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Post by millring on Feb 4, 2011 9:25:23 GMT -5
I used to nap on suede elbow patches too.
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Post by majorminor on Feb 4, 2011 9:29:14 GMT -5
Left Alaska in 1983 in search of sun and pretty girls and a buzz. Wound up in northern California specializing in 2 out of 3. Dropped out of college in 1985 and wound up driving a delivery truck for a door company. Now I own a door company.
Jobs along the way: Cannery worker Landscape grunt Bouncer at strip joint Bouncer at concert venue Ambulance dispatcher Truck driver
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Post by dickt on Feb 4, 2011 10:01:34 GMT -5
When I graduated with my BA in English from UVa in '72 and had been married for two years my thought was to work for the gummint (I'd had gummint summer jobs and actually believed that "ask not what your country ..." stuff. Nixon had imposed a freeze on all federal hiring so the only offers I got were to be a narc (actually narcing on the drug companies), a U.S. Marshall in DC, running the summer employment program at HEW (where I'd worked one summer in personnel). I had driven up to DC with my sister and my Dad who were attending a memorial service for the former deputy librarian of congress--a friend of my Dad's (he worked at LC from 1930 to 1970). So I walked up the Hill from HEW to meet them for lunch and found that the Library had about a half dozen entry level jobs on the bulletin board (legislative branch not being covered by the Nixon freeze). I applied and got one cataloging educational AV materials based on my experience the year before in the U.S. Army Foreign Science & Technology Library. Never imagined I would work at the "family business" but it's been a great place to work. I had pretty good language skills and was an early adopter of putting cataloging data into computerized form. So here I am 39 years later--it's been a good place to work and it's more than ever the family business. My second wife was a fellow employee and she transferred to our division when we moved to Culpeper in 2007. Also my second son got a job here when he graduated with a degree in music and a lot of different languages studied he was a good fit for cataloging sound recordings.
My original idea was to work as a mgmt intern for an agency while going to law school at night--not to be a lawyer but to work in Congress as an AA. Got a 720 on my LSATs but became pretty familiar with and turned off by congressional staffers. I can still still hear them saying in the Capitol Hill eateries, "Well my member said ...." Yeah, your member. Any I advanced very fast at LC and by 1981 was head of AV cataloging. Later I morphed into a data wrangler and programmer--same $$ but no supervisory headaches.
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Post by PaulKay on Feb 4, 2011 10:10:07 GMT -5
When I was growing up, my father had a bunch of electronic test equipment in the basement. Tube testers, multimeters, etc. I remember being fascintated by the stuff and use to play around with it. So in high school I took electronics shop classes and got further exposure to the concepts.
Once I got to the Navy I signed up for a coorespondance course from the Cleveland Institute of Electronics for a certificate in Electronics Technology. I never finished that course, but got 3/4 of the way through before guitar playing took over.
After the Navy, with the GI bill paying for college and all that fundamental knowledge from the correspondance course, I took some intro classes in Electrical Engineering and realized I was way ahead of everybody so kept on going...and it was a field that had a lot of jobs at the time.
While in college I also took another correspondance course from Heathkit (remember Heathkit?) on microprocessors and digital logic. This was the newest and latest technology at the time (1977-1978) and they weren't even teaching it in my college yet because none of the professors knew much about it. I completed both of those courses and low and behold, all the jobs out there wanted somebody who knew how to design and program with these new fangled things. So besides graduating at the top of my class, I had knowledge none of the other graduates in my class had.
So as it happens, I owe my career to those Heathkit courses since microprocessor based design has been involved in every project I've worked on for the last 30 years.
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Post by aquaduct on Feb 4, 2011 10:29:58 GMT -5
I grew up in Dearborn, MI, hometown of Henry Ford and his company. The auto business was everything and my dad was an executive for Ford, then AMC, then Chrysler.
My dad eventually earned a triple bypass and in high school I swore up and down that I'd never be in the auto biz.
Went to community college. Started with the intention of studying engineering, probably civil, when I transferred. Spent four years getting my associates in general science and decided that engineering was awful due to the distinct lack of females in the field.
Transferred to a teacher's college with the intention of using my math, physics and music background to build a killer teaching degree.
Two years later and being thoroughly sick of the college's inability to help me chart that course, I abandoned it and spent my last year there taking pretty much straight literature courses since I'd determined that, with the mish mash of credits I had, an English Literature major coupled with Math and Physics minors would get me the hell out of school the fastest.
After college, I did the only thing someone in Detroit with an english degree could do, technical writing for the auto companies through various contract houses.
Lived on the west side of Detroit with my new wife and worked for GM on the east side of Detroit for a couple years when a colleague mentioned he had an interview witha contractor that did work for Ford that he didn't want to go to. He offered it to me and I went.
