Just wondering what kind of technical/practical background we all have.

I work at a Nuke Power Plant in a Overview organization. It's more than just your average QA/QC organization. I produce video and multi-media presentations for employee training and information Been doing this for 22 years.

I am a plumbing contractor. I have been at this since I got out of the Army in 85. Hence I drive a Chevy instead of a Mosler.

I'm a Systems Engineer and manage computer networks for the largest school system in metro Atlanta. Been there for almost 18 years.... We have 144 locations and more than 500 servers that handle 14,000 employees and 100,000 students.

Engineer - I am the Process Technology Manager for the Automation Division of an Engineering firm that designs automation and control systems for steel and aluminum mills.

I'm an automotive engineer specializing in base engine design and development. Currently I'm working on a new Hemi's power cylinder (pistons, rings, conn rods, etc.) components.

Information Systems. Developer, project manager. Started out in the USAF, then EDS (GM), Fruit of the Loom, and Cracker Barrel.

I'm the chief estimator for a general contractor that specializes in themed and scenic types of construction. I'm in Orlando, Florida so yes I'm talking about a lot of theme park work.

I work for a consulting firm that does government relations/lobbyist manangement in the transportation industry. To really explain it would take a lot of time.

Why does that not surprise me ...

Huh?

I can go into detail, but it would bore the vast majority of readers.

what do i do to support autocrossing my '89 IROC... well.. about 20-30 hours a week of juggling credit card debt from the old cards to the new low interest cards..

seriously.. my job doesn't support anything that's fun

Lobbyist consulting firm ... take a long time to explain ...

Get it?

Yeah, its sort of like the two most maligned professions out there and I've managed to combine them into one, LOL.

Comedian Tim Wilson does a great bit on consultants.

Contractor......Windows and Doors!..Snow Plowing in the winter months ( supports my F-bod habit!)

Gary

Data center manager/developer for an interactive TV company.

Kitchen manager, casual dining bar and grill.

Not that that gives me much time to persue my racing habit - restauants are busy on weekends, we race on weekends...

AD Marine, deliver pizzas part time on weekends and such. Plus, since I go to school for free, the scholarships I get could count as 3rd income?

I'm a mechanical engineering major at the University of Louisville. I'm co-oping next semester with LG&E the local power company. I'll be working right in the heart of one of the power plants-getting dirty.

We had a group of those interns work at our plant the last few summers.

You guys are great entertainment ...

Audio mixer/Sound designer - I work on cartoons and make radio and tv commercials. If you guys have kids/nephew/niece they might know my work: Stanley and Jojo's Circus on Disney channel.

The work can get stressfull, but I'm just glad my days of driving tow trucks and fixing cars are gone.

Aria

Hey, nice job. Yeh, my 11 month old watches both of those cartoons. His favorite is the Wiggles right now, but he's starting to watch more of "Clay" and Stanley.

Boeing Engineer. Right now I'm a Stress Analyst for the Fuselage of the 747 but people are moving around a lot here these days....

Thanks. I wanted to be a mechanical engineer, but my lil brain couldn't handle it.
Tell your son by the time he's 2, Stanley 's coming out with a DVD (late John Ritter did the voice for one of the characters). I'm sure he'd care...

Aria

Yeesh, what, are 5% of us NOT engineers?! I work in City gov't. I do a bit of everything; budgeting, and more budgeting, cable channel coordination, union negotiations, web content updates, policy research, liaison with community groups and other gov'ts. My masters degree is in public administration, and this job is the launching pad to becoming a city manager.

Production control manager for the manufacturing plant of a large dirt/drag racing parts supplier.

Federal labor lawyer. Represent civil servants nationwide regarding adverse actions, workers compensation, whistle blower compalints and EEO complaints. My office is in the right place near DC and it keeps me busy. Totally enjoy it and yes, I find it more interesting than track work. It is a close comparison, though.

Steve

18 yr grunt , working on my tan in Iraq.

Cell site maint and repair.
i repair and maintain all the electronics and accosiated equipment that recieves and transmits your cell phone signal @ the cell sites around dallas and ft. worth for Nextel.
it used to pay for my crack habit. now after my wife quit working to raise my daughter, on top of zero overtime, it barely pays the bills.

come on, make that call to someone you love!

Oh no...we're expecting our first child and I really want her to quit...think I'll keep her working...

Aria

Don't do it. Find a way to afford for your wife to stay home if she wants to. It's worth it. We made the transition almost a year ago now and I love it. Yeh, it hurts the budget but it's worth it in the long run.

its worth it. and i know you don't want to hear this, but the car becomes lass important to you once the kids get here.

