Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: WeatherOp on June 05, 2017, 05:36:57 am
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I figured this topic would be interesting to see what we all did when we are not posting on the internet.
I am a Water Operator. I keep the clear water flowing to the good people of our community.
Pros: Good pay and good benefits. Almost no chance of being laid off (people always need water). Under eighteen years until retirement (unless some beaeucrat grabs it)
Cons: Yes that truck with LEDS at 2am in the hail storm was probably me. Everyone puts everything in the ground now, even the kitchen sink. People really really like their grassy, flat yards, even if it wasn't grassy or flat before you dug it up.
How about yall?
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I've spent most of my career to date as a field geologist in mining and resource exploration, looking for gold, base metals and iron ore. I gave up field work about eighteen months ago to finish a masters in mineral economics, so right at the moment I'm doing statistical analysis for the state Department of Mines and Petroleum.
Getting serious swivel chair spread though, so I've started looking seriously at getting back into the field. My current job is very secure, but boring as hell and the pay is pretty ordinary by private sector standards. Hopefully there's either a return to field work, or to a better paying resource industry analyst private sector role in the not too distant future for me.
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Black Wolf in the field:
:P
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i just got a job substantially based off the back of my teenaged hobbies, let's see how long i can live the dream
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Law enforcement (and because its a niche field, I'm not going to be more specific than saying I'm not a police officer).
EDIT: *nods at PH below* "Fish police" is somewhat close, anyway.
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I recently graduated and right now I'm waiting to receive by BSc diploma. I was studying Geodesy and Cartography but we were mostly orientated on Geographic Information Systems. Also, I specialized in hydrography so I'm aiming at offshore surveyor career. So a lot of my time recently is filled with sending emails and looking for job offers. My best shot so far is a company located in Amsterdam so it's possible I'll have to find some place to live there within few next weeks.
What we will be doing there? Mostly bathymetry surveys (measuring of water depth), sonar scanning (checking the bottom for presence of wrecks, dangerous garbage or other features). And of course processing of the collected data. All these data are mostly used in creation and updating of nautical charts or in dredging projects. In short. We will be helping to make work at sea safe.
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I used to be studying Earth Sciences at the VU in Amsterdam, choosing the Geomorphology instead of the Geology path. So basically: flood defenses, soil, the weather,
cleaning up the mess Black Wolf makes, that sorta thing. Unfortunately, I got hit with some pretty severe mental health issues which made further pursuit in the career impossible, so I study IT now. That whole CISCO networking thing seems interesting.
Heh, I was thinking about going into the Geodesy field. It's wildly interesting.
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Law enforcement (and because its a niche field, I'm not going to be more specific than saying I'm not a police officer).
we all know that you work in the fish police ryan
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I am a game-producer and game-/graphic-designer and working as a freelance game-/graphic-designer for other development studios mostly. In the last couple of years, i am more involved in indie games instead in games for the big studios, because they rely more on pure in-house development since a few years.
My financial life is mostly secured by a license-based Videocapture program for games that i have developed a few years back. This program is especially designed for Game Developing Studios and Gaming Magazines. And this program is only restricted to that kind of customers, because companies spend much money if you guarantee a 24/7 support that include the implementation of new features on demand, within a couple of hours.
On commercial games, i was only responsible for very few mobile (Smartphone/Tablet) and handheld games (openPandora mostly) so far. At least that are not Free-2-Play. :)
Cons: It is sometimes very hard, to get a contract. Also in Indie you can get easily some communication issues, because the employer can not describe exactly what he wants. Also the payment is also sometimes a very difficult chapter.
But the biggest problem i have is, that i have to invest my free-time to develop my own games, because i can get only money from them, when they are finished ;)
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Since retiring from EOD, I've worked in HMP Chelmsford "customer facing" ensuring the little cherubs did whatever means of meagre income I allocated them.
I now work in a court as an administration officer. Drafting court orders and getting drunk with judges. I'm often called upon to help de-escalate issues due to lack of security in the corridor. I can out shout most of the probates but I've never had to ;)
Law enforcement (and because its a niche field, I'm not going to be more specific than saying I'm not a police officer).
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I've moved out of QA testing, and am now a level designer at Chair Entertainment.
Living the dream, yo.
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(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/cf/ff/0a/cfff0aeccce1fec852bc53c03960a6d4.jpg)
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I got my BSc and MSc in Mechanical Engineering several years ago. My studies were extremely scattered, and my thesis could only be considered "mechanical engineering" under an interpretation stretched practically to breaking. (Optics, quantum-based thermodynamics, laser induced fluorescence spectroscopy, nanomaterials characterization, and the incidental fact that the system we were studying involves a combustion reaction which has traditionally been co-opted by mech-e's... it was pretty thin and I was well out of my competence but didn't realize that until it was too late and the only way out was through.)
