What do you do for a living?

[HarvesteR]

I'm a game dev, as some of you probably know.

Currently I'm working on my new game, Balsa Model Sim, where you can design and fly scale aircraft and aircraft-like things.

In whatever spare time I can find, my hobby is DIY simpit controls, which I guess is like four hobbies in one. ?

 

[Mojave]

I think most of you groovy dudes know that I work (lol... "work") at a nuclear power plant as an instrument mechanic, but now that our recent outage is complete, I'm moving to the training department.
We have an apprentice class starting this spring, and I'll only be interacting with them a bit. My primary responsibility is continuing training and maintaining our accreditation level with INPO.
I'm also a dayshift only guy now. Not sure how you daywalkers do it. Walking around, while the sun is shining and stuff... I have to run from shadow to shadow, I'm worried that if I spend too much time in direct sunlight I'll burst into flames. I've been a midnight shift worker for nearly 15 years.

Would you say you prefer working nightshift? If so, why? Other than the obvious "nobody is around to bother me" perk of the nightshift, lol.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

While working "in the plant" I did very much prefer nightshift for that very reason. We had one boss, and he sits in the main control room. Anything NOT on the schedule had to go through him. We show up, do our scheduled work, then sit and wait for dayshift.
Days, has 7-8 "bosses" in the shop at any given time (unless they're all off at meetings). The schedule is constantly in flux. And depending on what the other craft are doing, their work can shut down our work. Or Ops will shut us down, or maybe RadCon (some places call them Health Physics, or Rad Pro). If you have nothing to do, then it was expected that you were to "look busy". I. Don't. Do. Busywork. Or at least I don't do it well. If there's nothing for me to do, I'll disappear for a while.
Here at the training center, I've got one boss. And he pretty much leaves me alone. I've just finished rewriting a set of quals (the old format was 27 years old), and we are getting ready for an initial class of apprentices.

 

[Notebook]

Some folk here may remember I worked in Broadcast Tv as an Electronics Engineer. Not my job description, I'd call myself a technician.
Engineers to me have Degree level qualifications. I went through the Technical College/Polytechnic system that was common at the time in the UK.
More skills based than academic, and it delivered what was needed I think.

I worked mostly at Teddington Studios based in South-West London for Thames Television in the Technical Operations Dept.
That covered VTR operation, Telecine(film & slides) and first-line maintenance in CAR(Central Apparatus Room).
Below a certain grade you were rotated around those three areas to get experience.

That continued on happily till Thames lost it's London region franchise to Carlton Television in 1991. That meant it would cease transmissions
at midnight on December 31st 1992. And it did!

So what, you may say? Another light-industrial company going bust and making staff redundant. Two major things happened, the Euston Road(London) transmission site
was closed down and all staff made redundant. The Outside Broadcast garage had a management buy-out and did quite well for a long time, mostly sports and horse-racing.
That left Teddington Studios.

The ITV network had no need for Thames as a programme maker, so prospects were bleak. Teddington had no history as a "facilities" operation. It didn't
need expensive post-production equipment. Its output was mostly comedy, drama, Light-Entertainment. Management decided to market the site as a "Digital Village".
Companies could hire the studios and edit-suites, sound-dubbing, everything on a hourly or daily rate. The Production Offices were rented out, all the Producers
Directors, Production Assistants and writers had left. Contacts coming to an end or redundancies. Thames finished off the programs it had contracted to for the ITV Network.
We then waited to see what would happen, and how long we would last.
Happy to say the site went on till 2017 when it was demolished for riverside flats.

An average story of working life, and so it was. Except for a question, would you steal from your employer?
Easy I thought, no, its not right and a strange way to hand your notice in. Till this happened.

Thames had a wholly-owned company called TTI(Thames Television International) they marketed and sold all Thames material outside the UK.
We didn't see much of them at Teddington as they used external faculties to generate their own transmission masters. they could be different TV Standards
NTSC, SECAM. Might have subtitles or foreign language.

When Thames lost its franchise TTI could see their supply of material to sell disappearing. So they built a Format Transfer Area at Teddington
to get all 2" tapes transferred to a modern format. They decided on Panasonic D3.
I was put in at the start to get it running and later ex-Thames staff came in to keep it going. It ran for about 18 months as needed and finished all the 2" transfers.
No problems till one tape arrived from Euston Road after the building was cleared and given back to the landlord.

This tape was obviously not a Thames production. No Thames label on the box and no paper-work inside. Nothing on the content, no Ident, Titles, end-slide. Very odd.
It was dated 1964 and was Sir Adrian Boult conducting The London Symphony Orchestra in Elgar Variations and Beethoven 3rd Symphony Eroica. It was in good condition for its age.
Some tape edge damage that showed itself on audio drop-outs.

