When hardware and software lived in harmony

My time with Steve goes back to the first incarnation of NextWave.  It was his wild-eyed, "damn the torpedos, full steam ahead" smile as he told me that he was going to join the newly forming Dot Wireless that convinced me to do the same.

I remember the day that Steve walked into the lab and stumbled upon me trying to solder something.  He promptly proclaimed that one of the things that scared him most in life was a software engineer with a soldiering iron.   In the following years, Steve spent an enormous amount of his time to help educate me and many other software folks on hardware design and debugging.  I feel that during the years that Steve was overseeing things in the lab we achieved a harmony and camaraderie between the hardware and software teams that I hadn't seen before and I haven't seen since.   What was particularly cool with Steve was that despite his wealth of experience and knowledge, he was never too proud to learn something new himself.   I think I personally tutored Steve on several occasions just how wrongly software might try to use his hardware.   Through all the years of change and crazy redirections I can't think of a single time that Steve's positive attitude ever faltered.  That is a rare gift.

I have my own soldering iron now and on the odd occasion where I get to use it I always think of Steve.   Steve, wherever you are you can rest knowing that I am making clean solder joints and I have my power supply limit set correctly.

You will be missed my friend.

Mike