We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Angelo Keene a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Angelo, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about one of the craziest things you’ve experienced in your journey so far.

Many years ago, my job involved going to a couple of remote customer sites, and supporting our product development and test onsite with the customer team and *their* customer. At the time, me and my wife had two small children, so my focus was on getting the job done as quick as possible and getting back home as soon, and whenever I could. Unfortunately, due to poor management planning on the customer side, as well as lack of support from my own company, I frequently had to spend many hours, days, and weeks onsite without a break. At one point, I was frequently working over 160 hours in a two week period, working around the clock at unusual hours. In a way, I might have gotten a clue that it would be so bad when I started working for this company when, after I went on my first trip to meet the customer, my management team and the senior staff left me onsite and went home, telling me to ‘fix it’. This was in the first two weeks of my employment, and I hadn’t learned the basics of what our product did, much less how it worked, or what the customer required – I needed the job badly, and didn’t have the ability to say ‘no’.

Anyway, one early morning about 3 am, I was on my way into the remote site to work, and I stopped for gas and food at a convenience store on the way. As I was going through the refrigerated food section, I saw two choices for a breakfast sandwich. One was made/sourced locally, and the other was a national brand. Now, after many weeks of long hours, my thought process wasn’t too clear, but I thought to myself: “Hey, if I buy the local one, it’s going to be fresher!”. I bought the product and went into work.

Now, one thing to note about my work environment was that it was a very large lab filled with multi-million dollar computer hardware and specialized equipment, but we were allowed to have food in the lab area as long as we were careful and didn’t abuse the privilege. At the beginning of the day, the early arrivers tended to meet in one section before starting work, and that’s when I decided to eat my breakfast.

No problem.

As I was eating my breakfast bagel (about halfway through, as it was in my mouth), I looked down and saw a dark spot on the surface. “Oh, a burned bit; I’ll pick it off”.

Bad choice.

As I picked at the surface, that ‘burned spot’ got larger. Tried it again with the same results. So my next bright idea was to take the bagel out of my mouth and give it a look.

Even worse choice.

I opened the bagel, and there was every color of mold that you’ve ever seen, and not a little. Black, green, white, grey, yellow, etc.

My coworkers must have saw my face because all they could say was “Please don’t throw up on our equipment”. All I could do was shut down my thinking and sit absolutely still for about a half hour at that point, because if I thought about what had just happened, or tried to move, it would have been more than catastrophic for everyone involved. I couldn’t even speak.

As soon as I could, I got up, left the room, went down to the break area, and drank as much coffee and coke as I could to hopefully kill whatever I’d eaten. It worked, but the bad news was that I still had to finish my workday.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

By profession, I am a real-time embedded software engineer, specializing in low level devices and interfaces, and I’ve been in that business for forty years so far. In the last fifteen years, I’ve had the opportunity to invest in myself and pursue artistic outlets: digital art, 3d-rendering, photography, and writing books.

My initial photography portfolio is available on Blurb here:

https://www.blurb.com/b/9220323-reflectivations

My last three books are available on Amazon here:

One of the reasons that I have been interested in the creative arts was driven by my childhood.

I initially grew up in Chicago Illinois, and had access to the museums there, such as the Art Institute, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Adler Planetarium among others, as well as the historical architecture. A lot of my early influence was from the architectural Art Deco style, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

During elementary school, I had the opportunity to participate in
a multi-weekend exploratory hands-on art program at the Art Institute through the Chicago Public School system, and I got the chance to explore and create art in various media. One of the most memorable experiences was taking a field trip to the symphony, and while in the balcony listening to a performance, sketch while listening. All this was taught by great teachers who promoted creativity without judgement; just helped with technique.

In the years following, I worked more with pen and ink with detailed geometric drawings, reminiscent of the Op Art style on my own, but when the college years started until recently, I hadn’t done much more than the occasional pencil sketch, but whereever we lived, I always tried to search out whatever museums were in the areas we were in.

