Masters of Technology Happy Hour
Conversations with masters of technology, those who produce it or those who use it.
Masters of Technology Happy Hour
S1 Ep8: Matt Lombard, Power CAD User, Author and Musician
Step into the fascinating world where engineering expertise meets AI skepticism as Matt Lombard, author of the renowned SolidWorks Bible, shares his candid thoughts on the evolution of design technology. This conversation cuts through the marketing hype surrounding AI in CAD software, revealing the stark reality gap between what's promised and what's actually useful to practicing engineers.
Lombard draws from decades of experience pushing CAD software to its limits, particularly with complex surface modeling. His journey from developing SOLIDWORKS training materials to evaluating modern AI implementations provides a unique lens through which to view these technological developments. With refreshing honesty, he explains why many of today's AI-generated designs might look impressive but fail to meet real-world manufacturing requirements.
The discussion takes an unexpected turn when Lombard reveals his parallel life as a musician, leading trombone quartets and brass quintets while arranging music in his spare time. His path from the New England Conservatory through Navy service as a musician to eventually becoming an engineering authority demonstrates the fascinating connections between mathematical thinking and musical aptitude that so many technical professionals share.
For anyone working with CAD software, considering AI implementation in design workflows, or curious about the future direction of engineering tools, this conversation offers valuable perspective. Lombard's practical insights challenge us to think more critically about technological hype while embracing innovations that genuinely enhance human capabilities rather than attempting to replace them.
Hello everyone and welcome to the Masters of Technology happy hour, where once a week I have a drink with someone I meet in the course of business, but someone I'd like to get to know better as a person. Today I'm meeting with Matt Lombard and I'm happy to have him over. He's known Matt for years. First met Matt at a SolidWorks World and I was quite overwhelmed by Matt's reputation. He had been the author of a SolidWorks Bible and he was like a real user. I was just pretending to be a user and writing about SolidWorks and here he was like the guy who knows SolidWorks the best. So you remember that, matt. I think you pulled out a book of a Bible and signed it for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so, I think I remember that.
Speaker 1:You had it in your knapsack. Yeah, those were the days, huh. So you never worked for SOLIDWORKS, though, did you?
Speaker 2:Not directly. I worked for them as a contractor. I did interview several times and I actually turned down a job. I turned down two jobs I think. But yeah, I worked mainly as a contractor. I developed the surfacing class for them and I developed. They insisted on calling it the mold design class, but we didn't. You know, the class doesn't show you how to design molds. So I kind of protested but I still helped them develop the class.
Speaker 1:Oh, really Well, yeah, I think your specialty was curved surfaces, if I remember right, Choosing people how? To use surfaces best right? If I remember right, it's choosing people how to use surfaces best right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did a lot of work with complex surfaces and just pushing the software beyond where it's probably meant to go.
Speaker 1:Ah, okay, yeah, so we never Solarix. You, being a power user, would you say Solarix ever got to where like Catia was with Surface? No, I wouldn't sayworks ever got to where like CATIA was with service.
Speaker 2:No, I wouldn't say it ever got to CATIA level. It got pretty good. You could do consumer products pretty well, but I wouldn't trust it to do, you know, aircraft or automobiles or anything like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay. Now, you went on to work with Siemens for a while and I think we saw each other at the last. Realize right, we were both panelists on trying to. I think we're both trying to pass ourselves off as AI experts, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we were being sold as AI experts. We were.
Speaker 1:I bet they regret that now, huh.
Speaker 2:I think the panel came off pretty well. I'm not sure that anybody understood us as experts. I was later told that anybody with an opinion would do so I was good with that part, oh, okay, Well, both of us, I think, certainly qualify.
Speaker 1:I have been. I got to tell you, I have been, after all the people I know in high up in CAD companies to like why, why can't you put more of this AI and give us AI that we can use? I've always I've always denigrated the AI. What they've said is AI, and that's always been like topology, optimization and generative design, and I've always found those things quite the shapes that that generates quite useless and I've always had a big problem with that. How do you feel about what they had passed off? I think even Siemens was trying to pass off generative design as AI, right?
