What do you do at your job?

[hezagenius]

I guess one of the more interesting devices was a portable gauge that uses a nuclear isotope to measure the density of soils and asphalt. You've seen the rollers used in road building--there is actually a lot of science that goes into how many times the roller rolls back and forth before the asphalt is at the proper density.

I used to use one of those probes when I worked as a civil engineer. I'd drive a spike into the soil, pull it out, put the probe box over the hole and push the probe down into it. We had to wear these little clips that were supposed to absorb radiation. We'd send them off to DC every week and they would test them to see if we were soaking up radiation from the probes. The carrying case for the probe had all this stuff in it to help you put up a "Do not cross" perimeter if it ever broke open. That tells me it wasnt a trivial amount of nuclear material inside. I'm pretty sure I could have been more safe with it.

We'd use those probes to test the soil under roads and buildings. The guys running the rollers did not really appreciate an engineer fresh out of school telling them that the soil wasn't compacted enough and that they need to keep rolling on that layer.

 

[btbnl]

Don't photons move at the speed of light (I mean, they are light )? How can you catch up to a photon released from the big bang? Wouldn't it be at the edge of our universe now?

We intercept photons that, 13.7 billion years ago, happened be heading in our direction from a point 13.7 billion light years away.

 

[CaptainDucman]

I assume you fly for an arline?, which one?

Reserve in a crashpad Blows, at least you have HBT

I flew the 145 for 8yrs (I assume thats part of your screen name) for XJT. then CAL, now UAL (thru the merger). 911, age 65, merger, SLI, fences... this career has been 2 steps forward one step back, but wouldn't trade it for anything.

 

[Rhumbline]

We intercept photons that, 13.7 billion years ago, happened be heading in our direction from a point 13.7 billion light years away.

Sooo...

If the photons were emitted during the big bang, and the big bang was the beginning of the universe, and photons travel at the speed of light, how is it that the earth is here to intercept these photons.

Unless they stopped for a beer on the way, shouldn't they have been long gone by the time the Earth formed?

 

[hio3791]

I am an extremely overqualified high school chemistry teacher. When I can work, I make $43,700 per year. I have watched all of my colleagues and friends surpass me in every way imaginable. I decided to use my extensive knowledge of chemistry in, other hobbies, and it's proven to be a lucrative alternative to teaching. I'm mostly retired now. Having made more money than I could ever imagine, this hobby tore my family and friends and now live alone, away from the public eye. A secluded place where I spend my days secretly looking after my family.

 

[wobrien]

I am an extremely overqualified high school chemistry teacher. When I can work, I make $43,700 per year. I have watched all of my colleagues and friends surpass me in every way imaginable. I decided to use my extensive knowledge of chemistry in, other hobbies, and it's proven to be a lucrative alternative to teaching. I'm mostly retired now. Having made more money than I could ever imagine, this hobby tore my family and friends and now live alone, away from the public eye. A secluded place where I spend my days secretly looking after my family.

Stay away from your brother in law

 

[philipCT]

It's important to have a job that makes a difference, boys. That's why I manually masturbate caged animals for artificial insemination.

sounds like a stimulating career

 

[lurker18]

We have a lot of gears, some ITs, a few lawyers, etc, but from what I can see, I am the only grain grader/malt barley selector on the board. Working for a major agriculture company with several of their own massive malt houses, chances are unless you are brewing with 100% European malt, I have looked at the barley that you guys are using every day. Your welcome.

 

[hezagenius]

We intercept photons that, 13.7 billion years ago, happened be heading in our direction from a point 13.7 billion light years away.

Aren't all the photons emitted (from the big bang) on the edge of the universe heading away from us?

 

[philipCT]

Engagement Manager for a digital analytics company. We tell large companies how their web sites are performing. And help them improve.

My day-to-day work includes coordinating delivery of our services with my teams in India, developing and executing account plans (selling new services to clients), learning more about the tremendously dynamic digital analytics industry (yes, it is), fighting internal battles and talking to clients about what they do. That's my favorite part: learning about how other businesses operate and trying to figure out how our services can enhance that.

For the most part, great colleagues shoreside and a lot of really talented, hardworking guys and gals offshore.

