A Technical Swiss Army Knife

Like many of FixYa’s Experts, Shuttle83 got his start as a child, destroying his family’s appliances. But unlike most young Experts-to-be, Shuttle83 was actually able to repair what he broke. As he reminisces, “when I was about 9 or 10, I took my father’s TV apart. When he found out what I had done he told me I had one day to put it back together, or I was in for the spanking of my life. So I put the TV back together and it worked. He came into the room and started laughing. He then told me that the set had not worked in two years and he was just using it as book stand.”

Shuttle83 pursued his innate talent, reading books on electronics and taking radio and TV repair courses in high school. After college, he got his CET Certifications in Consumer and Communication Electronics, and his FCC Licenses in Radiotelephony and Ship RADAR. He worked for a number of companies and eventually ended up at Verizon where he worked his way up to the position of Distinguished Member of Technical Staff. As if that job weren’t enough, he’s also the CEO and Chief Technologist of Electron-Age Technologies LLC. Having accumulated so much experience, he’s come to think of himself as a “technical Swiss Army knife.”

Shuttle83 likes to learn and grow his abilities, and the solutions he’s proudest of are some of the ones that were voted “Inappropriate”. As he explains, though his answers were technically sound, the askers’ negative reactions to them made him realize “that some people don’t really want to know why something is broken, they just want to know if it can be fixed and an idea of how to fix it.” He considers those problems his “customer relationship building trials.” The FixYa team considers themselves lucky to have such a dedicated Expert on the site. The beneficiaries of Shuttle83’s 900 solutions probably consider themselves pretty lucky too.