It sounds simple in abstract, but putting it to practice is not easy and we have plenty of friends and relatives who haven't figured this out.

My concerns in techno-politics specifically include RF spectrum management (or the lack thereof), Intellectual property rights (a simple term for a broad cross section of issues), and societal issues such as how we teach our kids and what we teach them.

My humor tends to be on the practical joke side. If I ever make it to a Slashdot meetup, beware. I'm a big fan of rubber chickens.

I work for a local water and sewer utility. You all probably are wondering what a geek like me does there. Well, it's not exactly public knowledge, but utilities all over are growing automation out of their ears as they finally discover the cost benefits to running this way. However it's still a hard sell.

Our managers were used to throwing people at a problem, not hardware. They're scared of complexity --and they're not entirely wrong, if past experiences are any judge. This is not one of the red-hot sexy industries. Very few intelligent, well qualified people want to work on hardware and software that takes shit from the public every single day of the year (I mean this literally!). I do it because I like being the one smart guy on staff, even though my peers often can't comprehend what I say. Yes, it's an ego trip. But in the scheme of ego trips I've seen, it's hardly the worst I know if.

So I program PLC and SCADA systems. I build industrial communications networks. I design RF toys, and I get paid for this. I started at an entry level position, and these days I'm finally making a reasonable salary. It's much like any government job. Seniority means more than performance. So I don't put any more performance than I have to on the job. That way I can still manage to pull off the occasional miracle or two where the situation really demands it.

That's my life in a very short description. It's not flashy, but I have a life away from the keyboard. And to me, that's what matters.