The far out quantum theories are derived from real experiments that have been performed by several different groups all over the world. The results are the same each time and that is how something like Quantum Potential gets promoted to theory status. It's observable and repeatable on a sub-atomic level. Translating all that to the macro form of the universe is a giant leap in thinking, but a lot of well educated scientists seem to think it's plausible.
I think we pretty much share the same perception of the universe and its origins. About the only difference in viewpoint is that I would say it all occurs randomly and you might say it's Intelligent Design.
Well ... I don't know what you are talking about with Flat Screen Televisions. I have a Sony sitting in the great room that is over four feet wide. They didn't claim it to be "flat screen" but it sure as Hell looks flat to me. LOL As far as the pixel elements go, I'm certain every manufacturer has their own formula for what they think is best. The screens are pretty light weight these days given their size. I don't know what you are thinking of when you say the flat screen you have weighs a lot. It probably does if it's more than a decade old because the LED technology that exists today did not exist back then. I'm probably missing something here, but I can't tell what it is.
I can't read 8 point type, much less sub-atomic level things, hi hi. So I'll have to take your word for that.
CRTs (Cathode Ray Tubes) were normally bow front. And that's the way they were from numerous years.
Then they decided to make CRTs with a super thick and very heavy flat glass front on the CRT.
These were billed as and sold as Flat Screen TVs, and Flat Screen Monitors soon followed.
All Flat Screen units, whether a TV or a Monitor were super heavy due to that thick front glass.
A number of years later they came out with LCD TVs and Monitors.
All of them, due to the nature of the beast, are a flat panel, and reasonably lightweight.
But they ARE NOT a CRT, and therefore can't STEAL the term Flat Screen because that refers to a CRT screen style.
The proper term for a TV is TV SET or Television Set.
For a few years, a few early computer geeks, who should have known better, began calling a Monitor a CRT.
The equivalent of calling a car a transmission or an engine. Does not make sense.
Neither does calling a computer by the name of the Kernel, irregardless of the OS.
Windows users don't say they have an NT box, in fact most don't know they have an NT box.
So why do they call other OSs Linux Boxes?
I don't know either Yogi. It's the geeks that did it, like calling a Monitor a CRT.
If you owned a Pick-up Truck, what would you say to people who called it a Stake Truck or Van?
Would you not correct them and tell them it is a Pick-up, not a Stake or Van!
A Pick-up has a flat bed, and so do the other two, but we only call trailers by the term flat bed if it applies.
It's just not proper to call an LCD TV or Monitor a Flat Screen. It's given the screen is flat on that type of unit.
I guess that would not apply down south here, because anything with wheels is called a Buggy, no matter what it is, hi hi.
I guess that would not apply down south here, because anything with wheels is called a Buggy, no matter what it is, hi hi.
I was going to say you do not understand the problem with contemporary terminology, but it's obvious you do understand.
We have talked about this on a few occasions where you point out how a word is being misused; I'm thinking "bandwidth" in particular but the concept applies to all the situations I've seen you point out. Calling a display "flat screen" is like calling server downloads "bandwidth." In spite of your knowledge of the original definitions of those terms, you do know and understand what people are talking about when they supposedly misuse a term. That transfer of knowledge is the critical point. Both engineering types and computer illiterate types know what is meant by the current use of the word bandwidth. The exact meaning is determined by the context in which the word occurs, dictionaries be damned. In fact most current dictionaries will give you all the meanings, and if you are still unsure there is the Urban Dictionary for street talk. Motorola made flat screen televisions by the way. They also were the first to go square with the tube. So, now, my Sony looks like it's screen is flat, feels like the screen is flat, and smells like the screen is flat. Why would it be incorrect to call it a flat screened television?
The meanings of American English words are often derived from the context in which they are used. It's not only syntactical context that defines the word's meaning, but also the local dialect. You know, if I came to Knoxville and ordered a "soda" would I get the same thing as if I ordered a "Coke?" Would they even know I want some "pop" if I didn't use the right word for your QTH?
If all LCD TVs and Monitors are flat, isn't it redundant to call it a flat screen when there is no other choice other than flat?
It's akin to asking what kind of car do you have, and you respond with a 4-wheeler.