I travel across the US and internationally just often enough to be enjoyable. I'm able to control my on-the-road work schedule well enough to have time for a goodly among of beer tourism. Want to know the best brewpubs in Bangalore? I'm your man.

 

[Duke145]

Reserve in a crashpad Blows, at least you have HBT

I flew the 145 for 8yrs (I assume thats part of your screen name) for XJT. then CAL, now UAL (thru the merger). 911, age 65, merger, SLI, fences... this career has been 2 steps forward one step back, but wouldn't trade it for anything.

I signed up for this forum back in 2006, I had forgotten why I used the 145 in my name, lol. I commute out of BTV on XJT and my last five years at Eagle. I came over to AA via the flow thru in 2014 and was able to get on the 75/76. I'm having a great time whenever I get to fly.

 

[Newsman]

Network admin/IT support. I turn coffee into working technology.

I know the feeling. I did that in a couple previous jobs. I was even the IT Manager for a small carpet company for a few years before they became a victim of the recession.

 

[Newsman]

I used to be a team leader working in injection molding for a plastics company that did a lot of the halloween and easter baskets you can buy at walmart, blue bunny ice cream, etc. Then my girlfriend and I moved a year ago, and I accepted a job in research and development at another plastics company as a process engineer tech. So all of the new technology behind new water bottles/soda bottles/etc, we work on there. It's a very fun job and was a great career move for me.

So I have a question... whenever I open a fresh, factory bottle of water, it's very stiff and rigid, but when I've drunk the water, if I refill and recap, it's not as rigid. Is there some secret? Is the water bottled under pressure??? I don't hear a hiss when I open the factory sealed bottle....

 

[chudsonvt]

I'm an Electrical Engineer. I design medical products doing everything from board design, managing the FW development, testing, test software development, optics development and travel for certification testing. I get to play with lasers and tiny (1mm x 1mm) cameras, too.

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

By day I work with computer systems and by night I am the editor for the FrontPage of the world's largest and best home brew forum.

 

[PlexVector]

I used to use one of those probes when I worked as a civil engineer. I'd drive a spike into the soil, pull it out, put the probe box over the hole and push the probe down into it. We had to wear these little clips that were supposed to absorb radiation. We'd send them off to DC every week and they would test them to see if we were soaking up radiation from the probes. The carrying case for the probe had all this stuff in it to help you put up a "Do not cross" perimeter if it ever broke open. That tells me it wasnt a trivial amount of nuclear material inside. I'm pretty sure I could have been more safe with it.

We'd use those probes to test the soil under roads and buildings. The guys running the rollers did not really appreciate an engineer fresh out of school telling them that the soil wasn't compacted enough and that they need to keep rolling on that layer.

I had to wear radiation badges continuously at work. Never recorded anything over 16 years, but we were very careful in the lab. People in calibration department would get counts, but the welder who did the encapsulation got the most, and after a certain amount they would have to get a new welder. You were limited from a health safety point of view of the max you can get in a lifetime.

For density cesium-137 was used and the fast neutron source for moisture was americium-beryllium (I forget the number--247?).

 

[Fedora]

We have a lot of gears, some ITs, a few lawyers, etc, but from what I can see, I am the only grain grader/malt barley selector on the board. Working for a major agriculture company with several of their own massive malt houses, chances are unless you are brewing with 100% European malt, I have looked at the barley that you guys are using every day. Your welcome.

We and our beer thank you.

I'm a welder/fabricator. I build farm equipment out of steel. I also work at a brewpub on the weekends.

 

[chudsonvt]

Network admin/IT support. I turn coffee into working technology.

I know the feeling. I did that in a couple previous jobs. I was even the IT Manager for a small carpet company for a few years before they became a victim of the recession.

I designed this tee-shirt because of my coffee addiction:
http://www.redbubble.com/people/chudsonvt/works/11973677-coffee-110?grid_pos=1&p=t-shirt

 

[Newsman]

Currently working on it. haha.

Ask her if they need a GOAT (Geek of All Trades)????? I'd LOVE to have a job there with perks like that!

 

[passedpawn]

Sooo...