After that, we made a hasty return to friendlier places and people. It was the middle of a recession, so I took the only job offer I had.
I design tools for use in oil, gas, and hopefully someday geothermal wells. I'm pretty thoroughly entrenched now in the industry I once swore to help destroy. Life + my skill set + my wife's work left few options. I tried looking briefly, and I found I could have a great design career in an automatic door company. To no one's surprise, I opted for the devil I knew. It pays decently well, and I'm fairly good at it.
I could humor myself that I'm trying to fix the system from inside, but that's too sadly ridiculous a notion to even be funny.
I salve my conscience with the hope that all this tech and knowledge we're developing may one day be put to use in enhanced geothermal wells. That and hoping all the blowback over fracking will force stricter enforcement of good well cementation practise and verification. One day, maybe I'll have put together enough of a network of knowledgeable people to start something on our own. But that may as well be beyond an event horizon, for now.
(Edited for spelling and gross grammar errors)
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It took me 5 years to barely stumble through a B.S. in Physics (God I wish I'd gone engineering), and nothing for a few years after that when grad school didn't seem feasible for any number of reasons, followed by some part-time tutoring. At the moment I'm a high school physics teacher. To be frank I find it rather unfulfilling, and I'd much rather be doing something else if I could figure out what the hell that should be. Though to be even franker, given the opportunity, I'd gladly take doing nothing whatsoever.
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Archaeologist. Just finished my doctoral thesis on a regional study of the 11th-7th century BCE northeastern Aegean; now looking forward to at least a year (possibly more) of a detailed study of weapons from the area (including some really fancy bronze shields with relief decoration).
Also looking forward to at least a month of excavation this summer.
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I got my BSc and MSc in Mechanical Engineering several years ago. My studies were extremely scattered, and my thesis could only be considered "mechanical engineering" under an interpretation stretched practically to breaking. (Optics, quantum-based thermodynamics, laser induced fluorescence spectroscopy, nanomaterials characterization, and the incidental fact that the system we were studying involves a combustion reaction which has traditionally been co-opted by mech-e's... it was pretty thin and I was well out of my competence but didn't realize that until it was too late and the only way out was through.)
After that, we made a hasty return to friendlier places and people. It was the middle of a recession, so I took the only job offer I had.
I design tools for use in oil, gas, and hopefully someday geothermal wells. I'm pretty thoroughly entrenched now in the industry I once swore to help destroy. Life + my skill set + my wife's work left few options. I tried looking briefly, and I found I could have a great design career in an automatic door company. To no one's surprise, I opted for the devil I knew. It pays decently well, and I'm fairly good at it.
I could humor myself that I'm trying to fix the system from inside, but that's too sadly ridiculous a notion to even be funny.
I salve my conscience with the hope that all this tech and knowledge we're developing may one day be put to use in enhanced geothermal wells. That and hoping all the blowback over fracking will force stricter enforcement of good well cementation practise and verification. One day, maybe I'll have put together enough of a network of knowledgeable people to start something on our own. But that may as well be beyond an event horizon, for now.
(Edited for spelling and gross grammar errors)
Sheash, get out of that and design tools for water and wastewater operation and maintenance. Probably make a killing over the next ten-twenty years as this very important and ignored infrastructure needs replacing.
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Well that's a lot of super educated jobs around here. Like you're all protagonists in movies or something. Dekker was literally Hurt Locker...
I'm an apprentice electrician. I put wires in walls and make lights turn on. Ideally.
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I program stuff in Python using Django. It occasionally involves more interesting things, but feels stagnant atm. I didn't expect more from the first job.
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Web developer. I'm currently working on industrial production control systems using web technologies.
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I'm an architect. I've basically designed half of the projects in my office, listed in the projects' page in our website. You can take a look, here, http://www.jbmg-arquitectos.pt/en/
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Right now I work as a layout designer for the university newspaper.
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I'm an archivist, deciding what will be written in future history books ;) Currently working at a state archive, but I'll move to a city archive in august with more responsibilities and more diverse tasks (and also better pay ^^)
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Software developer, currently working on maintaining and migrating a (very) large number of applications for a government drug regulatory agency.
A lot of fancy words for programs that print lots and lots of spreadsheets and reports basically.
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Certainly more of us that work in some shape or form for different levels of the government than I thought.
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I just sent out a resume for a kitchenhand job at a place where you buy Pasta in cups.
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Sheash, get out of that and design tools for water and wastewater operation and maintenance. Probably make a killing over the next ten-twenty years as this very important and ignored infrastructure needs replacing.
