What do you do (or did) for a living?

[stealth6]

You can't take money with you. Experiences are valuable too. I've followed dreams and many whims and have had a good ride doing so. I passed a few opportunities in early college in order to "be responsible" and figured out it wasn't the right path for me. As Warren Miller always said, "If you don't do it this year, you'll be one year older when you do."

Or from Mark Twain....."20 years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did".

A lot of people like to so they have "no regrets".
But I look at it differently.
Do I have regrets?........oh hell, yes.
The real question is, do I have regrets that eat me up, or that bring me down, or feel that I've "wasted my life"?.....absolutely not.
Would I still have regrets if I was "smarter", or "made better choices?...............I'm pretty certain I would, just different ones.
If I could do it all over, would I change anything or make different choices?............absolutely, then I'd get to have even more experiences (and some new regrets as well of course).

s6

 

[stealth6]

during high school I mowed the Catholic cemetery and back then we did not have weed eaters, so we had to hand trim around every foot marker and tombstone, down on our hands and knees.

Pretty much the same here......but it was more in middle school. Catholic church/cemetary, WAY before weed eaters, lots (pretty much all) handwork, etc.

s6

 

[stealth6]

43 years as a graphic designer/art director. I'm soooo glad I'm retired now..... AI will kill the graphic design industry within 2-5 years. It's been dumbed down to being able to type into a search bar.

My experience shares a similar dynamic.
My major in college was graphic design, and it was my "chosen path" as such.

But this was in the early 1980's, and at that time most of the work was done by hand, and/or by film (stat cameras). About the only thing that was digital, or "computerized", were dedicated were typesetting machines. We produced "camera ready artwork" by hand, did a lot of pen & ink work, and our tools included exacto knives, wax rollers, rubylith, letraset type, etc.

But we were on a cusp of change. Desktop computers were becoming a thing, and more and more work started being done digitally. For the most part, personal, at-home computers were not yet common, so it wasn't quite approachable for "regular people", but of course that was coming....along with a great deal of "dumbing down" of being able to "do" graphic design.

Also, at the time, I HATED working on computers. And the thought of sitting at a desk, typing on a keyboard, and staring at a screen all day filled me with dread. But this was exactly the scenario I could see was soon going to be the life of a "graphic designer". Which is why I started to veer off that path (along with the idea of ski-bumming in Steamboat for a winter!).

So, after a couple years of working in a graphics shop in Boston (actually heading up the department), I ditched it all and headed west. And I did spend that winter in Steamboat, and it was fantastic.

Since then, I've done a fair bit of freelance work on occasion, but I'm not "in the industry" as such. These days I DO use graphics software and do things "digitally". My tolerance for it has changed since those younger wilder days, but it's still not something I want to do a lot of, I don't have to be a slave to it 40+ hours a week, and I'm much happier spending time working with my hands or with something physical.

The AI revolution that is changing the graphics industry for you, is analogous to what the "digital/computer" revolution was for me all those years ago.
I "got out" (as a full time career) when I saw it coming.

s6

 

[prfesser]

Washed dishes. Nailed heels on shoes. Helped cousin lay carpet (learned enough to always hire a pro for that). Got BS. Hauled lumber. Taught. Got MS. Taught. Moved, got PhD, and taught. Moved and taught. Retired.

 

[dr wogz]

Finite element analysis- a form of engineering stress analysis. If you have a complicated thing that there isn't a known equation or method of analysis, you use software that divides the complicated thing into a lot of finite elements, little pieces, that each can have its behavior modeled. Then you connect them mathematically into what is basically a very large system of simultaneous equations for the computer to solve. It can be very good for some things but is very susceptible to "garbage in garbage out", or "pebkac" (problem exists in the person acting between the keyboard and the computer.

thanks for that! great explanation!

and it computes thousands of calculations to come to a conclusion. And there is a %error in that result... small, but it is there..

