Riding Off Into the Sunset

Today is the last day of the semester at California State University, Sacramento. Next Wednesday, grades are due, and the 2024/2025 academic year is officially over. It is also the end on my 20th semester as a faculty member at Sacramento State - the end of my 10th year on this job. Due to my "classification" as non-tenured, contractual faculty (and about 60% of the California State University system faculty across all 23 campuses), I am officially unemployed until I am offered and accept a new assignment in the fall. While that has always been probable, it has never been certain. However, because of the state budget deficit, for the coming school year that probability is reduced to, "who knows?"

In my case, it's not as dire as it is for many others in my position. I was planning to retire after the fall semester anyway - right when the fall semester officially ends in early January. But I am eligible now and, if push comes to shove, will retire the day before the fall semester begins. It is not ideal, but it is workable. What it means in the right-here, right-now is the same thing it means at the end of the previous nine years - 10 weeks of “every day is Saturday.” As I've said many times before, it is my second most favorite part of my job. The best part? Being in the classroom. Not the prep work, not the bureaucracy and not the grading, but actually holding class.

1982 Harley Davidson FXR

Until I know more, it's business as usual. A summer of Saturdays awaits. I have two big motorcycle events planned and a bike to get finished. My pending grading this semester, unlike those in past, is much less daunting - partly because I am pretty good at it now and partly because of how this semester's schedule played into it. I am feeling some distant pressure due to uncertainty about the future, but nothing is bearing down on me like it usually is at the end of a semester. In fact, the pressure to get my '82 FXR Shovelhead done is far greater. But that's not a bad thing.

I have had, in the past, felt the ire of those who must work through the summer, from those who get, maybe, two or three weeks of vacation time every year. I get two and a half to three months. But there is a difference. Where that two or three weeks in a normal, year-round job is "paid vacation," mine is not. I still get a paycheck through the summer, but it's money I already earned - they "distribute" my pay over 12 months. It's not by choice (like it is in K-12) - if it was, I would choose to get it when I earned it. But, because of my official "unemployed" status, I am eligible (and collect) unemployment, too. It doesn't make up for what I would get paid - not even close - but it does make my summer monthly intake of money (as opposed to income, which should be paid in real time) greater, but without having to report to a job.

None of this is my call or my choice. I would rather the CSU just hire us rather than contract us. But they do not and, from what I can tell, the reason is due to the budget situation we are facing now. In lean times, they do not have to fire us, they do not have to lay us off, all they have to do is not give us classes. We, as non-tenured, contractual employees, do have certain rights regarding work, but per out collective bargaining agreement, work is always contingent on budget and enrollment. And there is never a guarantee. In official EDD language, I do not have "reasonable assurance of future employment." And until I sign an offer letter AND teach a given class past the census date (the last day a class can be cancelled), I never do, no matter how "probable" work is.

I have been dancing this dance with the CSU and with Employment Development Department (who has "investigated" me three or four times) for 10 years. Cue the bureaucracy. It is insane that they would continue to hassle us about what is rightfully ours - and spend even a dime investigating us when there are literally billions of dollars (with a "B") in real fraud they allowed to happen. Our union, the California Faculty Association, helps us navigate this quagmire and urges us to put aside the shame that some in both the CSU and EDD systems want us to feel for taking what is rightfully ours. And again, we did not create this - they did. And they could eliminate it by simply hiring us.

At the end of the day, none of it matters too much to me, personally. It still matters and for those who are in my position and not at retirement yet; it matters quite a lot, personally, to them. But I will be riding off into the sunset soon, maybe a few months sooner than I planned, but still soon. I do not know when I will be “celebrating” my retirement, which sucks a little, but I’m not real big on personal celebrations like that anyway. It’s also nothing new, that sort of shit has never been my story. I need a “Plan A” and a “Plan B,” but no “C,” “D,” or “E.” And for those who are still envious of the abundance of time I get? I have a simple solution: Do what I do. You’ll find that the time off is pretty fucking cool, but as not cool as actually being in the classroom. That’s what makes my job so special. And whether I retire in August or January, I’ll miss that.

