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Author Topic: How to deflect the skeptics?  (Read 17019 times)

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Offline mambocowboy

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Re: How to deflect the skeptics?
« Reply #100 on: May 18, 2018, 11:42:28 AM »
Thanks guys! At least I got in young, got 31 years in and can take my pretty decent health insurance.

My sister is a major officer for a company that owns 8 hospitals in the mid west,  totalling about 10,000 beds, and if she left tomorrow, after about 25 years,  she'd have NO health insurance from them. Way of the world.

The work world in the USA--really worldwide, has changed a lot in the last couple decades. Companies that used to offer good salaries, security, pensions and benefits, even the US post office, pay a lot of workers contract to contract, hourly w/o benefits.

There's still some good jobs out there--my son, a 20 y/o college junior, with dual computer science and math majors,  has an internship paying him $23 an hour and  they said if he works out (he's killin it there and says "It's fun!!") they'll start him around 80K, with great bennies next year, but that's unusual.

My wife, who's struggled with English, both spoken and in writing,  but kept self improving through classes and by working her way up in a few jobs,  is finally 'hitting her stride' and is a lot better in her work self confidence--although every company she's worked with loved her. She been cooridinating eCommerce for them and this week, after 5 years, they gave her the maximum pay raise they can, 7%, plus a bonus. 99% of staff got 2.5% She's still on a 401k matching retirement deal, but she has about 5 weeks a year vacation, which suits us well.

But I made sure as long as she's with me, she stands to inherit my pension. It costs me hundreds each month, (the pretty, much younger wife in the USA 'penalty', LOL) but if we split, my pension goes back up to it's max.

But the first 20, almost 25 work years for me were almost charmed, but it really went to hell. A lot of places have, between lawyers and efficiency 'System Analysts', sucking more work out of fewer people, making things paranoid and hellish. At one time, they had me color coding onto a special columned sheet with colored pencils, every activity I was doing every 15 minutes. (To think--- I almost pursued BOTH of those fields!)

Thankful again for my wife, who made it easier to not let it consume me, was understanding when it did anyway and when I was royally ticked off, got me to save some venomous emails in draft overnight, edit later or just plain outright delete them. Sort of a catharsis writing them, I guess. Plus she was able to sniff out some rat's at work that I didn't pick up on. A woman's intuition, I tell ya, boys.... ::)

I'll probably take at least 6 months or so off and then maybe do something part time. Something that I can take or leave. Gotta work out up my cardio, hang by the neighborhood pool, chill some for sure. The snakes I worked with (I already twice politely rejected their private lunch invitation this week) are making noises about maybe me coming back in some capacity in the future, .49% of the time.

But the blood's still wet from the holes in my back and just the thought it makes me think of Michael Corelone--"The Godfather,"---where he thinks he's out and legit--that he's DONE---and then he realizes otherwise, and Michael says:

"Just when I thought I was OUT--they pull me back in!!!"

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S-IkWpm7TS0
Holy cow! With your intellect and writing skill they had you color coding charts?! Sounds pretty hellish to me. Good riddance to those pricks....

Offline robert angel

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Re: How to deflect the skeptics?
« Reply #101 on: May 18, 2018, 12:59:50 PM »
I've been in IT, specifically software development/engineering for about 20 years and for good college grads with Comp Sci or other related degrees, getting 70-80k is reasonable to expect if the grad has a decent head on their shoulders and knows how to work.  Sounds like your son is one of the good ones! 
My understanding is that the unemployment in IT as a whole is low which is likely helping drive up or keep up the reasonable salaries.  To be fair I've been slightly out of touch on the hiring side for a couple of years as I'm now a contractor for my previous employer in the States after moving to Panama. 


Anyway sounds like you're moving on to better things which I'm sure you'll enjoy more anyway.  If you work pt for your previous employer, definitely make it work your while with some consulting level rates.. there is an old legend, have no idea whether or not it's true and I don't even recall the names.. (sad I know), anyway, per Snopes one variation is Nikola Tesla visited Henry Ford who was having some type of difficulty at his factory,  and Henry asked Tesla to help identify the problem area.  Ford asks him to send a bill and it arrives for $10,000.  Ford asked for the breakout and receives and invoice for $1 for marking the spot and 9,999 for knowing where to put it. :) (Snopes)


Humorous even if not true I guess. nonetheless. 


Good luck with retirement. 

 

Thanks PaChris, M.C.!

Yea, my younger son seems to be hitting the ball at the right time. Although he's dual majoring in Computer Science, w/ an emphasis on Artifical Intelligence, with a second major in Advanced Math --he finds that Math 'fun'-- he's pretty much decided to go for his Masters, espec. because as without him applying, they already said they'd accept 12 of the 30 or so credits required for a Masters, taking them from 6000+ level courses he's already taking.