We have a dedicated PC to 'number crunch', and it'll take a few hours to do so.. to come to 'convergence'..

https://www.simscale.com/blog/convergence-finite-element-analysis/

 

[Knundrm]

Atomic Scientist, Brain Surgeon, Double Knot Spy and Fry Cook.

 

[boatgeek]

thanks for that! great explanation!

and it computes thousands of calculations to come to a conclusion. And there is a %error in that result... small, but it is there..

We have a dedicated PC to 'number crunch', and it'll take a few hours to do so.. to come to 'convergence'..

https://www.simscale.com/blog/convergence-finite-element-analysis/

FEA/FEM's accuracy also depends heavily on the exact results you show, the quality of the mesh, and a host of other factors that are not readily apparent when you look at the pretty picture plots. Like CFD (computational fluid dynamics, aka Colors For Dollars*), you can make lovely graphics that are very convincing and yet are lying to you. CFD does the same task as FEA/FEM except that instead of resolving forces through the cells, it resolves fluid flow and pressure.

* I originally saw this name on this forum, and have adopted it at work. Thanks, TRF!

 

[twoxsheds]

See the title. Also I’d love a nitty gritty explanation of what it is exactly that you do!

As for me I go to 9th grade every day, and they don’t even pay me!!!

Time to bring the thread back to answer the question.

Machinist: a trainee, pre-computers.
Civil Engineering Tech: industrial HVAC systems, surveyor, replaced by computers.
Software Analyst: B-52 avionics, ALCM, B-1, B-2 mission planning.
Project Manager: strategic mission planning, end of the world stuff.
Test manager: airlift planning systems.
Test director: ASOC system, lots of fun and push ups.
Branch Chief: too many times to count, mostly operations.
Protocol: worst job I ever had, not good for an engineer.
Flight Commander: Intelligence systems, plans, best job in the USAF.
Squadron Commander: a tiny little squadron in the Pacific.
Systems Analyst/engineer: NORAD USNORTHCOM, missile defense fire control system, exercise plans.
Enterprise Architect: NORTHCOM, missile warning (I worked on the real WOPR), AFSPC, and USSF architecture.
Retired, flying rockets, making sawdust.

 

[Tommie D]

Starting my forty third year as the Machinist.

 

[bjphoenix]

We have a dedicated PC to 'number crunch', and it'll take a few hours to do so.. to come to 'convergence'..

A linear analysis just solves the equations once, nonlinear analysis has to keep solving over and over with convergence in mind. When I first started writing frame analysis programs* I wrote a few linear analysis programs then I learned about buckling solutions involving eigenvalues and a relatively simple way to calculate the first eigenvalue so I wrote a program that calculated buckling, it had to iterate to solve the eigenvalue. These were written to run on a mainframe computer so time was not an issue. At my first job we had a very small minicomputer but it just took a matter of minutes to run these programs.

Previously one of the engineers had written an iterative analysis program to solve cable networks (tensegrity structures) and it basically took almost 24 hours to run, probably not a very efficient implementation of the program. *(frame analysis is a simple subset of FEM programs because the elements are relatively simple to program)

A younger guy that I worked with told me about a FEM program they wrote in school as a project. On their IBM PC it would take almost an hour to compile. When they started getting close to the deadline they stopped measuring time in hours and minutes and started measuring time in compile cycles- how many times could they compile the program to fix a bug before the deadline. When I got my first Turbo Pascal compiler I thought it was magic.

I don't know about your equipment but I've noticed that businesses don't always have the fastest machines. Computer equipment is a business decision such as leasing instead of buying, buying a brand that the IT department can handle, etc. so I ended up with a relatively slow computer. In my previous company I built the CAD machines and they were relatively fast for the day. Today hardware has increased so much that this isn't as important. At my current company about 6 years ago they switched everybody to laptop computers. We can take our computers into meetings, take them home to work at home, etc. Then when Covid hit everybody just took their computers home and continued working with no interruption. We do quite a bit of FEM analysis and our machines seem fast enough for that because we only need to run relatively small models.