Got the job, tranferred in to Ford when my daughter was born, moved on to programming control systems (musicians are good at those types of things), and the rest is history.
Working (sometimes anyways) as an automotive frickin' engineer.
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Post by Don Clark on Feb 4, 2011 10:56:28 GMT -5
I've always wondered exactly when you started going to pot. I was 16, and a sophomore in High School. ![8-)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/cool.png) I've always had musical ambitions. Started piano in 3rd grade. Four years on cello before I started guitar in '61. Four years of choir and madrigals plus extra instrument study/ orchestration and arranging courses in high school. First year of college was a joke. I've told this before I think, but attempted 30 units as a Music Ed. major, completed 6 of those.....in co-ed badminton. My buddy Brad and I would get toasted before class and go watch 15 bazillion shuttlecocks go flying around all the beautiful young ladies. Did one year at the Westport School of Music in Westport, Ct., where I started classical guitar studies and took a keyboard/theory class. Next year I auditioned my way into the Hartt College of Music at the University of Hartford. Academically challenged, I plucked my way in. After the first semester back in Music Ed. w/ principle instrument of guitar, I dropped all the Gen Ed crap and went for Performance Emphasis. I learned a fair amount from my teacher who was a real snot, but blew off college after that. Then in '73, I took the Horsemasters program at what used to be the Potomac Horse Center in Gaithersburg, Md. ending up qualifying to manage/train/teach English riding. No work. Moved back to California, started a duo with my old rhythm guitarist from HS days, Craig. Got married. She wanted security more than I wanted fulfillment. Eventually phased out performing for the day job. I, over the years have done - Retail sales in music, shoes, and marine hardware More work in riding stables Worked in a grain elevator and feedmill Worked in a gas station doing service work and fixing flats Lawn maintenance - where I got my hand in a mower ![:'(](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/cry.png) Learned carpentry, became general contractor Farmed w/friend 2000 acres and 500 head of cattle. 13 years owner/operator small grocery store Each of these had aspects that were enjoyable at times, but nothing has ever had my heart more than music/guitar. That is why, at almost 60, and free to do it still plan on resuming some kind of performing situation.....besides church and nursing homes. I love playing for worship and seniors, but there is still more out there to do.
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Post by Marshall on Feb 4, 2011 11:07:59 GMT -5
Very interesting so far. I'll get around to it when I have a little time.
Up to my elbows , . . . ,
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Post by patrick on Feb 4, 2011 11:39:41 GMT -5
I grew up in LA, my mother was a nurse and my father worked for Hughes Aircraft, so I grew up reading nursing mags and Aviation Week and Space Technology. The San Fernando Valley was full of aerospace companies back then, so most of my friends in HS were also science geeks, and we went to a school that emphasized science.
I went to UCLA as a pre-med, realized I wasn't nearly cut-throat enough to get a 4.0 to get into med school, so after I graduated in '78, I got a job in a research lab at USC medical school. Eventually I got my Ph.D. there, then started looking for jobs. I was lucky enough to get invited for an interview in Baltimore at the National Institute of Aging, and they paid for the costs, so I was able to turn that into about 10 interviews over a week and got offered a post-doc position at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, which worked well because Jane wanted to go to grad school at the University of MD. After 5 years of research, I was looking for a job again, when the biotech industry was in one of it's periodic slumps and I ended up at the Patent and Trademark Office examining applications in gene therapy and transgenic animals. The work was OK, but the job environment sucked, so I found this job 14 years ago, negotiating with companies to commercialize technology from NCI. And Jane now teaches at Johns Hopkins.
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Post by AlanC on Feb 4, 2011 12:05:45 GMT -5
I graduated high school and went to Miami with a buddy to hang sheetrock. I began a promising career of heavy drinking and drug use. Coming home, I went to Jr college for a year and went to California to live with my mother's brother and smoke dope with my cousins on my Dad's side. After blowing the engine up in my '59 Chevy station wagon on a gonzo weekend in the Sierras, I headed back South for more dissipation. I had to take a job in a plant where my father worked in Chalmette, Louisiana. It made Aluminum- in giant pots-molten aluminum-chemicals-heat-overhead cranes swinging giant beams glowing cherry red with the heat. I had an epiphany: I would return to school. What to take? One of my drug buddies, Howard, was going to take drafting. Whazzat? You sit around and draw. Inside- air conditioning? Yeppers. Me too, then. After more two more years of intense dissipation, they turned me out with an Associates Degree. Now what? I went to the local Unemployment Office hoping to con them out of some unemployment money so I could continue with my dissipation career thinking there was no way Picayune, Miss had a j-o-b for a drafter. But alas, they had an opening at an engineering firm right across the street. They sent me to see Mike Douglas-now gone clear- who somehow put up with me for several years teaching me surveying and the basic drafting I didn't learn in school as it interfered with my primary occupation. The rest is history. Now at 58, I have never received an unemployment check... still waiting.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2011 12:21:47 GMT -5
Very interesting thread!
