Edward Ames:  

Life First of all, I got married in 2002. Besides that, I was working on the PhD in Physics and starting a business. Things haven't gone so well for the school nor business. The business folded. We were just starting to break even on a week-to-week basis but just ran out of finances. We had to give it up. The PhD thing fell apart as well. Gee, there seems to be a pattern here... Now, I have an OK job with National Oilwell Varco doing Simulation and Testing for their control systems. They make oilwell drilling rigs. Most modern rigs are highly automated, and we make the robots on those rigs. Well, I am one of the guys who tests the control system for errors. It's a job. Got the P.E. license. It's the Professional Engineering license for Control Systems in California. School Let's say that I didn't adapt well. I had some sort of anti-popularity while not achieving any sort of infamy. On the whole, I was happy to escape. I just remember it as a shame-filled haze. People make fun of me; people theatened me; I get homework; I do homework; I sleep. That is what I remember of high school. College I went to University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign right after high school. I didn't do so well. While I didn't get kicked out of school, I wasn't really that far from it, and it was enough for me to lose the scholarships. With not having enough money for school and not having enough maturity to deal with school, I did something else. I joined the Army. After I got back, I returned to studying Physics. Eventually, I started working with Prof. Steve Errede. I also did some martial arts (Kuk-Sool Won) and worked with the student chapter of SIGGRAPH. I decided to head somewhere with a third dimension. I went to University of California, Irvine where I got the masters in physics and am now working with Prof Rajaraman on the phd. My thesis will hopefully be on a solution to 5 dimension Einstein General Relativity field equations. Workplace I was tired of school. I had the master's degree and was working on the PhD when my advisor ran away (without me). So there was no advisor, no one else with whom I could work, poverty, and a general burn out. I decided to get some jobby-job. I applied at random (programming, math, physics). I got an interview. When I went to that interview, I found out that the people who had called me back were not the sa...Expand for more