Speaker 2:I always thought of it as a step forward. I mean, it's a stage that they have to go through in order to get to the next step and they make a lot of mesh models, which they had to find a way to make engineers comfortable with mesh models because, you know, for decades that's been somewhere you just don't go. Mesh models are for artists and people that do games and things like that games and things like that. But I think they had to go through that and then hopefully they'll get to the point where they're creating a manufacturable NURBS model and maybe even something that's aware of the manufacturing process.
Speaker 2:I saw something today or yesterday that was put together on a. It was some sort of an ad, but it was displayed on a CAD forum. I was reading and everybody just reacted the same way. It showed somebody giving voice commands to the computer and the computer actually creating a, a nerves based model, that that could be machined, a different one that could be molded or or cast or something, and the one that was, you know, a sheet metal construction and everybody just called the bullshit, if I can say that on here. You can say that, sure, because it just didn't. The workflow he was going through. He wasn't given enough detail in order to get a real result and he was getting you know a model that looked great, but I think that's kind of the state of AI right now. It's demo-ware to some extent, but I think that's kind of the state of AI right now. It's demo-ware to some extent. Well, ai as it connects to 3D geometry, it's the demo-ware, vapor-ware, whatever you want to call it A lot of wishful thinking, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that stuff like that is going to turn off pros like you, or if I can even call myself that, because it just doesn't. You know, it gives a how should I say? It gives a look of professionalism, but it's not precise or exact or it's not. It's just not right, it's just. Yeah, I got to tell you what, I got to tell you what.
Speaker 1:So my neighbor, my neighbor in my next office, I got to talk low. He's an insurance agent. Right, this building has a lot of different people in it and he's an insurance agent and he says, hey, repent her, because he knows I'm interested in AI stuff, right, he goes, look what I just did and he shows me a picture of his a edition he's made to his house and he did it with all the chat GPTs and on the surface it looks like pretty good rendering. This guy's never used SketchUp or any AEC product or anything, or AutoCAD, right, but he's able to produce a fairly good likeness of his house, right. The addition on this side oh, ok, chat GPT, now give me an addition on the other side. Let's see what that looks like.
Speaker 1:And it's not bad, I got to say when I first looked at it I thought that's not bad, but then he was kind of unhappy with it. It's like well, I wanted the house to stay the same and not change every time I asked it something and it wasn't able to do that. It wasn't, it didn't preserve the part of the house he kept. It kept changing the roof, and so there's enough irregularities or liberties that it takes that. It's not.
Speaker 2:It doesn't satisfy CAD people, right, right, yeah, it can't I've had a couple experiences, positive and negative, with uh, with its relationship to at least images or or 3d geometry. I think I was mentioning this to you before but I I had asked it to. I just gave it a very open task that designed me a boat or a fishing boat, and it came back with a nice image of a fishing boat and I asked it exactly the same thing again and it gave me a different fishing boat, but it was. It was a nice image. It wasn't 3d but uh, it was from a nice metric point of view. So then I asked it for a 3d model and I got. I got some sort of blobbish shape that was colored uh appropriately, but it it was, just it wasn't the same level of detail. I I think the bridge from images to to actual 3d geometry is is going to be difficult.
Speaker 1:It's going to be difficult, especially if they insist on using the same tools that they had before. I'm waiting for them to do something else. Like you know, why not have? Tell me what you think of this. I've proposed this idea. And they just say what do you know? They don't listen to me. I said what do you know, rappender Right. So I said do you know? They don't listen to me. I said what do you know, rupinder, right. So so I said you know, I don't, I don't want you to make these stupid shapes. I did. I use better language. I said I don't want to use make these stupid shapes.