The thing I got the biggest kick out of was when The Flat Earth Society said they have Chapters all around the GLOBE.
They normally say, we have chapters reaching to Earth's all four corners.
I wonder if the officer who made that post is still an officer after that, hi hi.
The dictionary does change to meet the common usage of a word.
But they are sticklers on some words and refuse to change them to common usage.
You would go crazy down south here. Every non-alcoholic drink is called a Coke.
Even restaurants who only sell Pepsi, the waitress will ask if we want a Coke.
And then go on to say, we have Orange Juice, Tomato Juice, Milk, Chocolate Milk, and name the Pepsi flavors they carry.
When I was young, to late teens, early adult. The common phrase in Missouri was Soda-Pop.
In my adulthood, most folks had quit adding Pop after the word Soda.
Restaurant rarely used the word Soda, or Pop. They would just ask what we wanted to Drink.
At the drive-through fast-food joints, if you tell them, they will respond with, do you want Fries with that.
I say No, they get soggy in soda, hi hi.
Unless we are writhing documents of a technical or legal nature the intuitive meaning of the words used is good enough. And, by the way, when you ask me what "kind" of car I have, saying it's a 4-wheeler would be correct. If you asked me what brand, then it would be a different response.
You are absolutely correct about the wait staff in the restaurants around town. They always ask what I want to drink. Saying a Coke will always get the response, "we only serve Pepsi." I can understand why Pepsi is the preferred brand here in Missouri, but it's a little bit more difficult to understand how dialects arise. We are all speaking the same language and using the same words to convey information. Why am I "you all" down south but simply "you" up north? What mechanism is at work there? I just don't get it. The origins of that famous southern drawl is a total mystery. And, if you ever visit Louisiana, there is a high likelihood you will be address by somebody speaking Cajun. What the heck is that all about? Apparently this dialectic variance is not unique to America. It happens all over the world in all languages. It's very strange.
On cars, is there really any difference in the brands anymore?
Almost all American brands are made by one of three companies now.
Each city has its own street language. Heck 50 years ago when I was working in Chicago, when being bummed for a smoke, the asked if he could have a Squire. I thought he said Square and passed him my 45 degree framing triangle. He gave me the weirdest look, then said no a Butt, Stogie, and pointed at my shirt pocket, hi hi.
Even after living down here close to 18 years, I still don't know most of the lingo they use here.
And it varies by what part of town you are in also.
Chicago was made up of many ghettos. It seems that each major country in Europe had a representative population somewhere in Chicago. They claimed that the only place in the world that had more Polish people was Warsaw. As I grew older those ethnic ghettos vanished. Most of the people moved out to the suburbs. In part his migration was due to African Americans taking over the southern half of the city. Most of those people migrated to Chicago from various points down south and not from Africa proper. It was black and white for many years, and we all got along well enough because we respected each other's territory. That was eventually adjudicated as being segregation, but that's a different story altogether. The south side of Chicago, home to the infamous Leroy Brown - meanest cat in the whole damned town - spoke Ebonics. I'd guess you would recognize it if you heard it, but I can't really describe it. LOL It's a bit like Cajun in that the base of the language is English but the local people added their native accent and jargon. It was very odd in the sense that those Ebonics speaking people would come up to the north side, hear us plain midwesterners talk, and understand every word. But, when us midwestern natives went to the south side of Chicago it was to a land of foreign language. Today the Latinx folks have overrun the city. Nobody who is not one of them understands one word of what THEY say.
The town of Des Peres where I grew up was 99% German settlers. Of course it got diluted over the years too.
With 250 employees, nearly all German, they more or less developed their own language also.
A few German words mixed in with the English words, and some words they made up that don't exist in any language.
After I moved from Catholic schools to Public schools, our school was already about 20% black, and this was before the segregation movement. So about the only difference here was the number of blacks in my school increased only about 5% is all. Heck, we even had blacks in my grade school in the '50s.
I think most of the problems were down in the inner city schools where there were white schools and black schools. Things were considerably different out in the county.
Nationality and Race shifts were quite prevalent in St. Louis before I was born and for many years while I was growing up.
The Rich white folks moved west and the Jewish folks took over their areas. In some cases really big time, building super sized mansions. Then Urban sprawl and the wealthier blacks pushed the Jewish folks further west. After that, the area would fall into decline, the large houses became multi-family, and lower class blacks took over an area, and basically turned those once super fancy areas into nothing more than a ghetto.
