'Occupation/Behind the Mask' Thread :)

[Sasha]

not sure what i'll do after school, because i'm mainly studying this for personal interest.

That is unusual way of thinking, but I like it.  ;)

[Enth]

Um... lemme check back here in 10 years or so :-X

[Just Phil]

i think this is a great thread so i hope you dont mind i resurrected it from the dead.

I work for DOW Chemical Western Canada Operations in their railyard i'm a switchman so i'm responsible for building/marshalling outbound and inbound trains. (they must be put together in a paticular order) I also scale the cars to ensure they have the correct weight. I also bring different cars to different areas of the plant to get loaded or unloaded. Great job i get to work outside and be active. Only time i dont like it is on days like yestesterday. -30*C (about 4*F) snowing heavy and 10mph winds blowing drifting snow in your face... at times i would have to walk the length of a train 45 cars (approx. 60feet per car) back and forth in waist deep snow. for 12hours a day. other then that its alot of fun. the yard i work in has 64km of rail on site. up to 22 railcars can be loaded/offloaded at a time. and has a capacity to store about +/- 1800 railcars.

[Flexinoodle]

I'm a bum for a living

I sit in a studio and make noises and stuff

Flexi

[JMS]

i'm a self titled computer technician, fixing or building computers for anyone that's willing to pay me and maybe a charity case here and there. (with some actual training in electronics engineering at vocational school)

  hmm...  as far as my current day job i started out as a machinist, building dies to stamp things out of steel with huge presses.... then i ended up doing  packing, invoicing and shipping awesome car parts all over the world with the same company.  i still get to get my hands dirty in the shop when i get bored of the office, oh, i get to run parts between different tool shops around town and check out all the huge machines in other peoples shops.

  in the past i've delivered pizzas, made pizzas, been a short order cook, washed dishes at a few bars, ran huge cnc machines making parts for who knows what, assisted in the assembly of huge robot cells for delphi/honda/GM/toyota (subcontract of course), i've even worked at mcdonalds a couple  different times.

in my spare time i like to take long walks on the beach and build midiboxes!

ADDED LATER:  Those speakers up there look loud!

[lylehaze]

OK, I'll spend a few minutes..

My interest in Electronics started before the teen years, and I've been building things ever since. I need to know how things work, and electronics are machines with no moving parts.. I HAD to understand how that worked. In high school I learned "Basic", on a terminal with an acoustic modem to "dial in" to the computer 20 miles away. Before I was 18 I took out a (big) loan to buy a TRS-80, Model 1, level 2. I went "big money" So I could get the expanded model that came with 16K of ram.. (oooh).

My career path has included repairing video games, industrial electronics, working as an instructor for an industrial robotics company, and as the department leader/trainer for a group of programmers in a manufacturing plant, and designing and programming embedded solutions using PIC chips.

My hobbies have included home automation, hand built guitar effects, stage lighting, and a LOT of programming around and about MIDI, especially on Amiga computers.

I have been unemployed for most of the past 8 months, and if you've got a job that requires some of the above skills, I'd LOVE to hear from you.

Hey, it's a tough market, I've got to advertise everywhere!

LyleHaze

[philetaylor]

Well I left school at 16 and got an apprenticeship in Electronic Engineering at RACAL Defense Electronics. They sponsored me to go to college for 2 years and then I spent the rest of my time in the software dept, mainly debugging Ada code in IFF RADAR systems and building DEC VAX Clusters. I also spent about 6 months in the schematic capture dept using Apollo Domain workstations, most of the circuits were 6-10 A0 pages of handdrawn schematics.....

When the cold war ended I took voluntary redundancy (in the early 90's) and got a job at a computer networking company until I left to setup my own networking company http://www.lansystems.co.uk with my 2 brothers in 95. I have been doing that ever since. Originally specializing in Novell Netware and later (like everybody else) Windows Servers.

