Michael Nelson

I keep in mind three terms in my search stability, mobility and locality.

I love digital imaging and would enjoy working in a creative environment again like my first job at Epson America when they were in Torrance, CA. I started as an Internship for Graphic Designer working for the Art Director whose workload was growing rapidly. I studied the Adobe Photoshop 3.0 tutorial the night before. That was my first introduction to Adobe Photoshop.

I helped with the design of the samples and other creative projects for the Merchandising Dept. Additionally; I performed color calibration of high end images to produce the best quality output using Adobe Photoshop. I came on in 1996 at the time when they were launching their second wave of Color Stylus Printers. After proving value, I exceeded the internship (90 days) and was kept on for more than two years. I still to this day keep contact with my then supervisor. Creative people are colorful and make work enjoyable.

The last eight years I worked for Peerless Systems Corp in El Segundo, CA. as QA Engineer. Still keeping in line with the printer field, I found QA to be challenging and rewarding. The greatest thing was having many different projects (printers) to work with. In the end though, the team was reduced to almost starving proportion as the economy started to downsize.

The focus changed from turn-key printers for big customers to many micro managed internal SDK products ranging from trapping, networking, connectivity and security. This made the job very challenging as you were required to learn new technologies quickly and shifted your focus constantly. My last assignment was MS Vista and XPS (the new print language in Vista OS). It has been over ten years since the market has seen any new flavors of print languages. Most of the developers in the printer market are creating embedded or software solution for Vista XPS. To this day there are still not any XPS capable printers on the market.

I enjoyed Peerless very much as the team and co. was full of great people from floor to ceiling. They gave me many benefits over the years that I worked there. I proved my worth through three downsizing events. Eventually, no matter how good you are, you will have to sacrifice as well. That is what we call "change". Embrace it and you will succeed gracefully.

The best though was 18 minute drive from my home and bagels n doughnuts every Friday morning!

Michael Nelson...