Speaker 1:It was just you know, if I'm comfortable using tubular structures or if I'm comfortable using I-beams right or plate or angles right, let me use those figures, let me use those shapes, but orient them in a way that's really good. Like, if I'm making a building, put the I-beams in the right spacing. If I'm making a bicycle, right, why not change the joints to where they're? You have the least number of tubes in the bike frame, right? So why not be a design assistant? Why not? Don't try to design the whole bike. It's not going to end well. Yeah, just help me be an assistant, just don't design the whole building.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, I think I took on the task of trying to do a generative bicycle at one point and it totally choked my computer. I just wanted to see what it would do and I had some ideas. You know I've designed a lot of bike frames in my time and I just wanted to see what it would do. But I would like it to get to the point where those surfaces that it creates are actually nerve surfaces and they they conform to some sort of standard, because these kind of these bone looking models that it creates you can only 3d print pretty much and you might be able to see and see them out of a big block of aluminum, but but they aren't. They aren't real smooth and they're not very. I mean, they might be optimized in some way but they're not really as aesthetic, uh things that you could. It's not the product of a real product development work yeah, it's not.
Speaker 1:It not, it's just. It doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't seem to. It has the conceit of thinking it can do a better job designing than we can. Right, and it just doesn't quite get there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just, it's a conceptual, conceptually optimal. I guess you got to work from there. What I've done in the past on a couple of projects is I've done some sort of optimization and I get something that's, you know, really odd looking. And then I take that from there and I interpret it as a product designer would do and I make it into something that's maybe marginally structurally optimized, but it's also something that's aesthetic, you know, something that you'd want to put on a shelf and sell.
Speaker 1:Right, right, yeah, yeah, so, right, right, yeah, yeah, so okay. So you use that, what, what it starts when it starts to optimize.
Speaker 1:You use that as a sort of an inspiration right it's starting right and then try to finish it off because it starts to arrive at shapes but it doesn't quite get there. It's like what's a saying it takes the last 10% of the shape, takes 90% of the time. Right, it'll start to converge to a solution, but it won't get there. I've got a story about that. So one company you'll know who this is. This company is based in San Francisco, and so they look out over the Golden Gate Bridge. Right, it's almost, almost. They don't have a clear line of sight, but let's pretend they can see the Golden Gate Bridge from their office. So I got tired of them pushing off generative design on me as usable, I said. And I got so frustrated I said well, see that bridge, see the Golden Gate Bridge. Do you think you could do a better job of designing that than the designers of the Golden Gate Bridge did? With that? Can you make a suspension bridge at all? Can you understand? Cables are perfect and design all that stuff, I said. And they said, nah, that's not what it's for, right? Okay, all right.
Speaker 1:And so I took it upon myself, ourself. I was working at engineeringcom, and we said we're going to try to do it right, we're going to tryself. I was working at engineeringcom and we said we're going to try to do it right. We're going to try to I didn't say this but we're going to try to prove how useless it is by trying to design a gold digger bridge. Let's see what it got, let's see what it gives and you should see it. You can see it. It's on a. It wasn't a very popular article with them, with that company. It looks like a drunken spider made it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going to have to look that one up.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it just doesn't, you know. I mean, there's nothing better than you know this as an engineer. There's nothing better than a cable intention, right, yeah, right, it doesn't know things like that, right? So I get so frustrated with these companies. You worked on the inside, right? Did you ever advise them on what an engineer needs in AI rather than?
Speaker 2:what? Well, I've talked with Siemens a little bit about it and I think they understand that right now most of their offerings that say AI are really kind of marketing hype and I've called them out a little bit. On the predictive command thing. I turned it on for a little bit. On the predictive command thing. I turned it on for a while and it never predicted anything I wanted to do, but I think that all the useful stuff is still years out on this.
Speaker 2:The text-based stuff is getting really good. I mean, I used it today to clean up an article that I wrote and it did a fantastic job in like 95% of it. There's 5% that I really needed to that it really just didn't understand what I was trying to get to and maybe that points out the deficiency and, in my way of saying it, um, early on, but uh, it I think the text-based stuff is is really doing well, even some of the image-based stuff and moving into um, being able to string images together into movies of, uh, of things that you really just you can't do in reality, um, and and uh, being able to make a movie or or maybe it's too dangerous or too expensive to do these things in reality. You can do them in in ai and, yeah, you know, for better or worse, I'm sure it gets used for uh, for other purposes as well. When you come to making images in movies, things are always going to be. Technology is always going to be misused in one way or another, but they've made great strides in that area, I think.