It's a nice thought, but I have the wrong degree. At least if I'm reading you right. Water distribution and waste-water treatment and disposal are more the realm of Civil Engineers. If you mean salt water disposal wells, some of the tools I've worked on have been used there as well. Temp and pressure are generally a lot lower, so the need for my equipment is fairly minimal in those applications unless you just have to inject water into a low permeability formation because of location and the need to stay well below usable aquifers.
My skill set is pretty specialized towards high pressure (15,000 psi) and high temperature (350F to 600F) seals and temporary plugging devices to be placed at the bottom of wells 9000 to upwards of 20,000 ft deep. Everything has to fit in a small round hole, and internal diameter has to be maximized under most circumstances. It takes a while, but you eventually get a kind of instinct for how to design this stuff. A few initial calcs to put boundaries to the design space, and then the design is just adding the necessary features and some validation calcs at the end to prove I really did know what I was doing after all.
It's not an extremely portable skill set. Well that's not fair. Some of it may port ok. What won't is the rather large body of oilfield specific knowledge and techniques. We're one of the few companies I know who still design using 2D cross-sections, because 99.9% of our components and assemblies are radially symmetric. And me being able to rattle off the nominal ID of 5.5" 17 lb/ft casing isn't going to be a lick of use outside of the upstream industry.
Plus I can't move. Finding a place where my wife and I can both work was nearly impossible.
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Sheash, get out of that and design tools for water and wastewater operation and maintenance. Probably make a killing over the next ten-twenty years as this very important and ignored infrastructure needs replacing.
It's a nice thought, but I have the wrong degree. At least if I'm reading you right. Water distribution and waste-water treatment and disposal are more the realm of Civil Engineers. If you mean salt water disposal wells, some of the tools I've worked on have been used there as well. Temp and pressure are generally a lot lower, so the need for my equipment is fairly minimal in those applications unless you just have to inject water into a low permeability formation because of location and the need to stay well below usable aquifers.
My skill set is pretty specialized towards high pressure (15,000 psi) and high temperature (350F to 600F) seals and temporary plugging devices to be placed at the bottom of wells 9000 to upwards of 20,000 ft deep. Everything has to fit in a small round hole, and internal diameter has to be maximized under most circumstances. It takes a while, but you eventually get a kind of instinct for how to design this stuff. A few initial calcs to put boundaries to the design space, and then the design is just adding the necessary features and some validation calcs at the end to prove I really did know what I was doing after all.
It's not an extremely portable skill set. Well that's not fair. Some of it may port ok. What won't is the rather large body of oilfield specific knowledge and techniques. We're one of the few companies I know who still design using 2D cross-sections, because 99.9% of our components and assemblies are radially symmetric. And me being able to rattle off the nominal ID of 5.5" 17 lb/ft casing isn't going to be a lick of use outside of the upstream industry.
Plus I can't move. Finding a place where my wife and I can both work was nearly impossible.
Ok, I understand now. Yeah that is pretty specialized.
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Certainly more of us that work in some shape or form for different levels of the government than I thought.
You can include me in that group. I'm a research analyst for my state's social services department. Our primary tool is mainframe SAS to collect data from a wide variety of sources, but as a unit we are all self-taught since no training is available. The last formal technical training I had was a college FORTRAN class in 1987. We also use Excel a lot, and I have learned that although I used to think I was advanced with that I actually know almost nothing.
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I'm originally a mathematician and just started working as a researcher at AT&T Labs. I'm working on designing machine learning algorithms to forecast people's phone usage patterns, in order to optimize the wireless phone network and the cloud service running behind it. I have ended up hopping around between various different fields and used to build automated investment strategies at a hedge fund, face recognition and fraud detection algorithms at a tech startup, and military sensor and radar systems at a government research lab. I like getting into different things and do a mix of academic research and building systems, but have been mostly changing jobs because of layoffs. At one time my dream was actually to become a game developer, back when we were all building Freespace campaigns here, but I went more into math and research instead. (the game industry has also changed a lot over the years, not sure I would want to be in it today)
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I was previously doing Unity3d programming for an AR agency but my project was a bit of a dead end. Now I'm just staring at databases for a beleaguered investment firm.
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"I make cool things! Or at least I think so. People pay for them... Sometimes."
Freelance graphic designer, mostly doing logotypes, brochures, posters and other kind of advertisement as one-man studio OrionLabs. I was working on UX and webdev as well. Currently I'm switching to more interesting comissions, as 3D artist for young indie game studios. I want to work as professional enviro and vehicles designer in the future. Working for CD Project RED [Witcher 3] is my current dream job.
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Developer for Social Security. Modernizing the systems and adding in new things.
