Thread: What you do for a living?

Originally Posted by Tarkus

I have been working in machine shops since I was 15 and been a Toolmaker for 28 years now, working at the same manual machine shop. I became an owner in 2005 and its been all headachs and high blood pressure ever since.

I wanted to be a Machinist in the worst way (pre CNC) spent a year at Trinidad colo. school of Gunsmithing.
Could not make a living gunsmithing,but I learned alot.

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

I wanted to be a Machinist in the worst way (pre CNC) spent a year at Trinidad colo. school of Gunsmithing.
Could not make a living gunsmithing,but I learned alot.

I got my fill of ignoramouses in retail gunshops (over all the years) and gave up on the notion of modern gunsmithing and that FFL paperwork/hassle. I do love making the flintlocks, but can't do it fast enough to feed myself.

I'm teaching myself CNC programming presently, to get on somewhere in metalfab, to live, save up retirement, and outfit my personal shop properly--for work after "retirement".

It seems my career has been a bit dull and monotonous as compared to some here!

After a mildly exciting career as a kid (and some college) at age 19 I decided to join the USAF as an air traffic controller - not that I knew much about the job but it sounded like I might be able to fly some. So I did 4 years at McGuire AFB as a tower and approach controller and then got out of the military once my commitment was over. Planned to bum around Europe for a year but got hired a day after I got out of the USAF as a contract controller at a small airport in Baltimore. The FAA hired me a year later as a controller. Trained and certified at Washington Center then got bored and transferred to Houston Center. Two years later got bored again and got selected at the FAA's ATC command center in DC. After 3 years I went on staff in our HQ and then spent the next 8 years doing fascinating work and traveling all over the world helping other countries improve the way they do ATC. Wanted to run the Division I was in at the time but it required some field manager experience so I returned to "the field" and spent a few years as an ATC supervisor at Oakland Center and then manager at a few towers in California and the enroute facility in Colorado. Was supposed to spend only 18 months in CO before going back to our DC HQ to finally take the job I'd gone back to the field to prepare for, but we liked it so much here I decided to stall my career by staying in CO and really live life for a while. Through cunning and patience managed to stay 11 years until I retired about 2 years ago. So I spent 36 pretty good years in air traffic control.

These days I fish, tie flies, buy and restore straight razors (even occasionally sell a few), coach my son's baseball team, play my guitars, do some writing, and generally do things that my wife occasionally views with fear or suspicion. Still young enough to be able to get out and do physical things (I'm in my mid-50s) so I often find myself in a tent above 9,500 feet waiting for the sun to come up so I can go annoy native trout or give lead poisoning to something larger. It's fun, but not really a career as such anymore - but I'm lucky enough to be getting a decent retirement so now I'm back to a mildly exciting career as a kid I guess - except I started breeding late and we still have all 3 kids at home in school (elementary school through high school) having their own mildly exciting childhoods.

Life really does move in circles sometimes...

AWESOME. Love your writing style and sense of humor.

Really fascinating read on the varied lives and experiences of he members here. Good thread idea Walt.
To add my own journey so far I offer, in reverse order as well, from age 12:
Golf caddy, dishwasher, prep cook, butchers apprentice, bakers bitch, grocery clerk, automotive detailer.
During College I studied Aircraft engineering and delivered pizzas and worked midnights stocking the grocery shelves to pay for that three year program. Got a lot of speeding tickets delivering pizzas, amassed a fair number of unpaid fines and lo and behold, earned jail time for it.. Who knew they take that s**t so serious in North Bay Ontario. Anyway, got "paroled" long enough to attend classes and survived my 90 days in the big house and graduated in the top ten of my class. Worked for Canadian Airlines in Aircraft maintenance until a big aviation merge up here, then moved on to making dog food. Then into fixing dog food making machines. Got my industrial millwrights ticket and left dog food for pharmaceutical medicines. Maintained equipment in the human drug industry for a number of years than moved into management in maintaining chemical processing equipment.
From there into poultry processing maintenance, automotive manufacturing maintenance and paint booth cleaning equipment maintenance. Then I did a stint in open pit limestone quarrying and blasting mgmt.
Currently I run the maintenance dept in a dairy, processing the raw milk and packaging the cartons and bag milk out to market.
I'm hoping this to be the last line on my résumé, but know better than to count on that.
Post retirement I am going to be getting into iron smithing and hopefully will have a small forge in the workshop. If my eyes, back, and hands still work that is..and my wife lets me, hehe.
Life is in the journey lads,,,we all have the same destination.

Cheers gents.