Speaker 2:Moving from text to images, to moving images. You know it's going to take a while, but this development has been very, very fast, going from text to images. It's really been less than a year, I think, to get there. So, from that sort of data to 3D, you know we're probably going to have to go through mesh models and blobular shapes. We have to put up with more of that until it gets to actual manufacturing, understanding manufacturing processes and manufacturing geometry and things like that. I think it's coming and I'm excited. I'd like to be part of it, but I think we're gonna have to be patient because there's a lot of stuff that we're gonna call bullshit on before we get there.
Speaker 1:A lot of bullshit, a lot of hype in this area. I think every new technology has a lot of hype. I think the internet had a lot of hype when it first came out. A lot of people thought, oh, this will never work. What do you think? What sense did you get from the room when we had our panel discussion about the job thing? Because I get the sense when I'm talking to most people, not necessarily engineers. I get the sense when I'm talking to most people, not necessarily engineers, but most people, like they're always when you talk about AI. They always have a sense of foreboding, like this is going to hurt, this is going to cost me my job. Did you get any sense of that at the conference?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think people are afraid of that and as I was kind of preparing for that panel discussion, I could see where industrial designers you know they got to be shaken right now because it can create images so nicely and it can do a lot of iterations of those. And that's not all of what industrial design people do, but it's a portion. It's a lot of it, right? Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of it.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of it, right, yeah, yeah, it's a lot of it. I'm thinking about tech docs, right, making sketches out of CAD drawings. I mean, that should be a slam dunk for AI.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Maybe not now, but soon enough, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but there's other technologies, I think, that are going to compete. We've, in SolidWorks, had great success with setting up document templates for drawings that had specific types of views and you could just you know it was just as fast as you can drag and drop. You can make drawings, and it depended, of course, on what kinds of dimensions and how many dimensions you needed. But if you're just doing some QA check drawings, you could turn out drawings very quickly. You just have to clean up the title block, make sure. My big thing with this, and even in what I've done today in the last few days with text, is you got to check your work or you got to check the work of the AI, and even if that turns out to be our main task as humans, I think it's still worth work that's worth doing, because you can't just trust it. Whatever it gives you, it's right.
Speaker 1:every now and then it just it just totally misunderstands and it'll it'll go off and on some tangent or hallucination, as they call them yeah and so uh you know anybody who's personally like friends, neighbors, colleagues that have been affected lost their job no, I, I don't think yet I um, it's, you know I'm.
Speaker 2:you probably know more people that, just as a writer, because writer, I think writers probably the the first people that are affected.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I, in fact I was. Yeah, I do know a few that have like copy editors who lost their jobs and and, uh, I would say like junior writers or you know, or people that don't know the business right but are just trying to be writers. I think they're I swear I could turn out an article, uh, on on a subject from a press release, for example, better than some beginning writers who don't know the business yeah but using chat gpt, right, it's, it's easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's easy. Right, so I'm yeah, would I? Would I hire a junior editor anymore? No, I would hire more senior editors for sure, right to met to do the job.
Speaker 2:But right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, I think you have to know the content and and that's going to differentiate you from the, from the AI bot yeah, right, right there, early on, when, when AI first started, I I took the task of asking it the several technical questions. You know, solid works, actually things that I had written about extensively and either on my website or in the books, and I was asking questions specifically to see how much stuff was plagiarized. But you know, I was both. I was surprised, pleasantly and negatively, because it obviously wasn't plagiarizing anything I wrote. But it also wasn't.
Speaker 2:It didn't everything it said was very generic and you know, it's like if you ask a guy who's a know-it-all a specific question and he just bloviates about things that he obviously doesn't know anything about. That's exactly what this AI sort of sounded like, but I've seen it over the course of a few months really improve in that respect. This last edit that it did on an article that I wrote, I mean it had some nice touches in it and it seemed like it understood some of the content that I asked him about specifically.
Speaker 1:You feel like it understands your style, or is it? Is it trying to learn your style? Have they gotten to that point yet? I don't think so.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure I I'm not sure I really have a style.
