[930addict]

I grew up in Silicon Valley where my dad owned a tiny engineering company that provided printed circuit design and PCB manufacturing services. He had been in business for 30 years before he retired in 2001. During that time he was able to work on some really neat stuff in both the military and commercial space. Basically if you can think of the major players in the electronics/aerospace industry my dad’s company probably did work for them. We were involved in companies like Nvidia when they were just a hole in the wall and, in fact, we knew the founders before they became gazilianaires. I remember when we received a schematic that was labeled ATM Switch. I had asked my dad what that was - I was only 16 at the time - and I’ll never forget his reply: “I don’t know maybe it’s a new type of cash machine”. LOL. We were there on the forefront of emerging technologies and saw products before they came to market. At one point we were simultaneously doing work for the big three graphics chip manufactures, Nvidia, 3d labs and ATI. We also worked on military projects like components for the patriot missile systems and the B1 bomber to name a few. One of the coolest things that I personally worked on was an experiment for NASA and having the scientist call me up to say, “Hey James. Remember that project you worked on? I just wanted to let you know it’s orbiting the planet right now in the space shuttle.” There was an energy in the valley that I really miss.

I was reading an article last night about some 23 year old that makes a half million a year by posting facts on twitter. Half a million a year for regurgitating information. He is building an app that is expected to bring in about $60,000 a week that basically ties into his tweets and allows people to like something and post comments. I am definitely missing something here. It seems more and more people are making money off of things that I would consider to be senseless. Snapchat - really? Then you have twitter and facebook. Ok. Facebook I can see has a little value but my family used another service that did the same thing years before the Zuck hit puberty. So I don’t know why facebook all of the sudden became so popular. I liked the other service better anyway. I guess I don’t understand how these people are making so much money for building stupid apps that serve no meaningful purpose. I have ideas that I am working on but they are things that can potentially have a huge impact for the users. Not like making a stick with a mount and marketing it as a selfie stick. WTF?

I hear very little about making meaningful stuff anymore. The tech leaders of today are to ingenuity what the Kardashion's are to talent. It seems that nowadays making money is actually easier if you set your sights lower.