My last real corporate job was at ADAPTIVE Corporation, a startup funded by Network Equipment Technologies. This company's CEO was Audrey MacLean. The team that Audrey recruited consisted of the top people in the computer networking field who I was humbled by and proud to be learning from. I was the most junior engineer at the company when I joined in 1989 as employee number 16. The first phase of my work there was to build and support the hardware and software development network. I was promised a slot in development (any place I wanted, if I recall) once I completed that task and hired my replacement, Barbara Cooley, to take over the network. Roger Cheung, the VP of Engineering, who led the entire engineering effort was a great engineer and emphasized the “Simple Solution Wins” concept at every turn. I don’t know that our product (the STM-18) was such a simple design, but he did his best to keep us all in line. About the time of my transition, Roger brought in a gentleman named Brantley Coile for an interview. I was asked to interview him (as it turned out, he interviewed me) on the day of his visit. Brantley worked for DCS in Georgia engineering some of their switching equipment. He went to university briefly, studying drama, then followed the path to engineering instead (thank goodness for me!). Just before Brantley took the job at ADAPTIVE, he briefly worked at AT&T with Dennis and Ken (the originators of much of today's computer science and operating system work in UNIX, Plan 9, etc.) in a position reserved for those with PhD's. This was a huge testament to his skills as a computer scientist. Brantley, Grant Haidinyak, Brad Benson and myself formed the team that worked on the Generic UNIX (GUN) system that was control processor for the ADAPTIVE STM/18 switch. We very quickly used the acronym GUN in many ways (we worked in the GUN Shop with 19” racks of systems called GUN Racks, etc). If anyone has any photos of those days, I would love to add some to this site. While I worked with the GUN Smiths in the GUN Shop, Brantley took me under his wing and really taught me how to write very compact, clear and easy to understand code. His philosophies permeated not just my professional life, but my personal life as well. For example, I was raised by one of my parents to think that telling a "little white lie" was acceptable. I will never forget the day Brantley sat me down to explain that no lie is acceptable, even a little one. He really helped me to become a better person in every way. I will be grateful the rest of my life for the lessons and tools he gave me. At ADAPTIVE Brantley and I were busy working 80+ hours a week and I was learning at a furious pace. I had just received the biggest percentage raise at ADAPTIVE (25%, I think) and my salary was a whopping $40,000 per year. If you do the math, that is about $10.00 per hour. When I was 16, I was installing IBM minicomputers making $35.00 per hour. Now I was an engineer with a BS in Computer Engineering, 3+ years of professional experience, been programing since I was 12 years old, and I was making $10.00 per hour. I very quickly did some math (is 10 < 35?) and decided I had to make a change. This, coupled with the fact that Brantley was tired of all the strange people in California, caused me to try to come up with another solution.