Speaker 1:Like an engineer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, at least not a good one, but uh, um, yeah, I think it understood the content that I was asking about and and there was a particular vein that I was following and it it understood my train of thought, I think yeah, going to be using the paid version of ChatGPT. No, I'm just using the regular one. Yeah, I didn't even sign in in this latest one, because I think you get a better version if you sign in than if you just.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you get more up-to-date versions. That's more up-to-date information, for sure. Yeah, for what I'm doing, what I do is do it for research on news that I'm following up on. It goes, it's very current and I don't get that with the unpaid version. Yeah, yeah, so did it manage, was it? You're thinking I read your books, though, like, did it read your?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm gonna go back and and run the tests again that I ran before and and see because it it it is much more thorough and it does understand. But you know there are a lot of sources for information, but I think there are some specific things that I've, that I've done or said or written about, or something that would tell specifically if it was just regurgitating something I had written back to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So what I'm waiting for again, another thing I'm waiting for with the design is it to do what it does with language, with, with, with a, with a CAD program, like I wanted to be able to tell, using English, what I wanted to do, like, okay, make me a flange with this many holes in it. Right, that that I wanted to do? And uh, I had somebody else, a software vendor executive, who said again like you don't, you don't know what you're asking. You're so naive to think that that that software, that a prompt like that would take so long to act to create that you're better off just making the part yourself, right?
Speaker 2:You know I'd have two responses to that. One is this product called Leo that is a plug-in for SolidWorks, yeah, and it actually does some things based on kind of functional input that you give it, things based on kind of functional input that you give it. Some of it isn't very good, but you can see that it starts to understand certain mechanical concepts. If you think about the difference between you know, you want to write, so you have to think about the words to do that that comes kind of naturally to you know, especially people like you. But and if you think about designing, that's a completely different, uh, way of thinking and I think you, you think more slowly about it because it's it's more difficult and I, I think that the ai is going to find the same thing. That, uh, you know, words are one thing, but geometry, and geometry connected to manufacturing processes, just to make it, even you know, an order of magnitude more difficult, I think that's going to turn out to be an entirely different thing.
Speaker 1:Interesting, so shout out to leo, you like it yeah, leo is.
Speaker 2:Uh, it's an interesting toy. Right now I wouldn't spend any money on it oh, okay there's this other thing that I uh, that I read about on, if I can give a shout out to somebody here uh, there's a, uh, a new cad forum that's called um, oh, now I have to think of oh, no, no, no, okay, it's called cad munity. If you say that wrong, it sounds like cad mutiny. You know it's.
Speaker 1:So it's cad munity, if I anyway it's uh, why don't these people check with us before they name the product?
Speaker 2:really. But uh, it's a, it's a new, uh, a new cad forum since. Well, when the, the solidworks cad forum, went down, then I started mine and when mine went down, this guy started this one and I gave him all of my data. So he's got all of my old CAD Forum stuff up here. But I found this AI reference on this CADmunity site and a lot of people had the same reaction to it and a lot of people had the same reaction to it that it just it's got a nice video done on YouTube. But you can see, if you're careful, you know you watch the, you watch the SolidWorks feature manager and you watch how features and parts show up over there and and he's obviously doing a lot of things in in the background. He's like the uh, uh, the wizard of oz wizard they're uh, pulling strings, but he's also got a video editor to help help him out a little bit.
Speaker 2:So you know, I think we're we're in that smoke and mirrors stage right now. Maybe this guy he his big pitch was you could get on his waiting list. He doesn't, he doesn't have anything to deliver right now, but he's got a waiting list, so he wants your information or something he wants to. Maybe he's raising money, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1:Maybe he wants to get the Matt Lombard seal of approval right. Give him some credit in this business.
Speaker 2:Well, he got some. What he did get was some good natured ribbing.
Speaker 1:Oh, did he? Okay, so Leo, Leo is um. They always. Fun is getting a lot of good backing, as it was, as it were.