 

[bjphoenix]

FEA/FEM's accuracy also depends heavily on

There seems to be a whole science on modifying the algorythms and methods of the programs to optimize speed, accuracy and storage space. When I was into programming a lot I would have liked to have been able to study this but it is pretty far outside of my major focus and I didn't have time for it. (This was before the IBM PC.) I did do a lot of study on how to work efficiently with small amounts of storage (RAM) and managed to get my programs to run pretty efficiently using the available RAM instead of hard drive. I remember seeing methods for reordering the stiffness matrix to improve accuracy of the calculation. In the applications I was working on you could end up with inaccurate results if you had large differences in the stiffnesses of elements. In conventional FEM this could relate to the mesh size in one place vs. another.

 

[stealth6]

Time to bring the thread back to answer the question.

Machinist: a trainee, pre-computers.
Civil Engineering Tech: industrial HVAC systems, surveyor, replaced by computers.
Software Analyst: B-52 avionics, ALCM, B-1, B-2 mission planning.
Project Manager: strategic mission planning, end of the world stuff.
Test manager: airlift planning systems.
Test director: ASOC system, lots of fun and push ups.
Branch Chief: too many times to count, mostly operations.
Protocol: worst job I ever had, not good for an engineer.
Flight Commander: Intelligence systems, plans, best job in the USAF.
Squadron Commander: a tiny little squadron in the Pacific.
Systems Analyst/engineer: NORAD USNORTHCOM, missile defense fire control system, exercise plans.
Enterprise Architect: NORTHCOM, missile warning (I worked on the real WOPR), AFSPC, and USSF architecture.
Retired, flying rockets, making sawdust.

yeah, but did you ever mow the lawn at the cemetary?

ssixsixsix

 

[cls]

Protocol: worst job I ever had, not good for an engineer.

wondering, what was that position? what does a Protocol person do?

 

[NTP2]

wondering, what was that position? what does a Protocol person do?

My guess is make up protocols.

 

[cls]

My guess is make up protocols.

is there a protocol for that?

 

[twoxsheds]

Starting my forty third year as the Machinist.

I’m amazed you could do that. When I was in tech college machinists were being replaced by CNC machines.

 

[boatgeek]

wondering, what was that position? what does a Protocol person do?

I dunno but they’re probably about to be replaced with a protocol droid.

 

[twoxsheds]

wondering, what was that position? what does a Protocol person do?

Basically you get hotel reservations and arrange chicken dinners for high ranking officers and politicians. It sucks because there is always some little thing that goes wrong, like chocolate with nuts in a fruit basket, and it becomes the most important thing in the world. “My wife could have died!” Then you get charged with attempted murder of a generals wife, and your boss asks why you didn’t know the generals wife had allergies. You asked, it’s on the form, but the other protocol office didn’t reply. It’s just stupid work. It’s work best left to C3P0.

The best visit was President Clinton, he left Hillary home. She was difficult. President Clinton was very easy going. Also, the MOD/Vice President of India, he was quite the gentleman. Saudis were fine if you let them buy some western underwear.

 

[KenECoyote]

43 years as a graphic designer/art director. I'm soooo glad I'm retired now..... AI will kill the graphic design industry within 2-5 years. It's been dumbed down to being able to type into a search bar.

My wife is a graphics person working with PowerPoint presentations and she just told me this past Friday
"WOW! With AI, it's SO easy to find the right graphic. It can be off at first, but once you narrow the search, it's AMAZING! Used to take me a long time, now it's almost instant."

I was starting to think that AI was overhyped given how sad some ChatGPT results sounded.

 

[KenECoyote]

Me... kinda boring?

