lr64
Well-Known Member
As part of one job, I created an artificial butt for testing the durability of an ultrasound probe.
What do you do (or did) for a living?
- Thread starter NTP2
- Start date
Help Support The Rocketry Forum:
Did it function? Also I’d love to learn how one makes a butt!
lr64
Well-Known Member
It didn't excrete, if that's what you're asking. It was just something to insert and extract the probe from, to see how fast it wore out. Nor was it anatomically accurate.
Well.....before I settled into a position at PartsUnknown University And Bar And Grill, Mountain Fries Our Speciality:
In all seriousness: most of this s**t was not fun. But I was paid $2 or a bit more per hour, back when big-store bread was around 25-50 cents a loaf; call it six loaves an hour. Expecting people to do any kind of work, let alone that kind of rough/dangerous/scut work, for less than two loaves an hour is unconscionable. Especially at today's artificially-inflated and shrinkflated prices of EVERYthing. Yeah, I just preached...we can have it out at LDRS if ya want.
- washed dishes in a restaurant. In the 70s, when parts of those bake-n-serve loaves came back untouched, it was tossed in to make turkey dressing the next day. Did you want to know about the dishes of vegetables, or the uneaten ham/beef/turkey/gravy that came back? I didn't think so...
- nailed heels on shoes and went home stinky and dusty every day.
- helped my cousin lay carpet & vinyl 2 summers. Learned enough to have professionals do our living room.
Also helped him build his house. - spent the occasional Friday night as helper on an 18-wheeler. One driver found out I was an astronomy nut and went crazy, we talked so much that the work ended quickly. He ended up sticking me in the driver's seat for a little while. Okay, I asked for it. Kinda fun, really.
- loaded and hauled lumber locally. Splinters galore. That summer I and the other kid unloaded a railcar of lumber. Not fun in July.
- teaching assistant/lab assistant/whatever, kept 1st year chem students from damaging one another (I was a sophomore).
- promoted to stockroom/prep tech because (tooting my
cuz I'm proud of it) no one in the entire dept knew as much about practical prep of solutions as I did. The Pchem prof was so glad to be able to hand me a list of what was needed, and forget about it. Trusted me more than she did the gen chem prof.
- clerk at a Golden Pantry in Athens GA. Evenings and weekends. In a less-desirable section of town. (following may have appeared before, sorry) Third-most-important event was on the first week. Some idiot drove off with the gas spout still in place. Pulled over a pump. Fire at the base. I'm 22, of COURSE I panic! Hit OFF button, grab extinguisher, pull pin...it's empty. Run back inside, grab another extinguisher...it's empty too. Run across street to gas station, grab theirs, lug it across street. Fire is out. Someone with less panic-in-the-brain dumped a bag of ice on the fire. I did that job for two summers and weekends full time and a semester part-time. Never occurred to me to quit.
- took census in summer 1980 cuz the college not only hired you for 9 months, they paid you on that arrangement. Summers were tough. In eastern KY. Y'all know how some rocketeers can go on and on about their rockets and flights? No? Well son, it happens. And other people have the same attitudes about their activities. You have not lived until you've heard an old guy go on about the dozens of clogging steps that existed. Or had an 80yo appear at the front door with dribbles of tobacco juice down each side of her chin. I was told of workers who got stopped on backwoods roads, by guys carrying guns (moonshining is undoubtedly still big there, as it still is in Land Between The Lakes).
In all seriousness: most of this s**t was not fun. But I was paid $2 or a bit more per hour, back when big-store bread was around 25-50 cents a loaf; call it six loaves an hour. Expecting people to do any kind of work, let alone that kind of rough/dangerous/scut work, for less than two loaves an hour is unconscionable. Especially at today's artificially-inflated and shrinkflated prices of EVERYthing. Yeah, I just preached...we can have it out at LDRS if ya want.
lr64
Well-Known Member
One summer, when I was a teenager, a local company subcontracted a repetitive part of their woodworking to me. By the end of the summer, my fingers were too fat to fit in the same bowling ball and our house was full of sawdust that had drifted over from the garage. We had to replace the bearing in the table saw.
