[TheForge] Re: guardrails and handrails

[Mike Spencer]

Charles> Mike, he was talking about IT workers in the telecom industry.
Charles> Trust me, there it IS all about the bill.

Yeah, well, I guess I knew that.  During one of my few and limited
episodes in the IT industry, working for an academic institution that
should have known better, I did the graphics for some HVAC training
software. After the educational stuff was done, I spent an equal
amount of time making eye candy because the guy who wrote the checks
wasn't an HVAC tech trainee (presumably eager to learn well and
quickly) but a droid in charge of buying software.  And he was
made happy in proportion to the glitz and chrome.

Charles> When I started in the industry years ago...the real
Charles> attraction was doing really neat shit with neat people...

And that is what I had seen in the high tech world before someone
offered to *actually pay* me to do some computer stuff.

Charles> ...changed...to one where I get text messaged at the hospital
Charles> asking if I am still going to make my billable quota for the
Charles> week.

That, more or less and the relevant changes being made, is why I
"retired" at 27.  Of course, in retirement, I learned a few of new
trades, learned a bunch of stuff about some very arcane subjects (and
also some very prosaic ones not taught in school), progressed from
"Look! I made a hook!" to "The impossible just takes a bit longer" at
the forge, made some neat stuff, raised a couple of kids and a lot of
tomatoes, etc. etc.  And retirement has had its episodes of
near-poverty [1].  But, various jobs away from home notwithstanding,
nobody ever called me in the hospital to ask about my billable quota.
So I was kind irked that Andy's remark seemed to reduce 35 years of
my life to "nothing but a hobby".

You got it: having a life is my hobby.  Don't bother me.  I'm kinda
pre-occupied with it. :-)

Devon> flossinaucinihilipilify: Are you entirely sure this is a word?

   1)  Yes.

   2) I mis-spelled it. It's "floccinaucinihilipilification".
      "cc", not "ss".

   3) It has never been in any Merriam Webster dictionaries so far as
      I know.

   4) See http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-flo2.htm
      for a short but detailed history of the word.

   5) "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" *is* in my
      Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary.  I have heard a rumor that
      some doctors made that one up out of spare lexical parts just so
      a Yankee dictionary, not a Kipper one, would have the longest
      word.  I can't confirm that rumor.

- Mike


[1] I recently met someone in the supermarket whom I hadn't seen for
    20 years.  After a warm greeting, he says loudly to his buddy,
    "This is the guy that when I visited him years ago he was sitting
    in a chair on top of his kitchen wood range trying to keep warm."
    (Thanks, Greg. :-)

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^

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