So playing the 'long game' probably makes sense. And a Masters differentiates him from a lot of folks. Told him to look into a T.A. (Teaching Assistant to Professor) position, as that'd probably (hopefully) cover most costs. A Master's D. would kick his starting pay straight out of school closer to 100K and the outfit he's with has over 40% of US retail using some form of their A.I. software. I never knew it's used for even small,outfits to figure details like how many gallons of milk to order in February, how many nails and roofing tiles in March, weather patterns and crop planning, how stocks might perform, on and on. I thought A.I. was all about when and where to drop 'THE bomb, LOL. They already have him teaching student classes for free, helping with Math mid terms.

Before the internship, he was working about 20 hours a week at the Olive Garden restaurant. He was elected vice president of the university  cyber security organization and a few other things, plays jazz gigs,  chess, tries not to let the babes consume TOO much of his time. Perhaps too much a fashionista, an afficiando of the 'finer things', but nonetheless ready to pull his own weight, like his older brother.

But what you said about Henry Ford piqued my interest. For a long time, my family was very involved in the automobile industry internationally. S. America, Europe, Asia etc. Personally, as a teen, I worked in the old Tarrytown, NY assembly line plant--then the oldest, most decrepit car plant in existence. It's a massive, toxic waste superfund site today. I never, ever mentioned my family being involved in operations. But we built 62 cars an hour, and I had 2, sometimes 3, spot welding guns to 'hit' on each car. Must have averaged 130 degrees and being 'relief' ---a floater they called me, I had the worst jobs on the hottest days.The UAW (Union) guy would call in for a few days,  go to his Dr. for free, get his narcotic Rx for free and wait the heat spell out, then come back and I'd get a new terrible, body wracking job. If you had to piss or crap on 'the line', it had to be on schedule.

I was a 'floater'-absentee relief on the 'jungle line'--the white metal, chassis and body assembly works and oh the horror, sparks, electric shocks, cuts, burns, workers sabotaging vehicles out of anger. The high up tree of the 'systems analysts' observing us monkeys on the floor below, always trying to bleed greater production ...I remember being pulled by union, non union forces, by the guys who ran the drug and gambling rackets inside that plant, all of them trying to get me to join in, with big promises.

But most of all, I remember the kind, old black guys telling me: "Quit this job before you get used to the money--I hate GM, my family hates GM, but I am a slave. Where else am I going to make this kind of money?--support my family as they're accustomed to? With my skills spot welding parts on cars? Useless.  I used to be a regular human before I came here, now every other word's a curse word, QUIT". 

Thank God I listened, because after I attempted a little, umm 'transaction' and was warned I was lucky they didn't break my arms or legs because it was THEIR action--- their 'territory/turf'. But the 'wiseguys' nonetheless took me in, cut me in, tending bar at a prime spot---right outside the main gate after my shift, making even more money, collecting bets on games, the horses. They realized I could record 'the action' booking it accurately. Plus, they 'loaned' me an old but mint, gold colored Oldsmobile 88 convertible coupe. Pimp City. That ride must've been 20 feet long. Man, I thought I was THE sh!t!

When I went to the latest Dearborn Michigan Plant, where the Ford F150 series is built, (best selling vehicle of ALL cars, trucks, vans, foreign and domestic, for over 40 years in a ROW) and saw how it was air conditioned and so clean you could eat off the floor, how workers could stop the line if there was a production error, I thought I was in a different galaxy.

But I met Henry Ford II (Hank the deuce) a couple times as a kid, hanging out in lovely vacation land, in swank Charlevoix, Michigan. He was a colorful guy, quite the ladies man. He made English King Henry the 8th look like a choir boy and was always the subject of multiple gossip columnists. Loved his drink. But a kid couldn't have met a nicer guy.

Dunno if it was a fight with a wife, or a drunk driving arrest, but his quote: "Never complain, never expain" is legend, adopted by royalty, politicians. I mean, why give them fodder? As we know now, they're gonna spin it, make it up like they want to anyways, no?

But Henry Ford, 'Hank's' grandfather, that embittered fellow was a trip. His first attempts at a car failed miserably. When he finally got his 1st one--his quadricycle, right, he was working at the Ecison plant, but when he prepared to take it out for it's 1st test drive, he realized he had to take a axe and bust out his shed's doorway. The door jamb. The 'car' was too big to get out of the house, LOL.

If you had a meal with Ford, and you salted your food before tasting it, he wouldn't hire you, thinking you were hasty. He helped a lot of African Americans, North and South, but had a livid hatred against Jewish people. Really anyone involved with finance. He was one salty prick himself in a lot of ways.