If the photons were emitted during the big bang, and the big bang was the beginning of the universe, and photons travel at the speed of light, how is it that the earth is here to intercept these photons.

Unless they stopped for a beer on the way, shouldn't they have been long gone by the time the Earth formed?

Aren't all the photons emitted (from the big bang) on the edge of the universe heading away from us?

That's what I'm getting at. Photons are massless and thus MUST travel at the speed of light, while Earth has mass and CANNOT travel at the speed of light (thank Einstien and special relativity math for that). If the assumption here is that they all started at the same point, how did we creatures of mass catch up with those speedy photons?

 

[Terek]

I own a heating and air company. you may think owning a company means sitting around doing nothing. far from the truth. I work twice as much as my guys. I would love to hire a manager to do my job, but it is so hard to trust someone else to run something it took you 4 years to build up to actually being prophetable.

 

[Gibberoni]

I do chemical logistics for a specialty company. I schedule the bulk trucks, FTL and LTL trucks to come in and pick stuff up and make sure they get to the destination on time and without exploding. HAHA. I also do SAP logistics support and TMS integration.

Might sound boring but it is actually a lot of fun. Very fast paced, as we ship out millions of tons of liquid each month.

 

[Ridire]

I own a heating and air company. you may think owning a company means sitting around doing nothing. far from the truth. I work twice as much as my guys. I would love to hire a manager to do my job, but it is so hard to trust someone else to run something it took you 4 years to build up to actually being prophetable.

I work mostly with privately owned businesses...the majority of which are still run by the founders. I am constantly amazed by the disconnect between the reality of being a business owner v. Joe Paycheck's perception of being a business owner.

 

[Baja_Brewer]

but I have to take 4 showers a day.

Best way to avoid swamp-ass I suppose.

I had an internship in college working in a geophysical lab that was one of three labs in the country able to perform testing on rock cores in an environment that simulated the pressures of deep underground or sub ocean floor. Compression, extension, triaxial tests on strain gauged rocks inside a pressure vessel on a custom made machine that ran on DOS (this was 2008) and 1 guy knew all the quirks of the system.

I took 3" diameter rock cores and polished the faces to be level within 1 mil all summer and left there with another thing on the list of items that I did NOT want to do once I graduated...

Hmmm.... The whole aversion to repetitive work makes me question my desire to open a brewery...

 

[Newsman]

I am going to steal that. The first question I have when people call with computer problems is have you restarted it. 95% of the time the answer is no, and 94% of the time that fixes things and undos what they have done. We don't give the crews the IT guys number because he is contracted and very expensive. They basically already pay my salary so I can tell people to restart their computer.

It also scares me I get computer questions. My knowledge does not go much farther than restarting.

LOL!!! I used to be front-line tech support for a call center. My nickname there was "Reboot" because my first question was always "have you tried rebooting your computer yet?" As you said, 90%+ of the time, that fixed the problem.

 

[harrke]

I guess one of the more interesting devices was a portable gauge that uses a nuclear isotope to measure the density of soils and asphalt.

When I worked at a nuclear plant near Miami, the Police called the station because they recovered one of these that had been lifted off a construction site.

 

[TheDudeLebowski]

that's what i'm getting at. Photons are massless and thus must travel at the speed of light, while earth has mass and cannot travel at the speed of light (thank einstien and special relativity math for that). If the assumption here is that they all started at the same point, how did we creatures of mass catch up with those speedy photons?

rdwhahb

 

[TheKodiakWay]

Contractor specializing in remodels... I tear houses apart, then put them back together in a different way. Do everything from dirt to finish. 16y+yrs now.

Still baffles me you need to go to school to cut someone's hair and put make up on them, but to work on someone's house (generally the largest investment they'll make) not a day of school is required.

 

[Newsman]

That's what I'm getting at. Photons are massless and thus MUST travel at the speed of light, while Earth has mass and CANNOT travel at the speed of light (thank Einstien and special relativity math for that). If the assumption here is that they all started at the same point, how did we creatures of mass catch up with those speedy photons?

