Enlightenment

I remember a moment when a respected team associate pointed out a milestone in my career. Rich was probably the most brilliant Electrical Engineer I have worked with. We were working with high-speed sewing systems, incredibly fast 9000 rpms systems that could ramp up to speed in 200 ms and process garments at the rate of 12” per second. The systems were supervised by a Motorola based controller running state logic, if you don’t know what state logic is look it up. On the garment we were processing there as a single thread hanging out, he was instructed to change the program by 2 ms and handed me a new EEPROM. Triumphantly returning to him to declare victory over the concern, I told him was that I recognized how much I didn’t know and he quickly rewarded me with the honor that I was now as brilliant as he was. We went on to be the first team to successfully integrate stepper motors into industrial sewing systems, something smarter individuals could not accomplish, if you are not impressed this was 30 years ago. Takeaway, be humble, determined and confident.