The wealthier blacks then integrated with the whites in suburbia, but the Jewish folks still hung together in areas of suburbia, but slowly thinned after folks no longer cared if you were Christian, Jewish, black, white, yellow, or red.
In far was St. Louis County we had a huge Indian population, from those who moved off the Reservations.
Des Peres Germans thinned out to Irish, English, Polish, and even a few Russians, each with their own shopping areas. Then almost overnight, everyone was everywhere, and all getting along quite well with each other.
The the politics of our area changed drastically, and most of us were glad to get out of Des Peres.S
Dad and mom moved to Ballwin, early on, but we still had our business in Des Peres.
I moved out by my mom and dad for a couple of years, then moved up north to Creve Coeur which was predominantly Jewish and Christians, all getting together just fine, often going to each others major events.
Living down south now is a major cultural shock. The south is absolutely nothing like the midwest, except for all the chain stores which are the same everywhere, although they do have some different things on the menu's down here.
Restaurants are a hoot. All of them have southern dishes over midwestern dishes. And those that might serve a midwestern dish, mess it up royally, hi hi.
I looked into Google Street View for a current picture of the house I grew up in. You know, that barn with a stable which eventually became my home. The last time I looked it was now three floors of living space. The top, attic, never was finished when I lived there. It was purely for storage back in the day, but apparently now it is income producing residence. I often thought I would go back to talk to the current residents, and if I were extremely lucky perhaps be shown what the insides now look like. But then, very much by chance, I met a fellow on a social media site who happened to live near that old house of mine. He was Puerto Rican as was the entire neighborhood. I asked if he would give me a tour should I happen to be in the neighborhood, and his quick reply was "don't come." It's dangerous, especially if you are not obviously Puerto Rican. How about if I just drive by? He said I could try that if I don't mind being shot at.
I don't know if that guy was exaggerating or not, but I never made it back to the old neighborhood. All the street views of the shops have Spanish signs in the store windows and the empty 300 acres owned by the Board of Education was now populated with wall to wall housing. There was a football stadium on that property as well where many of the local high schools would come to play their games. I used to love sneaking into those games and knew where all the holes in the fence were. It's all gone now. I'm sure I'd be disappointed if I did by some chance happen to have an opportunity to visit the old ghetto. Nothing is the same and most of it isn't recognizable anymore.
I read your comments about the Jewish community with interest. There was a small section on the north east side of Chicago that had a huge Jewish population. Further to the north and west of the city was a suburb also heavily populated by Jewish people. That would be the Skokie which made headlines a few times when folks with swastikas decided they wanted to march through downtown Skokie. It was tense for for a while, but the march never happened. I don't recall now what the Jewish community did, but they held their ground. To this day Skokie is still nearly 100% Jewish, but I'm not so sure about the neighborhood in the city limits. I'm guessing they are speaking Spanish there now and not Hebrew. Jews are a steadfast people, apparently. They do look after one another very well and preserve their culture and traditions to the extreme.
Now that I've been here 4 years, I'm thinking I'd like to go back and visit those old familiar places. There is actually no reason why I can't. My daughter is fluent in Spanish. Maybe I can take her with.
There's now a shopping center where the house I grew up in was located.
When I was buying homes to renovate down in the city, I had to learn exactly which blocks on which streets were safe enough to work and be able to sell the house afterward.
Most of the houses I did buy were two-story all brick homes with a full basement.
At one time they were luxurious homes, but were now pushing 100 years old.
Almost all of them were built by the wealthy, then around the 50 year age marker most were occupied by lower middle class. By the time they reached the 75 year age mark, depreciation drew the poor classes of folks. Due to their age and inability to afford all the maintenance required, most of them fell into disrepair, and as such the areas became slums.
Most of those who were living in the slums moved out and into public housing, leaving the houses vacant, during which time anything that could be sold was stripped from them, and transients would live in them illegally.
Little by little the areas got cleaned up somewhat, but the houses themselves were in deplorable shape.
The transients living in them often caused a fire in the house, so they often got condemned and boarded up.