OK, me the early years. The summer between 8th and 9th grade I mowed lawns at the counties cemeteries. Between 9th and 10th I worked at a Stroh's ice cream parlor for $1 an hour, 1971. Summer between 11th and 12th I worked for Zantop cargo airlines. I cleaned the insides of the planes and anything else that needed a broom. Summer after high school went back to Zantop and was now old enough to be insured and became part of the loading and unloading crew. You have not lived until you have unloaded a DC 6 full of tires or worse yet the bench seats of a car that is just the wire parts. It was like a puzzle. What wire was stuck to another wire. Zantop and another company, Auto Air Cargo were at Willow Run airport near Detroit. They only moved car parts and sometimes whole cars. Getting a car in and out of a DC 6 cargo door was like magic. Saw Evil Knievel's Lear Jet from time to time. Sometimes the jet would have one small box of some bolts or screws that were needed bad enough to use the Lear rather than stop the production line. In collage I had a side job as a security guard. Directed traffic at Michigan State football games. One memorable security job was at a Uniroyal warehouse during a strike. I climed up to the overhead crane and watched the place from there. I worked for a book printers as a folding machine operator. 10 minute lunch. 7 hours and 50 minutes running back and forth feeding paper in one end and folded book sections out of the other end. Raises were tied to volume of production. My forearms were oversized and strong from lifting a 100 or so pounds of paper and loading it onto the machine. Won a lot of beer from arm wrestling. A guy would look at me and see a 5'7" guy that weighed 135lbs and think I was a push over. I would show them the error of their ways. When I meet my wife she called me Popeye. When we moved to Mtn Home Idaho I went back to school at BSU for two years to be a X-Ray tech. Did some on and off folding work. Sold cars. Then I got the call that I had been accepted into the X-Ray program and then we got orders for England. I worked at a local gas station for 6 months. The place got robbed on my last day there. The two guys had bin liners { plastic bags] on their heads. One had a gun. I looked at it and it was a Daisy 1911 BB gun. The cops didn't believe me when I told them they had a gun but it wasn't real. I didn't bother telling them I had had guns since I was 13 and probably knew more about guns than they did. Then I managed a pizza store for two other dependent husbands. They sold the store and I started working at the base golf course. First cooking then supervising the food side of the club house. Had my own key to the building. After a round of golf with my friends I would unlock the door and we would have a few drinks in the lounge. And of course we left what we owed in the till. And that was the start of my 20 plus years in the golf business. When the golf business died in 2008 I started working at a gun shop and range as an instructor. Taught everything from handguns, rifles, shotguns and sub machine guns. Retired at 62. Now I fly rockets and collect and shoot guns. I also build AR's. If you want to learn to shoot look me up.
- Joined
- May 29, 2019
- Messages
- 1,421
- Reaction score
- 1,209
Did you have to buy it dinner first?
Reading thru Prfesser's list reminded me of a couple other jobs I had in my youth.
Still in high school I worked in a "mobile home" factory. My job was roofing and sidings. Hated the work. Was fired when I had to take a day off to get my wisdom teeth pulled.
From there I went to work at the local saw mill where I pulled lumber off the green chain. I liked it better than the trailer factory, but not by much!
Thinking of the easiest job I ever did....The two years I worked for the Forest Service, living at the Ranger Station most of the other folks left for town on the weekends. Policy was someone always had to be on the radio. Once they realized I always stayed at the station I got paid $7.25 an hour from 6am to 12am Saturday and Sunday to "log in and log out" and listen for calls relating to our station. In two years I had one call. It wasn't as bad as it seems, our mobile radios were tuned to the same frequency, so if I wanted to take a short hike, I just took a mobile radio with me,
Unloading box cars? Done that too. Working as a lumper for a transfer warehouse, I unloaded semi trailers and stacked pallets for loading. Rail cars usually came with product on pallets. One time that didn't happen. We had 7 rail box cars loaded with 125lb bales of shredded coconut for Nabisco. At first it smelled so good. At first. By the time we got the 7th car unloaded by hand, the smell was so sickening it was decades before I could eat coconut again.
Still in high school I worked in a "mobile home" factory. My job was roofing and sidings. Hated the work. Was fired when I had to take a day off to get my wisdom teeth pulled.
From there I went to work at the local saw mill where I pulled lumber off the green chain. I liked it better than the trailer factory, but not by much!
Thinking of the easiest job I ever did....The two years I worked for the Forest Service, living at the Ranger Station most of the other folks left for town on the weekends. Policy was someone always had to be on the radio. Once they realized I always stayed at the station I got paid $7.25 an hour from 6am to 12am Saturday and Sunday to "log in and log out" and listen for calls relating to our station. In two years I had one call. It wasn't as bad as it seems, our mobile radios were tuned to the same frequency, so if I wanted to take a short hike, I just took a mobile radio with me,
Unloading box cars? Done that too. Working as a lumper for a transfer warehouse, I unloaded semi trailers and stacked pallets for loading. Rail cars usually came with product on pallets. One time that didn't happen. We had 7 rail box cars loaded with 125lb bales of shredded coconut for Nabisco. At first it smelled so good. At first. By the time we got the 7th car unloaded by hand, the smell was so sickening it was decades before I could eat coconut again.
