August 23, 2020

I have had an eclectic and varied career from a fry-cook at McDonald's, to jumping out of perfectly good airplanes as a paratrooper in the 82d Airborne, as a waiter in numerous restaurants, and as an Attack Helicopter Commander in the 2D Armored Cavalry Regiment in the US Army patrolling the West German/East German border. I helped build the commercial video game Day of Defeat (Valve), I created ways to manage financial results looking for lost revenue, I installed software on a single machine and then worked to install software on thousands, I ran a three-person help desk supporting a few floors of a building, to designing, implementing, and directing a 60-person service desk supporting a Fortune 500 defense contractor, I also managed all the end-user desktop IT support at the US Treasury. I clearly still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up…

Now that the LinkedIn portion of this is done…as a youngster growing up near Washington DC in the 60’s my father would buy me models to build. At the time I didn’t know it but I’m pretty sure he was trying to give me something to do w/my energy rather than “turn on, tune in, drop out”. I also read everything I could get my hands on and drew a lot (pencil/pen drawings). My early reading tended towards WW2 history and science fiction. Drawing fighters and future flying-related machines gave me insight into how to make a better models. I can remember sitting at the dining room table, newspaper spread out, and spending the entire weekend building a Monogram P-51. My parents couldn’t believe I could sit still for hours on end working on a small section of a model.

As I grew older I left modeling for years at a time, only building a few between college (VMI) and present day. Fell in love the second I saw my wife-to-be, had three kids, bunches of cats and three dogs and we moved so much (military) I think my first son went to 5-6 elementary schools by the time he hit 3rd or 4th grade. Outside of family events (school, sports, etc) in the early 2000’s, my free time was spent playing or making video game maps/levels for Valve’s Day of Defeat WW2 shooter game.

My son was one of the leaders of the Day of Defeat mod team before Valve bought them. His online tag was “Fuzz”…so I became “FuzzDad”. I really enjoyed level design. It matched my drawing and artistic skills with my game-playing desires and I ended up with multiple maps in the original Day of Defeat commercial game (dod_glider, dod_flugplatz) released in 2003 and I did map updates and clean-up work for Day of Defeat Source. This is one of my custom maps for Day of Defeat Source, DOD_Cobra

Since the early 90’s I’ve worked in (and still do) IT Services and as stated, have run multiple small and large call centers and IT help desks. That job and gaming and working for Valve (part-time) led me to hi-end PC building and I’ve built every PC myself since 2005 or so.

I built “boutique” PC’s because I’ve been a avid PC gamer for years now…my first PC was a Tandy 1000SX (twin floppy drives baby!) and over the years grew to appreciate PC building as a hobby and as a way to learn more about them and to get them hella fast to play games at high FPS. I’ve played hundreds of games over the years from Myst up-to-and-including the latest Flight Simulator from Microsoft. A few years back I even started to design a tattoo showing some of my favorite games but still don’t have the guts to get it (at least not yet).

Although still gaming, I also got back into modeling in early 2019. I had watched some of Phil Flory’s videos and others and joined his website and for the last nineteen months I’ve been modeling on weekends and evenings. I work slow and deliberate and like most of you, my desk/center is a mess when working.

The model-making community is filled with guys like me…picking up the hobby after many years, trying to relive some of that early passion and fun…I find it helps me stay centered and focused and calm. There’s also the immense satisfaction of getting a perfect fit between wing halves, and seeing the sanding and shaping of a wing root we spent hours while fixing a gap issue go invisible as we spray primer on it…or the decal, no bigger than a gnat, that goes on perfectly.

Years ago I read a book by Walter Isaacson on (and called) Steve Jobs…the book was great, but one paragraph really stuck with me

“I thought my dad’s sense of design was pretty good,” Jobs told Isaacson, “because he knew how to build anything. If we needed a cabinet, he would build it. When he built our fence, he gave me a hammer so I could work with him.” Fifty years after the fence was constructed, Jobs showed it to Isaacson, still standing and recalled a lesson about making things of quality that he learned from his father. Touching the boards of inside of the fence, he said that “He loved doing things right. He even cared about the look of the parts you couldn’t see.”

Wes Shull

August 23, 2020 4:11 PM EST