Testimonial

I was watching the video Taylor shared and it reminded me of two significant moments in my life that I find correlates to the message. The first is when I designed the NAVSAT program for the department of defense mine warfare department. NAVSAT was never originally suppose to be a weaponized drone but started off as a concept when I was working on my senior design project in college. I was part of a 5 man team that entered a robot competition who proposed a radical concept to cut the weight of the robot by redesigning the navigation routine in a controller we would design and build in house using Protel. The team felt the idea was too radical to pursue and a huge gamble given the experience level we were at and the time we were working against. No one wanted to risk a new design from concept so I got ousted from the team. I was convinced the design was possible so I invested my time Day in and day out with maybe 4 hours a sleep at most taking my design from concept to test and back again. Over and over I exhausted my theories and failed a lot. I remember running tests at 2am, failing and trying again and again. I was obsessed that the design was viable. Until one day I got the program to work, but by then the program was messy and not probable to push into hardware. So I started from scratch and rewrote the program from start to finish over 3 days and then reran testing. Long story short I got NAVSAT to work and even show cased it to the university. I later receive a call from my Captain who point blank asked me if I would like to go to The Naval Post Graduate School and that he would make some calls. I honestly didn't put much excitement into the offer because I didn't believe I was the smartest guy or fastest or even worthy enough to contend with senior officers who contend for that same billet. Flash forward 2 months i took orders to my first ship as Strike and the second morning following the day checking into my command my XO received a personal call from the dean of the graduate school asking if I had checked on board and if I was still interested on attending the school. I immediately accepted and was on a flight to Monterey Ca a week later. I never applied nor filled out any applications or formal requests to attend the school. I was just accepted. The first working Monday after I arrived I met with the admiral who gave me my course schedule for the entire time I was stationed to the school and I realized I was accepted in the mine warfare program specifically because of NAVSAT. I evolved NAVSAT using missile guidance algorithms Heavy on eigenvalues and redesigned the drone to communicate to sister drones through swarm logic. The point of all this was that I knew in my head what NAVSAT was and didn't stop until it became what it was suppose to be even after trail after trial. I never asked or imagined it would launch into what it has become I just knew what I knew and didn't take failure as an option. I can safely say I was obsessed.