How do you break ?

[Thales750]

Looking forward to reading it.

 

[Thales750]

It's been done already.

Google Jacques Cousteau, or sou-cou or submarines.

Col

A whole lot of people have done this Col, Mine will just have to be better, that's all.

 

[Rabbie]

if i do too much of this crap work, I get angry that I'm alone for too long and I don't get to talk to anyone. how does everyone else cope with this type of work? i'm about ready to give it to the birds. it is not for me, and I do not enjoy it. anyone else share the feeling ?

Adam, if you do not enjoy your work then you owe it to yourself to find work that you do enjoy. Life is too short and precious to waste it doing something that you hate. Besides it is much easier to do a good job if you enjoy it.

 

[Thales750]

Adam, if you do not enjoy your work then you owe it to yourself to find work that you do enjoy. Life is too short and precious to waste it doing something that you hate. Besides it is much easier to do a good job if you enjoy it.

No question about it. I will be leaving my job at the government very soon if my boss can't get it in his head that I can telework.

I spent the last year driving 2 to 3 hrs a day round trip. Hello I have better coffee, a better computer, less interruptions, etc.etc.

Life is way to short for commuting.

 

[boophoenix]

The_Doc_Man sounds like something Merlin himself might enjoy.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

aje and others:

The advice I gave my oldest grandson recently would be appropriate here. He asked me how to choose a good job? My answer was this:

Don't choose the job first. Decide what you like first. Study that subject matter. Look for ways that people have made money in that field. Choose one that you think you will like. Then and only then, figure out how to make money at what you like to do. If you look for a high-paying job, you are putting the cart before the horse.

Now, I understand that some jobs look great until you get into them, so I also shared with the #1 grandson this old adage: The other man's grass often looks greener than yours, but you have actually walk in that field to see how deep the fertilizer had to be to get that way. So don't be surprised that sometimes it doesn't look so good from the inside as it does from the outside.

On another topic, I'm not against posting my novels, but I want to protect them in some way since I still have the (admittedly forlorn) hope of really publishing them some day. I'm not ignoring the folks who expressed interest, just trying to protect my own interests.

 

[Kryst51]

On another topic, I'm not against posting my novels, but I want to protect them in some way since I still have the (admittedly forlorn) hope of really publishing them some day. I'm not ignoring the folks who expressed interest, just trying to protect my own interests.

Of course you should!

 

[georgedwilkinson]

I'd be happy to sign an NDA.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Jon & Administrators:

It might be totally inappropriate to post such things here, but some folks have expressed interest in seeing an advance copy of my fiction. I don't know whether it exceeds the intent of the forum or the forebearance of the administrators. And Jon, specifically I do not want to attempt anything that would in any way prove to be an inconvenience.

I do not have the means or intent to generally publish on the web at this time. Which leaves me with this question: Is there a way to post 17 chapters varying from 50 to 80 kbytes per chapter? It is now in Word Perfect, but I would convert it to something else before posting. I'm still thinking about sharing with my web friends, but also want to consider the security of the situation as I might yet wish to publish for real.

If any of the administrators or Jon want to give me a private reply on this subject, I will surely pay attention to your comments, be they "yea" or "nay" on the idea.

 

[ajetrumpet]

aje and others:

The advice I gave my oldest grandson recently would be appropriate here. He asked me how to choose a good job? My answer was this:

Don't choose the job first. Decide what you like first. Study that subject matter. Look for ways that people have made money in that field. Choose one that you think you will like. Then and only then, figure out how to make money at what you like to do. If you look for a high-paying job, you are putting the cart before the horse.

Doc,

would I be out of line saying that basically ANY job nowadays consists of basically KEEPING that job. I know a lot of people that are paid way too much for what they do, but just 5-10 years ago they actually earned the money and DID do a lot of work, whereas now all they do is listen to others complain and fill there day comming up with new ideas of how to keep their own positions alive. Is this out of line? Unfortunately, that's the way I see it nowadays. Sad, but true in my eyes.

Is it more important that you do what you like, or be able to put food on the table for yourself? I, myself like ACCOUNTING, but in that game either you have the knowledge or you don't. One aspect of it that is going very much downhill in today's world is tax preparation. You can no longer make any money doing it, as many people are learning to do it on their own. Either that, or they are paying peanuts to get it done by firms who are processing thousands of them every year. Now....how does a small time guy like myself make money doing stuff like that? Impossible really. Any suggestions from the wise old men on this one?