Speaker 1:So I got a call back. I was checking out the product too. I interviewed Mayor and the owner and founder and I got a letter from somebody asking, I think, about whether I wanted to buy it. And you know, press, we don't buy anything. We mostly get it for review. Because we don't buy anything, we mostly get it for review Because we don't use it, we just review the software. And his name was something Herstick. Oh, no.
Speaker 1:And I thought and I went back to him I said are you related to John Herstick, by the way? Now this is a salesman for Leo, right? And he said yeah, that's my dad.
Speaker 2:Oh no, so he's got a few million in the bank to play with, I'm sure.
Speaker 1:Quite possibly I've got to ask John that when he's on the show he's going to be on the show, I think, next week.
Speaker 2:Oh great, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I'll ask him what do you hope your son to do with this company?
Speaker 2:He might be surprised that you haven't uncovered that little bit of information.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh, uh-huh, don't tell him I'll, I'll bring it on them. Yeah, all right. So so tell me this now, okay, so we're running low on. I don't want to take up all your time because you're not making any money talking to me, so but hey, tell me, tell me, it's a little bit about not work stuff. What, what, what does matt lombard like to do it as? What makes you interesting? Besides, besides your work, right?
Speaker 2:oh, well, well, I I do a lot of stuff. I'm probably the thing I do most of is, uh, is music. Um, I play trombone. I grew up playing trombone. It's uh, it's something. I've got a trombone quartet that I lead and a brass quintet that I lead. I play in a in a jazz big band a couple times a week and then I play in an orchestra here and there, and if you call me up to play in church, you know I'll do that too, is that right, you're a musician.
Speaker 1:All these years. I never do that. That's why I have this show, so I get to know people a little better.
Speaker 2:When I was in high school I was accepted to Boston University for engineering and then I'd been accepted to a couple places for music and I really didn't know which way to go. I failed miserably on a calculus test and, and that that made up my mind and I just went into music. So I I spent. Wait you, you must have gotten better oh, yeah, yeah, I got, I got better. I retook the test and I got an A on the test.
Speaker 1:Okay, good.
Speaker 2:But that happened at a crucial moment in my decision making and so I went to. I was at New England Conservatory in Boston.
Speaker 1:Really that's top school in music. Yeah, no kidding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and from there I joined the Navy as a musician and I spent four years in the Navy just playing music, traveling around playing music, wearing the uniform, doing everything I had to do, playing music Really. So instead of a gun you were had, you had your trombone yeah I, I never touched a gun the whole four years I was in the navy how about that?
Speaker 1:oh, except for training, everybody has to have firearm training, right oh yeah, I I somehow didn't.
Speaker 2:You know, I I just fired a gun several times. You know, at home I grew up in the, uh, in the great outback of the northern adirondacks, and guns are just a way of life up there. But, um, but while I was in the navy I never, never, touched a weapon at all. And I I took an audition for an orchestra that paid $17,000 a year. So you're obviously going to have to have some other form of of job to keep your you know, just to keep your head above water. Yeah, and, and I didn't, even the guy I knew who was the best trombonist I knew he didn't even make the first cut. Yeah, obviously, neither did I.
Speaker 2:And so there were a hundred guys that showed up for this one chair that didn't pay any money at all. And I looked at that. I was like, oh man, I made this decision for my career. What am I doing? And I looked at, and I was in the navy. So I took, I took advantage of a lot of stuff like the armed services vocational abilities board or something like that, to figure out what my real interests and aptitudes were. And they said I could be, I could be a musician. I knew that they said I could be an editor.
Speaker 1:That went nowhere, oh really.
Speaker 2:Or I could be a bricklayer or an engineer, and then they started talking about these other types of fields that I was working and I loved to take my bicycle apart as a kid Because my bicycle was my freedom, freedom and that was my only way to get around and so we have that in common, but when I was growing up, I got out.
Speaker 1:I got out for an hour. I was, I was like a teenager. My parents were very strict. I got an out for an hour. I could ride my bike. That was my freedom, but the wheels were freedom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great. And so the Navy paid for me to go to RIT and I got my mechanical engineering degree, okay. And then, yeah, it's just a lot of fun from there on. That was like your.