TTI had a complete wobbly over this, who made it and why was it at Euston Road? 1964 was four years before Thames was created from the parent companies of ABC Television and Associated-Rediffusion, both ITV contractors at the time. Questions we couldn't answer. The management wanted it sent back to Security Archive and forgotten about.
It wasn't Thames material, they couldn't sell it and they could be liable for "denial of asset" by holding a tape that didn't belong to Thames. Yes, they had some copyright lawyers.
Told to forget about it, send it to storage and not contact the London Symphony Orchestra.

Dilemma, if it went to storage it would be lost. No one knew about it to even ask, and Thames weren't renowned for making classical music recording. Besides the fact it was made four years before Thames existed.
After a few weeks I put the 2" and its D3 copies into the system, waited to see if anyone noticed and they didn't. I also made a D3 copy and kept it at Teddington.
In 1996 I went with my pension to another site, and took the D3 with me.

Theft?

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode!

 

[Trekkie]

i work at KLM / Boeing Component Services Program as a Repair Administrator

 

[Notebook]

From #104 above.

The second (and final, you'll be glad to know) episode.

What to do about a tape copy I made and removed of The London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult?

Its not a Thames Tv production, the originating company is long gone. Gets worse, Pearson International, a UK publishing company decided they wanted the Thames library, so they buy Thames, including the staff on the same terms and conditions. I have to move to a new site.
Lose contact with the old TTI sales staff who remain at the old site.
Quandary now, I'm the only one who knows about the tape. If I confess to my new employer they might take a dim view of me copying material and taking it off site. I would.
Tip off the LSO anonymously? They will think its a hoax, or if they believe it and Peasron go looking they will soon find out I was the only ex Thames staff involved.

I had responsibilities and a wage and a good pension coming. Commercial television paid very well, and it was very unionised. Industrial disputes were settled with money, but not for long after the 80's
so I waited and.....waited to figure out what to do about "The Boult Tape"

Eventually my responsibilities declined and I retired. Thought I had better do something in case I fell under a bus.

Contacted the LSO in 2018, at first they were dubious and lukewarm. Can't say I blame them. Videotape recordings were very expensive as was studio time in 1964.
When they did go through their records, there it was. February 11th 1964, Studio Five Associated-Rediffusion Television, Wembley. With call times, rehearsals, and "transmission" .
No mention of a videotape recording though.
Sent them a DVD and that concentrated their minds.
They went through various options of how to market this performance. Seems it doesn't fit into the normal LSO market and brand.
Then Covid came along and the orchestra and their home, The Barbican Centre shut down.

Glad to say they eventually authorised a specialist dealer to market the DVDs.

This is them:
CRQ Editions
About a third down the page under "New DVDs and DVD-ROMs"

Glad to see the LSO got their material back, and its out there for the public to buy.

 

[Notebook]

The LSO is promoting the DVD with a short clip and a quiz about how many players you recognise. One for the fans I think.

London Symphony Orchestra | Facebook

Short clip(1'20) dated 9th December, monochrome.

 

[Padre Pedro]

I am a real estate agent. Used to work in Italy but early this year moved to Spain to Costa del Sol. I was really lucky to take up my relocation about a year ago just before all these lockdown activities.

 

[insanity]

I used to work in politics, but then went in to digital strategy. Now I lead a strategy practice at a small agency that works for nonprofits and higher education clients.

 

[Scav]

I'll chime in.

Years ago I lemminged my way through a questionable for-profit educational institution. The purpose was to gain professional validation and an 'in' doing infrastructure work, but the credentials I earned ended up being worth less than the paper it was printed on (with the added bonus that said questionable for-profit educational institution ceased to exist almost immediately after I graduated, along with the umbrella corporation that purchased them . . . rendering any educational credit I ever earned from said questionable for-profit educational institution utterly meaningless, with the added bonus of starting out my professional career with an irreconcilable derogatory to my resumé) made an error, but managed to survive everything mostly intact. I somehow found some work in computers, but the cutthroat corporate environment quality and quantity of actionable work I was able to find was too often soul-crushing and made me stupider not a good fit.

See Office Space for my last foray into working on/with computers/users for a living -- sans any embezzlement or buildings being burnt down. After leaving the IT environment on an 'any port in a storm' basis, I now I balance life and working in aviation with educating myself again, this time in a mechanical capacity. The gut feeling, tempered with the failures of the past, is that in spite of the prior nonsense I'm on a good track, and this might actually trigger the better second half of my intended life.

Bonuses:

• I shed some 50# (~23kg) of weight during the first year after I changed career paths.
• I learned I became diabetic somewhere down the road -- this is managed now.
• I'm strangely stubborn and stuck around long enough to see this happening.
• I'm happier now.

 

[N_Molson]

I'm a game dev, as some of you probably know.

