Hi Andy - Well, you know me anyway but just for the record.... Work in IT for a living. Not one qualification (to speak of) to my name but 18 years of working knowledge and 12 years previous knowledge dating back to programming zx81's with my mates back in school. Lost the ability to bullshit in work years ago. Tend to only turn up for meetings if theres a buffet going or, if I host a meeting - ill wing it so some of the lads get a free lunch...and tend to get told off when something bad happens and I cant help laughing/seeing the funny side of it...stuff happens and its just like an episode of the IT crowd....ie one of the admins left a laptop plugged into a network switch at our datacentre which then left unattended slid off the top of a rack taking the power out and then cutting off the whole uk network....now that's funny....air conditioning cutting in and the HR girlies all hiding bar heaters under their desks and running them til it overloads the ring main taking a floor down....the list goes on.... My wife is amazing with the stuff she has to put up with, and me constantly pressuring her for bikes which for me is therapy. Time in the garage away from everyone. Sunday was nice....cup of tea, stripping my new hyper down and watching BSB at the same time....perfect. As much as I like riding the things theres something that I like about "looking after your stuff" so although it could be a nice day and perfect for riding sometimes I'm just happy messing in the garage. Some people flog bikes cos theyre not getting used enough....I like that in a way, cos if you've not ridden something for a while (RSV4 is about 2 months now when it was last warmed up) then its all the more occasion when you do.. Ive got 2 brothers, a younger and an older and although we get on well if we're in a room long enough then arguments/ganging up on "the other one" usually will start. The last time we were all together was a couple of years ago just after our dad passed away...and yes, that started to happen....its just the way it is..! My kids have no interest in bikes whatsoever (and I'm happy with that) it'd scare me silly if they ever wanted to venture out these days with the amount of traffic that's about. When I was 20 there was a lot less traffic and nutters so it gave me a fighting chance to get used to riding and over the years improve....I think I could say to all reading this, riding a bike teaches you to "look ahead" a bit more and always assume that no one can see you... Anyway...rambling now....ill definitely be in to see you soon on the hyper Andy. Get well soon...really...otherwise I wont get any more discount!
I was a write off at school, got a job making and fitting contact lenses, got bored went back to college and after several lower courses ended up with an Ordinary in mechanical engineering Got a job as a "design" engineer with a company that built GE industrial gas turbines under license. The design wasn't really design it was just spec writing for suppliers to make skids for accessory equipment around the GT. Got bored with that and went into the Customer Services side, first mechanical then gradually controls and finally performance testing, which I really liked. Got taken over by GE and then did tuning and testing on industrial GTs, the occasional LM (Land & Marine) aero engines modified for ground based duties and some steam turbine work (hated that dirty and dangerous) Loved working with GE, it was great, some of the testing was new product experiments and always something different. Traveled all over and no 2 jobs were the same, money per hour was just Ok BUT there was always more work than you could shake a stick at, so I did Ok (in no way can I be considered affluent, but I'm contented with what I've got) Took early retirement about 6 years back, no regrets field work is a younger man's game...........................seen quite a few older guys keel over on the job (never to get up again), mixture of hard work, time pressure, long hours & bad life style. Surprised I'm still on marriage No 1 but last week celebrated 30 years, that says a lot more about her than me. Sorry to hear about the problems Andy, you have my best wishes
I plugged myself into a clients server room and the moment I switched on... all power to the VERY large London hotel went down. I shat a brick but it turned out their on-site guys had done a UPS test the day before (UPS was designed to run everything for about 24 hours) and forgotten to switch the mains back on. My trousers and I had merely suffered from poor timing in plugging my laptop in :tearsofjoy:
I actually did that....my first day (14 years ago) plugged in a faulty pc and knocked out the whole floor...and ironically my mate did the same thing when he started 6 years before that....
thank you for the wishes, it's good to hear a struggling start in life, hard as it's been has given you the fight to better yourself and give you the attitude to appreciate where you got to, the wife thing is great but fir me it took 2! chin up be proud and you had enough to retire early and give back to your wife and you bike, cherish it
Its strange - for me - we struggled at the start....the front door on our first house was nailed closed as the hinges and frame had gone....a total renovation job while the two of us were living in it....ironically I lost my gsxr7/11 for a kitchen and the wife lost her Renault 5 GT Turbo for a roof....after that it was knackered 100 quid cars/and a second hand Raleigh twenty (for me) Pushbike (y'know - the ones with the shopping basket on the front) but - perfectly balanced so you could wheelie them everywhere....all seems like ancient history now... The house we have now was pretty well the same...total renovation job but with 2 then 3 kids thrown in....its only about 6 years ago or so that we started to get to the end of the renovation - only then could I afford to get a bike again...but its got out of control....
that vey last comment earnt it a funny...............it's not 'its' that got out of control it's 'you'...............slush fund, remember?
Mate - the slush fund is so far into 5 figures now I couldn't believe it...especially when I saw my balance on the phone after buying the hyper...!
what I will say if you ever give up biking, bring your bikes to me cause there always first class, on everything but we've had that conversation before eh
do you give financial advice, cause I've no idea how you do it, that deserves a round if applause but I can't find emoji! Well done chap.....
