I am an experienced....

[GrumpyOldGuy]

I am experienced at wasting time on the computer, mostly surfing ScubaBoard since I live in the desert.
I get paid to write code and manager other programmers as part of the Borg .... I mean multinational conglomerate of manufacturers.

 

[Pullmyfinger]

I am a Machinist and an aircraft structural mechanic (sheet metal). I have worked as both a defense contractor in a few different overseas locations, and have previously worked at a helicopter repair depot.

I joined the Army right out of high school, and got out after the Gulf War in 1991.
I served in a mechanized infantry battalion B Co. 2-16 Infantry, 1st Infantry Division.
I was a unit with Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and M-113 personnel carriers. I was on an M-113.

After the Army, I took my complete lack of job skills.......an took quite a few different jobs, seeking out whatever seemed exciting to me.

I worked in a lumber yard, then took a job at a prison, followed by by a year of driving a truck over the road.

I was a police officer for 4 years, but left that job and started working in a ship yard as a welder.

While working in the shipyard, I went to school in the evenings for EMT training. I worked part time as an ambulance driver, because that seemed interesting. That job offers very low pay.

I left that job and worked on a natural gas platform in the Gulf of Mexico. This brought better pay along with time off to enjoy it.

I used this job to spend plenty of time off in the winter snow boarding and skiing.

The price of oil dropped, which led to a slow down in jobs. So I went to night school for Computer Numerical Controlled Programming/ Machine tool Technology.

I landed a job as a machinist at a helicopter repair depot, which gave me enough experience to start traveling as a defense contractor.

I've been working in aviation ever since. I have worked as a contractor in Luxemburg, Germany, Utah (so I could ski.) Alaska, Guam, and Japan.

I now travel extensively working on Navy and Marine aircraft. I live in Japan, and travel from here to various places around the world.

I've been to Afghanistan, a couple of aircraft carriers, supply ships, Dubai (x3), Bahrain, Korea (x2), Okinawa,
and Guam a few times. I do 3 month rotations on ships.

I am blessed and have a dream job.

It's not all rainbows and kittens though. I've been divorced twice, and also had a house wiped out by Hurricane Katrina.
One year after purchasing a home in Ocean Springs, MS, two blocks from the beach; It was destroyed by the tidal surge from the hurricane.

I used to be into back packing, and also rock climbing.
I have owned a few different sea kayaks over the years, but now have a Klepper folding kayak that I bought years ago, while working in Germany.

I also play guitar, and have owned a few motorcycles over the years. I'll be buying another one soon, because it's just bad to not have a bike.

I am also into cycling, and ride quite a bit around the local area. I recently completed a 100 mile ride.

Diving take the highest priority in my life these days. The only way to afford it, and the dive trips is to put everything else on the back burner.

Cheers,
Mitch

 

[DevonDiver]

 

[DeputyDan]

Well, DeputyDan is a comic book character. I am not in law enforcement.

I was raised on a farm in rural Appalachia (western North Carolina). We were very very very poor. My father believed the purpose of children was to be free unpaid labor (slaves). I have essentially worked a paid job since I was 12 years old. This was in addition to the unpaid farm chores.

Since I was raised in a debt adverse family, I would never have considered borrowing money for college.
When I went to college, I found my dorm and then found a job (32 hours a week). Graduated in four years with no debt - no money but no debt.

As a side note, I was the first person on my father's side of the family that ever attended high school. He was always supportive of academics even though he only went to the third grade. On my mother's side one person went to community college. I was the first to attend a four year school.

I have no mechanical ability to fix anything. That means that those of you who can will always have a job as long as there are people like me.

I have worked for 30 years as a CPA and have a license as a CVA (even though I don't do alot of work in the valuation field).
The vocation exams for the Army said that my aptitude was to be an accountant, but when I asked my high school "guidance counselors" about it - they laughed at me and told me that bookkeeping was a girls job. It was three years after college graduation that I heard the term CPA.

My claim to fame is that I had enough sense to marry the person that God wanted me to marry. That was 30+ years and two kids ago. Both of our kids dive and both graduated from college with no debt and enough money in savings to start off on the right footing.

I find diving to be an enjoyable diversion from the 8-5 world. I would not want to work in diving because I feel that if I did - it would lose a lot of its charm. I don't really have any other hobby's. I am now in the mode of taking some more expensive trips and saving a lot more for retirement.

