The Technomancer’s Tales — Stories of Compute from 8088 to the Modern Era, #6 — The Crash: College, Kamikazes, and a Wake-Up Call | by Cypher619 | Oct, 2025

In 1993, I graduated high school and left San Diego for Cal Poly Pomona, a wide-eyed freshman, dual majoring in Computer Science and Computer Engineering. I moved into the dorms thinking I was finally on track — this was going to be the next level.

Then day one hit me like a freight train.

Turns out my mom had missed the payment notice for my classes. I showed up to orientation thinking I was enrolled… but I wasn’t.

No classes. No schedule. No support. Just me — green, disoriented, and scrambling to crash classes as a freshman, which, if you’ve ever done it, you know is basically like trying to sneak into a locked building during a fire drill.

I scraped together 9 units.

But between the stress, the free time, and a few too-generous seniors, I spiraled fast.

The Drift

That first quarter turned into late nights and even later mornings. I started drinking — hard. A quart or more of Kamikazes a night, easy.

There’s one night burned into my memory: I was so drunk, I crawled back to my dorm room with my 4’9” girlfriend riding on my back like a horse, both of us laughing like idiots. It felt funny at the time. Now? It just feels like a warning shot I didn’t hear.

Weed crept in too — not as a social thing, but as an escape hatch.

I lasted two quarters.

My GPA was a 1.42, and honestly, it would’ve been lower if some of the professors hadn’t taken pity on me and handed out D’s instead of F’s.

But the turning point came when that second-term report card landed in my hands.

I looked at it… looked at myself… and thought about my parents:

• My mom, a civil servant accountant, working long hours to keep it together.
• My dad, a mailman, out there in the heat, the cold, the grind — every single day.

They didn’t have money to waste. They believed in me. They’d sacrificed to put me there.

And I was throwing it away.

So I made the call.

I wasn’t going to waste another dime of their hard-earned money.

This wasn’t the end of the story — it was the moment I realized I needed discipline, structure, and a new path.

That path would come with a uniform, a flight line, and a black box full of wires.

Next stop: The U.S. Navy Reserve.

🫡 Carrying the Torch: Three Generations Deep

This wasn’t just a pivot.

This was legacy.

I’m a third-generation military man — and when I said goodbye to Cal Poly Pomona and walked into the recruiting office, I wasn’t just looking for structure. I was taking my place in the line.

• My grandfather fought in the trenches of Germany during WWII, U.S. Army — the kind of war that reshaped the world, and he saw it from the dirt.
• My dad was a Signalman on the USS Constellation during Vietnam — standing post on a floating city, sending and receiving light and code in a combat zone.
• And me?

I signed on with the U.S. Navy Reserve — and chose the rate of Aviation Electrician’s Mate (AE).

Because wires, circuits, systems — that was my language.

And now I’d learn it the military way.

I went from crawling drunk in dorm hallways to standing on a flight line, working on the electrical guts of F/A-18 Hornets.

This was no longer about curiosity. This was about responsibility.

It wasn’t just my story anymore. It was the next verse in a family legacy that spanned continents and decades.

And I wasn’t going to be the one to drop the torch.

🔌 ASVAB Domination, and Choosing My Weapon

The Navy was running a recruitment program that felt tailor-made for me:

• Boot camp and “A” School as active duty
• Get trained, earn a rate, then move into the Reserve Fleet
• 8-year commitment, but just 2 days a month, 2 weeks a year

Structure. Skill. Purpose. Then back to the world.

I signed up — and when I took the ASVAB, I dropped a 97.

That score? It unlocked everything. Nuclear, Intel, Cryptologic Tech, you name it.

But I didn’t chase prestige — I chased what I already knew I was a monster at.

I chose Electronics.

Because even before I wore the uniform, I was diagnosing at the motherboard level.

I could:

• Follow trace routes across a damaged PCB
• Identify a bad cap by look or smell
• Tell the difference between a RAM fault and a voltage drop
• Pull and re-seat ICs with confidence, not fear

I didn’t need to learn how circuits worked. I needed someone to point me at more complex ones.

This was my lane. My battlefield.

And the Navy? They were about to get a tech who had already been god-tier with a soldering iron since before most kids knew what a jumper was.

🫡 Spring 1994: Boot Camp at Great Mistakes

In the spring of ’94, I shipped out to Great Lakes, Illinois — or as every sailor knows it: Great Mistakes.

That’s where it all started.

Boot camp was what I needed: structure, fire, discipline, routine — and a total reset.

Because of my ASVAB score and the program I was in, I got assigned to a 900 division — the ceremonial unit that performed at graduation.

• We trained the same as everyone else — but with added pressure to represent
• Marching drills, rifle handling, color guard, even singing details
• We were the company that looked good in front of the parents — but still had to suffer just like every other recruit

Don’t let anyone tell you being in a 900 company was a free pass. Boot camp was still boot camp.

• Wake-ups before the sun
• 5-minute showers
• Folding socks with surgical precision
• PT until your brain went quiet
• Getting smoked for someone else’s mistake — standard issue

I went in weighing 185 pounds. Came out a lean, carved 155.

Every inch of softness burned off. Every ounce of ego sanded down. What remained was focus — and the sense that I was earning my legacy.

I wasn’t just joining the Navy.

I was becoming part of the machine.

📍 Millington, Tennessee — “A” School & The Simpson 260

Eight weeks after boot, I was on a bus heading south to Millington, Tennessee — home of the Navy’s Aviation Technical Training Center, and the next chapter in the AE pipeline: “A” School.

