A Day in the Life of a Rocket Scientist
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
Difficult to preview a photo-gallery, when images are not permitted; therefore I’ll try to describe the content in words. There are approx 1100 images on 229 pages. The images show the author and whatever background is necessary to tell the story. Each story image is described in brief captions. Other folks are shown in a few images to establish the context; but with their permission. The collection includes many images of hikes thru the redwoods (Mendocino, Butano, Big Basin, Redwood Canyon, Big Sur, Yosemite, etc), over local hilltops, along miles of spectacular sea-side bluffs, and along countless stretches of central California coast; kayaking out of Half Moon Bay and local waters; pub-crawls and scene-capture in faraway places (Iceland, Mexico, Africa, New Zealand, Eastern Europe, Ireland, England, France, Canada, Alaska, Hawaii), macho exploits (drags, moto-cross, skiing, snorkeling, sports-car rallies, air-shows, and more); and plenty family images. I’ve not included any images of the “rocket science” component of my life…. boring mainly and probably not appropriate due to security or IP issues, even after all these years. This collection is narcissistic, for sure, but offers fodder for my nostalgia, provides a glimpse of g-g-g-pop for any interested family down the years, and might dispel notions that all techie nerds lead boring lives.
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Book Details
About the Book
The book is a photo gallery—images from the life of a geek rocket scientist. I concentrate on myself mostly, but I also include images with relatives to document fun family events. These images are in no particular order and are not arranged by activity. The time spans are from early 1940s (scanned black and white film) through early 2015 (digital). Each image is composed and captioned to identify the moment. There are major unfortunate gaps in the record related to technology, timing, and problematic kids’ activity coverage. I would love to have retained images of me keeping three kids’ swings, swinging without getting kicked in the face or diving to catch a bailing-out toddler. Image quality is iffy in spots—all the author’s fault, not the publisher’s. Note also that I have always been irked by the popular impression that geeks and nerds have no life beyond boiling lab beakers and chalk-boarded equations. Wrong. In this book, I call myself a rocket scientist only as a stereotype catchphrase. I did only engineering chores in four aerospace firms surrounded by real scientists, who were themselves fully functional, fun-loving folks. Just because we were good at arithmetic did not doom us to boredom.
About the Author
The author is one of nine kids; his dad was a civil engineer working on wartime infrastructure; mom was a teacher, when possible. As the family grew, they moved from New Mexico to the Mexican border of Texas. His dad is now an IB&WC hydrologist working on dams and bridges. I remember good times, plenty outdoor games with siblings, reading every page in our encyclopedia, and every book in the local library. Later had part-time jobs, STEM high school, engineering degree, plenty kids and grandkids, lots of outdoor macho activities and family gatherings. Supporting all this is a series of tech jobs in aerospace, electronics, quality control, medical products, and operations management. The book’s images capture, admittedly narcissistically, a film or digital story of a great life of a stereotypical nerd.