Twilight

It's About Time and... Money 

Next week, classes begin for the spring semester at California State University, Sacramento (Sac State). It will be the beginning of my 20^th semester teaching there since returning from my four years of PhD coursework at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge. While I had completed my coursework, my comprehensive exams and advanced to doctoral candidacy, I was not yet finished. But I was finished in Baton Rouge, and it was time to find a job. I ended up with this gig in the fall of 2015 and, while I never did finish the work necessary for the PhD, I did manage to get another master’s degree (and the unofficial degree of “ABD” – all but dissertation). But that is a story I have told many times, one I will likely tell again, but not now. The point is that, although I am beginning the end of my 10^th year as a faculty member at Sac State, I was teaching undergraduate college students as a graduate student since 2008 (at Sac State) and 2011 (at LSU).

 

When I enrolled in Sac State’s communication studies MA program, I did not know, for sure, what I wanted to do with that degree. All I knew for sure was that, among the things I discovered since getting sober in 2004, I am good at school. That was never the case before. There are several factors that played a role, not the least of which is the fact that my brain was no longer polluted by drugs and alcohol. But I was also 46 years old. My focus was keener, my time was shorter, my urgency was greater, and my satisfaction was off the charts. I was seriously having fun. My undergraduate GPA in the dual major of poly-sci/journalism at Sac State was 3.87; my parting GPA after two years at San Diego State University from 1983-1985 was 0.7 – the contrast could not be starker.

 

I did not even know what area of communication studies I wanted to pursue. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t clear on what the areas were or even that it made any real difference. I might have if my undergrad was in communication studies, but, although journalism at Sac State is in the communication studies department, I was a journalism student. In fact, had Sac State offered a journalism MA, I would taken that route. In fact (part deux), I almost entered the MA program in public policy. All of this points to an economy that was, at the time, not good – especially for middle-aged aspiring journalists. That industry, especially the part that I gravitated toward – print journalism – was shrinking quickly. I needed credentials and, at my age, I needed them badly.

 

My plan was to get the MA and use it to get a job with the state, but I also had an idea that I would like to take it and use it to teach at the community college level. I had (and still have) a great deal of respect and admiration for what the community college system does, what it did for me and, in particular, the instructors employed there. I thought that would a cool job, and I knew an MA was enough to qualify for it. It took a semester of student teaching at Sac State before I made that decision – but, that was all it took. That first semester solidified my career aspirations, my concentration withing the discipline of communication studies (generally, rhetoric, but I have narrower interests within it now), and it turbo-charged my excitement for academia. By the time I neared the end on the MA program, several key people in my world suggested that I expand my aspirations beyond an MA and beyond the community college system by applying to a PhD granting (R1) university.

 

That’s how I ended up in Baton Rouge and LSU. There’s a lot more to that part of the story, but after living, studying and teaching there for four years, it was time to come home. In the summer of 2015, after several applications to different jobs both inside of and outside of academia, I landed my current position. I am, technically, a “temporary, part-time” employee, a member of the “adjunct” faculty. About 60% or so of the 23-campus California State University system's faculty members are non-tenured, like me. However, through a series of contracts, I have been there almost 10 years. And… I am just a little less than one year from retiring. At the conclusion of the fall 2025 semester, my 21^st in this job, I will retire, at 63 years old. I will be putting both the Social Security and the CalPERS wheels in motion very soon.

 

Unfortunately, I haven’t been at this job long enough to get a “full pension” from CalPERS, but it, combined with SSI, will be enough. Further, I will have the opportunity to work “post annuity” on a limited, part-time basis, after a six-month waiting period. That means, if I choose to do so, I can go back in the fall of 2026 and teach a couple of classes per semester. Why would I do that? There are two reasons: One is obvious – for the money. The other is, perhaps less so; I really like my job. It’s the best job and/or career I have ever had. It’s too bad I did not find it earlier, but I am forever grateful that I found it at all. Why retire then? Because… time. One of the best parts of this job is the large breaks in between semesters. I enjoy that time immensely. The other thing about time is that we do not know how much we will get. One of my best friends passed six months after working up to his full retirement. Six fucking months.