For me...
I always loved music & psychology and thought about being a music therapist but it would have been many years of college (& $ I didn't have). I was drawn to do something in the healing arts and I went to acupuncture school in the mid 80s (in Chicago) when it was still illegal in most states. I ended up not staying acupuncture school because I was too shy and didn't really like working with people that closely. (that is massage and needles, etc)
Many years later (2002) I saw an ad in a magazine about becoming a Certified Music Practitioner. (see MHTP.org) It really resonated strongly with me and it turned out we even had training modules right in Charlottesville at the time. (it has since moved to Baltimore)
that was it for me... I've been employed at the University of VA hospital since 2004 and work for city parks & recreation playing for groups of disabled people. Great job!
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Post by theevan on Feb 4, 2011 14:10:18 GMT -5
dick, "Well my member said ...."
My member says all kinds of things but I would never repeat it!
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Post by billhammond on Feb 4, 2011 14:34:42 GMT -5
I had started college at the local university after high school but my heart just wasn't in it and by the second semester of my freshman year I was in danger of flunking out and losing the deferment that was keeping me out of the military.
So I joined the Navy! I did boot camp and Radioman school in San Diego (decades later I would find out that Paul Kucharski was in that same class), spent a year in Iceland and two years in Newport, R.I., never got on a ship because Iceland, by being isolated, counted as sea duty.
When I got out, I elected to resume college in Wisconsin, but in Green Bay rather than Eau Claire. I just took liberal arts courses at first, played in a band, dated the woman I later would marry, but had no real major in mind until I took a feature-newswriting class and sold my first freelance piece to the local daily paper.
Before too long I had wiped out most of the J-classes at UWGB, and transferred back to UW-Eau Claire, this time with a part-time job at the local paper as the result of a summer internship. While a junior and senior I had this insane schedule of working about 35 hours a week as a reporter and photograper at the Leader-Telegram while carrying a full credit load, too. (This is the period in which I met MartinFever, BTW.)
I graduated in winter 1977, snagged a copydesk job at the Milwaukee Sentinel for the princely salary of $250 a week, stayed there three years until getting a desk offer at the Minneapolis Star that nearly doubled my income. I started here in 1981, the Star and Tribune merged the next year, same year I got married, I was named local copydesk chief the following year and have bounced around within the organization for what will be 30 years in a couple of months.
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Post by theevan on Feb 4, 2011 16:45:29 GMT -5
These are great!
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Post by TKennedy on Feb 4, 2011 18:24:52 GMT -5
Pretty mundane for me. Dad was a family doc in western NE so I headed for Denver in 1963 for premed and also became immersed in the folk scene there and took up guitar and banjo. That worked, so on to med school at Creighton in Omaha and marriage. I always liked building things and taking them apart so Orthopaedics looked cool.
After interning and a year of working for a heart surgeon in Omaha I did my Orthopaedic residency in Mpls and at age 33 had my first full-time paying job joining a buddy that had started practice in Alexandria MN a couple of years before.
We covered a large geographic area and were on call every other night. I have little recollection of that first five years except no sleep and lots of injured bodies and OR time. When we got a third partner it was a lot better. That lasted 29 years.
I got into guitar building in the late 90’s through one of my kids, took the Charles Fox building course in 2003, and decided at age 60 I was as good as I ever would be as a surgeon and that there were a few other things I wanted to take a shot at while I still had some degree of health.
So far I have not regretted that decision and through lutherie and music have discovered a whole new world and group of friends that have enriched my life enormously.
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Post by Chesapeake on Feb 4, 2011 18:39:18 GMT -5
Gosh, there are more characters to keep track of here than in a Russian novel. We need profile pages!
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Post by Don Clark on Feb 4, 2011 20:44:22 GMT -5
This really has been a good read.
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Post by Village Idiot on Feb 4, 2011 22:00:19 GMT -5
This has been a really good read. When all is said and done, it should go to the library.
Everyone's pursuit seems to fit them, except Letson. Have you ever considered becoming a writer?
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 4, 2011 23:36:25 GMT -5
I thought about it, but the erotic-haiku gambit didn't work out, and I don't have the energy for the longer poetic forms. I think stain removal is really my métier, with nap-restoration as a backup.
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Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 20,003
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Post by Dub on Feb 5, 2011 1:19:31 GMT -5
These stories are just grate great. I keep wanting to jump in with my own but can't find enough time in one block. We're away for the weekend so maybe Monday. Or maybe I can work on a document a little bit at a time and post when it's done. - Dub
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Post by Doug on Feb 5, 2011 6:31:20 GMT -5
I was born about ten thousand years ago.........
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