Ironically, I live not far from one of the Ford family's old winter homes. He built schools, homes, churches for blacks and whites alike around there. An old guy I knew, now long gone, used to as a kid, deliver milk to the local Ford Plantation Estate. He had to to push the old 'crank start' milk truck until it was out of ear shot of Mrs. Ford, then crank er up . She hated the sound of the old crank starters, LOL

But Ford, in a 'bromance' that pales Trump's crush on Putin, loved and supported Adolph Hitler ----even up to the late 1930's, he kept a picture of Hitler on his desk!!! Unreal, I know....

Ford had some great ideas, but largely was a success in spite of himself and during WWII and especially when his son Edsel died, the US govt was quite close to taking a near bankrupt Ford over to help keep the WWII and US security efforts viable. His insistence on "You can have that Model T in whatever color you want--as long as it's black"--although he belatedly did offer changes on the 'T'--it meanwhile gave other companies a competitive edge. He was a stubborn, paranoid coot, slow to innovate and it cost him.

About that time that Ford almost tanked, actually a wee but later, 1951, the USA govt gave a near dead post WWII Japanese company a little contract to build a few hundred prototype vehicles to replace the aging Willy's Jeep. Their prototype wasn't accepted, but the company was saved with that quick, temporary USA cash infusion.

You might've heard of them: TOYOTA...

But they kept that vehicle, (the design of which they basically copied from a modified Philippines Jeepney floated back to Japan) and morphed it into the FJ--Land Cruiser model, which exists still today, ladder frame and all, with much of it's orginal 'DNA' within.

Today a new version that gussied up old dinosaur, STARTS at a price of over $84,000. So I guess Toyota did succeed eventually. Oh, that's right, they're THE largest motor vehicle company on earth now, occasionally swapping 1st place with Volkswagon. (but keep an eye on Hyundai...)

Like so many quotes being orginally quoted to individuals,  Ford's are hard to pin down as being 'his'. So many great lInes (most) quoted from movies are wayyy off. Bogart never said 'Play it again, Sam', etc.  I have at the bottom of my posts, " Whether you think you can or can't, you're right!" --Great quote, no doubt, but it's origins go back probably thousands of years before Ford, to ancient India and are repeated in countless yoga studios.

As to: " If I asked them what they wanted, they would've said 'faster horses'" --great quote, that's a harder one to pin down. Maybe Ford did say it. But the gist of it--Don't worry, don't ask others,  just do it, are great.

If you want some great quote and have another ten minutes, look up Yogi Berra and Satchel Paiges'--great, funny as hell stuff...

Those quotes, especially on thinking you CAN, rather than fearing that you can't and creating self fulfilled prophecies, seem to fit the kind of mind set most guys here have, or SHOULD have...

https://www.successories.com/iquote/author/1428/yogi-berra-quotes/1

http://www.satchelpaige.com/quote2.html

« Last Edit: May 18, 2018, 04:35:31 PM by robert angel »
Whether you think you can or think you can't--you're right!

Offline Elexpatriado

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Re: How to deflect the skeptics?
« Reply #102 on: May 18, 2018, 03:42:36 PM »
That one has got to be a record Robert.

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Re: How to deflect the skeptics?
« Reply #102 on: May 18, 2018, 03:42:36 PM »

Offline robert angel

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Re: How to deflect the skeptics?
« Reply #103 on: May 18, 2018, 04:05:38 PM »
That one has got to be a record Robert.

Just chilling at home, between the wife joining me for lunch, a load of laundry, some garden work, I left and came back and added a few times. On a rip I guess. Nothing on the news---they're just changing the names, faces and figures around. Recycling the same stories....
Whether you think you can or think you can't--you're right!

Offline Elexpatriado

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Re: How to deflect the skeptics?
« Reply #104 on: May 19, 2018, 04:25:13 PM »
Just chilling at home, between the wife joining me for lunch, a load of laundry, some garden work, I left and came back and added a few times. On a rip I guess. Nothing on the news---they're just changing the names, faces and figures around. Recycling the same stories....


Cant wait until you are retired and have more time on your hands,


Maybe you should get together with you know who and write a novel.


I can supply a lot of the material, but it will be in third person....an Australian living in Manizales..kinda like Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes

Offline robert angel

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Re: How to deflect the skeptics?
« Reply #105 on: May 20, 2018, 01:05:41 PM »

Cant wait until you are retired and have more time on your hands,


Maybe you should get together with you know who and write a novel.


I can supply a lot of the material, but it will be in third person....an Australian living in Manizales..kinda like Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes

I could probably crib together enough stuff from my posts here to at least launch an Internet available book. Besides needing more humor, (and while there WAS a lot of funny stuff, humor's never been too 'big' around here) if I got into the names and faces I met as a kid during the late 60's and seventies, many who were radical political people, folks who went from being pariahs, from being repeatedly arrested, having their skull's busted by the cops, to being vindicated and eventually becoming prominent judges and politicians themselves--that might be interesting.