 

[georgedwilkinson]

Tax preparers make money by selling securities to their clients.

 

[ajetrumpet]

Tax preparers make money by selling securities to their clients.

I don't do that thought George. I'm not a financial advisor.

 

[Fifty2One]

I would read that story. I certainly hope when you go to publish you will tell us your finished title and nom de plume so we can pick up a copy.

Well, to start with, my best work is a 5-story arc, the shortest novel being well over 120K words (by WordPerfect counting methods), the longest at over 135K. It is set in an alternate universe where magic is actually a psychic ability that redirects free energy in various patterns. The catch is that it is magic because they don't fully understand how the mind controls the magic; they only know the effect of certain patterns.

My heroes are a retired Army captain, who was the champion archer of his battalion; a professor of history and magical exploration of ruins; an student of advanced magical theory who doesn't initially know her own strength; a locksmith and his brother, an armorer; a priest of a life-honoring religion who is also an expert at fighting demons; and the priest's friend - who is a dwarf-of-all-trades-master-of-none type. Each has his or her own reason for adventuring. Therefore, each has a different perspective on how they interpret what they find. Sort of "Magnificent Seven" meets "Conan" with a dash of Randall Garrett's "Too Many Magicians" thrown in for spice. But not derived directly from any of them, actually.

I set it in an alternate universe because if I tried to do this as an ancient-Earth setting, too many "facts" would get in the way. In an alternate universe, you can pick your own history, create your own pantheon, and ignore inconvenient issues from this world.

A friend of mine who was more expert on such things than I was (when I started the project) told me I had what was called an "orderly magic system" as opposed to a chaotic one. That is, my magic borders on science in the sense that it is repeatable if you repeat the process correctly.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

whereas now all they do is listen to others complain and fill there day comming up with new ideas of how to keep their own positions alive.

Well, first and foremost, my day job is working at a USA Federal government site. If you don't think I see that sort of thing going on every day, you need to think again. Trust me, I understand your comment initimately well.

"Accounting" is what you like, but the question is, what part of accounting? I'm going to wander around a bit and come back to that question.

I'm a chemist by original training, but what I did for my first "real" job was to be the "chemistry-related math formulas" guy for a small company that did automation projects of industrial products. I designed and/or wrote the Real-Time Data Acquisition software for their evolving product line, because RTDA was a secondary skill I had to pick up as a research chemist. Sort of by default, I became their operating systems expert, device-driver writer, and bits-and-bytes guy.

These days, that kind of work isn't so easily available, so I allowed myself to evolve. I'm still in the computer field, still working with operating systems, but no longer into device drivers and real-time stuff. The point I'm making is that the world evolved and my viewpoint had to evolve with it. I didn't fight that evolution.

There was a time when "putting food on the table" was a priority and I had to do what I consider drudge-level computing. So I understand the "survival" comments. After mom came down with Alzheimer's and the company I worked for got bought out and relocated, I took a job with a 25% pay cut so I could stay near her nursing home rather than blindly leave her to the care of the nurses without regard to what happened to her. And her doctor advised that moving her would not be a good idea either. So I had to change directions in order to keep up with family obligations.

I had to live with survival priorities until she finally passed on, so I stayed where I didn't like the work, but at least the people were nice. When I was able to do so, I searched for another job, one that brought me back to operating systems, though now I shepherd them rather than do device drivers for them.

Where this is going is simple: What you like may have to evolve. After all, as you mature and go through life's other changes, your likes and dislikes will probably change. There's an old Chinese proverb that, loosely translated, says "we are a new person every five years." Meaning (I think) that a person who knew you five years ago and who met you again today would see changes in you that you didn't see because for you they were gradual.

My advice to you now is this:

I, myself like ACCOUNTING

Think about what it is about accounting that you like. Accounting is a broad, impersonal field, just like chemistry or computing. Are you a procedures guy or do you actually like to shuffle paper or do you like to do the math portion?

I am reminded of the young officer from Bridge on the River Kwai who was a bank accounting clerk. In WW II that meant he added up columns of figures by hand. How much fun could that have been - but he was in accounting, too. You can't do that these days because of computers having replaced that particular job, but there are other jobs you can do that keep you near accounting.

