Getting Back to It
After my longest absence since starting SemiSerious, I thought it was about time to get posting again. For the handful of people actually reading this blog, I feel terrible about not keeping it going through the early summer. I hope to ramp up again in August with weekly posts appearing regularly by the time September rolls around.
Unfortunately, I have nothing semiconductor-related to post today. Instead, I thought I would just give an update on where I’ve been. My father passed away in June. After travelling back to Saskatchewan with my wife and two daughters for the funeral and other things, we took an extended family vacation. It just seemed like the right time for the kids to be with their maternal grandparents.
Now that I think of it, maybe a post about Dad is connected to semiconductors. I guess you could say he was there on the ground as consumer products transitioned to solid-state technology. Around the time I was born in the mid-sixties, my father was off work from the seed cleaning plant because of a workplace injury. He decided to use his unproductive time to enroll in a home self-study course in electronics – radio and television technology and repair. That led to a moonlighting business fixing TV’s (in our basement), then to a job at the local electronic parts distibutor, and eventually to his owning and operating that same parts business.
It was watching Dad in the shop that ignited my own interest in electronics. He always enjoyed having his kids around, so there were lots of opporunities to see him working. Dad taught me the resistor color code and Ohm’s Law.
In a lot of ways, it was difficult for Dad to watch the industry migrate from vacuum tubes to semiconductors. He was fascinated by the transistor and the IC, but the ever-decreasing cost of electronic products unsettled him. Cheaper TV’s meant fewer would ever be repaired. But it was not just about the loss of business for himself and his colleagues. It meant that more things were just thrown away and piled up in landfills.
My Dad was born in Southern Saskatchewan to immigrant parents (first generation North Dakotans) and spoke only Norwegian until picking up English at school where he completed the eigth grade. He was 83.
Nice comments about your Dad, Don.
…Keith
Condolances about your dad Don.