What is your occupation/background?

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Fri Dec 10, 2010 10:03 pm

Don't quit your day job Doc. Leave the bad jokes to us professionals.

Rip · Post by **Rip** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 1:51 am

DocDarm wrote:Most of the new people here have probably never heard of me. I used to post regularly, especially in the Gone Gold days. Now I check the site, but rarely post. The old timers here know me better.

I'm an endocrinologist in private practice. That's a hormone doctor. Mostly we deal with patients with diabetes. We're doing well, and we've hired another doctor. MzDarm is the practice administrator, and she has on an expanding, growing trajectory. It's working. She's incredible.

I've taken a special interest in thyroid, and my practice is tilting more towards thyroid diseases and I enjoy doing thyroid and parathyroid ultrasounds (geeky, eh?)

Endocrinology joke: What's the difference between a hormone and a vitamin?
Spoiler:
You can't hear a hormone.

Spoiler:
You can't hear a whore moan.

Hold on a second.....did you just call me an old timer?

Rip

Kelric · Post by **Kelric** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 1:54 am

dbt1949 wrote:Don't quit your day job Doc. Leave the bad jokes to us professionals.

The jokes are even better in person.

AjD · Post by **AjD** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 3:05 am

If people are still doing this...

Audio engineer / producer (small potatoes, mostly, but fun) and musician
Recovering newspaper / publishing guy

Tokek · Post by **Tokek** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 3:20 am

Right now I'm an IT Systems Engineer for a huge multinational mining survey company in Jakarta (HQ in Paris, France), just started this a little over a month ago. I basically do desktop support and application support for geophysicists and make sure the server clusters are not down. Before that I teach English as a second language to adults here in Jakarta.

Prior to returning to Indonesia, my last job in the US was as an IT guy for a health device manufacturer. I did everything from desktop support, IT purchasing, server management, project planning, managing people and pretty much every other IT related job in the company. I've been in IT for over 10 years but some of it got mixed with other stuff. I've been a game tester for EA and Vivendi, been a sandwich delivery boy / cashier, an apprentice printer (offset hidelberg 2-color), a Disneyland ride operator, and a slew of other things.

Kelric · Post by **Kelric** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 3:24 am

Tokek wrote:Before that I teach English as a second language to adults here in Jakarta.

You mean you taught English, correct?

Tokek · Post by **Tokek** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 3:38 am

Kelric wrote:
Tokek wrote:Before that I teach English as a second language to adults here in Jakarta.
You mean you taught English, correct?

Haha, correct! English is complicated! But I still do part time teaching when there's a class that doesn't interfere with my official work hours, so technically I still teach.

Chaosraven · Post by **Chaosraven** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 5:04 am

Geez some of these look like resumes.

Clanwolfer · Post by **Clanwolfer** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 5:40 am

Chaosraven wrote:Geez some of these look like resumes.

Some of us are proud of what we've done with our lives.

...some of us are also unnecessarily long-winded.

stessier · Post by **stessier** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 5:57 am

Clanwolfer wrote:...some of us are also unnecessarily long-winded.

and bored with too much time on our hands. Don't forget that!

Chaosraven · Post by **Chaosraven** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 6:16 am

stessier wrote:
Clanwolfer wrote:...some of us are also unnecessarily long-winded.
and bored with too much time on our hands. Don't forget that!

hey! That's my JOB!

I just meant the histories stretching back into High School... Chaosfaerie and I are artists, but wiithout consistant work it pays well but infrequently. So she was teaching and managing an art gallery and I am here.

Lagom Lite · Post by **Lagom Lite** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 8:52 am

MA in Dramatics + smatterings of theatre & performance arts and writing courses. Wrote and directed some off-off-off-(equivalent-of-Broadway) theatre plays in my early twenties. Been living off smallish theatre projects, mostly local community theatre stuff with/for teens. Have lately got into administering and producing instead - finding means and money to enable fellow artists to work their craft is immensely gratifying.