 

I am always reminded of a quote from Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame – “No amount of money ever bought a second of time.” What will I do with all that time? I have no idea, no specific plans, no particular intentions, save one: If I sell it to anyone else, be that an institution, a company or an individual, it will be on my terms and on my… time.

In Another life

As if in another life, almost another world, and certainly when I was a much different man, I wore many different hats. They have been ball caps, hard hats and hats that weren’t hats, like suit jackets and ties. Each has been a composition of time, place, circumstance and opportunity and each has formed who I am today. And, today, one of those lives has decided to make a reappearance. It was a “white-collar” time, a time when I moved, not exactly comfortably, in and among the Silicon Valley brain trust, the engineers, primarily, who would drive innovation and determine future production.

 

I wasn’t part of it “at the beginning,” not of Silicon Valley proper, but I do remember when the Santa Clara Valley became Silicon Valley. It was in the 70s, I was still a kid. My dad, a Ph.D. chemist by trade, worked for SRI International (formerly, the Stanford Research Institute). He had contacts and friends who were very much involved, in some way, in the semiconductor industry. While chemists are certainly employed by these companies, they are mostly after the engineers. One of those contacts at some time in the 70s asked my dad if he could solve a problem – a chemistry problem – that was within his realm of expertise.

 

It was not for a semiconductor, exactly, but rather for a means of handling their semiconductors. They were called “beam-lead diodes” and were made from the far more expensive semiconducting compound of GaAs (gallium-arsenide) because silicon would not operate effectively at the microwave frequencies required for the military applications these diodes were needed for. (I know I am getting into the technical weeds here, but bear with me). The name of the diode, “beam-lead,” is an appropriate description of their tiny leads; they look like beams protruding off of the diode. These tiny diodes are fragile enough, their even tinier “beams,” so easily knocked off, are even more-so. One broken lead renders the entire device worthless. At about $1,000 per diode, so small they are hard to see without magnification, every damaged beam was a lot of money.

 

The way they came up with handling them was to use a rubber-like “gel,” a silicone (not silicon, that is something entirely different) applied to a two-inch square glass slide that the diodes would “stick” to, but still release from with a dab of alcohol. It seemed to work, when it worked. The problem was that they could not get the gel to cure consistently. It is a two-part resin and when applied that thin, it is difficult to get the curing agent to react properly. Someone from either Hewlett-Packard or Raytheon (I don’t remember who was first) asked for help and my dad solved the problem. Then, since they had no desire to be in the chip handling business in the first place, they asked if he would just make these damned things for them. After crunching the numbers, my dad and mom saw it would be a profitable part-time endeavor. “Beam-Pak” was born – in our garage. And our kitchen. And our family room.

 

This is where I am going to fast-forward – a lot. I don’t remember exactly when the first Beam-Paks went out the door, although I do, very distinctly, remember the first Beam-Paks going out the door. Eventually, though experimentation, the “gel” in the Beam-Pak found its way into other applications and, as the market grew to more than just beam-lead diode manufacturers, the name was changed to “Gel-Pak.” While our market was still primarily high-value GaAs semiconductors – FETs (field-effect transistors) and MMICs (monolithic microwave integrated circuits) – the business outgrew our garage and our home. Over the years, the business moved to larger and larger facilities in Mountain View and Sunnyvale, employed more than 20 full-time employees and employed several family members, myself included - two or three different times.

 

At one point, my dad was faced with not so much a chemistry problem, but an engineering one, a physics one. It had to do with automation. While Gel-Paks did an outstanding job holding these fragile, high-value chips in place during handling and transport, they still had to be manually transferred out of the package to wherever they needed to be. Automation used vacuum wands to handle chips, and a vacuum is not enough to break the surface tension formed between the bottom of the chip and the gel. Between my dad and his partner at the time, they came up with, and patented, a unique way to temporarily break that surface tension when needed, on demand. The new system was called “Vacuum-Release” because a vacuum drawn under the gel would pull it away into recesses that would allow the chip to only be in contact with bumps of gel, not the entire surface. And it was reversible, when the vacuum is released, the gel becomes flat again.

