I was once told I need “professional” exposure on social media. So I put a profile on LinkedIn and got on with work.
People want to get to know others and this WunderNet thingy seems to be the latest rage in ways to do so. Less stuffy than a formal resume and seems a reasonable way to introduce one’s self to distant strangers anyway.
Hi! How ya doing? How’s it going?
I’ve been using computers long enough to remember SunTools – a “window” system long before “Windows”. My Sun 3/60 was the first computer I actually enjoyed working with. 20MHz clock and 24 Mbyte RAM as I recall. A screamer … in its day. Microsoft Windows was a let-down; never did take to Apple. Actually I remember using IBM cards with “hard copy” on paper rolls generated by teletype printers in not-quite soundproof rooms.
I had been a DEC-certified PDP-11 “guru” – such as it was. Still have my manuals and a motherboard for some reason – but then I have a few 1960 vacuum tube manuals laying about as well. The PDP-11 was a 16-bit machine and if I recall, it had 27k of RAM. We used to play “Star Wars” when deployed to remote locations. It was a distinct improvement over the PDP-8 where instructions were entered by setting each bit with a mechanical switch (0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, ENTER). Which was a (slight) improvement over handing a box of punch cards to some guy behind the counter … Please don’t drop the box.
After FORTRAN WATFOR/WATFIV, I became a “qualified” programmer on a that new programming language “C”.
All that and I’m still basically – almost entirely – an “analog” guy. I like bouncing electrons more than bits.
This is a fairly formal profession … and the industries I tend to work in have little tolerance for gaiety and expect a seriousness that allows little enjoyment of one’s work. Actually, enjoyment of one’s work seems to be a distrusted anomaly. Luckily, I don’t consider it work … I pity those who do.
But one wonders: After all this time, am I actually this applied physicist/engineer whose entity revolves around my resume? I sincerely hope not – although after all this time – decades – in the field, one can’t help picking up bad habits. (and I still haven’t figured what makes a “good” resume.)
Luckily, for the most part, I’m past that stage in my career. I’ve been known to tell people I “work” for free; I get paid to live in an office and go to meetings.
I enjoy developing instrumentation; my interest started before it became a hobby. Maybe that’s why it became a hobby – then a profession.
I never did become “formal” management – did my best to avoid it; it’s one of the accomplishments of my career. I have run a number of successful projects and burned a couple of companies into the ground. Seems it’s easier to learn from doing wrong than doing right …
I started working with electricity as a toddler in a high chair – the orange wires inside the toaster were fascinating and I kept sticking silverware inside to see what’s what. Luckily from a wooden highchair. I soon advanced to poking behind the covers of vacuum tube equipment. More orange glow with a touch of blue. And it smelled … interesting.
Then the “Magic Eye” caught my attention … some >adults< got irritated when I played with the knobs to make the pupil change. Seems they were listening to something or another. “But I’m experimenting.”
Dinosaurs bore me; I was punished in 2nd grade by being put out in the hall to play with my battery, wire, and compass. I didn’t realize I was being punished … I thought I was given freedom to pursue my own education. Not that I thought in those terms …
I didn’t know I was studying electromagnetic physics either.
To this day, I don’t recall why I had those things with me … at 7yo or so
I built my first Heathkit … a VTVM (vacuum tube voltmeter) when I was 10 years old. It had high-impedance inputs – 10 M$\Omega$. And a voltage range sufficient to handle plate voltages of 300 – 500 V.
“Popular Electronics” was a regular purchase. I was getting paid to fix radios and TVs when I was 14. I could once diagnose a problem by the smell …
Tesla coils??? The world has changed. I may build another just to … because.
1964. Transistors were new then. ICs existed … sort of. “Digital” was mostly an expensive concept.
Transistor radios were a hot ticket item – the latest and greatest. Even better than an iPad …
I still have a handful from the ’60s
Spare parts at the back of Joe’s Radio & TV repair. Vacuum tube relaxation oscillators in Boy Scouts. Tesla coils and Jacob’s ladders in junior high school … oil furnace starting transformers were plentiful, cheap, and heavy. Tube testers at Cunningham’s.