I recently got a new job.

I'm 31, no kids (yet), girlfriend, cat.

Grundbegriff · Post by **Grundbegriff** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 9:11 am

Tokek wrote:Right now I'm an IT Systems Engineer for a huge multinational mining survey company in Jakarta

Have you been to the Great Stupa of Borobudur out near Yogyakarta?

Default · Post by **Default** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 9:39 am

Armed government employee.

Eco-Logic · Post by **Eco-Logic** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 10:04 am

I'm a Financial Advisor with a Regional Bank. I've been in the investment industry since my sophomore year of college, where I got my BS in Business Finance.

Tokek · Post by **Tokek** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 11:16 am

Grundbegriff wrote:Have you been to the Great Stupa of Borobudur out near Yogyakarta?

I have when I was little. Haven't been back there since I got back from the US last year though.

storz · Post by **storz** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 11:46 am

BS in EE after got out of the Air Force (Air Force trained me as biomed equip. tech), after getting the degree, found I like to work with actual troubleshooting part better than a job in design, thus now still works as a senior Clinical technology tech. (biomedical equipment repair tech. is what this used to be called, I believe DBT has the same job as me before he retired

)

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 11:56 am

DocDarm wrote: I've taken a special interest in thyroid, and my practice is tilting more towards thyroid diseases and I enjoy doing thyroid and parathyroid ultrasounds

Eew. Save it for Craigslist, why don't ya?

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 12:11 pm

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, next to Glenview Naval Air Station (now closed

). (rumor: NAS Glenview was on the short list of Russian nuke targets for tactical reasons)
The jets and cargo planes would fly over my house on their landing approach...
I took to skiing at a very young age. I've never actually stopped loving or buying Legos.

I was always very interesting in math and physics.
I was also very into Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, high-end remote control cars and planes, and camping. And our Apple IIe.

For college I headed out to Boulder Co, where I got my BS degree in Aerospace Engineering.
Summers, I was a horse-back riding counselor at Sanborn camps, a great camp.

So, then the Cold War ended and no one got jobs, so I headed back toward computers to earn a living.

After college, I headed back to Chicago and worked for a small start-up company that acted as the IT 'guy' for a number of small businesses. (pulled cable, set-up hardware, set up and admin their networks, etc)
Ditched that company to become a Sybase database admin for a couple years.
I've stayed at this company for a number of years (we write software that the Automobile Collision and Insurance Industry use to make estimates and facilitate claims, etc).
Moved away from database administration and more toward inteface and 'back office' program design.
Our company has since moved off Sybase an onto Oracle, and I'm currently building up my PL/SQL skills.

I haven't skied in years.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 12:31 pm

Unagi wrote:I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, next to Glenview Naval Air Station (now closed ). (rumor: NAS Glenview was on the short list of Russian nuke targets for tactical reasons)

They were targeting the golf course, I believe. I got to golf there a few times (and my friend Don, who some of you met at an Octocon, got married there). It only cost $10 back then. Now it is The Glen Club and costs about $175.

I have some friends who live in The Glen, they are golfing buddies but they have never golfed there...they can't afford it!

ChaoZ · Post by **ChaoZ** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 12:32 pm

I'm an editor for a trade magazine, but also have my hands doing some of the layout and graphic design, which is a field I'm looking to move into.

My university degree is a combination of English and Journalism, which unsurprisingly, helps at work while being pretty useless at new job prospects at the same time.

pr0ner · Post by **pr0ner** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 12:50 pm

Isgrimnur wrote:I've come to the conclusion that all a college degree does is prove to people that you're willing to put up with an environment where you have to spend 75% of the time doing stuff that you don't consider important, the willingness to jump through hoops, and a bit of an aptitude to learn enough to get by.

I disagree with the above, as my degree was a requirement to getting my job, said degree getting used on a daily basis.

