I was riding a natural high. I paid back the money I’d borrowed from family members for the last big order, and I was getting buried in work, drowning in orders from Lucent Technologies, Texas Instruments, and Dallas Semi. Decisions were piling on me like a ton of bricks. I made up my mind that the job offer at Credence was a lost cause, but I didn’t expect my personal life to implode so damn fast. I started realizing I had been working long hours and volunteering at church 30 hours a week to avoid confronting the changes in my marriage. The home life that was supposed to give me purpose? That was falling apart too. Zero support at home, no joy in the house—just a dark cloud of negativity. Bitterness and resentment hung in the air like an unspoken truth.
Even though we were going to church, Mormon-style, temple card holders, and the money was rolling in, none of it solved the real problem. I was foolish from the start and didn’t learn my lesson until years later. I had false expectations—buying things, providing for the family, thinking it would make my children’s mother care and support me—but it all turned out to be worthless. I had a woman haunted by her past, doomed to become the person she swore she’d never be, her mother. But there was no connection. Paying off bills, finishing the house remodel, whatever I did—it wasn’t hindering her transformation.
And then, out of nowhere, the phone rang. Steve Wolf from Teradyne in Boston wanted me to head down to San Jose for Semicon. I didn’t even hesitate. It was business. I put on my Mormon suit, the one that had no soul, and flew to California. Met the customer, sat down with them. Explained how I was going to offset the test head by 10mm by 15mm, slide it right into place. Told them there’d be some changes to their loader cover. They listened. They didn’t ask questions. Instead, they handed me a $30,000 purchase order like it was nothing. Just like that. One deal, no questions, a little math, a little grease, and suddenly, I was in.
I didn’t stop there. I filed for a patent on the J750. Sold about fifty of them — mostly to Microchip in Phoenix.
It felt like I was building something real, like this wasn’t just a one-off deal. There was a demand for my services, and the money came pouring in. But damn, that’s when the trouble started. When you start making money, you become a target. And trust me, I was already one. My old employer, Tokyo Seimitsu, the one I walked away from, gutted the department. They brought in a project manager, design engineers, mechanical engineers, office staff—basically, they replaced me. But it wasn’t just the engineers they hired. They also brought in a damn army of lawyers, and they weren’t happy with me. They didn’t waste any time.
I had a brilliant idea—create a website to showcase my product line, thinking it’d reel in more customers. I built the damn thing, complete with misspelled words and pictures of equipment that wasn’t even mine—LTX, Valastar, LT1101. Ripped straight off the Tokyo Seimitsu warehouse floor. It was obvious. A damn smoking gun just waiting to be handed to their lawyers. They caught me. The cease-and-desist letters came in like a flood. They were pissed, and they didn’t hold back. I was stealing their customers, poaching their orders, and it didn’t sit well with them. The letters got nastier by the day. Before I knew it, I had to hire an attorney. Jeff Love. Good guy, sharp as a tack, but expensive as hell. When he saw the case, he didn’t sugarcoat it. “You’re fucked,” he said. And he wasn’t wrong. The evidence was everywhere. The plagiarism. The stolen images. The orders. Hell, I was guilty as hell.
Then, the lawsuit threats came, $1 million demands. All for taking some damn pictures and trying to make a quick buck.
But the real shit hit the fan when I was called to Dallas. Texas Instruments wanted a meeting. I walked into a room full of engineers — plaid shirts, beige pants, the usual. They told me they weren’t happy with the Tokyo Seimitsu rings, the ones I had provided, were causing damage on the floor. It was a FOD issue — foreign object damage. The bronze bushings I used were chipping off, leaving metal shavings that were getting into the machines. When those silicon wafers hit the chuck, if there was any debris, it shattered the wafer. Millions of dollars in damage, they said.
I sat there for two hours while they ranted. When they were done, they asked when they could expect something from me. I didn’t hesitate. “How about tomorrow?” I said.
The looks on their faces? Priceless.
I spent the night in my Marriott room. Slept for a couple of hours, then went to work. Fifteen hours later, I showed up with a solution. The new ring, blue this time, covered every complaint they had. They were shocked. They made it their default ring. Stamped the first one “000” and the last one “890”. Sold them at $10,000 each. Cost me less than a thousand to make. But hey, when you’re on top, you might as well ride it until the wheels fall off.
The business was built on chaos, and it sure as hell wasn’t what I’d planned. Lucent Technologies calling me at home that day, or Texas Instruments demanding the VLCT rings—it hit me like a freight train. I was scared. I was in shock. Sleep? Forget it. I could barely keep my eyes closed, let alone rest. Church? I was there less and less. Family life? I put a wall between myself and everything that was supposed to matter. Production issues piled up, designs needing every ounce of attention to detail, lawyers breathing down my neck like wolves. I was on a ticking bomb, and I was right in the middle of it.
The whole damn thing was a mess from the start, but it was my mess. Built on chaos, much like my life—half-truths layered on top of each other, and I was just dancing through it, pretending I was the one pulling the strings. The world didn’t give a damn about my performance—hell, it didn’t even notice. It was all just noise and smoke, and I was right in the middle of it, breathing it in like it was where I was meant to be.
It was in my DNA, that old feeling. Not married, no kids, no Mormons, but God, I felt alive again. The survival tactics, the thinking ahead, the sharp edges—that was all me. It came natural.
Maybe I was fooling myself, thinking I had some control over what lay ahead, that I was the one driving this whole mess. But really, you’re just being yanked along by some unseen hand—whether it’s your ambition, your past finally catching up, or that sourness brewing in the wife. And the real kicker?
You only realize it when you’re already too deep in the shit to turn back, racing toward the end of the road, not knowing what’s waiting there.
