I am an experienced....

[Peter Guy]

Rob -- thanks for the thread.

I was raised in a small dairy community and learned the value of hard work -- and like Clarence Darrow decided I never wanted to work hard again, so I went to law school and became a criminal defense lawyer. That lasted about 5 years until I realized I really hated my scumbag clients -- loved to get them off but didn't like them at all. Not to mention having a judge tell me he really believed me when I convinced him to give my sniveling snot of a client probation when all he had done was stab an old woman during a burglary -- that was my "life lesson" that I needed to get out of the job. I ended up in a think tank working on banking issues (1979) which later led to me writing an essay on how I created the Savings and Loan Crisis (it was never published) -- but I, and others like me at the time, DID create the structure that permitted the S & L crisis of the 1980s in the US.

I ended up going into the family direct marketing business, bought it and ran it for 20+ years until I "found a bigger fool" who bought it in 2006. I've been a retired bum since then, living off my wife (TSandM -- the best thing I ever did was get her to go out with me on July 4, 1987).

Like TSandM, I'm a mediocre dressage rider and have been for 20+ years now.

Hmmm -- what else -- oh, my life really changed in May, 1992 when I had a full cardiac/respiratory arrest. TSandM was the person who recognized I wasn't there any more and started CPR which brought me back through the tunnel. I wasn't a particularly religious person and still am not -- but there is something "beyond" -- I saw it and will go back to it someday.

I started teaching scuba in May, 2009.

 

[Hank49]

Rob -- thanks for the thread.

oh, my life really changed in May, 1992 when I had a full cardiac/respiratory arrest. TSandM was the person who recognized I wasn't there any more and started CPR which brought me back through the tunnel. I wasn't a particularly religious person and still am not -- but there is something "beyond" -- I saw it and will go back to it someday.

Now there's something not many can say they have experience with. I'd really like to hear the details sometime. Glad you made it back.

 

[mrfixitchapman]

Sort of a cross between True Confessions and Updated CV. I'm just into my sixth decade and it has been a trip. Although I live less than twenty miles from where I was born I have spent some of my life in three of the four corners of the mainland US. Part of childhood in the shadow of the old ALCOA works in San Bernardino, graduated high school in Iowa. Tour of duty as Navy Aviation Ordnanceman. I've been working at something or another since I was eight years old. By the time I was 16 I was the youngest licensed steam engine operator in the state of Iowa. I worked for a canny old gent who went to the DeVry Institute in Chicago to learn the machinist's trade. At the turn of the 20th century. First time he worked on a car it was dragged to the shop behind a team of horses because it wouldn't run. I'm a certified Master Automobile Technician and a have a binder full of other certificates, too. Thirty years after I graduated high school I finished my Bachelor's degree in adult education. By that time I had been teaching Automotive Mechanics Technology at a two-year community college program. I totally redesigned the program. In my first year we had two returning second-year students and four new students. Now we usually have about 50 students in four sections. I've been diving for a little over twenty years. AOW, Wreck, Nitrox, lots of little specialties. Hope to get pretty good at it some time. My wife and I live out in the country on a small farm where we can't see or hear a neighbor. I've been a motorcyclist since I was 14. Never finished my private pilot's license, but I have a couple hundred hours in five different ultralight types. In 2006 I bought a sailboat that had been washed into the mangroves by Hurricane Wilma. Built a trailer in my driveway, hauled it to Key West and brought the boat home. I'd had it finished sooner except for the cancer operation one year, the Holdam Family had to go to the Grand Canyon one year, one year I restored the father-in-law's Farmall H, one year I bought and installed a new stainless steel shoulder, but last year we got into the water at Lake Pepin. BTW, boat is a Newport 30 MK III named Paradise Cafe. Lake City Marina, slip 856. Stop by some time. As soon as I can afford it, I'm retiring to work on the rest of my life.

DC

 

[mrfixitchapman]

I killed it Jim. He's dead, this thread.

DC

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I'm an experienced manual laborer ... having been in the technical writing field since 1977. I write mostly operations and maintenance manuals, but have also done marketing literature, training courses, online Help, and am currently a site administrator for an electronic documentation system that amounts to a big website with about 7000 pages and over 20,000 linked documents. I've worked mostly for hi-tech firms in industries such as semiconductor manufacturing and testing, computer manufacturing, medical instrumentation, telecommunications, and internet commerce. About a decade ago I got out of the private sector and went to work for a public utility. I now work at a wastewater treatment plant and write documentation on both wastewater and stormwater treatment and transmission systems.

Besides writing I'm also experienced at teaching. I've spent time at various jobs creating coursework and doing stand-up training for the company products and technological processes, been a youth hockey coach, a ski instructor, and for the past nine years a scuba instructor.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)