Those not torn down by the city were still owned by the banks, and the banks did not want them, so sold them at REO auctions. And this is how I bought almost all of the houses after I studied the area.
Unfortunately, I was not in with the group that would buy up whole city blocks at once, then as they finished each project in a house, they would sell it to the next guy in their group, each time upping the price, until all their jobs were completed. By then the houses were appraised considerably high and the yuppies began buying them up for big dollars.
My point here is, it is possible to turn a slum into an elite neighborhood, but only if you have enough people working together to do it. And they cover a large enough area that the area becomes safe again.
My biggest enjoyment in working in old houses, was when I had the opportunity to help restore historical homes that were classified as historical. This is one of the reasons I obtained Knob and Tube Certification on my Electricians License.
Not to get into too much detail here, but there were two types of knob n tube installations, one safe, and one deadly. Many of the original historical homes were wired using the deadly, or switched ground system of wiring.
There were only like three of us in the county who could go in and convert the system over to the safe system while maintaining all of the original wiring. The other two guys charged an arm and a leg to do this, which is why I was called on so many historical wiring jobs. And because I was also a licensed plumber, I got some of that work also. And when they saw I could restore fancy millwork, and remake ornamentation easily, I often got to do tons of things in those old houses.
There was a short period of time when other contractors were calling me to help with unusual situations they encountered in buildings old and new they were working on.
I really loved those days even though it was hard work. On more than one occasion I was told I was called because they knew I could do the impossible and for a more than fair price. Heck, one designer even had me restoring old plaster humongous picture frames in some old mansions they were working in. It almost became a sideline business for me, but I didn't really like doing them all that much. I just knew how to think outside the box to repair things is all.
OK, don't want to sound like I'm bragging on myself.
The area where I bought an apartment complex, was mostly white, a few Asians, and couple of blacks.
As each tenant moved out, I completely renovated and upgraded each of the apartments. I was fortunate for a time as I had a few seniors who chose to rent the lower apartments, so I made sure and only put older adults over them.
I still had about four more end apartments to finish when someone offered to buy them from me. The price was right so I accepted his offer.
Within about five years after I sold them to him, the area turned totally black, and he had the place up for sale for less than half of what he paid me for them.
I bumped into him once at an REO auction, and he told me the folks living in the four end apartments were still there when he sold out. When I said I was sorry he lost so much money, he asked what I was talking about. I said I saw what you sold them for, that was quite a loss. He said oh contraire my friend. I had next to no maintenance costs since you upgraded everything, and when a new tenant moved in, the rent was more than double what you charged. I more than doubled my money which was my goal, in fact I almost tripled my money. I got out at just the right time.
I was not so lucky myself. My wife thought I was crazy for renting out those big two-story brick homes for only 350 to 375 a month and the others for only 300 to 325 a month. But then I only had tenants to hold those houses until they moved out, then I could renovate them for resale. So I looked at it as Inventory earning a profit while sitting, hi hi.
Oh well, those days are long gone now!
Chicago must have gone through the same changes in demographics as did St Louis. Downtown was famous for it's wealth of stores owned by wealthy families. At one time those wealthy landlords lived close to their investments, that is to say, around the perimeter of downtown Chicago. Well before I was born they all moved to the suburbs. Their mansions were broken up into apartments and middle class folks soon took over the area. Then as you describe with St Louis, that area became populated with poor black folks. The magnificent mansions turned into slums. The FHA, I believe it was, came in with dump trucks full of $100 bills and tore down most of those old buildings to replace them with public housing. These replacements were huge skyscrapers housing thousands of families. Well, if all those ex-mansions could only devolve into slums I don't know why anybody thought skyscrapers full of poor people would do better. That public housing project became world famous in fact for it's deteriorating way of life. It got so bad that not even the police and fire department would respond to calls therein. The last project in that area was to tear down those skyscraper slums and replace them with condos. Whoever took on that project had more money than the government, obviously. However, the condos now sitting on what was world class slums were not cheap. They were right up against downtown Chicago, and you know how it goes in real estate. It's all about location, location, location. The poor black people could no longer afford to live there and it became Yuppie heaven instantly. So now, I believe it's still in place, what was the wealthiest neighborhood in town turned into slums became Yuppie-ville. It's truly an amazing history.