You're forgetting the expansion of the universe

 

[Newsman]

I currently work for the phone company planning and overseeing implementation of DSL upgrades for entire neighborhoods. Basically I am given a location, a pot of money and a suggested solution. From there it is up to me to research it and either agree with the recommendation or come up with a different solution. Either way I have to send the proposal up the chain through various management levels (how high depends on how much I'm looking to spend) and then purchase all the equipment, fibers, optics, etc and send them to the contractor to install.
My assigned territory is NE Georgia, but I never get to go out in the field. I'm a glorified (electronic) paper pusher.

 

[jhoneycutt]

Some of yall have really cool jobs. I'm a flatbed truck driver... I was a crew leader for industrial cleaning company at a power plant. And 13b in the army before that though.

 

[hunter_le five]

I own a heating and air company. you may think owning a company means sitting around doing nothing. far from the truth. I work twice as much as my guys. I would love to hire a manager to do my job, but it is so hard to trust someone else to run something it took you 4 years to build up to actually being prophetable.

Word. My FIL owns a small HVAC company. He makes good money at it, but is always complaining about the workload and stress. Has mentioned selling the business several times so he can do something else.

It's tough when not only do you have to spend time doing the same grunt work that your employees do, but also have to wear other hats such as employee supervisor, business manager, marketing, bookkeeping, payroll, and all the other behind the scenes stuff required to actually run a business.

He's tried hiring managers that can take over a lot of that for him, but as you say, finding someone who is reliable and can be trusted is hard. It seems like in that industry, anyone who could successfully "run" an HVAC business for you could *almost* as easily (and would rather) start and run their own.

 

[m00ps]

We intercept photons that, 13.7 billion years ago, happened be heading in our direction from a point 13.7 billion light years away.

Dude, there's no such thing as billions of years ago. Jebus, read a bible...

 

[TheDudeLebowski]

Created products for the telecommunication industry/ special effects for movies and audio editing which our team won an Oscar and Academy Award/ Playstation 4,nintendo, xbox and probably your smartphone/ mil aero for jets, tanks, helicopters and aircraft carriers. Currently working on new technology for autonomous cars, aircraft, motorcycles and the Robot Uprising.

 

[Rhumbline]

You're forgetting the expansion of the universe

Are you suggesting the universe expanded at greater than the speed of light? In that case, wouldn't we still be in the dark?

And don't bring religion into this. The mods will have to scrub the posts and we're not letting you off that easily.

 

[j1n]

i surf the internet and post on forums.

 

[MonkeyBot]

Are you suggesting the universe expanded at greater than the speed of light? In that case, wouldn't we still be in the dark?

And don't bring religion into this. The mods will have to scrub the posts and we're not letting you off that easily.

As far as I'm aware, yes the expansion of the universe was at some times greater than the speed of light. Also when I say "expansion of the universe" I don't mean matter flying out into a void after an explosion, there was more actual space being created causing distances between objects to increase which is what allows this to be possible.

I'm just an interested layman though, for a quick primer read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space

And now back to people's jobs!

 

[Biscuits]

I work at a 5-sided building in the Capitol region...and I post on HBT while I am at work.

 

[m00ps]

Are you suggesting the universe expanded at greater than the speed of light? In that case, wouldn't we still be in the dark?

And don't bring religion into this. The mods will have to scrub the posts and we're not letting you off that easily.

Sorry, sometimes my sarcasm doesnt get through to people

 

[Newsman]

Are you suggesting the universe expanded at greater than the speed of light? In that case, wouldn't we still be in the dark?

And don't bring religion into this. The mods will have to scrub the posts and we're not letting you off that easily.

There was a HUGE expansion of space during the big bang. I studied this back in college, before a lot of the "cool" stuff was known. Basically space went from smaller than the head of a pin to THOUSANDS of light-years in size in a micro-second. The way I understand it, there was nothing but glowing vapor for millions of years before space actually became "space" with stuff the size of grains of sand that eventually clumped together to make planets, galaxies, etc.
The CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) is basically the "echo" of the big-bang. And yes, space is expanding at something approaching the speed of light. There are galaxies that we can no longer see in visible light because the light they produced has shifted (think a train horn coming and going) so far that it is now no longer visible light. Instead it is radio waves.
Mind blowing! I keep up with this stuff via Discovery.com and other semi-technical sites that are able to dumb down the science to a level where I can understand it.