Don Booth

I currently own my own business, providing computer IT support for residential customers and small businesses about 50% of my time, and doing machine control programming as a contractor the remaining time. I also continue to do optical thin film design as a contractor, working especially in anti-reflection coating, color shifting coatings, and polymer on metal coatings. I started out as a physics student (and a pretty decent one at that) and wasn't introduced to computer programming until my senior year in undergraduate college, when I took a Theoretical Physics class and started out learning how to program FORTRAN to solve physics problems. I discovered at that time that I was really good at programming, and from that time forward as a graduate student in Optics, I split my time between Physics/Optics and computer control of instrumentation and then industrial equipment. Being very good at two disparate fields can be a good thing, and a difficult thing. Earning a PhD taught me critical thinking, how to research "unknown" information, and problem solving. Persons with advanced degrees (MS/MA and PhD) often find themselves migrating to other fields during the course of their working lifetime, and that is probably a very proper thing. I am very gratified that I have ended up working at tasks and jobs that are both interesting and fulfilling.

Finally, being the owner of my own business, I can set my own schedule as I wish. One of my favorite loves is volunteering, especially for non-profits. Most of the time this is doing computer IT work (everyone has a computer, right?), but I also do other kinds of volunteering, including mentoring.