Every once in a while I write a blog related to my life before AFT. Today is one of those days. And I am going to talk about swords and plowshares. This is a reference to the Old Testament book of Isaiah of moving from war to peace.
First, bear with me while I tell a humorous story of the early days of AFT that relates to plows. I was applying for AFT's first credit card (in 1994?) and someone at the bank mistyped the application information into their system. I received a credit card with my name on it and the name of my new high-tech company "Applied Plow Technology" – for sure an up and coming high tech field on the cusp of the 21st century!
When I called to get this fixed, the credit card company again showed its lack of competency - in another humorous way.
I received the second credit card a few days later. The company still said Applied Plow Technology - but they had changed my name from Trey Walters to "Trey Flow". Yes really. I felt we were going backwards because we were going backwards . Eventually, we got it all figured out.
My first job at General Dynamics is where the swords come in – see Rockets are Pumping Systems Too - The Aerospace Heritage of AFT. I worked on Atlas rockets for launching satellites into Space – some commercial, some science and some for defense purposes. The facility where I worked in San Diego was the same one where, in the 1950's , the Atlas rocket was designed and built as the United States' first ICBM. The Atlas also launched the first American into Space. While I did not work on ICBMs, the facility where I worked did in previous decades. These are the modern-day equivalent of swords.
Fast forward a decade and I had left the company and my rocket days behind me. The company also moved on from the facility in San Diego after a 50-year stint and sold it off for commercial purposes. What moved into this historic place where the first American ICBMs were designed and built? A car sales lot! These are the modern-day equivalent of the plowshares.
We can take this story one step further. I learned most of what I know about product design and engineering working on the Atlas and other newer rockets at General Dynamics. Two years after leaving General Dynamics I started Applied Flow Technology (Flow not Plow!). We do not sell software to any plow companies that I know of. But we do sell software into the agricultural industry which I would say is close enough. So that is a way that AFT has helped beat swords into plowshares. And that is a pretty cool thing.