Well, I do try....I think we were the luckiest people in the world - we remortgaged the month before they coined the phrase "credit crunch" and got the most amazing deal ever... .5% above base rate...we double pay on the mortgage so the bank gives us a "slush fund..." the rest is history!! Just to add and as ive said before I'm just riding around on the bank's hardware (but then I think a lot of us are)! ive had too many friends and some family (my father included) who have passed on, some never got to do what they wanted to do (my old man always wanted to go to Goodwood and I said id take him if he got through his illness which he didn't) other mates suddenly died and also never got to finish what they started or wanted to do....so id rather do as much as I can now in case anything ever happened or, stuff that I never did and wished that I did but I'm too old to do it...
Marine Engineering - ie - I do preccision guesswork based on unreliable data provided by those of questionable knowledge... ( Sometimes surrounded by penguins ) "We, the unwilling, lead by the unknowing, and working for the ungrateful have done so much with so little for so long that we are now capable of doing anything with nothing or nothing with anything..."
I'm owner and MD of a small consulting and training company specialising in 'Agile' and 'Lean' approaches to project and product management, software development etc. using methods like 'Scrum' and 'Kanban'. I was one of the first people in the world to focus on this area as my chosen research subject for my Uni degree. I've been working in it ever since - more than 20 years - and this is the second company I've set-up after working for a big IT services firm for a few years straight out of Uni. Selling my share of my first company paid for my Desmosedici . For the first 10-15 years of my career this stuff was very bleeding edge and business was sometimes good and sometimes poor. In the last 5-10 years or so it has become mainstream and I now find myself a leading expert in something that is in great demand. Hopefully we have another 5-10 years before it becomes a commodity! I don't have much time for anything outside work - most days I'm on the train to London from Somerset or on a flight to somewhere in the UK or further afield and I work at least one weekend in London every month. When I do have time I like to get out with my family in our VW camper (the Mrs and I have two teenage girls) or have a bit of 'me' time with my bikes. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I think the method I use is....."winging it..." I work for a mechanical engineering design consultancy (mainly in the aero business)....the general norm is that no one gets through the door without a university education....which is ironic as I have great problems just helping my 14 year old daughter with her homework...
Oh Goodie I can better that especially as mine was through incompetence that was (nearly) all my own work and not accidental. I had completed data collection on 1 of 3 40MW GTs that ran heavy oil fuel on a station just outside and supplied power to, Casablanca. As part of that I had to monitor parasitic consumption. This meant connecting a meter onto the 3 phase 415V aux MCC (motor control center). So after the test I had to remove it and shutdown the GT (so far, so good) BUT then I isolated the MCC to get the meter off (BAD IDEA) After a couple of minutes with ma heed buried inside the MCC trying to get to the incomer, an agitated local comes screaming into the cab informing me that the GT's neighbor had tripped "nuffin to do with me mate," I reply casually, still buried inside said MCC and carried on. After approx 5 minutes, same operator comes into the cab now in a state of apoplexy, the 3rd GTs gone down as well. At this point I step outside and I'm greeted with industrial levels of white smoke and the whines of machines winding down..................Pretty spectacular I thought. What had happened was the MCC I shutdown was supplying the main feeder to the fuel forwarding pumps, this shouldn't have been any problem as the scheme called for Auto transfer to the next MCC on another GT, BUT the bloody clowns who ran the station didn't understand the scheme and just hoiked everything onto manual. So I starved ALL the units of fuel!!!! That little episode blacked out Casabalnca for about an hour, worse still the project manager was in meetings with the customer trying to wring money outta the tight wads, when all the lights go out. Of course they all burst out laughing when somebody suggests a GT has tripped Oops John
The realisation that I did not like work dawned on me a few years ago, this was after forty years of working as a panel beater fabricating and repairing car bodies, the answer was to sell up and retire as I had little patience for the customers any more. Now I have retired seem to have very little time as always pursuing one of my hobbies, Classic Cars, Shooting and motorcycles along with a few others.
I've had some close ones at work, 1) Pulled a (low voltage) wire out of a din rail, as I did not want to turn the machines off or mess about with the timer (lead,lag and standby) - which subsequently tripped and shut all 3 down as they were running on a control panel. Stopped a production line and the fire brigade turned up as it affected an automatic fire system - lucky I found the fault quickly. 2) Painted a new large machine built in the workshop due to be shipped overseas with thinners mix instead of hardener. Still wet after the weekend, customers took a photo of me next to it (for scale) before it was shipped. 3) Cut up a metal tank with a gas torch, and it had oil vapor in which went bang. Lucky it had large open ends. 4) stepped inside when testing a machine that had a 30ft 6" hydralic hose attached which burst, it knocked over 3x vertical air tanks that stood as tall as a house, bolted to the floor, with steel 6" pipe work attached. Sounded like a bomb going off. 5) Was up in the air in a large factory in a horrible cherry picker, had 12m of 2.5" steel pipe hanging of Perlin hangers, as I swung to one end it came down and I caught the held the pipe, as I held on to it, it tilted the cage. I wrapped my arms round the pipe and an RSJ, while the guy with me tied the pipe off so we could drop the cage.... How I miss industrial work.