All the while, although I'd never have admitted it, they, with their middle fingers raised, served as role models to me as 'people on the edge'. And they knew how to party too. Maybe how I saw them transform without abandoning their past, might be interesting too. I guess they gave me hope that I could be a wild man and still possibly make it in society too. Not that I ever cared much about conforming, but they proved to me that options were available in life.

While name dropping there, add the NYC-Greenwich Village period of my high school, early college years, how we used to have crash pad in 'The Village'--the rock n roll, punk rock period--that was also some wild stuff at the time, w/ Lou Reed, Iggy, Bowie, The Ramones, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, Black Flag etc--all the sex and more drugs than Pfizer....

So the NYC years,  the few years we escaped to the Virgin Islands, then back to the states, the Detroit years, decades of craziness in Key West before the DEA radar blimps, all the while getting kicked out of every school from K-12th grade--even from a Canadian Boarding School (to escape USA legal system) a school where the priests promised my family (and court) to reform me: "We don't expell ANYONE, we CHANGE them"

The 'good fathers', --the priests, most of them drunks who relished in beating me, expelled me within six months, for giving drugs to Canadian citizens (even a little international crisis works wonders sometimes) and for escaping at night to hotwire cars for joy rides and drinking binges. Man, those Canadians make a great brew! I just couldn't resist. And those good Canadian girls were soooo cute too, without the 'edginess' of the Detroit chicks.

Then, before and after, the other illegal shenanagins (now that the legal statute of limitations has expired and the money's gone) the women, booze, rackets and more drugs, a couple fortunes made and pissed away, the highs, lows and narrow escapes, the friends who weren't as lucky. Guys I never ratted out. Then, my eventually actually cleaning up and settling down a bit, to the surprise of everyone who knew me.

Nobody thought I'd see age 21. Or thirty, forty. And I didn't care. Nobody imagined I could pass an academic class until I actually did so in college, where my partying accelerated, but I wanted to stay in school and getting good grades not only necessary,  but also sort of like me flipping off all the people predicting my early demise. But as long as I was alive and had still had some money, I partied like like there was no tomorrow, figuring "No Problemo!!"

I love Jimmy Buffett's style, his music. How he still doesn't take himself too seriously. I remember him playing in flip flops, guitar case open in front of him on Duvall St., busking for loose change. But I think about his great song: " A Pirate looks at Forty" and think, damn, I still had the main sail full open, with the jib ripping into it--all in a gale at age 40! And spitting into the wind, like a damn fool, LOL.

Maybe that's why Jimmy's worth about 600 million bucks today and I need to look at my bank statement once a month, LOL.

But sometimes we don't realize 'luck' when it comes and believe you and me, it comes and it goes. And to an extent, you 'make' your own luck, just like you dig the very holes you end up in, sometimes repeatedly.

I didn't know what I had a number of times, but looking back, I can see it more clearly. I'm aware that right about now, how I'm lucky to be here. I haven't even totalled a car in a few years, which in and of itself, is a new personal record for me. I dare say, a Porsche Turbo S is on my bucket list, as I actually realize I have limitations I can accept nowadays, and that includes the PTS's zero to 60 MPH in 2.4 seconds and quarter miles in the low tens. I'll probably even remember to wear a seatbelt for a change.

But what'd maybe be interesting to the broader audience is what made me so damn crazy. Still trying to figure that out, actually. While I was basically a wild child already, being caught up in a hurricaine of an 'upbringing' --those always changing winds blew me around, every which way. Nobody, not my family, teachers, shrinks, law enforcement etc, could tell me jack sh!-t. Up was down, right was left and I trusted nobody. I went my own way, usually contradictory to the norm.

I had to come to my own reckoning, to crash and burn a few times both literally and figuratively, but somehow living to walk away and eventually believe those who told me, looking at the wreckage: "I can't BELIEVE you lived through that"--- I'm just very fortunate to have survived to this point!

They say we each have a book in us, so who the hell knows?
« Last Edit: May 20, 2018, 02:01:55 PM by robert angel »
Whether you think you can or think you can't--you're right!

Offline pachris

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Re: How to deflect the skeptics?
« Reply #106 on: May 21, 2018, 09:58:10 PM »
Robert,
  I enjoyed your response and the humor in the quotes and those that have truth in them as well. Sounds like you've led a very interesting life and while I'm new to the board have enjoyed reading through a number of your thought provoking responses.


All the best to your family and your sons (hope I read that right).  I'm in my mid-40's and trying to decide if I want to put the time in to either go back to school for AI or just take what I know and work myself in laterally.  I have some other interests as well that are tickling my fancy so I may be picking up some of those as well.


I've led a much less adventurous life in many regards, though I did move my family to Panama about 2 years back because I wanted something different.


CH


 

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