 

Armed with this new technology, Gel-Pak (eventually incorporated as Vichem Corp, still family owned) was able to sell the advantage of complete safety during shipping and handling along with ease of removal for automated assembly. It was the best of both worlds. However, because our product was considerably more expensive than the competition, we were still limited to only very expensive chips and, at the time, that meant not silicon, but GaAs. However, in the late 80s, Intel was getting ready to introduce its new processor, the i486. I ran into an Intel engineer at a trade show (probably Semicon West) and found that, in the early production, these chips had very low wafer yields and were being packed and transported prior to assembly. And that was a problem. This was damaging what was left of their already low yields.

 

Our containers would have solved the problem, but their chips were too big and our packs were too small. We got busy and came up with a larger format VR package that would accommodate their processors and, sometime thereafter, Intel became our largest customer. We might have been selling packages for silicon chips before (and we had a variety of other applications, too), but this time it was big, literally and figuratively. We continued to grow, continued to explore new markets, continued to adapt and develop our technology for new applications and, no matter what the economy was doing, we remained very profitable.

 

Eventually, a combination of personal issues in my life, corporate changes in the company and a bunch of other bullshit – some of it my doing, some not – led me to depart the company for the last time. My title when I left was “marketing manager,” but I did a lot of everything. I, still, have seriously mixed feelings about it all. A couple of years later, my dad sold the company, consulted for it for another year, and retired. It’s still around, still making the same products we developed. I don’t know if it still seeks the opportunities the way we did, I don’t even know if that world still exists. That time in Silicon Valley was heady; it was fast, new things were happening all the time. It was a full-time job just keeping up with what was going on, staying ahead of the curve… finding out what the Intels needed before they knew they needed it.

 

So, what brought all this back? Well, in the news recently, Google unveiled its new quantum chip, “Willow.” I don’t pretend to understand what all it means other than to understand that quantum computers are the next big thing, and this is a step towards that. In stories about it, there is a photo of this new chip, on a gloved hand. Between that chip and that hand is a Gel-Pak VR tray. It is exactly the same thing I used to show to potential customers back in the late 80s and early 90s. It is still doing what it was designed to do – protecting a high-value, fragile chip while still allowing it to be released from its captive state on demand with a simple vacuum. The technology is no longer protected by its patent, but it is the same patented technology developed all those years ago. 

***Correction: Beam-lead diodes were actually fabricated from silicon, not GaAs. They were still fragile and expensive, but not GaAs. Fets and MMICs were GaAs. Some other small details are also subject to minor errors due to my aging memory.

 

every.single.fucking.day

Twenty years ago today I “celebrated” my 42^nd trip around the sun. Why the scare quotes? There are two reasons, really. The first is simple history. My birthdays have never been all that – ever. Where I once had expectations for actual celebration, I no longer do and, ironically enough, I prefer it that way. I have come to see these things as more pomp than circumstance, more superficial than real. The same can be said of most socially created days of recognition, but this day 20 years ago was particularly bad. This day twenty years ago warrants the ”scare” in the scare quotes.

 

I don’t remember it in any specifics, but I do remember that part of my life – and there really weren’t any good days. Beyond being alive and not incarcerated, life pretty much sucked. I was at the end of a five-year downward spiral that began 25-30 years earlier. The end of the end had already come and gone; I was at the beginning of the beginning – again. I went from a near-death, self-inflicted wreck in 2000, to incarceration in 2002, to a six-month in-patient addiction recovery program in March of 2003 to getting my shit together and going back to school in the fall of 2003 to relapsing at the end of 2003 to violating probation and picking up a new charge in April of 2004 to two more incarcerations in the fall of 2004, finally getting released some time in late September or early October with about 60 days sober (or clean, if that matters to you). That’s a really long sentence and it reflects how long that last year and a half felt – the world’s slowest roller coaster. 

