My name is Armen Chakmakjian. The first part of my name “chakmak” is the word for Flint in several middle-eastern languages. Currently I’m a Manager of Product Development at Intuit’s Platform as a Service Group (PaaS-G) managing Intuit QuickBase and the Intuit Partner Platform
Here’s a few things about me:
- I love gadgets, whether electronic or a swiss army knife
- I play the guitar
- I teach Sunday School in the Armenian Church
- I like a nice glass of wine with my dinner
- I went to RIT and got a degree in Computer Engineering
- I graduated from Fairfield Prep
- I’ve worked for Digital, Teradyne, Lakeview and Intuit
- I’ve written a Science Fiction Novel
- You can find me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
My favorite quote of all time, which I need to paraphrase now because I’ve lost the original text, was attributed to Admiral Spruance after Midway. It goes something like “Historians will write that this event or that choice made the difference here or there. While you’re there though, it’s a hell of a lot of groping around in the dark”. When I first wrote this I forgot my other favorite quote which is a bit more serious: “Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for, I have grown not only gray, but almost blind in the service of my country.“ which was said by George Washington, putting on spectacles for the first time in front his officers in 1783, while reading a note from Congress about their back pay about which they were talking rebellion.
I’m a fan Star Trek, Monty Python, The Prisoner (Patrick McGoohan), and Sean Connery James Bond movies. I’ve thoroughly read the works of Jorge Luis Borges, like some of Umberto Eco, and think that Frank Herbert was the greatest SciFi writer. I think the greatest single work of human literature is Lord of the Rings (I place the Bible in a different classification). I love reading biographies of famous cranks of history like John Adams, U.S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Winston Churchill…People who were out of place in their time and sometimes viewed as eccentric or difficult.
My favorite band of all time is the Doobie Brothers. After that the Eagles, America, and a host of other groups and artists who played a guitar to make music and not just bang on it or play a million notes because their fingers can do it.