My wife has been a stay-at-home mom for about ten years now. I was a staunch supporter of this arrangement and I was right - it's good for the kids. However, it's not all's it's cracked up to be for my wife unfortunately. She's the only stay-at-home mom in the entire neighborhood and that effectively means she's alone. It has gone on long enough that it has affected her personality some. If you do this, it's good for the kids, but consider your wife during the process.

Trust a man who has been through this. I would probably do it again, but I would have researched the neighborhood better for some contact for my wife.

Interesting thread .... My kids are 24 and 22 and on there own, for the most part.

Stay at home moms ... Once the kiddos are in school, transitioning back into a career for Mom is usually a good choice. and typically Mom is ready for something more fulfilling.

However, a LOT more burden is placed on Dad. Shuttling kids, helping around the house, grocery shopping ... means less and less time for gearhead related stuff.

My wife is disabled with a personality disorder ... bipolar. Consequently she CANNOT work. It's a struggle to maintain balance between meeting her needs and having enough time to mess around with my hobby. It has to be lonely here for her all day while I'm at work.

Fortunately for me, she enjoys going to the track, as long as there are decent bathrooms. She also doesn't mind coming out to the shop and heping out.

The wife and I are still talking back and forth, though I'd rather she stays home. Thankfully we have friends close by, although not exactly walking distance. It's interesting that 2 of the stay home moms started to get bored after the baby turned 1 and found themselves part time jobs.

I think I'd let her work on weekends to pay my habit, and I'd work 5 days to support us

Thanks for the stories, it's good for a would-be-first time dad to hear this stuff.

Aria

my wife will return to work once all kids start school.

Jon,

I attended an interesting seminar last month put on by Vishay. It presented their new, inexpensive package (less than $10,000) for PhotoStress analysis, that now provides measurements with hard numbers. Volunteers were allowed to do the PhotoStress measurements while the Vishay personnel did the strain gage control measurement. The results tracked within 5-6%. Of course, it was a controlled experiment designed to demonstrate the new capability of the photo technology, but it worked for me. And we were not measuring at the edge of the part, which would be much simpler.

They showed a lot of video of PhotoStress analysis (visual analysis, not hard numbers) done by Airbus. It seemed to me that that is still the strong suit of photo analysis, but what a great tool! Airbus found a problem with an internal spar for a rudder that they had failed to uncover with many strain gage attempts. I didn’t think that so many strain gages could be located on one piece of metal. But that analysis kept saying that the part should hold up, when it continued to fail in testing. The photo analysis not only identified the problem area, but found some “zero” stress areas where they ended up cutting holes to lighten the part! I couldn’t believe they made additional edges in a part that was already failing. I guess that if that area sees no stress, that you aren’t creating a stress riser. I would fear that if some other part fails and a load is applied to this part in a different plane (not airplane), that the part under discussion might then fail because of the new holes. It was all very interesting.

I most enjoyed seeing the stress distribution in an automobile steering knuckle. Wow. But they did tend to downplay the difficulty of making the molds for the stress coating. When I pressed one presenter on the time it took to make one series of complex molds and coatings, he admitted that it was 3 weeks from the start till they were ready to test. I would also be concerned that the picture you see does not represent the entire stress picture if you don’t apply the forces in all of the axes that will occur in the real application, which could be the most difficult part.

I imagine that you have a VERY interesting job.

Me, I have never picked one career. I jump back and forth between being a fry cook, a brain surgeon, and a double-naught spy.

Bob

I'm sorry to hear that Mitch. About 4 weeks after we had Garrett this year my wife got very sick. I took her to the emergency room and a few hours later they determined she had a blood clot that had moved to her brain. She was losing her sight and had some intense headaches. Suffice it to say after a few days in intensive care and then another week in the neurology ward at the hospital you learn really quick what is important in life. It was months afterward before she could really take care of Garrett like she wanted to and the visits to the doctors were very frutrating. Luckily we had some good neighbors that became good friends during that time. Since then I've found I spend a LOT more time at home and a LOT less time in the garage.

As we said above though, it's worth it. We probably won't have another baby as my wife is a high risk pregnancy now, but Garrett's really cool and he's all we ever wanted. Can you say a spoiled only child?

Mike, sounds like it was rather trying times there for a while. Glad things are going better for all of you.