Living in the desert southwest, I have a lot of respect for the early American artists who tried to capture in paint the look of sunlight through the clouds during a rainstorm, or a sunrise/sunset without the benefit of a camera to lock down what they wanted to share with others.

One thing I have noticed, especially as I’ve been online, is that the subjective judgement of the ‘art world’ and ‘potential clients’ is so diverse and critical, if I didn’t try to produce the kind of artwork I visualized, but served what I thought others wanted, I’d never create anything, and burn myself out trying to make everyone else happy. With the internet, trends and fads come and go, but hopefully the real talent gets recognized anyway. Everyone is good at something, and there is always someone that is ‘better’, but what good do I want to give up in myself chasing approval I don’t need, burning out, and to eventually be good for nothing?

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

Two quotes come to mind:

IF YOU ARE UNHAPPY – Once upon a time, there was a nonconforming sparrow who decided not to fly south for the winter. However, soon the weather turned so cold that he reluctantly started to fly south. In a short time, ice began to form on his wings and he fell to earth in a barnyard, almost frozen. A cow passed by and crapped on the little sparrow. The sparrow thought it was the end. But, the manure warmed him and defrosted his wings. Warm and happy, he started to sing. Just then a large cat came by, and hearing the chirping, investigated the sounds. The cat cleared away the manure, found the chirping bird, and promptly ate him.

The moral of the story:

1) Everyone who craps on you is not necessarily your enemy.
2) Everyone who gets you out of crap is not necessarily your friend.
3) If you’re warm and happy in a pile of crap, keep your mouth shut.

The second quote is from Sun-Tzu, “The Art of War”, ca. 500 BC:

“Thus there are three ways by which an army is put into difficulty by a ruler:

He does not know that the Three Armies should not advance but instructs them to advance or does not know that the Three Armies should not withdraw and orders a retreat. This is termed ‘entangling the army’.

He does not understand the Three Armies’ military affairs but [directs them] in the same way as his [civil] administration. Then the officers will become confused.

He does not understand the Three Armies’ tactical balance of power (ch’uan) but undertakes responsibility for command. Then the officers will be doubtful.”

“Thus there are five factors from which victory can be known:
One who knows when he can fight, and when he cannot fight, will be victorious.
One who recognizes how to employ large and small numbers will be victorious.
One whose upper and lower ranks have the same desires will be victorious.
One who, fully prepared, awaits the unprepared, will be victorious.
One whose general is capable and not interfered with by the ruler will be victorious.
These five are the Way (Tao) to know victory.”

“Thus it is said that one who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be endangered in a hundred engagements. One who does not know the enemy but knows himself will sometimes be victorious, sometimes meet with defeat. One who knows neither the enemy nor himself will invariably be defeated in every engagement.”

“Thus generals have five dangerous [character traits]:
One committed to dying can be slain.
One committed to living can be captured
One [easily] angered and hasty [to act] can be insulted.
One obsessed with being scrupulous and untainted can be shamed.
One who loves the people can be troubled”

“One whose troops repeatedly congregate in small groups here and there, whispering together, has lost the masses. One who frequently grants rewards is in deep distress. One who frequently imposes punishments is in great difficulty. One who is at first excessively brutal and then fears the masses is the pinnacle of stupidity.”

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Referring back to the ‘bagel story’ from earlier. I think the key lesson out of this that might be useful is that sometimes you need to stop and listen to your significant others/body/conscience even when you really want to press ahead. Sometimes the ‘gut feeling’ is right. If you don’t take a pause, you may be forced to when you don’t want to. Arguing with your body never ends well; you will lose eventually. You can’t count on those who think you owe them something (such as being in your management/reporting chain) looking out for your best interests.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.flickr.com/photos/aakeene/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aa_keene/
• Other: Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Angelo-a-Keene/author/B0BSMHQK2D?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1727667401&sr=8-1&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true&ccs_id=c9456d6b-b432-42b1-8882-cf2da0c762bc

Image Credits
Angelo Keene