| Jim Warner |
| Jim was four years older than me. I was three years old when we moved into the neighborhood. I was in Junior High when I started hanging out at his shop. He loved mechanical work. He got me all checked-out on refurbishing my bycycle. I was taking industrial arts at school. Sometimes Jim would have me help around the shop. I'll never forget the time I turned his oil-drain-plug the wrong way and stripped it. He took it all in stride. He was taking shop at De Anza at the time. So he machined a cool new oil-screen cover with the tapped hole for the drain plug. He does clean work, I always admired him for that. I have him to thank for my basic habits: I always debur my work. I'm good with buggered threads. I guess I'm okay with locks. We played with gas engines a lot. He helped me build my first vehicle: a Volkswagen bus. He taught me to drive and to ride a motorcycle. His projects and adventures were always robust. |
| One day Jim rigged up a breecher's buoy in his yard. The guys would go way up in the tree, to the phone wires. Then they hung onto a tee handle on a pulley, and slid down and across the yard to land in the grass. I was chicken. |
| Jim used to moto his bug all over. We were always at the baylands, Montebello Ridge, Skyline, Etc. That thing rarely got stuck. Those dirt roads are blocked now. |
| Jim worked at Spectra Physics for a while. He gave me a carload of LASER power supplies and a few tubes. The whole community got stoked up with LASERs. The tubes were easy to get. When we got those supplies, we were in hog heaven. I learned simple PWM switching supplies. Soon I was breaking into potted blocks like a surgeon, replacing bad transistors. Those tubes took 12 KV to start. When you get on that, you know it! |