I'm introverted enough, that sounds pleasant. I'd probably bring a book, some music and a fishing pole.
Exactly why I loved it. The rivers around where I was at had no fish, so fishing was out. I read lots of books, took lots of hikes and lots of rock hounding.
+1 I’d pay for that.
Pem Tech
Notorious Member
This will be my 21st year with the Arkansas State Health Department/Dept. of Environmental Quality. Started out at ADEQ in the Air division as an Air Compliance Monitor, moved to ADH Radioactive Materials Program as an inspector, license application reviewer and RAM emergency responder. After a brief hiccup I ended up back at ADEQ in the water division as an enforcement analyst. Now I'm back at ADH as a chemist at the AR Public Health Laboratory.
It is nice to get people to pay you for something you enjoy. I've been mostly fortunate in that. Although my career has come with unexpected stresses that might not be worth it, I do enjoy helping my community and we can do what we want in our down time after daily chores and training.
hcmbanjo
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2009
- Messages
- 2,471
- Reaction score
- 456
A rocketry story, with banjo playing side trips -
At 17 years old, first real job was as a graphic artist. I learned paste-up, darkroom and headline type setting.
In 1972 I had won first prize in the Centuri Photo Design Contest and got to know the reps. at NARAM 17, 18 and 19.
At age 19, I got a call from Centuri Engineering, they were looking for a new hire for the R&D department.
I didn't get the position, congrats to Jeff Flygare who got the job.
Momentarily disillusioned with rocketry, I pursued a career in entertainment. 27 years in the theme parks and Nevada casinos.
Landed in Orlando Florida in the early 1980s with my eye on entertaining at Disney World.
While I did work quite a bit for Disney, my first long term contract was at Sea World.
In 1982, I met up with the Centuri reps. who were at the Kissimmee, FL NARAM 24.
Bob Del Principe let me know I was probably in a better place as an entertainer. Things were closing down in Phoenix,
with operations moved to Penrose, CO.
In 2005 I left Sea World after 10,000 shows over 15 years to launch a 13 year solo act on the Cruise Ships.
The economy slowed down in 2009, the cruise ships cut back on entertainment for a year.
With free time at home, I started designing kits for the new Odd'l Rockets line. The "Model Rocket Building" blog started.
Those years as a graphic artist came home! I sent out emails to vendors asking if they had a graphic artist who also
had experience in model rocketry. This led to drawing up instructions for Balsa Machining, Starlight and Wolverine Rocket kits.
Graphics once required a darkroom, light tables, straightedge, waxer and an X-Acto knife - could now be done on a laptop screen.
Cruising picked up again in late 2010.
250 cruises until 2018 when I hit 60 years old. But in the cruise industry, when you hit 60 years, the phone doesn't ring as often.
I had met Bill Stine at NARAMs years back. He called me in February 2019 about work as the "staff builder" for Estes.
I had built a few show and flying models for Quest in the past. I happily took the Estes job, fulfilling a teenage dream of
working for a model rocket company.
At a 2019 Florida NARCON I mentioned to Dane Boles that I'd be interested in some show and flying builds for Quest/Aerotech.
Dane called out: "Gary, we have a builder!"
Last week an email from Dane let me know there could be 36 more builds this year! My kitchen table build area will be busy!
At 17 years old, first real job was as a graphic artist. I learned paste-up, darkroom and headline type setting.
In 1972 I had won first prize in the Centuri Photo Design Contest and got to know the reps. at NARAM 17, 18 and 19.
At age 19, I got a call from Centuri Engineering, they were looking for a new hire for the R&D department.
I didn't get the position, congrats to Jeff Flygare who got the job.
Momentarily disillusioned with rocketry, I pursued a career in entertainment. 27 years in the theme parks and Nevada casinos.
Landed in Orlando Florida in the early 1980s with my eye on entertaining at Disney World.
While I did work quite a bit for Disney, my first long term contract was at Sea World.
In 1982, I met up with the Centuri reps. who were at the Kissimmee, FL NARAM 24.
Bob Del Principe let me know I was probably in a better place as an entertainer. Things were closing down in Phoenix,
with operations moved to Penrose, CO.
In 2005 I left Sea World after 10,000 shows over 15 years to launch a 13 year solo act on the Cruise Ships.
The economy slowed down in 2009, the cruise ships cut back on entertainment for a year.
With free time at home, I started designing kits for the new Odd'l Rockets line. The "Model Rocket Building" blog started.
Those years as a graphic artist came home! I sent out emails to vendors asking if they had a graphic artist who also
had experience in model rocketry. This led to drawing up instructions for Balsa Machining, Starlight and Wolverine Rocket kits.