Dramatist · Post by **Dramatist** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 1:14 pm

My great grandfather started a retail flooring store in about 1948. When he died a few years later his two sons took the business over. I started working for them in December 1989. We do mostly residential and small business flooring and I do everything but install the flooring.

I go out to the jobsite to measure and make floor plans, help the customer pick the flooring, bid the job, make the deals, order the materials, unload the trucks, schedule the crews that install and keep up with all the paperwork.

The last few years have been hard becuase I believe the industry is shifting away from the small stores to the big box stores. We do good work for a good price, but have trouble getting people to come to our store.

Odin · Post by **Odin** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 3:00 pm

Dramatist wrote:The last few years have been hard becuase I believe the industry is shifting away from the small stores to the big box stores. We do good work for a good price, but have trouble getting people to come to our store.

My brother- and sister-in-law run a store that sounds exactly like that. If you guys come up with any effective marketing strategies, let me know - I'd love to pass them along.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 3:11 pm

pr0ner wrote:
Isgrimnur wrote:I've come to the conclusion that all a college degree does is prove to people that you're willing to put up with an environment where you have to spend 75% of the time doing stuff that you don't consider important, the willingness to jump through hoops, and a bit of an aptitude to learn enough to get by.
I disagree with the above, as my degree was a requirement to getting my job, said degree getting used on a daily basis.

My contention isn't that the degrees themselves aren't necessary to get jobs, it's that, at best, they prove that you have an aptitude for the field and can be trained. I use my degree every day as a programmer, but the majority of the classes I had to take to earn it have no bearing on what I do in any given year: accounting, real estate finance, strategic management, etc.

I've talked with engineers that say the same thing about their course load. They had to take a lot of classes in a lot of different subdisciplines that they never use once they hit the real world.

But we all know you're a special case, Pr0ner, both professionally and personally.

As a patent examiner, I'm sure you have to stretch outside of the major-related classes a lot more than the rest of us.

Elbino · Post by **Elbino** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 9:48 pm

Started out getting a Bachelor of Computer Science.

Worked for 5 years in Telecom/Voice over IP stuff back when that stuff was cutting edge. Mainly I worked for startups and a great perk of those jobs was that I've been to most cities in North America and Europe on extended troubleshooting/installation trips. I also had the chance to live in London, England for a couple of years and saw the crazy Y2K new years party from ground zero. Missed out on 2 different get rich quick IPOs by about a month each due to cash burn in those companies. Finally decided to give up that life cold turkey and get some stability. Mainly I was tired of the office/indoor life.

For the last 10 years I've been a commercial lobster fisherman. I work like hell out of a small 20 foot boat from Dec - May. I don't do anything but golf and spend time with my family for the other 6 months. It's a dream job for me, but most can't hack it even 6 months at a time. When my Dad retires (any day now) I'll be flying solo enjoying the sunrises every morning.

mori · Post by **mori** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 10:24 pm

Sheep slaughterer.

Jaymann · Post by **Jaymann** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 10:45 pm

In Soviet Russia your background occupies you.

Steron · Post by **Steron** » Sun Dec 12, 2010 9:31 am

For the past 5 years I have been a System Administrator (that's my title but the 3 of us in IT wear many hats) for a bank. We have about 80 employees in 8 branches and the home office. Prior to that I have been an Information Security Engineer for a government contractor, a Network Analyst for AOL, a Level II Circuit Test and Acceptance Engineer for a tier I provider, a SR. NOC Technician for a tier 1 provider, an Install Coordinator for a circuit provisioning company back when ISDN Centrex was awesome, and a consumer products tester (everything from steel toes in shoes to bolts that hold together rockets and satellites).

Jiffy · Post by **Jiffy** » Sun Dec 12, 2010 10:48 am

My background definitely fits in here...