I've only seen photographs of your work but your written descriptions too tell me a lot about your ability to build high quality specialized domiciles. I know you are not the braggart type, but you do deserve some recognition for your abilities. It seems as if your peers did recognize your abilities and patronized you, which to my way of thinking is the highest award possible. I keep thinking that I would have liked to know you about forty years ago, but then you would most likely have been too busy to pal around with me so that I could learn something from you.
In St. Louis they built a massive project housing named Pruitt-Eigoe.
Brand spanking new, and within only about 3 years, those who lived there totally destroyed and gutted the place.
After the building was condemned, it sat for many years empty. I don't remember what ever happened with it though.
Almost the same thing has happened here. We have projects about 1 mile from me called Montgomery Village.
It is more than 2/3 vacant now, and several of the buildings in the complex are now boarded up.
Lot's of problems in them. Whenever you hear sirens blaring, that is usually where they are headed.
I'm always dumbfounded how so many college graduates know so little about anything, other than what they were taught. It's like they all have tunnel vision, hi hi.
I may not know what they know, but then I probably have no reasons to know it, since I don't work in those fields.
As far as helping others, I hired a lot of green kids and taught them the aspects of the trades. But there too, most only wanted to learn one thing, not everything about the industry.
I taught carpentry for VOTEC down in Arizona. Kent Titze was the head over the project. This was a volunteer job to help fulfill one of my qualifications to get my General Contractors license. I was there much longer than needed though, stayed for two whole semesters, even though I only had to teach introductory, I taught the last classes at the masters level.
One might say I was a curious kid and wanted to know how things worked, and how they were made.
Even as a young boy, I loved to take things apart, and most of them I could put back together again and they still worked.
I also converted parts from some to others to make them work better too, hi hi.
In my early teen years, I would go around to businesses and study how they worked, and mainly take tours of factories.
After I graduated from school, my day off from work was usually a Tuesday, which is a slow day at most factories, so they didn't mind showing me through their companies. But that would never happen in this day and age.
What it boils down to is when you see how things are made, and the many different ways some things are made, you pick-up things and store them in your brain for later reference.
And to be perfectly honest, I was never a very good employee in any of the trades fields. They wanted it done fast, and didn't care all that much about appearance or minor errors. I was too much of a perfectionist for them, hi hi.
At least the electrician I worked for was sorta like me, a perfectionist, but only up to a point. I think he thought I had OCD because things had to be perfect, hi hi.
But the plumber I worked for. And this was back in the Cast Iron days. He knew how to legally cut corners on nearly everything we did.
You may not be interested, but I'll explain one thing so you know what I mean.
Cast Iron bell fittings, after the stack is stuck into the bell, is first wrapped with Oakem then tamped down, followed by a pouring of hot lead, which also gets tamped down.
My boss did not want the oakum tamped super tight, and we used one turn less of oakem than normal.
The oakem was only lightly tamped down so it didn't take so much lead to fill the joint, then it was only lightly tamped down, with no final seal pour over it. It works and there is never a leak, but it is not a completely solid joint either. On a tall stack, one could bump it hard enough to loosen a seal. although in real life, most folks are not bumping into their standpipes or vent pipes, hi hi.
When I did a joint, I used enough oakum for four full turns, then packed that sucker down tight. Then I would pour the lead and pack it down tight too, which also packed the oakem even tighter. Then I always finished with a final lead pour to make sure that pipe was sealed forever. In my opinion, tapping the lead down breaks its seal with the cast iron. But you do have to tap down the first pour to seat it tight against the oakum.
In the later years most plumbers used No-Hub Bands, which was OK, but rubber does deteriorate over time.
I still did the oakum and lead, but instead of finishing off with a lead pour, on vertical joints I used a polyester resin pour, mainly because it looked nicer, and was quicker to do. I even had a special wrap made for doing horizontal resin pours so they came out slick as a whistle.
OK, I see I'm rambling again, hi hi.
I know I mentioned it before, but there really is no need to apologize for or to avoid rambling. You are generally writing about things you enjoy and accomplishments from your past. It's the real you and there is no reason to suppress it.
