Credence

I post this here because it can be accessed publicly, i mean if i go somewhere in an office and i have to show it.

After my hospitalization in early 1996 we were living in Vancouver, WA. Things got better in the way i wasn't thinking of anything anymore. I was on Navane from a prescription given by doctor Proano Augusto of Vancouver that was my doctor at SW Washington Memorial, Vancouver, WA.

One day i saw an add from Express Personnel in the Oregonian, i guess. On Apple Way, off Beaverton Hilssdale Ave, in Portland. We both signed up for a 2 days training course in soldering with them.

We spent that weekend at the Marts in Salem. My ex-collegue from Bacău. Monday it was snowing and on I5 i stopped once to check tires i guess. A policeman stopped and offered his help but we were ok. So we went in Portland and at Express right in time for the course. I think Julian Mart managed to take me off Navane that weekend too.

They weren't many people in there. Can't remember exactly the names. The recruiter, a younger guy, brunet, with moustache. The instructor, Mary? Or something like that, a short and very common name. Students, besides me, Angela and a Mexican woman, i don't think there was nobody else.

Now, that i think, the instructor also reminds me of a celebrity. Always reading from a note book.

I remember her repeating as she was going through the material. "For soldering you need solder, flux and heat".

At the end of the two days course, since i scored high at tests, the recruiter and her decided to give me an electronics technician test. Since i went to a specialty electrotechnical high school and because of one semester of electronics in faculty, i did 3/4 of the test, perfectly. For the rest i ran out of time and i checked random answers.

In a couple of weeks i had an interview at Credence, onNimbus Ave, Beaverton building. Now there's some religious center in there http://goo.gl/maps/qyX37.

Anyways. On April 14 i started working there. Swing shift, 11 dollars an hour (double minimal wage at the time), in the same time with two other guys. Robert "Bob" James, a Mormon (big Bob as Dino called him, cause he was like... 300 pounds, blue eyes, in his 50s), Lyle Hall, fired from Intel an me. There was another guy in that shift, Bill Appel or something driving and old Nissan Z with a hole in the floor and a guy... can't remember, another Bob, from Colorado, who had a car with a windsurfing bord on top and everyday was bragging about coming directly from Hood River and in the weekends was remodeling houses he bought for resale, with a green license plate that started with the word SEX. I think swing shift was partially overlapping with day. Dale, a blonde guy who set on fire a few racks when he left one day and forgot something and i saw the smoke coming out. And a few others.

As usually with all of my jobs in the US i had several bosses.

First month they trained me on power supplies. Got shocked a few times.

Then i started testing boards for test heads on a minicomputer. I was packing and shipping the good ones. The other guy working at those, Eugene from the day shift was fixing them. Later, i got trained by Eugene and started fixing those myself. Can't remember who was doing the final tests, but i was doing huge amounts, good quality (no returns or complaints from field techs like from Eugene's), lots of overtime and my day shift supervisor was overjoyed. Credence was charging companies that were using their testers around the world with $700 a board and i was fixing at least 10 every day. Didn't know exactly what i was doing, just putting the board in a fixture tied to a minicomputer, running tests and replacing parts accordingly. Those were highly precise, ultra fast, nanoseconds circuits. Lyle, who knew electronics, told me that nobody understood those circuits made of Schottky diodes anyways except for maybe the designer, "they were too weird".

My buddy Lyle. We were together all the time. Many time he was just pulling me from the bench for long cigarette and hot chocolate breaks. He was coming to me smiling and braking an imaginary stick in front of my eyes: "Brake" time!

Together we went to Insurance Auto Auction and bought cars. I had this old Fairmont and he did not have a car so he bought him an old Chevy Cavalier or something for 100 bucks (nobody else bid) (he was smart, that car was not wrecked and he just started to use it, after going to the most praised by him Les Schwab (for whom i worked next year) to balance tires, that were still under warranty) and i bought an 89 white Escort GT that was hit in the front for 900 bucks. His car was ready and running but mine needed a radiator, hood, bumper, fender and some... frame straightening, which i did at Lyle's apartment. Using a cable, i tied the frame to a tree and backed up until i straightened the body enough to be able to put those parts on. One problem though. Unibody type frame was broken some place and every time i was pushing the gas pedal was going... right i guess, a little bit, and every time i pushed the brake, it was going left or something like this. But not much. To me, it was good, and the 1.9 liter engine on a small car like that seemed good enough.

Many other things happened in there. I am both nostalgic and sick when i remember.

But the main reason i dig through this stuff is this.

One summer day, before i bought the Escort, or maybe after and i was just still driving the Fairmont that day, i don't know, in the afternoon it was very nice and warm. Only Lyle and me on the floor. All the walls surrounding the ground level floor had big windows made of dark glass and we could see outside.

Maybe a dozens of police like cars marked ATF surrounded the building. One of them parked in the back of my Fairmont, blocking it. But they did not come into the building and proceeded in the bushes behind it, towards the Fanno Creek. Lyle pulled me in the middle of the floor.

A few minutes later they came out of the bushes with an Asian looking guy. Very thin, dressed in a dark-gray, very simple, sports like suite. A very strange face like i never saw before. Not Chinese. He was not agitated, barely moving, but looking upset. Nothing in his hands.

Later Lyle and i saw a small, old car with a blue static coat and a badge like ours inside parked nearby, but we knew it was only us in the building. Lyle said maybe it was the janitor or something. I was kinda shook for the rest of the day.

Later that summer they started laying out everybody in that building. My part of the job was sold to a start-up in Milpitas, California. So one day in a very beautiful September i drove 700 miles in my new Escort over there for an interview. But this is another story.