 

By this time in 2004, with about four months sober, it was worse than it was the first time. I was, this time, on my own. I did not have the structure or the community of a “recovery home.” I did not have the faith or trust of my family. I did not have a job, and I felt as though I flushed what was a shitload of promise in going back to school right down the toilette. I was miserable, but I knew that if I gave probation one dirty test, I could multiply that misery exponentially – the next step was not jail again, it was state prison. And here it was, my fucking birthday. Yet another shitty one.

 

I almost said “Fuck this!” on Thanksgiving (another socially constructed superficial celebration) just a couple of weeks prior. I would again on New Years eve. But I managed to stay sober and stay out of prison, and, with the help of a school counselor, I found a path back into school. In January 2005 I went back with a plan to transfer to California State University, Sacramento in the fall. Things started to get better. I started to succeed. I was getting good grades again. I was enjoying the fruits of my labor, and those fruits were not monetary. One day, I realized that it had been some time, several days at least, that I was not angry. It hit me like a bolt of lightning. I spent most of every day for I could not remember how long being pissed off about everything. Being angry all the time is fucking exhausting. 

 

What I was experiencing was a taste of freedom. It was not a permanent state, but it did grow. The days, weeks and months went by. Birthdays came and went. Some were better than others, one (my 48^th), in particular, was actually kind of cool, but mostly they were just another day. Today, my 62^nd, is that – just another day. It has been 20 years since I literally started my life over again, since I literally rose from the ashes. I didn’t do it alone, I had a lot of help along the way from friends, family and two different 12-step fellowships, but the simple truth – for all of us phoenix’s – is that without the effort we put into our own lives, our own resurrections, it will not happen. 

At 42 years-old, there was no light; I moved forward anyway – on faith, because there was nothing for me in the rearview but more bad. I could not, in a million years, have predicted where my life would take me. While I do, sincerely, appreciate the well-wishes that inevitably come to me on this day every year, I don’t need a bunch of minions celebrating the day of my birth – I celebrate life every.single.fucking.day.

 

 

Home Again - Redux

 

My hometown high school in Los Altos was part of a three-school district called the Mountain View Los Altos Union High School District. The fist school opened in 1902 but moved to Castro Street in downtown Mountain View in 1924. The next one was opened in Los Altos on Almond Ave. in 1954. Finally, in 1961, Awalt High School opened on the Mountain View-Los Altos border near Grant Rd. The mascots were, respectively, the Eagles, the Knights and the Spartans.

 

The last graduating classes for the Mountain View Eagles, the Los Altos Knights and the Awalt Spartans was 1981. The district decided to close one of the schools and it was decided that it would be the oldest (and probably most valuable real estate asset), Mountain View High School. Beginning with the 81/82 school year, Awalt would become Mountain View High School, but not the Eagles - it would keep the Spartan. And while Los Altos HS would keep its name, the Eagles would fly there. The respective school colors would follow the mascots; Awalt-turned-Mountain View would remain the same, Los Altos would get the colors of the Eagle from old MVHS.

 

I graduated from LAHS in 1981 - the last of the LAHS Knights. That was the end of a 27-year reign of the Knights. It probably isn't a big deal to anyone in Los Altos or Mountain View today. In fact, where Mountain View High School once stood, all that is left is a park called "Eagle Park" where the football field once was. The rest is all gone. But it all happened 43+ years ago. Although the initial transition was huge, the majority of these schools' histories are from then to now - by a lot. And, it goes without saying to anyone who came from a Silicon Valley small town from before it was Silicon Valley, everything has changed. Everything.

 

Almost 15 years ago, I started a group on Facebook called "Los Altos High School Knights" dedicated to LAHS alumni from that era. In it we reminisce about our time in high school, the time we spent in a town that barely resembles what it is today, and we try to keep alive and appreciate the idyllic place and time we grew up in. For better and for worse, the world is not like it was 50 years ago. Yes, there have been major improvements in countless areas, but along the way we have lost so much. And some of what we have lost is an innocence that made growing up, somehow, much more authentic.

