Laura McGaffey
Senior Software Engineer

lauramcgaffey@hidessw.com

In the 1950's Laura's father was a pioneering computer professional. He worked for 40 years in
military aerospace retiring from Lockheed in Sunnyvale, California. She likes to tell the story of
when in 1964 they were living in Los Angeles and her third grade teacher told her parents,
"Laura rarely raises her hand to answer questions...she doesn't want to share her knowledge".
In response Laura and her father constructed a cardboard "mainframe computer" which she used
as a prop for her show-and-tell session during which she gave a brief lesson on binary and octal
math.

Laura entered Silicon Valley's San Jose State University at the age of 16 to study computer
science and later took advanced courses from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

After doing contract work for major semiconductor companies Laura accepted a position with
Sorcim, working on Supercalc, the first spreadsheet program written (in Assembly) for the Heathkit
(later Zenith) H89, the CompuPro, Osborne and other microcomputers that predated the invention of
the IBM PC and Apple computers.

During the 1980's and 1990's Laura and her husband, Thom, an electronics systems engineer
established several high-tech R&D and service businesses in the Silicon Valley offering software
engineering, systems engineering and printed circuit board design.

In 1989 she accepted a two-year contract position managing the programming department of
Pacific Gas and Electric Company's Nuclear Business and Financial Management division in San
Francisco.

During the 1990's Laura worked on IBM and other point of sale (POS) systems and trained
other programmers. She also worked for two years for Systems Control, a provider of auto emissions
testing systems. In addition, she expanded her work on embedded firmware projects. In 1998 Laura
and her husband, Thom, an electronics systems engineer, established Energy Release Systems
(recently renamed Mentor Aerospace LLC), an aerospace engineering company.

At the end of 2003, Laura and Thom finally escaped the congestion of the Silicon Valley and moved
their operations to Pearce, Arizona. Laura also established High Desert Software in response to
continual requests for computer assistance in this very rural community.