But I was – and am – interested in other things … 1800s steam locomotives and photography first come to mind. What better way to spend time than chasing what remains of these engines with a camera?
I build model railroad dioramas for fun
Enough of that …
I like history in general – I was actually better at it than wiggling electrons – but not by much. I find the 1860 – 1915 period particularly fascinating. But wiggling electrons is fun … and far more lucrative.
I explore the “Old West” for remnants of what were once industrial settlements – mostly mining and logging. I look “back east” as well … but there’s not much left that’s not been memorialized or transformed beyond recognition. Tidewater Virginia was a fun place to explore but it’s all private or public in a structured way west of the Divide isn’t.
This is someplace in central Nevada.
I also chase the support industries as well.
Towns – brief as their lives may have been. This is Bodie, California. It was so remote, the remnants existed until the State of California was able to preserve most of it.
Aurora, Nevada is not far away – a few miles – but it was stripped and nothing much is left. Aurora is the place where Mark Twain writes of almost making it rich by mining in “Roughing It“.
Transportation systems were among the more important support industries – food and supplies in; product out. There are still remnants of the old Overland Stage road and stations from the 1860s in now out of the way places.
This is along the Bitter Creek division. This was the main highway west until 1868 when the Transcontinental Railroad was built. One of the more prominent station remnants is at Point of Rocks, Wyoming right off I-80 (itself a remnant of the Lincoln Highway) on the other side of the railroad tracks – themselves part of the original “Transcontinental Railroad”.
Mark Twain writes of travelling this route in “Roughing It“
I always wondered what it was that drove people to leave the “civilized” east to head for the uncertainties and dangers of the west. The trip itself could be fearsome. Disease primarily, but wild gangs of locals who felt the newcomers “dissed” their territory. Like being a stranger around Grand Blvd and Mack in Detroit at 3AM …
Weather, flimsy vehicles, poor feed, poor water – when there was any, boredom … What would it take for someone to decide to walk across the country with a wagon full of maybe 2000 lbs of all your belongings – plus supplies for the trip?
Now that those dangers have mostly passed, I have to admit I like getting out in that country. The ghosts still speak in the wind … the graves appear in unexpected places. There’s a lot of off-road out that way …
But this is now and I do love me a good 4×4 … and there are still enough “things” that can go wrong … 4-wheel drive failing as I hit the spillover from an unexpected desert spring 25 miles from a highway – and even farther from “civilization”. Know how long it takes to walk 25 miles? A 12-pack and a tank of gas to some locals solved that one.
High-centering coming down a wash that was once a road. 4-wheel drive isn’t much use with all tires off the ground. Hi-lift jacks are handy tools. As are multiple spare tires. A good winch never hurts.
Things I’ve learned to avoid while I was young enough to recover without hurting myself too much. It seems to take longer to heal these days …
This road here? Pushing 14,000 ft, narrow, wet, slick, and a long way down. And no ready place to turn around. Let’s go!
Oh, by the way … since I’m introducing myself. I’m a voracious reader as well. I need about 500 ft of bookshelf space … or maybe I need to open a used bookstore.
So I’m now a respected senior engineer living in the modern 21st century where none of this past history is of any concern … but electronics has become my profession and these other things have become my hobbies.
I didn’t have a “traditional” career; itchy feet, greener grass (sometimes, not always), just … had to move on.
The leaves are falling all around, time I was on my way
Thanks to you, I’m much obliged for such a pleasant stay
But now it’s time for me to go, the autumn moon lights my way
For now I smell the rain, and with it pain, and it’s headed my way
Ah, sometimes I grow so tired
But I know I’ve got one thing I got to do
I have a friend from school so long ago … We graduated at the same time and started the same job, same company, same department, same day. He stayed and retired from that company. I obviously didn’t. We talked about it not long after he retired. He envied me a bit, I envied him a bit. Do I regret my choices? Not often – mostly in that I didn’t form long-term professional relationships. But I had experiences a single career wouldn’t have allowed at a cost of not receiving the “prestige” being one of the old hands would have brought about.
OK, you’ve learned more than you cared to about Dave and his career ….
