About me

I have done quite a bit and finally have a place to showcase some stuff I have done. In my early years, I grew up in California and worked with my father in the summers as a heavy equipment mechanic. It wasn't a year before I knew there was no chance of me doing that in the future. I did it for three more summers, because he made me work for him during summer to keep me busy and out of trouble. I went into the Navy Seabees after high-school and immediately into a technical college, ITT Technical Institute, for drafting in the early 90's. I spent a little time in the Carpenters Union in Sacramento, CA., just after the service, working on new tech buildings and sky-scrapers.

I have always been a creative person, drawing some of my first home plans around the age of 12. I really wanted to get into architectural design and building houses. The craftsman and mountain style homes are still my fav. I graduated and within six months ended up getting a job with The Boeing Company in the mid-90's. I left my job at Apple Computer Inc. in California and moved to Washington State for an eleven cent raise. After three years at Apple, I ran two high-speed production lines and performed rework troubleshooting for anything that stopped the lines. It was a lot of running around on 3rd shift for almost two years. When hired at Boeing, I was at the bottom of the ladder again, learning how to draw proper line weights on mylar, structural engineering with a calculator and dealing with manufacturing problems for the twin-aisle programs.

By the time I was laid off from Boeing at the end of '99, I taught myself Macromedia (later Adobe) Flash programming language and was hired at Microsoft as a contractor (one year duration). I did quality assurance for about twelve of the Microsoft Press titles on Office, MS Systems Engineering (MCSE) courses and Windows Operating System. I read all the information and was passing a lot of the MCSE coursework, but didn't pony up the ridiculous cost for the testing. The industry really didn't end up using it as much as Microsoft had hoped. After working at Microsoft, I became a computer repair field-tech for a couple years. I did everything from swapping PC parts to installing new Cisco routers at banks in the Northwest region. I was even certified to work on MasterCard servers, after a week-long training at their facility in St. Louis, MO. The company I contracted through would send me techs from other regions to train. This was a good way to run my own business, but it relied too much on others and ended up failing.

About six-months after leaving the computer business (just after the dot-com bubble burst), I had to go back to work and ended up getting a job working at a door company. The day I was hired, the hiring manager walked me to the end of the production line where doors came off the sander. He introduced me to the other person in this position and leaned into me and said, "this IS the lowest position in this company." Within seven months, I was the area lead. Managing the time for the 20-something employees and input/output to meet shipment demands. Within a couple more months, I was working in the office, doing new door design and working with customers. That was fun, but the company ended up consolidating the site and laying everyone off. I was able to keep jobs doing design and spent the next few years working for door and window companies.

I scraped my way back to a better job using my design skills in Autocad. I worked for a commercial interior company and refined in-field measurements for cutting on the CNC, and designed interiors for multiple companies from banks to restaurants. I was able to refine the company processes for CNC utilization and templatizing custom designs. I also worked for a custom door and window company, which allowed me to create three new products. This was a very creative five to six years or so, but it just didn't pay that well and the promotion abilities were nill. I went back to Boeing in '08 to be a Quality Investigator. For the first two years, I worked two full-time jobs, not wanting to give up the design position with a custom cabinet company.

I am happy with my position at Boeing. It allows me to guide a team of about thirty, while still getting my hands dirty if I need to. I like the chance to travel and even lived in Italy for three months. Having a job that doesn't require too much of my personal time affords me the ability to concentrate on learning new things and brewing beer. I hope over the next few years I can finish a book or two that I have envisioned for a while and maybe my son and I will learn to fly small airplanes.

Thank you for your interest.
William F. Seeds