I've got degrees in Chemical Engineering and Computer Science and use both of them in my position - Process Control engineer. So my work revolves around computerized automation and optimization of a multi-billion dollar chemical processing plant. I work for one of the companies happily ruining the environment (we make plastics and until recently, co-products like styrofoam). <evil laugh>

Koz · Post by **Koz** » Sun Dec 12, 2010 12:10 pm

Nothing too exciting for me: I'm a programmer and majored in Computer Science (and Classics).

KKBlue · Post by **KKBlue** » Sun Dec 12, 2010 12:17 pm

Since 2001, I’m a self employed “cleaning lady”. Many family members have started up their own businesses, so it was only suiting that I do the same. Thinking of it, I have mainly worked for independently owned businesses since I was 15 (exception, UPS). During the past 10 years I have been learning more about the healing arts and getting attuned (Reiki master), taking workshops (along with conducting some of my own), and classes (hypnosis and aromatherapy certifications) to better my life (energetically speaking) and those around me. If it helps to keep the “freaking out here, who is this person!” feeling that I might of just conjured up, I am volunteering at the local hospital in the oncology wing and had to go through, and passed, a background check.
Because of my entrepreneur experiences, I am in the process of starting a new venture which is like a mix of Amazon and Facebook with a metaphysical twist.

Hispanicgamer · Post by **Hispanicgamer** » Sun Dec 12, 2010 1:08 pm

I am a Microbiologist/Molecular Biologist working in a start up biotech that is designing diagnostics for the food testing market. I've been working in Biotech for, gulp, 23 years this coming February. Mostly like working with the entry level people and getting them started. I like the people management side of the job rather than the project management. My wish is to be able to retire in 11 years at 60. I might have to be a greeter at Wal-Mart if I can't.

paulbaxter · Post by **paulbaxter** » Sun Dec 12, 2010 7:36 pm

I have several hats I wear these days.

I teach piano and French Horn to a select group of students.

I tune and repair pianos, which would be quite remunerative if I could schedule enough appointments to do that full time.

I score the Test of English as a Foreign Language, specifically the speaking portion of the test. OK pay, no benefits at all, but I get to work from home and write my own schedule.

I watch three amazing boys grow up three days a week while my wife earn real money and benefits working for a large insurance company.

My wife would much prefer that I work full time and make lots of money.

malchior · Post by **malchior** » Sun Dec 12, 2010 7:42 pm

My entire background career-wise is in IT. I started off installing NICs in computers in the 90s and eventually through various twists and turns landed a job as Network Manager at a college in NJ. I spent 9 years there and moved on to consulting. I designed and built data centers around the world and consulted on network architecture for customers large and small domestically and internationally. Unfortunately, that company wasn't so big on work-life balance and I decided to take a turn into Security. Last year, I picked up a Network Security Analyst position in the energy industry. I am responsible for IDS/IPS deployment/maintenance, device security, event correlation, VPN endpoints, firewalls, NAC, proxies, dalliances into PCI compliance, and various other random tasks as I seem to always have a ton of free cycles.

It's been a pretty jarring transition. I went from weeks in a row where I couldn't get through a night without the phone ringing to a job where I don't get called after hours ever. And I mean ever. In lieu of a training budget they reimburse for passed tests, so I've re-picked up my CCNP certification (let it expire many years ago) and a CISSP. I'm probably going to work my way through most of the Cisco professional-level certs: CCDP/CCSP, maybe a CCVP if I get motivated. My opinion is they are fairly worthless (less so for the CISSP), but hiring managers who don't know better seem to put a lot of stock in them.

KingB · Post by **KingB** » Sun Dec 12, 2010 8:11 pm

I am a Corporal in the Detention Center for the Sheriffs Department here in Bismarck. I also own a lawn/snow removal business.

GungHo · Post by **GungHo** » Sun Dec 12, 2010 8:17 pm

I'm a respiratory therapist as well as a paramedic and I work in the Transport Services area of a children's hospital. Which basically means, whenever a sick kid shows up at a hospital other than our own and that hospital feels the kid is too sick for them to handle, they call us and we come and get the kid and bring them back to our hospital.

