I went to Cal Poly in the fall of ’75 and majored in physics. I was very focused on my studies. I studied hard and learned a lot.

I graduated in ‘79 and got married five years later. I took a job at Intel in Santa Clara. At that time National was bigger than Intel. I worked in the quality and reliability area. I measured radiation in the materials that go into making integrated circuits.

That is where I met my wife. She was going to Mission college in their electronics program in 1981. We started going out in 1982 and I left Intel in ’82. I wanted to get a PhD in particle physics. I went to Stonybrook in New York. I was there for a year but decided it wasn’t such a good idea, so I came back here.

A lot of the reason was because of Bonnie because our relationship had developed and I wanted to be with her. Also, after being in industry, going to graduate school was a little demeaning. I was a research assistant there and they kind of treat you like a dog. There were post docs who made a lot less than I was making at Intel who thought they were God’s gift to the world.

So after a year I moved back here and Bonnie and I moved in together. That was in ’83, and we got married a year later. She is a very goal-oriented person and she made it very clear that she didn’t want to have an open-ended relationship, she wanted something that would go somewhere. I was a little nervous. We went to a really nice restaurant in Fremont that is no longer there and she said yes, which was good.

I don’t remember too much about it except that I was nervous. So we got married in April. We just had a civil wedding. She had been married before and didn’t have much interest in a big wedding. I didn’t really care. Later that year she got pregnant with Rebecca and she was born in June of ’85.

She was born at home with a midwife, which was something that Bonnie wanted because she had had hospital births before. I think if it was just me, I would have preferred the hospital for safety reasons. It was pretty neat, she was born at 1:30 in the morning. The midwife put her in this bath after she popped out. She was all scrunched up, but in the bath she stretched out her arms and legs. Bonnie got in the bath and was holding her and it was a magical time. The midwife was very good. She made it a nice experience with us.

Housing
We were living in a condominium in Milpitas. The landlord was kind of weird. He wanted to raise the rent and sell the place. He didn’t really know what he wanted.
Bonnie had a strong nesting instinct and she wanted to buy a house. We bought one in Milpitas. It took all of the savings that we had. We put down $12,000 dollars. The house was $114,000 in 1986. A couple of months later, my company cut everyone’s pay by 15%. I was working at Genus at that time, a semiconductor company. We were in a big financial period when we just weren’t making enough. But eventually it passed and everything worked out.

Three years later, the house doubled in value and we sold it and moved to a bigger house. And we started to ride that wave that so many have ridden. So we moved to a house in San Jose and lived there for thirteen years.