• Candy store that also made and shipped gift baskets worldwide (I can still make a gift bow!). We added ice cream one summer and it was THE BEST JOB EVER!!!
• Non-Fun stuff: Coding assistant, Proofreader, Editor, Tabulation programmer (Unix), Field supervisor, Tabulation Department Manager, Client Consulting Associate Manager, Strategic Planning Manager, Sr. Project Coordinator, Segmentation Team Lead (decoded and programmed different client's segmentation algorithms), Client Solutions Manager, a few others and Road Runner chaser (definitely not fun so far).

 

[teepot]

When I read, mowed lawns at a cemetery I laughed. In the eighth grade I worked for the county mowing grass at the cemeteries in our county. Some were in the middle of nowhere and overgrown. Just a dozen or so headstones. We would crawl around on our hands and knees and trim around the headstones. Always gave me a funny feeling. I even helped fill in a grave. Now that was unsettling.

 

[twoxsheds]

My wife is a graphics person working with PowerPoint presentations and she just told me this past Friday
"WOW! With AI, it's SO easy to find the right graphic. It can be off at first, but once you narrow the search, it's AMAZING! Used to take me a long time, now it's almost instant."

I was starting to think that AI was overhyped given how sad some ChatGPT results sounded.

This is very true. Just a few months ago AI renderers gave people some fingers, could be three or seven. Dogs would have three or five legs and two tails. Now it seems to get the fingers and legs and bilateral symmetry. Pretty soon it will be creating things beyond what humans can conceive, that’s when we’re done.

I’d like to point out that computer generated is not artifical intelligence. Much of what we are seeing today is simply graphics generated by sets of rules, that’s what computers do. AI is when the computer generates new rules based on its experience. Even this is not really ‘intelligence’, the computer has to learn and apply it’s knowledge to solve problems correctly. This means computers have to make mistakes like five legged dogs and learn that five legged dogs are extremely rare and usually put down or surgically fixed back to four legged dogs. The computer has to learn that dogs are four dimensional and drawings are two dimensional.

 

[Art Upton]

Me... kinda boring?

• Candy store that also made and shipped gift baskets worldwide (I can still make a gift bow!). We added ice cream one summer and it was THE BEST JOB EVER!!!
• Non-Fun stuff: Coding assistant, Proofreader, Editor, Tabulation programmer (Unix), Field supervisor, Tabulation Department Manager, Client Consulting Associate Manager, Strategic Planning Manager, Sr. Project Coordinator, Segmentation Team Lead (decoded and programmed different client's segmentation algorithms), Client Solutions Manager, a few others and Road Runner chaser (definitely not fun so far).

Aah, "Banners and Tabs" as "Deliverables"

 

[KenECoyote]

Aah, "Banners and Tabs" as "Deliverables"

Yeah, lots of brutal stories lol. Used to work full speed twice a week past midnight for 3 years. I don't miss that, but it paid very well back then (corner office with huge glass windows and two computers back in early 2000s).

 

[Vitruvius]

I ran my costume business for 22 years doing custom costumes of most genres. I then became a substitute teacher until 10 years ago when I had to go on disability. It's been an interesting life, so far.

 

[dr wogz]

I had a friend in College who was a grave digger.. still is from what I understand..

 

[KenECoyote]

I had a friend in College who was a grave digger.. still is from what I understand..

 

[FurqWerx]

43 years as a graphic designer/art director. I'm soooo glad I'm retired now..... AI will kill the graphic design industry within 2-5 years. It's been dumbed down to being able to type into a search bar.

I too am a graphic designer. You are absolutely right about AI. It will certainly kill the lower end of graphic design. The higher end may survive for a while longer. I work at a medical school. It will be adopted very aggressively here. Even instructional designers feel threatened because the class management platforms will easily do their jobs. Oh well, seven more years to retirement for me.

 

[NTP2]

I ran my costume business for 22 years doing custom costumes of most genres. I then became a substitute teacher until 10 years ago when I had to go on disability. It's been an interesting life, so far.

That is a new one, cool!

 

[Fishhead]

Mail prostitute