I learn something new every day by the nature of my profession. Being a designer can be exhilarating as well as exhausting, especially because it requires many different professionals to make a project come to life. Sitting at my drafting table with trace and pencil in hand is incredibly rewarding and gratifying. I love working in a profession that allows you to design creativity into every nook and cranny possible.
I enjoy seeing my vision realized and then appreciated by those who use it. 
In high school I started playing the electric bass and learned rifts from bands like Rage Against the Machine. After starting college I realized that music was the main thing that spoke to me, so I took a year off to learn the upright bass. I went back to school for music and learned classical music. Afterwards, I moved to Washington D.C. and played electric bass in a hip hop band, but was exposed to blue grass and old time music through friends and started experimenting with it. Then I moved to California and took a break from playing music. Later some big changes happened later in my life, and I hit a point when I needed to reinvent myself. Music kept resurfacing. During this time I met my friend Mike when he was playing at the Berkeley Farmer’s Market. For the last five years we have been getting together to play music in Transit of Venus, an acoustic band that has a mandolin, guitar, and bass.
What do you like about playing music? 
My work is usually dictated by a formal interest in composition and
color relationships. The content is both figurative and abstract in the sense that what you see is a representation of earthly life, reinterpreted using my own visual language. Control is another issue that frequents my work, evident in my process and craft. Some of my recent paintings attempted to weave a narrative between two recent major life events: the birth of my daughter and the death of a life-long friend. They never achieved this. Instead they stand as separate ideas that recognize and accept loss, and observe a child-like wonder of the world. Since those paintings I had been working on small studies, trying to solve a few technical issues that I felt were repeatedly surfacing in my work. I just started a new series of 10 paintings this weekend, which I am pretty excited about. 
I knew I wanted to be
an artist and receive education in the arts from a very young age. With
that, I believe that a certain amount of dedication is required to
brandish such a nomenclature as being “an artist”; otherwise it is just
cast around too easily. I graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in
2004, but lacked that dedication to call myself an artist until about 3
years ago. It took me some time to get my priorities straight. 
I have a Bachelor's and a Master's in Civil Engineering, and have been working in the field for one year.
The best part of my job is the diversity of work- there's always interesting project. Long term, it is satisfying to know that my work could have enormous effects in the safety of train passengers, rail system employees, pedestrians, and motorists. My job lets me think about how mechanical, structural, and human components interact in a complex system and create ways to keep them all protected.
Andrew Thomas. Bass Player.
Since introducing the original Zip Tie, we have gotten a lot
of positive feedback from folks. Josh had considered adding some colored
felts into the mix. Plus, a number of people have requested ties in color. After
having this swirl around in his head for a bit, he is now deciding which colors
to use for the next generation of Zip Ties.