Graphics once required a darkroom, light tables, straightedge, waxer and an X-Acto knife - could now be done on a laptop screen.
Cruising picked up again in late 2010.
250 cruises until 2018 when I hit 60 years old. But in the cruise industry, when you hit 60 years, the phone doesn't ring as often.
I had met Bill Stine at NARAMs years back. He called me in February 2019 about work as the "staff builder" for Estes.
I had built a few show and flying models for Quest in the past. I happily took the Estes job, fulfilling a teenage dream of
working for a model rocket company.
At a 2019 Florida NARCON I mentioned to Dane Boles that I'd be interested in some show and flying builds for Quest/Aerotech.
Dane called out: "Gary, we have a builder!"
Last week an email from Dane let me know there could be 36 more builds this year! My kitchen table build area will be busy!
Last edited:
lr64
Well-Known Member
I had a job in a mailroom one summer that probably ruined me. We'd get done with our work by maybe 1 PM most days, and I'd be itching to do something. The other guys, who were close to retirement, told me to just take it easy. I felt funny, but I read several novels at work that summer. I even got most of the way through Gravity's Rainbow. We had an unusual, two week heat wave, and sometimes I'd hang around some biology lab space that had been set up but not yet occupied. Nice and cool. The air conditioning in our room didn't work, but I don't think we actually had an outside wall.
Up to that point, I'd always thought older folks were all conservative, but one of the guys was a socialist. They played "Music of Your Life", for which I guess I have forgiven them by now. One of those programs that goes the extra mile to make sure they are obeying Sturgeon's Law. It took me some years to realize that there was some actual good music from around WWII. I think any DJ audacious enough to play one of the wilder Benny Goodman tunes would have been executed.
Up to that point, I'd always thought older folks were all conservative, but one of the guys was a socialist. They played "Music of Your Life", for which I guess I have forgiven them by now. One of those programs that goes the extra mile to make sure they are obeying Sturgeon's Law. It took me some years to realize that there was some actual good music from around WWII. I think any DJ audacious enough to play one of the wilder Benny Goodman tunes would have been executed.
I appreciate the offer but my brother is quite the gun enthusiast and begs me to go shoot with him so I don’t really need to. (I’m not a horrible shot but I don’t enjoy it much)
Shooting tends to grow on you. It's like a lot of things. Once you start you want to do better so you keep practicing. Golf was like that for me. And rocket building.
The train cars jogged my memory. When I moved to Florida from Michigan I took a job at a Super X drug store warehouse. It was a big place. Train cars would be lined up at the loading dock. One car I helped unload was full of feminine hygiene products. The smell was over powering.
in a bad way?
If you have ever been exposed to one retained, you will never forget it. Gag a dog off a gut wagon.
I am a Registered Nurse that performs IV infusions in people's homes.
Good that you are better.
I'm Winston Wolfe and I solve problems. 
I was so bad at my one and only 9 hold round of golf that I decided the only type of golf for me involves windmills and volcanos.
When we got to England I couldn't break 90. Barley kept under 100. Started working at the base golf course. When we left I was a 3 handicap. Shot in the low 80's at Carnoustie and the Old Course at St Andrews. Both British Open courses. After I retired from the golf business and had to pay to play scores went up. Now I only play once a year with my friends in Oregon. Don't play so well now. But I have hope every time I tee it up.
Mick Kelly
TRA#02937
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2018
- Messages
- 80
- Reaction score
- 50
Senior engineering technologist for an explosive bilty company, ran the day to day operations at a remote large scale explosive bility testing facility. Blew s..t up for a living. Testing setups and high speed data acquisition collection and data reduction along with high speed cameras. Sample rates at a 1000 samples per second both with data and camera frame rate.
I like explosions. There is a site at the Nevada Test Site that does big explosions. The BEEF.
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2019
- Messages
- 6,766
- Reaction score
- 5,189
What's an "explosive bilty company?"
Mick Kelly
TRA#02937
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2018
- Messages
- 80
- Reaction score
- 50
It's a way of categorizing what class an explosion belongs in. Does the explosion take 300ms to reach max pressure or does it only take 1 ms to reach max pressure, Once you analyze the explosivebility of the fuel you can then design and explosion protection system to detect and react to the initial over pressure and respond to it before it can reach max destructive explosive pressure by suppressing it, venting it by direction or isolating to a contained area.
There are three classes , class 1, 2, and 3
Industrial explosion protection.
To answer u directly John since u posed the question, This has always been a pet peeve of mine, to see if a person is truly interested in the subject matter or is their interest in spelling and proper grammar. One letter means more than the subject doesn't it?
Last edited:
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2019
- Messages
- 6,766
- Reaction score
- 5,189
