Robert Bernal was an island of calm and good humor in the sea of chaos that was Weber Aircraft's effort on the Airbus A-350 seating project.

Inspecting incoming purchased implants and instruments in a lab full of dedicated and enjoyable colleagues.

Mechanical design of electronics products

Design of rugged portable computers. Worked with excellent and enjoyable folks on thermal and mechanical designs under Rappy and Holly, the two ignorant, colossal boors at the top.

Mechanical design oversight of OEM flat-panel displays. Fun contract with a very nice group!

Faking fan performance data for unprincipled VP of sales and engineering. Then sitting down in front of engineers and telling them how good our fans were.

Designed cooling systems for small power supplies. Worked with a heated, recirculating wind tunnel and with infrared video; pretty interesting work. Lucent opened this Titania Division in Austin with great fanfare, hired a big staff dangling big bucks, then closed it quietly two years later, telling us all the while our jobs were safe, as the technical managers left to start another company in California. For example, we returned from Easter Weekend to find that Kris, our engineering manager, had vanished, his office a ghostly shell, never to be heard from again, without a goodbye or word of explanation to his eight or ten direct-reports! And the new manager, Young, assured us he would lead us to glory even as he had submitted his resignation, it turned out.

Design of printers and portable computers. An eight-year delight with the finest colleagues, many of them friends from Texas Instruments. Studied and applied heat pipes. Coordinated prototype and pilot builds for several products, the best part of a development project.

Contract research on diesel engine combustion and fuel injection methods. Crack open a six-pack and get me talking about engines.

Mechanical design of printers and computer terminals. Lucky enough to get into a product development group doing interesting work and meeting lifelong friends.