The structure didn’t stop. If anything, it got tighter.

• Rigorous PT every morning
• Marching in formation to and from class
• Calling cadence until your voice cracked
• And classes that weren’t just theory — they were technical boot camp

We dove deep into:

• AC/DC electrical systems
• Ohm’s Law, power calculations, resistance networks
• Aircraft-specific circuitry — rugged, redundant, and tightly spec’d

And our weapon of choice?

The Simpson 260 analog multimeter

Heavy. Reliable. Bulletproof.

• No digital screen. No fancy modes.
• Just a swinging needle and a set of ranges you had to understand — not guess.
• You learned to read scale, compensate for parallax, and trust the movement

This thing was the Navy’s multimeter of choice for a reason:

• If it could survive flight line abuse, it could survive anything
• If you could diagnose a fault with one of these, you could fix anything

We used it to:

• Test power rails and connectors
• Verify continuity on long aircraft harnesses
• Detect failed components, dead grounds, shorts, and opens

It wasn’t about memorizing. It was about internalizing — knowing the theory and the tool, and being able to apply both under pressure.

Millington hardened my knowledge. It turned curiosity into method, and instinct into repeatable process.

This wasn’t computer lab tech anymore.

This was aviation-grade electronics — and I was right where I belonged.

⚙️ The F-8 Crusader: My First Bird

Before I touched anything modern, they gave us a relic — a piece of Cold War steel with just enough life in it to teach you everything that mattered:

The F-8 Crusader

It was the Navy’s last true “gunfighter” — single-engine, swept-wing, fast, and beautifully analog.

This was our trainer aircraft — not for flying, but for learning.

We tore into its systems to:

• Run power checks on ancient wiring harnesses
• Chase down ground faults the old-school way
• Test relays, limit switches, and pressure sensors
• Learn how to read schematics and translate them into physical systems

Every component had age, wear, and a story.

You didn’t plug in a laptop and get diagnostics. You picked up a Simpson 260, a set of prints, and got to work.

If something didn’t function, it was on you to trace it, test it, and fix it.

The F-8 was more than a trainer. It was a baptism by circuit — a rite of passage before moving on to newer, faster, smarter aircraft.

And when you could keep that thing powered and working?

You were ready for anything.

📚 Top of the Class — With No Slack Given

When it came to the tests and labs at “A” School?

I aced everything.

Electronics theory. Hands-on diagnostic labs. System simulations. I nailed them all.

I finished third in my class, and here’s who outranked me:

• A rocked-out nuke — someone who’d already failed out of Nuclear Power School, now retaking AC/DC theory.
• A Foreign National Saudi Chief — a senior enlisted sailor with decades of fleet time. The kind of guy who’d normally be teaching, not taking classes.

The only reason I didn’t get automatic promotion was because the Chief was in the room. Had it been a class of just U.S. sailors the top two in the class would receive promotions.

That told me something important:

Not only was I back on track — I was outpacing veterans and second-chancers, like I was built for it.

🔥 Damage Control: Where Leadership Found Me

Part of the pipeline before hitting the fleet was DC School — Damage Control — where they teach you how to keep a ship alive when everything starts going wrong.

• Hull breaches
• Pipe ruptures
• Flooding compartments
• Zero visibility, time pressure, chaos

You don’t pass by memorizing. You pass by responding like it’s real.

We were deep into the simulator phase — water blasting, alarms going, adrenaline pumping — and our designated team lead, a Third Class Petty Officer, completely froze.

Didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t know what to do.

And right there — as an E-1, still new, still junior — I stepped forward.

Calm voice. Clear instructions. Called out tools by name. Assigned hands to leaks and patches. Coordinated the team like I’d done it a dozen times.

I didn’t yell. I didn’t try to take the spotlight. I just got it done.

Sealed the breaches. Controlled the situation. Led from the front without ever being asked.

Afterward, the instructors didn’t need to say much. Everyone in the room knew what just happened.

That moment locked something in:

Leadership isn’t about rank. It’s about stepping up when no one else will.

🛩️ Back to Miramar — VFC-30 Aggressor Squadron

After graduating “A” School, I got my assignment: Home.

I was headed back to San Diego, stationed at Naval Air Station Miramar — the very same base that gave the world Top Gun.

But I wasn’t there to watch the show — I was there to support the pilots who played the enemy.

VFC-30: Reserve Aggressors

I got assigned to VFC-30, a Reserve Aggressor Squadron.

Our job? Fly as the opponent in training exercises — simulating enemy tactics, testing fleet readiness, and keeping active duty pilots sharp.

These weren’t weekend warriors. These were F/A-18 Hornets, maintained and flown with precision, flown to push the Navy’s best pilots to their limits.

And I was part of the team making sure those birds stayed in the air.

My Role

I was no longer training. I was doing the work.

• Performing inspections
• Diagnosing avionics issues
• Supporting launch and recovery
• Keeping electrical systems tight and mission-ready

Every time an F/A-18 went up, it was my work on the line — and every time it came back down clean, I knew I did it right.

Home, But Changed

Coming back to San Diego felt familiar — but I wasn’t the same.

I wasn’t the kid tearing apart PCs in my bedroom. I wasn’t the student who stumbled through college.

I was a fleet-rated Aviation Electrician’s Mate, standing on the flight line at Miramar, supporting one of the sharpest squadrons in the sky.

And I was just getting started.