When I was a young lad I met an absolute wizard of a technician. He could make equipment do whatever he wanted it to do and understood the way all the systems were integrated so well he could visualize circuits and explain them to you without consulting a diagram. He never consulted a manual or technical document unless he wanted to illustrate a point.

Even though he was technically “in charge” of the entire facility he wouldn’t hesitate to grab an equipment cart, remove a floor panel or rack door, and get in there elbow deep with an oscilloscope and a tool kit. It wasn’t until much later that I learned just how unusual this trait is.

The best part was that while he was doing all of this he was also teaching YOU how to do it, and not just at a surface level, but so you could understand how things were working fundamentally. He could explain why the test results meant what they did, and not just “replace board Y in box X” because a flow-chart told you to.

I don’t remember his first name because everyone just called him “Chief” or “Sir” if there was a slight chance you weren’t on good standing with him. He was the first person I’d ever met who was in charge and clearly smarter than everyone around them, including me, and it’s largely his fault my career went the way it did. Now that I think about it he was probably the first real hacker I’d ever met, though I’m certain he didn’t think of himself in that way.

He was such an influence that I can’t begin to explain the things I learned from working with him without many, many more paragraphs, and this is enough story-time-with-uncle-Thrakkar for everyone. Even though he’s not a programming hero (we wrote no code) or even a computer (very different equipment) hero, he showed me that technical skills really can get you somewhere, and that being able to teach those skills to others is just as enjoyable as honing them.

To this day I maintain that if I’d have been able to hook a cable up between he and I to download all that knowledge, I would have.