 

[TSandM]

I've spent twenty years as an ER doc, but I've never been sure I was very good at it. I think I was a pretty good general surgeon before that. I've gotten feedback through my whole life that I'm a pretty good teacher of anything that I know, or know how to do. I also write pretty well.

I've spent over twenty years learning to be a mediocre dressage rider. (I'm not alone in this.)

The one thing in my life that I was really, really good at was math . . . I majored in it and loved the puzzle-solving quality of high level algebra, set theory, and logic. I'm still pretty good at thinking through logical connections, which serves me well at work.

 

[Adam Grose]

Hi, Diver0001.....

I am an Electronics Technician, working in the pool and spa industry (fixing control boards, etc.), an Extra Class Amateur Radio Operator, and am very active in Veteran's Affairs (through the American Legion). I got my Electronics training through my service in the US Navy (4 yrs. active, 4 reserve, 8 in the Navy Military Auxiliary Radio System). With all that, I STILL find time to dive!!!

Adam

 

[boulderjohn]

I was a career educator, first as a high school English teacher and then as a school administrator. At one point I had thoughts of teaching college, but I found it pretty hard to complete the graduate studies while teaching high school, so I never did the dissertation for the required Ph.D. I liked teaching high school better anyway. I became an administrator at about the same time educational technology was changing rapidly, and I ended up founding an online school within the public school system. After that, online education became my focus. I was a co-founder of Colorado's official state online program. After retirement form the public system, I was the director of Curriculum and Instruction for a very large online school system, and in that role I directed the creation of one of the most popular online school programs in use today. I am now primarily retired, spending my time with scuba and being an editor for an online journal focusing on technology in education.

 

[Aquabot]

Been a mechanic for the last two and a half years. Before that I worked with my father installing interstate billboards and four years in a hardware store during highschool.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk 2

 

[Ste Wart]

I'm an experienced diver! Of the things I've done most in my life diving is something I've committed the most time to over the last 10 years.

I've got a couple of University degrees, one which I never use and one which I work with.

I could say I'm an experienced traveller, but my fear of heights and general short temper is more suited for people who should stay at home, or be English (I go with option 'B' mostly)

 

[agilis]

An interesting question, Diver0001. When I look back on my life so much seems like a dream, like something unreal. Someone once observed that only what is written is real, all else is an illusion. That sounds too much like a dive operator asking for my non-existent logbook, so I'll ignore it.

Most of my life has been spent in academia, as an assistant/associate/full professor and administrator, once even reaching the exalted rank of assistant dean. A strong hostility toward authority was always an issue, and I much preferred being the VP of our faculty union, a post which allowed me to confront power rather than wield it. I held that post until I retired a few years ago. It gave me an inside view of not just academic politics but also politics on a statewide level. I had to metaphorically hold my nose because of the stench of corruption, but I did get to see how the vast majority of political leaders are skilled only at gaining power and holding on to it; their talents generally extend no further.

Military/government service when I was very young was fun, boring, and terrifying at various points, but it did teach me how to hold my antagonism for authority in check, if I knew what was good for me. I resigned when I was offered a promotion, to the utter consternation of the people who offered me that step. I then decided to travel, and I did, always with my mask, snorkel and fins. Brasil and Jamaica were places where i stayed the longest. I still miss them, or at least what they were back in that golden sun streaked era, both theirs and mine.

Back to the USA, and graduate school, my entrance to an academic life in which I remained for more than 35 years. Literature and History, and lots of free time. I married 3 times, the last the only sensible relationship of the three. I did learn that marrying beautiful graduate students was not a good idea.

I've always been an animal lover, since childhood. My longest relationship of any kind, which continues still, has been with an Amazon parrot that I brought back from Jamaica after living there for a year, on a sabbatical during which I learned a little bit about Caribbean literature and poetry written in that forms of English sometimes mistakenly called dialect. If I were given a choice of spending eternity in any one place it would be there, as it was then. My parrot is a very clever bird that sings more than talks and is a master at imitating sounds, like the noise made by an electric can opener, guaranteed to bring my three cats running, to her great and obvious amusement.

I've kept tropical fish since I was a very small boy, and still do. I have three marine aquaria, the largest 260 gallons. Almost all my fish and invertebrates were hand collected by me. At one point, so long ago it seems like a dream, I spent a summer on Curacao helping a Dutchman collect very deep water fish for the aquarium trade. Despite being a published poet, I still feel that my most outstanding talent is collecting and maintaining salt water reef fishes.

I began diving at age 6. My mother was a competitive swimmer with Brasilian connections. Those are two gifts she gave me: the music and the sea.