 

My parents still live in the same house I grew up in. I go back a handful of times every year to visit for various different occasions. I went yesterday for Thanksgiving. The following is what I posted in our group. To say it resonated would be a huge understatement. It blew up.

 

Home again

 

I am currently sitting on the front porch at my parents house, the same house I lived in all the years I attended Santa Rita, Egan and LAHS. It has changed over the years, the neighborhood has, too. But, overall, both are similar enough to be recognizable. A time traveler dropped here from 1970 would know this place.

 

I drove here, for Thanksgiving, from Sacramento earlier this afternoon. I’ll be returning tonight. I came straight here, off Bayshore, down Old Middlefield, San Antonio… and here. Some of what I passed looks eerily the same, much more isn’t remotely so. And I know what most of the rest of Los Altos looks like. I’ve been, it’s not likely to have changed back.

 

I have no plans to drive down any memory lanes. There are precious few memories left standing. I come here four or five times per year, but of late, it’s been only here. What was Los Altos still lives, but not in a physical space. It lives with me and with y’all. Sadly, when we are gone, all that will be left are these archives - our pictures, our words and our memories enshrined in binary bits on some server somewhere.

 

It was a good place to be a kid. Maybe it still is, but not in the same way. The world has moved beyond such simple pleasures. I am quite sure we are not the first nor will we be the last to reflect on the passing of our childhood fixtures - these are not new revelations.

Still, I am profoundly thankful to have had what I consider to be an idyllic youth, even if I did not recognize it at the time. I am prouder today than I ever was then to be a Knight. And, appropriately, this is Thanksgiving.

 

Happy Thanksgiving, Knights.

Semester's End... Again

Getting a spike in student emails at the end of the semester, right when the "big things" are coming due, is nothing new. It happens every semester and the variety and creativity of the excuses never ceases to amaze me. And I am not here to judge the validity or legitimacy of them. I actually do not care - produce the documentation necessary, as required by the university, and it is an "excused absence." Done. I don't give two shits if it is the third time your grandmother died this term.

However, an excused absence does not excuse a student from completing the required work. I think most of them understand that and that - excused and legitimate or not - they are just looking for more time, but there is a trend I'm starting to notice that indicates perhaps a new level of coddling is happening somewhere before they get to me. Some of these students seem to believe that if they have an "excuse" of significant magnitude, that is disruptive enough in their personal lives, that it not only excuses their absence (I almost never "take roll" anyway), but it also excuses them from doing whatever project was assigned to them when their lives were disrupted.

I am not sure what they expect. Am I supposed to just remove that project and the associated points from the total and calculate their grade on what they did do? Do I take their average of what they did do, insert that in the grade space for that project and then calculate their grade? Am I expected to recognize - and award credit for potential? Does "deserving grace" equal merit as shown by performance? And how is that going to be received by the rest of the class - you know, the ones who did do the work?

 

 ID 5291693 | School © Jimmy Lopes | Dreamstime.com

In every case, when I receive these emails of personal hardship, my response is empathetic (been there), but also pragmatic. I can both understand and explain that there is no way to award credit for work that was not done - excused or not, legitimate or not, documented or not, whether I believe it or not. None of that matters and at this very moment, there are exactly six days left of the regular semester before finals week begins. Time is also a factor. I get the feeling that there are students who were counting on their excused absence also excusing them from the work. This is not exactly new, but it is much, much more prevalent.

I don't know where this is happening, but somewhere they are learning this works. I hope it's not happening in college classes, but I'd bet there are some overly sympathetic professors who do give grades, that were not earned, because of circumstances beyond a student's control. But my students are mostly freshmen and sophomores - they are not learning this in college. It’s coming with them, from high school, from middle school - but ultimately, it's coming from their parents.

Stop it.