During most of this time I have worked 'part-time' as a theatrical sound designer/engineer and have been the resident engineer in a number of local theatres over the years. Over the last 5-6 years I have also started doing PA for a number of bands with the 'kit' that I have accumulated. I also do the odd (very odd) disco :)

Phil

[Gioxannes]

In short: I am a freelance engineer in computer science for my own agency.

MUSIC

As 6 year old young kid I sneeked secretly behind the electronic organ we had at home which my father used to play, and my sister was having lessons on. After a few weeks I got trapped and was assigned private lessons in musicology and organ playing till 12, which I absolutely hated.

I did not do much with it till at 18 I got a 120 button accordion and picked up having lessons again for a few years.

ELECTRONICS

As a kid I developed an interest in micro electronics. Build my first radio at 12 and continued building (illegal) radio transmitters till 15 when at school they showed me  a computer (Apple IIe, first program I wrote  [10 PRINT "JOHAN"] [20 GOTO 10] )

I dropped electronics until I got my own Commodore Amiga (A1000) a few years later and started combining computers with music. At this time I build samplers and midi interfaces, even if I did not have my own keyboard.

COMPUTERS

At 22 I graduated as an engineer in computer science at the poly-technical university of The Hague. My graduation project resulted in a patent of pattern recognition, which is still in use today (for over 20 years) to find postal codes on pre-printed postcards and envelopes (Yes, those little dots in The Netherlands is my idea; No I did not get any money for it).

After spending a few years writing educational software in Paris I moved into telecommunications and Oslo.

I worked a s a trouble shooter in other peoples' software for over 10 years and got to see nearly the whole world.

TODAY

I live on a Greek Island in the Mediterranean see. Part time taking projects for the financial world, programming cryptographic security algorithms, which pays enough to spend the rest of the year spending time with my computers, girlfriend and nature.

Gio.

[frailn]

Ultra:

basically i'm a cable guy

Yep, I was a cable guy for awhile. I contracted to install CAT5 and CAT3 for a small bank in Birmingham, AL for three years. And, I did residential and commercial cabling, as well, but mostly did the bank. The most interesting job I had was a brand new Super Wal-Mart. I was contracted for a week by Wachter when two of their techs were fired for no-show on the job. It's amazing how much cable goes into a Wal-Mart. Me and one guy would get up to the ceiling on a scissors lift. We would take turns driving the lift forward, while the other guy ran 15 - 20 cables through the girders in one go. And I have an extreme fear of heights. Don't ask me how I got through that job. But, I did.

November, 2008, moved to Kansas City to be close to the International House of Prayer (ihop.org). I've had an interest in this organization for several years and knew I would move here, eventually.

My interest in midibox is related to my interest in the International House of Prayer. This organization has prayer going twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, non stop. It consists of two hour sets, each set can have several guitar players, two keyboardists, a drummer, several singers. Sometimes there is a cello or sitar. It's hard on the keyboards, we never turn them off! Yamaha informed us that they will no longer honor warranties on our keyboards because they are in constant use, and are never turned off.

I'm hoping to inject some midiboxSID sounds into a set or two in the near future. MB-6582 is perfect - I can get an MB-6582, and a laptop to control it, on an off stage fairly quickly without much hassle. 

Currently, I'm working as a Program Manager for Multi Service Corp. This is the best job I've ever had. The company makes money from transactions of purchases, just like Visa or Mastercard. Only, our clients are trucking fleets, the US Dept of Defense and the Merchant Marine. Most of the transactions we run are for fuel purchases. So, you can imagine how many fuel purchases come out of the US DOD! My account is PACCAR Parts Division. They build Kenworth (US, Canada, Mexico), Peterbilt (US) and DAF (UK, Europe, Australia) trucks. My company gives them a billing solution so that all those fleets have a way to buy parts for their trucks from dealers. My entire development team is located in Melbourne, so collaboration is a bit tricky. Hoping I'll get the chance to visit Melbourne, UK and Europe sometime soon because of this job!