I heard about it . Actually your first baby is running on background. Oddly, I really enjoy those "fly there, make a report, fly back missions" on Kerbin as much as space missions. I'll keep an eye on Balsa Model Sim, might be my kind of stuff as well

I'm not so young (37) and I must say my life wasn't something linear at all. Studied philosophy, have a Masters Degree in Education. Was part of the BASPM dev team, quite a stressful but rewarding experience. Also worked sometimes as service agent, cleaning stairs in residential buildings. Gave quite a lot of private guitar lessons, was quite successful with that. Last winter I applied for a philosophy teacher job in a French school in Casablanca, Morocco. We had 2 months of classes then CoVid with full lockdown, borders closed and no way to get back home. Did my best with my colleagues to teach "online", but it wasn't easy, a lot of pupils just skipped classes (I can't blame them too much). Got a repatriation flight in June. Now I'm back with my sisters in my parent's farm in french countryside, waiting for the storm to calm down. Not easy to make plans those days, but I'll try to find another teaching job (in France) as soon as things settle down (probably not before summer).

 

[Moach]

Much like HarvesteR, I'm also a game developer. This is possibly related to the fact that we're twins and graduated game design university in the same class.

Curiously enough, we each have our own separate projects, despite some passing similarities between them


My work at present is MotorWings - A sim where you build your own airplane....Uh, Just like Balsa? Well, yes and no, but mostly no, not really.

Balsa is an RC model sim based on a session-cycle gameplay with various mission-specified goals (there's a mission editor and all).

MotorWings is fundamentally different in overall design as it centers around RPG-like open world careers on a fantasy "Crimson Skies" style environment, with full-sized aircraft too.

Whereas the technical core of the two is indeed very much similar, the overall point of either one ends up being completely distinct. Ultimately, the experience of playing each should be very much unique, despite both having a "make your own airplane" foundation in common.


So Basically: In Balsa, one flies make-believe aircraft in the real world, whereas in MotorWings one flies real aircraft in a make-believe world...

In the end, the only practical solution for anyone who cares, is to have them both.

 

[Azul Quinton]

I am sort of a part-time investor. That is my hobby. I research different assets, their potential and then decide whether to invest in them or not. At the moment I study Economics at Manchester University and try to do some trading

Guys, has any of you stumbled upon interesting courses on Coursera about investing? It would be cool to expand my knowledge

 

[Challenger007]

I work as an engineer, making custom-made furniture in my spare time. I would like to master a profession that allows you to work remotely. I am thinking of mastering some programming language.

 

[Urwumpe]

I work as an engineer, making custom-made furniture in my spare time. I would like to master a profession that allows you to work remotely. I am thinking of mastering some programming language.

If you are an engineer already, what about taking a look at Model-based Systems Engineering instead of a classic programming language career? Its a current trend in mechatronics and quite many companies and organisations (NASA, ESA) are adopting it.

I wanted to switch my focus there as well coming from the Software Engineering, but well, now I have to finance it myself, because my employer has other plans with me....

 

[Padre Pedro]

I am sort of a part-time investor. That is my hobby. I research different assets, their potential and then decide whether to invest in them or not. At the moment I study Economics at Manchester University and try to do some thing

It is hard time investing I believe because economic situation is difficult all around. I wish I was a Python programmer, these guys are in great demand today

 

[Urwumpe]

It is hard time investing I believe because economic situation is difficult all around. I wish I was a Python programmer, these guys are in great demand today

Don't overestimate it... at least here, we have some requests for Python programmers, but most of the actually paid work is for Java. When companies ask for professional Python programmers, its because engineers screwed things up in their extension script code badly...

We have one developer of my department doing Python full-time in a special simulation project, all others just do some Python for customizing jobs here. Most still do C (without ++) and Java, most new projects involve Java or JRE backends.

 

[Krishnan]

I am just an enthusiastic and brilliant 10th grader. I plan on getting into engineering or computer related field one day. My goal is Aerospace, but in India, there are the JEE exams, and IIT.

 

[TheShuttleExperience]

One of my latest jobs was working for sales for a German market leader producing entrance mats (the ones you walk on when you enter a terminal building at an airport for example). It was kinda boring but the salary was good.

I started pilot training seven years ago, but I got concerned about job security because the aviation business is somewhat uncertain in this regard, especially for career jumpers flying for low cost carriers. Also, flying airliners across Europe all day long is no romance these days. So I stopped training and saved some money. I didn't know back then, but the pandemic did just prove me right ?

I ended up driving trains for now, which is the most relaxing job I had so far. Ironically I got new workmates which formerly worked as ramp agents, flight attendants, aircraft mechanics and airline dispatcher ?

 

[MaxBuzz]

I worked for a big blue oil giant (immediately after the photo session it will be painted)