My wife is actually very well adjusted. Didn't mean to make it sound like she was incapacitated. She has a regiment of meds she has to take, but by and large she is "stable". She has long periods of severe fatigue (days/weeks) and it's all she can do to just care for herself. We have occasional hospital stays, but they are becoming less and less common. We've finally learned to get in a doctor's face and say "Hell NO!" when he wants to experiment with her meds.

When I hear or read about folks who do crazy things with their families and it's attributed to bi-polar, I'm a little more compassionate about it. I understand the frustrations and the mind-set of those people. I've seen it and lived it.

Wow ... this thread took a weird turn, didn't it?

I'm now currently looking for a job........anyone hiring?

I work for Southwestern Bell, ASI. I've been there about 3 years now.

I'd really love to be able to spend more money on this hobby, but it's pretty tight around here. My wife was laid off from work over a year ago (2nd time in 2 years). She decided then that she'd rather go back to school & try to get into medical school instead of being laid off ever 3-4 years. I've been fortunate enough to have a job that will allow her to do that. (I did tell her that she has to buy me whatever Vette is out when she gets through with school & gets her practice going! )

I still get to play around a bit though, so I can't complain too much.

http://www.ls1.com/forums/showthread.php?s...threadid=448142

Saw that you're in Indiana, but figured I'd pass this along anyhow. It's for a job in Richardson, TX.

At this point...as long as it pays enough...I'm willing to move.

Thanks for the link, but I think I'm going to have to look for something in the Engineering and Production field.

Im a stay at home Dad but I used to be a A & P Mechanic and I used to work on fork lifts. So now I say Im retired.

I also have a Master's in Public Administration. You are now the first person other than myself I've meet that is into Government and F-bodies, LOL.

well i work here www.speedhound.com restoring, modifying, and repairing corvettes. this includes super charging some C5s, building some wicked C4s, and turning a C3 into a show car. that was done just this year with many simple things in between.

i have a small part of a mechanical engineering degree from UGA. I may go back one day, but right now I'm 23 and love what I'm doing so i won't be going back anytime soon. I do have a machining diploma from a local tech college. loved that, but never had any intentions of being in production machining. something about standing in front of a computer controlled machine watching it work for 12 hours a day just doesn't do it for me.

i stay really busy with the customers cars and our new C4 show/ project car(look for it in corvette fever soon), so its not the money its the time i don't have. Trey

Hey Trey!!! Glad you made it over here!!!

I'm a structural steel detailer. I work for a steel fabriactor. A general contractor sends us plans for a new building, school, shopping center, etc. and we detail (draw, model, whatever you want to call it) the structural beams, columns, channels, etc that make up the framework of the building. Basically we draw and then fabricate the skeleton of a building.

Been auto-xing for about 5 years with the Texas A&M Sports Car Club. Just recently upgraded to my '01 Z28. This site seems like it's got a good start. Hoping to gather a lot of useful knowledge....

I'm another Boeing-ite. I work in the system test lab for Connexion by Boeing, the company that's making broadband Internet access in flight a reality. Commercial service starts this March on Lufthansa German Airlines, followed by Scandinavian Airlines, Japan Air Lines, All Nippon Airways and Singapore Airlines later in 2004 and 2005.

I love my job- my group and the Flight Test guys get to play with all the cool toys. We even have our own "flying testbed" 737:



I hear you guys on the single-income-family thing. We are expecting our first in March, and my wife will be a stay-at-home mom. That means NO money for racing in the normal family budget, so I have to sell my Firebird to finance the 2004 season. Beyond that, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Might have to give up racing for a while.

I own a printshop in a north Dallas suburb called Carrollton. I started printing as a press operator 16 years ago. I have been self employeed for 7 years this Feb. Being self employeed may not be for everyone but I can honestly say that I will NEVER work for someone else as long as I have a say in it!
My wife is a stay at home mom with our 11 year old daughter. She is an avid Nascar fan so we have a great relationship when it comes to my "nasty little habit".

Well congrats. It makes this whole racing thing alot easier when the wife understands. Or can even get interested in it.

My wife LOVES to autox.



What I do for a "living" is a mix of what TxAgZ28 does and what a construction machinery operater may do. Basically since I have been in the work force I have been working in shipping. From UPS and FedEx packaging/invoicing and shipping to over the road tractor trailer crates. Sometime built inside the trailer.

I currently work for a Marine company and ship boat loads of fun each day
Actually just tractor trailer loads of Pontoon and Fiberglass sport/deck boats. I'm gonna start using the excuse 'since I drive around a deisel powered 60,000lb fork truck all day it effects my driving' Yeah thats it. thats why I am so bad...





BTW I just broke my own policy don't talk about work! My wife and I don't even talk about work.