User:Ric Turley

I'm a retired programmer traveling North America full-time. I'm an avid learner and mostly self-educated. I've continued my passion for electronics and programming with automation improvements on my fifth-wheel RV.

I wanted to travel as a young man and started my career with television repair school as a path to learn to work on CB radios planning to set up a repair shop in a van and offer my services at truck stops as I traveled. Having to work to pay my way in school, I soon landed a job in a television shop working for one of the Viking project engineers who rapidly had me well ahead of my class, so I asked the school to switch to an FCC License class. They were angered that I thought a Second Class FCC Radiotelephone License was more valuable than an ETI Certificate and expelled me. I studied on my own and passed the FCC exam before their class ended and later passed the test for the First Class Licence. I got jobs in a television shop, radio station and managed a college radio station combined with teaching a broadcasting class.

An unlikely job opportunity at Hewlett-Packard redirected my career into the world of automated test electronics and programming. I eventually started my own business doing Applescript workflow automation and joined the premier Applescript development group. I learned more languages and started developing Ruby on Rails web applications.

After moving to the Colorado foothills, I was paying an outrageous price for ISDN internet to support my business when I got involved with a wireless internet service provider cooperative. They were my last clients as I trimmed my business in preparation for retirement.

My work ended up being entirely online, so I sold my house and moved into an RV. I finally got my dream to travel full-time, see the country and make more friends in more places than I could have imagined.