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I'm going back for my MS in Computational Media in September (I was one of the weird people feeling withdrawal from academia immediately after graduating). I'm hopefully going to be doing a bunch more narrative focused stuff and if I have time keep writing plays. Maybe I'll even try and switch into the long haul for a PhD because why not.
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I am an "ICT specialist" at our municipal IT service provider, doing second-level support stuff regarding workstations, mobile devices and peripherals. In a nutshell, our customer support will ask customers "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" and "Have you checked if it's plugged in?" on the phone. If/when that fails, we go on-site to say "I turned it off and on again and it works now." or "I plugged it in and it works now."
Seriously speaking, we do also have our weird issues, widespread problems and what not that we also get to solve. And being the lazy bum I am, I'm always looking for ways to do my job remotely and automating repetitive tasks so that I wouldn't need to lift my ass off my chair.
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I retired as a Computer Application Engineer & System Developer, Labview Programmer for one of the auto test labs. Specializing in Data Acquisition and Control.
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After my first finished study (humanities, mainly history and German philology) combined with geography I didn't find an adequate job with a perspective for more than a few months, especially if you have to raise a little child. So I decided to start from scratch and got some kind of "integrated degree program".
Now there are 14 more months to go until I'm done. After that I will work at the court as a law (enforcement) officer (at least that's what the translation website calls it, I'm not sure if there's a real equivalent in english), in my case at the labor court. It's a mix of making formal decisions, writing bills for lawyers and court management stuff.
It never was a matter of the heart, but the conditions are almost unbeatable if you have a child. Fair payment, regular working hours and the possibility to (almost) decide freely how long you stay (as long as the work gets done).
Ironically I now earn as a student almost as much as I would have earned after my first study for a long time. So it's again 3 years of time-consuming learning, very little spare time and additional tuition, but it's worth it. (Counts the days until September 30th, 2018 :D)
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I'm a computer science student, but over the summer I'm working at TomTom, updating and in some cases creating internal automation. It's really interesting, actually, and I get to solve real-world problems and see a different side of the software world than you get in academia.
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Ex-English teacher. Moved to secretary jobs, as they're less stressful, less time consuming (preparing, staying up late to check tests etc.) and more stable in general. The downside is starting quite late (after 10 or 11am or even 3pm) on most days, so difficult to balance with family life.
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I teachez ze Enlishz to ze Germanz! :nod: :lol:
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It took me 5 years to barely stumble through a B.S. in Physics (God I wish I'd gone engineering), and nothing for a few years after that when grad school didn't seem feasible for any number of reasons, followed by some part-time tutoring. At the moment I'm a high school physics teacher. To be frank I find it rather unfulfilling, and I'd much rather be doing something else if I could figure out what the hell that should be. Though to be even franker, given the opportunity, I'd gladly take doing nothing whatsoever.
Mongoose, if it is any consolation, my high school physics teacher was a true inspiration for both myself and my classmates who had the privilege of learning with him. While it may be an unfulfilling position for yourself (and if you are truly unsatisfied then by all means do what you need to do), it has likely opened the door to greater understanding of the physical world to those whom you teach.
That being said, I am currently an engineering student working at Amphenol where I design, build, test, and deploy machines that automate connector assembly.
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It took me 5 years to barely stumble through a B.S. in Physics (God I wish I'd gone engineering), and nothing for a few years after that when grad school didn't seem feasible for any number of reasons, followed by some part-time tutoring. At the moment I'm a high school physics teacher. To be frank I find it rather unfulfilling, and I'd much rather be doing something else if I could figure out what the hell that should be. Though to be even franker, given the opportunity, I'd gladly take doing nothing whatsoever.
Mongoose, if it is any consolation, my high school physics teacher was a true inspiration for both myself and my classmates who had the privilege of learning with him. While it may be an unfulfilling position for yourself (and if you are truly unsatisfied then by all means do what you need to do), it has likely opened the door to greater understanding of the physical world to those whom you teach.
Seconded. My high school AP physics teacher is the reason I'm an engineer today. And really thinking about it, a large part of why I'm good at it and also good at teaching our candidates (if they actually care to learn). That class is where I first had to/learned to think about what I do know to reason out what I don't know. How to learn and adapt, basically. And now I use those same methods to try to force the 'kids' as I think of them (fresh hires right out of college) to actually understand the stuff on a base level and be able to figure things out rather than just memorize a lot of book knowledge. A skill which seems to be getting rarer with every passing year.
I'm actually kinda mad they passed me up for an instructor spot, opting to hire new, unknown, inexperienced and for the most part unqualified people to fill the spots instead. I'm certain I could have done a LOT of good for the division's overall and long-term health (which is staggeringly awful), but the way our training program is ACTUALLY shaping up, I'll be surprised if we don't implode in the next 5 years.