Saturday, March 13, 2010

About John Best

Certainly by now I'm more than a 'jack of all trades', I'm a very capable bastard in many fields, but only expert in a few. I'll not reach 'Renaissance Man' status in this life, but the fun is in the trip. Basically, I make things. All sorts of things. I wrote, successfully defended, and received a US patent and have three more in process. I design electronics stuff, mostly micro-controllers these days, and write the firmware. I once redesigned a DNA sequencing machine to pass CE (Conformance European) requirements, and it was passed by an independent lab (MET labs) without revision. Oh, what else? I write a good letter to the editor. I hiked 270 miles one summer. I grow 20 or 30 tomato plants every summer, peppers and eggplant too. I remodeled several houses, wiring, plumbing, HVAC roofing, etc. I've done a few sculptures. I've developed manufacturing machinery and processes. I built a vapor-phase soldering machine once. I set up and run my own anodizing line. I program CNC lathes which I use for manufacturing medical devices and art pieces. I have a degree in Letters, Arts and Science, and am was an Electrical Engineer for most of my career. I've written drivers for data acquisition systems. I designed, manufactured and sold a data acquisition board and imaging software to plug into a PC and extract images from Scanning Electron Microscopes (SEM). I easily saved the US trade deficit at least $10 million dollars by allowing users to extend the life of their SEM's. I've started two companies, ELMDAS Co. and Best Instrument, Inc. Blah, blah, blah........so what? Here and abroad we still seem to be producing far more babies than we can educate decently and will be able to pull their own weight. I used to do a fair amount of volunteer work, but frankly, I've invested enough time and money raising other peoples kids. I've volunteered THOUSANDS, (not hundreds) of community hours coaching soccer, setting up PTO functions, spend 6 years on a school board 1 as head of the finance committee, I volunteered for a small museum, I set up a community fair for 6 or 7 years, I was a merit badge counselor, initiating and completely organizing all aspects of a science fair for 4 years straight, setting up an educational technology fair for Pennsylvania teachers and many other things I'm not going to take time to recall. I sail. I am a gun totin', meat eatin' Liberal, in the spirit of the Founding Fathers as inspired by the French Enlightenment. Yessiree, a 'man in full'is a man who is full of it, and that is I. I've done enough that I can look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell, and that is exactly how my Grandmother told me to be.

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