Until We Meet Again

After 39 years in the CFD world, I have decided to retire. My last day at Cadence was Fri 05 May 2023. It’s time for me to rest and relax with a year-long weekend and time with family and friends. And unlike a disgraced politician, I mean it.

I’ve been involved with CFD since I entered the workforce back in 1984. To say that a lot has changed would be a vast understatement. The stories I used to guard as “evidence” now barely qualify as anecdotes.

Someone once asked me what from my career I was most proud of. I’ll admit that being part of the 3-person team who developed and delivered the Gridgen software (1987-1991) ranks high on that list. To have seen that software so widely used throughout the aerospace industry remains a point of pride to this day. To have accomplished that with people who are still friends to this day is doubly special.

However, what’s most special about the past nearly four decades are all the relationships I’ve developed with people throughout the CFD, aerospace, engineering, and business communities. You are the reason I do this and why I came to work each day. You motivated and taught me. You scolded me and redirected me. You pushed and prodded me. You put a smile on my face when I needed it and saved me from doom when I needed that too.

Many people have earned my sincere thanks. If I try to mention them each by name, I will undoubtedly omit several. I ask that you forgive the lack of personalization in what follows. But you each know who you are.

For the past two years, I’ve been very appreciative of all my Cadence colleagues. They have been very patient with this simple mesh generation guy. I often joke that there’s no such thing as a stupid question but there sure seems to be a lot of inquisitive idiots. Thank you for the grace you demonstrated while tolerating this inquisitive idiot.?

My Vistage group delivered one of the most rewarding and enriching experiences of my career. What began as a group of business leaders solely motivated to improve their own organization evolved into a group of friends motivated by the desire to help each other grow professionally and personally.?

They say it’s better to be lucky than good. As? a small business owner, I was the lucky recipient of some of the best business counsel I could hope for. Whether it was legal, accounting, finance, marketing, or strategy, the advice I received often saved me from myself and my own ignorance. Perhaps the nicest thing someone said to me during the past week was that I was good technically but I excelled at leading the business - due in no small part to good advice.

And then there are all my friends, customers, and partners throughout the CFD whether they be from academia, government labs, software companies, or folks from industry. Some of us love CFD, others just want to use it, and there are those fortunate to do both. Too many conversations to count, too many ideas shared. We should all be as fortunate to work in a field so vibrant and energetic.

Speaking of good luck, I was incredibly fortunate to have been given the opportunity to work with and within the nascent CFD group at General Dynamics Fort Worth (now Lockheed Martin Aeronautics) beginning in the mid-1980s. It’s unclear to me how I would’ve turned out had that experience not been so positive. Beginning in 1983 (I arrived in 1984), a bunch of 22-25 year olds were given the resources of a major company and asked to create a CFD capability from scratch. What we created was one of the premier CFD capabilities of its time. And we had a blast doing it.

And then there are all my Pointwise friends. To say that each of you has been more than a colleague would be an understatement. To call us a family sounds cliché, but we did act like one. We celebrated, argued, laughed, and shared meals together - many, many meals. (The “Pointwise 15” was a real thing.) I hope that you all recall many more good times than bad; I certainly do. Working for a small company is a leap of faith and you each made that leap with agility and poise. It is each of you who earned recognition as Small Business of the Year in 2018. It is each of you who committed to excellence, paid attention to details, worked collaboratively, took initiative, and - most importantly - made coming to work fun. The 26 years of Pointwise are the pinnacle of my professional career because of you. Like an athlete past his prime, it would've been nice for me to get a 1-day contract and retire from Pointwise.

The rest of you aren’t done with me yet. I plan to remain an active member of AIAA and other professional organizations that have been such a big part of my career. That includes the CFD Vision 2030 integration committee so you haven’t heard the last of that from me yet. I may spend more time on my advisory board duties at my alma mater to contribute in a small way to the next generation of engineers. I want to learn to play the piano. And maybe I’ll write that book I keep talking about. And you’ll continue to find me on social media, probably a lot sillier than usual without the need to uphold a professional veneer. (And given what I post now, you’re probably shocked by how thin that professional veneer apparently is.)

And in a year after I’ve cleared my head and healed my body, who knows? Do I still have enough gas in the tank to be helpful to anybody? Would anyone care to hear what I have to say?

Many of you may know me best because of my blogging. Another Fine Mesh has been my love letter to CFD. As you probably know, its name is a bit of wordplay on the famous line by Stan Laurel of Laurel & Hardy fame: “Another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.” Let me close with another of Stan’s lines.

“All I know is just how to make people laugh.”