Speaker 1:Fifth choice was after bricklaying huh yeah, oh my God. Fifth choice was after bricklaying huh yeah, oh my god. How long did that all take. How long did it take with, after you graduated high school, to where you were, went to got into rit for engineering that was uh, that was six or seven years.
Speaker 2:So, uh, you know, I was uh, I was on the 10-year plan when it came to a graduation, but but I'd done, you know, four years in the, in the navy, and that's uh, that was worth something, I think yeah, yeah sure, I gave you a lot of I was gonna say give you a lot of practical knowledge, but that was for you, was just playing yourone, yeah but the thing is, is that, uh, that now I approach music as is just a great way to just to enjoy my off time and, uh, I, I do a lot of different things in music.
Speaker 2:I actually do a lot of arranging for music. Uh, you, you probably never never heard anything that I've ever done, but it's uh, it's, it's a lot of fun and I make make great friends around here doing that, and it's a it's a whole community, in the same way that the engineering people are a whole community, and these people have, uh, you, you'd be surprised how many physicists and engineers I meet who are also musicians.
Speaker 1:There's something to that. I've heard that too. Same I also know a lot of people. It's something like mathematical in music right. That can? I don't know. I don't know quite what it is. Have you figured that out?
Speaker 2:Well, it's somewhere between the mathematics and the analysis, because when you're listening to music and playing it at the same time, you have to try to be in tune and in time with everybody else, and so you have this inner clock going and you're also making. Intonation is something that making sure that two pitches are the same. Intonation is something that making sure that two pitches are the same. That's something that's difficult and I don't think it's a natural skill. It's something that you have to develop so to be able to do that, while you're also reading music and keeping time and making sure you're not playing too loud and there's all sorts of things that go on with your embouchure that you got to do all these things at the same time, they all have to be at a pretty high level to be uh, you know successful with it yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's that's yours. That's what you do when you're not doing cat or design or engineering. You do you do your music, yeah, okay I do that.
Speaker 2:I do a lot of gardening. Uh, I do a lot of fishing.
Speaker 1:When I can, I love to love to get in the water, um, yeah, are you in a good place for it up here in north carolina right?
Speaker 2:well, I'm in virginia virginia, okay there is there is some water here. It's not like uh, the adirondacks were, the adirondacks were, the Adirondacks were beautiful, but for three months out of the year, the rest of the time it's frozen solid.
Speaker 1:It dies fish.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I did a lot more bike riding, but bike riding was my release. That was what I did, and you did a lot of bike riding too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when I was out in California. That's a whole different story. I worked at Avocet, which made bike seats and bike electronics, and that was my first engineering job out of college engineering job out of college and so where I lived was Redwood City area. There was so much riding to do. I commuted to work across the Dumbarton Bridge four days a week. I rollerbladed one time across the bridge. I only did that once. That was not a smart move.
Speaker 1:You know there's 18 miles on rollerblazes is there, even sidewalk on it is there it.
Speaker 2:It has. It had a bike lane, oh, okay, on one side of the bridge, okay, and when you got down to the other side they had this nature reserve and it was very interesting that going through that nature reserve, you saw this really odd looking bird that had a beak that goes down and curves up. You know most of those sandpiper birds their beak curves down, but the bird that the beak curves up it was called an avocet, and so I always wondered how that company got its name, and it turns out that this one little odd duck, as you might say, was how it got the name.
Speaker 1:How about that? Oh, that was like a revelation when you saw that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, Interesting. Oh, Matt, this has been great. I really enjoyed catching up. I'm learning more about you. It's been a we got to do this more often and I guess we could talk more. By the time you come back, we'll have a lot more to talk about with.
Speaker 2:AI.
Speaker 1:AI. It might even be AI replacing us in this conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll talk about the old days when we had actual jobs, actual jobs.
Speaker 1:We really appeared not using our avatars, all right. All right, matt. Hey, great talking to you, great catching up. Hope to see you again in the flesh at some other conference, all right. Yeah very good seeing you again as well. Talk to you later. Talk to you later. Bye-bye, thank you.