It's cool. We get to fly on a helicopter and walk around the airport runway. We also get to go to the front of the line when we fly in our jet and make everybody in the commercial planes who are looking out their windows say, 'Hey! WHy do those guys get to take off before we do?!?'

Of course it's got it's major downside too, as I'm sure you can imagine.

I actually got my degree in Psychology from the University of Texas, but I went right into RT school 2 weeks after I graduated. Did paramedic school about 6 years ago.
No more skoolin' for me, thanks.
Actually, I lie. I will probably, at some point, maybe, go back to nursing school. But I dont feel like changing diapers at this point in my career.

theohall · Post by **theohall** » Sun Dec 12, 2010 8:20 pm

GungHo wrote:I'm a respiratory therapist as well as a paramedic and I work in the Transport Services area of a children's hospital. Which basically means, whenever a sick kid shows up at a hospital other than our own and that hospital feels the kid is too sick for them to handle, they call us and we come and get the kid and bring them back to our hospital.

It's cool. We get to fly on a helicopter and walk around the airport runway. We also get to go to the front of the line when we fly in our jet and make everybody in the commercial planes who are looking out their windows say, 'Hey! WHy do those guys get to take off before we do?!?'

Of course it's got it's major downside too, as I'm sure you can imagine.

I actually got my degree in Psychology from the University of Texas, but I went right into RT school 2 weeks after I graduated. Did paramedic school about 6 years ago.
No more skoolin' for me, thanks.
Actually, I lie. I will probably, at some point, maybe, go back to nursing school. But I dont feel like changing diapers at this point in my career.

You are a better man than I. I wanted to be a doctor for a long time - say from 7 years old until I was 16 - then I walked through a Respiratory Therapy ward. 3/4 of the folks on machines with all this crap coming out of them asking for cigarettes. It turned me off to medicine, sadly.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sun Dec 12, 2010 9:07 pm

theohall wrote:
GungHo wrote:I'm a respiratory therapist as well as a paramedic and I work in the Transport Services area of a children's hospital. Which basically means, whenever a sick kid shows up at a hospital other than our own and that hospital feels the kid is too sick for them to handle, they call us and we come and get the kid and bring them back to our hospital.

It's cool. We get to fly on a helicopter and walk around the airport runway. We also get to go to the front of the line when we fly in our jet and make everybody in the commercial planes who are looking out their windows say, 'Hey! WHy do those guys get to take off before we do?!?'

Of course it's got it's major downside too, as I'm sure you can imagine.

I actually got my degree in Psychology from the University of Texas, but I went right into RT school 2 weeks after I graduated. Did paramedic school about 6 years ago.
No more skoolin' for me, thanks.
Actually, I lie. I will probably, at some point, maybe, go back to nursing school. But I dont feel like changing diapers at this point in my career.
You are a better man than I. I wanted to be a doctor for a long time - say from 7 years old until I was 16 - then I walked through a Respiratory Therapy ward. 3/4 of the folks on machines with all this crap coming out of them asking for cigarettes. It turned me off to medicine, sadly.

I was serious about becoming a doctor until my junior year of high school. For the first time I ran into a subject (chemistry) that I simply could not master, even with after-school tutoring.

In the midst of this crisis my parents scheduled a dinner out with my uncle, an old-fashioned small-town doctor (and my role model). His advice to me: The thing that matters most for a doctor is to love people. You have to want to devote your life to helping others. If you have that going for you, you'll get through your academics.

That was the end of it for me. I hated people even back then.

I wouldn't learn until years later that doctors who hate people just become surgeons.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Sun Dec 12, 2010 9:08 pm

KingB wrote:I am a Corporal in the Detention Center for the Sheriffs Department here in Bismarck. I also own a lawn/snow removal business.

You remove lawns too?