Ever since I was a kid six years old, I wanted to be an inventor. Like Thomas Edison, or Alexander Graham Bell, or Leonardo DaVinci. Coming up with new ideas (some crazier than others) was and is one of my favorite things to do.

But as I got older, I noticed that you don’t very often hear of inventors nowadays. I wasn’t sure they existed anymore.

I was interested in airplanes when I was young and considered being a pilot, but flying commercial planes sounded too boring! I was good at math and physics, and I got into programming at an early age, so those seemed like natural fields for me to go into.

In the summer before my senior year in high school, I went to Terre Haute, Indiana to participate in a summer engineering camp at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, which is where I ultimately went to college. With the help of one other student, I designed and built a radio-controlled hovercraft. Unfortunately, the main motor seemed to interfere with the radio communications — the rudder would operate perfectly when the main fan was off, but when it was on (which is of course necessary for hovering) the rudder would be erratic and the vehicle was difficult to control. But overall it was a success. It did hover and it was somewhat steerable.

After college, I went to work for a startup company called Applied Science Fiction in Austin, Texas. It was incredible. This company was developing a device that was unlike anything that had ever been built before. It was a new invention and I got to help develop it. It reawakened my childhood dream. There were times when I would look forward to going to work each day. I stayed late because I was having more fun working than if I were to go home and goof off (which at the time usually meant playing computer games).

After five years of seeing Applied Science Fiction nearly go bankrupt, the company finally got bought by Kodak. I decided there was no future for me at Kodak so I soon left for Raytheon near Dallas, Texas. I no longer had a job that let me be an inventor like I had been in Austin, but I was determined to do what I enjoyed so much, even if it wasn’t at work.

I bought some electronic components and boards for prototyping, and built myself a binary clock. It features an innovative modification from the more common design that makes it much, much easier to read! A couple years later I bought a miniature lathe and milling machine, which greatly broadens the range of things I can potentially build. So far I have not completed anything particularly useful, but I have made some precision metal tops, some of which can spin for up to five minutes!

To help me prioritize (and remember), I’ve made three lists of ideas. One is a list of ideas that might make money someday. A second list is of things that probably won’t make money, but would be useful to me personally. The third list, and this is my favorite, is things that probably won’t make money, are not really useful, but are just cool!