So you have to ask yourself what it is that you like about accounting. Reduce that to its essence. Don't worry that it might take a while to do that. What you want to do, though, is look to the factors in accounting that give you the pleasure you felt about that job. THAT is what you seek to do.

I'll digress again to illustrate my own search for what I liked. As a college chemist, I was a mechanisms guy. My dissertation was on the mechanism of a reaction and the process of analyzing its flow - looking at the interplay of chemicals to form the intermediates of the reaction before finally producing the final compound. That field is called "Chemical Kinetics."

As a computer device-driver guy, I was again a mechanisms person. I saw how things flowed inside the computer to take data from point A to point B. I wrote code to facilitate that data flow by controlling the data flow devices. Again, I was looking at how things worked.

As an operating-systems guy, I watch the computer scheduler processes, security arbitration processes, etc., because there I am looking at the interplay of the software components that make things work. I'm again a mechanisms guy. Lately I've had to pick up some networking expertise. Again, a matter of watching data flows and learning how the components work together.

If you tried to map that career, it would look like a bus tour with a drunk driver at the helm, steering in no particular direction. Looking back, I can see the twists and turns I've had to take to get where I am. I'm amazed I didn't go bonkers myself.

All of this works for me because it is all about learning how things work beneath the visible surface - and applying that knowledge to the practical problems around me. At bottom, I like knowing how things work together. I'm a systems analyst.

Note I didn't say "Computer Systems Analyst" - though I could. Systems analysis is all about understanding the interplay of parts that make a whole. Finding problems with the flow from point A to point B. Smoothing out or facilitating that flow. That job applies to computers, factories, the court system (not the laws, but case management), small and large businesses... everywhere of any consequence. That is what I liked.

It took me a long time to figure out that part of me. It wasn't overnight. When people asked me what I liked back on the other end of my 35+ year career, I gave them semi-accurate answers. But some time ago I learned what I really enjoyed - the mechanistic systems analysis viewpoint - and turned that into a skill set that keeps me employed.

Why the massive essay? Because I needed to show you that it ain't an overnight thing and it ain't a simple process to figure out. It took me many years to get to this understanding. Once I learned what I really liked, though, I found ways to turn that into contentment with what I do. And to turn that into my bosses' contentment with what I do. Because I can also do that (to some degree) with Access, it is again turning what I like into a useful skill that strengthens my job position.

It is what you will have to do for yourself. Don't expect overnight results. You have a whole career to steer. You will always have some level of frustration with your job, Adam. You can fix that in two ways. First, identify what you like to do at a very low level and associate some part of your job with it..., or second, find a new job where that base-level factor that you enjoy is somehow maximized.

For the amount you paid to get it, there's my advice. Hope it helps.

 

[Minkey]

I've just finished a massive video project which started as a simple request but soon turned into an absolute monster, to a deadline that was half as long as I needed, for the very highest profile clients we work for and of course included the virtually impossible.

Suffice to say I'm now nearly a zombie - last week alone was a 72 hour week, I've done no other work for almost 3 weeks, I haven't been out with friends for those 3 weeks and I even missed an episode of 24 (something that's never happened before !).

So I plan to break by:

Taking Friday off, drinking beer and my new favourite whisky "The Yamazaki" (yep Japanese and it's lovely and that's high praise for a Scotsman ;-)), watching some TV and a favourite film, getting some gaming time in and generally chilling out (maybe even all in my underpants ).

Saturday - Probable hangover but a big fry up will sort that out. Meet up with some friends late afternoon to catch up (more beers ) then we'll see where that goes.

Sunday - Spending my overtime money - new gadget maybe, some Blu-Ray disks or maybe book a trip somewhere.

All sustained by my favourite foods and indulgent snacks of course.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Then, of course, there is the question of how I will take a break this weekend.

I'm from New Orleans. The Saints are in the Super Bowl. I'm staying inside because the city of New Orleans is going to become an uncontrolled madhouse. (More than normal, I mean...) I'll be curled up in front of the big-screen TV with surround sound turned on.

Geaux, Saints!

 

[Thales750]

Had a girl friend from New Orleans once.
I reckon that’s as good a reason as any to root for them.