I haven't lived in many houses during my lifetime, and we only custom built one of them. We hired a general contractor for the project who did most of his work 30 miles to the north of our site. Our project was outside his usual range for travel, but since he came highly recommended to us he accepted. The downside was that he didn't know any of the local tradesmen. He claimed that he asked all the shops he could find in the village, but they all declined what seemed to be a gravy type job. Thus the general contractor had to call on some of his more distant buddies or hire people he did not know very well.
After we lived in the house many years it needed some maintenance. Both the electrician we called and the plumber told us they recall when the house was being built. It was the first in a large empty plot of land and that alone made it interesting. I told the plumber that he did good work for me and too bad he wasn't around when the house was being built. The contractor was looking for local help. The plumber told me that he recalled being asked but did not want to work for a contractor because there is too much emphasis on cost cutting and short cuts. That might be true for track housing but my home was being custom built and in need of quality workmanship. Apparently general contractors don't have a good reputation in the trades. LOL
The stories I hear about today's college grads are mixed. I've been told by more than a few employers how "uneducated" fresh outs really are. They are not prepared at all for earning a living in today's business environment. Then again, I've met some of these supposedly degreed imbeciles and often walked away with a much different impression. Some high school kids are smarter than the average college grad, but there are some truly brilliant minds out there too. The smart ones don't look for mind numbing jobs, which is what a lot of employers are offering kids that just paid $150k to get educated. Technical school grads have no problems, but the other fields sometimes take students just for the income to stay solvent. The truth in the matter is that the best companies attract the best graduates. That could be why a lot of airheads become accountants.
I've always lived in my parents house, well until I turned 18, which was after my mom and dad moved west to Ballwin.
My cousin and I got an apartment in Brentwood almost next door to where he worked, and about 3 miles from where I worked. We were not there long because we both got drafted. Ironically, that apartment was still not rented when I got out, my cousin stayed in the service. So I managed to get it back, and that is where I was living when I got married the first time. From there I got an apartment in Kirkwood for 5 years, when the opportunity came up to move into my grandmothers house when she passed away. This was also after my dad's heart attack, so I quit my day job to go back to work at the florist as manager of the cut flower shop, basically taking over most of my dads duties.
While I was living there, I concurrently lived in my girlfriends house after she got ill and needed a caretaker.
After she died I remarried and moved to Creve Coeur where I was for over 20 years, and then down here for nearly 20 years.
At the florist, we rarely if ever hired a college grad, simply because they would not be there long enough to bother training them. The only exception was if their degree was in horticulture or licensed in advanced floral design.
I know tons of kids out of college cannot find jobs in their fields of study.
And many large businesses work bass ackwards, they won't hire you without a degree in something. Which makes no sense to me at all, unless it is to push business to the colleges.
I think one of the main reasons we had employees who came to work for us as teens, and stayed working for us there whole life is because they were treated like family. We did have a few who worked in our department to learn how we did things, mostly after coming to us from another florist, but their next step was often opening their own florist.
I had to laugh at some of the questions my dad would ask a potential employee, especially if they applied for a truck driving position. One of the questions had to do with their knowledge of the types of brooms and how each was used, hi hi. Also if they knew how to check the oil, air up the tires, and even how to safely change a tire. Talking only about the small delivery van drivers here. It's amazing how many have no idea how to change a tire, and that was 40 years ago. Today most have no idea. They just call AAA on their cell phones.
I was born at an awkward time. Technically, I suppose, I'm not one of those Baby Boomers because the war wasn't officially over until I was 10 months old. The economy was in the throes of change and it affected the work force. By the time I was getting married and looking for a reliable income, all that was needed was a high school diploma. A college degree was nice to have because it opened up more opportunities, but it certainly wasn't a requirement back in the 50's. Today a Masters degree is preferred for any professional job, and those are the jobs today's undergrads are looking for. I got a great job with Motorola, but my position was guaranteed to be static unless I had a degree. That didn't become obvious until I was working there twenty some odd years when all my co-workers were degreed and I wasn't. No way would they (my coworkers) allow a guy with only a high school diploma to manage their activities.
An emphasis on education became necessary because the type of jobs that evolved after the war required it. You didn't need to be a rocket scientist to work in a greenhouse, but that had more to do with there being no rockets or space program in existence yet. When Kennedy decided to put a man on the moon an entire new category of jobs were created and most of them did not require physical labor skills. The ability to think through tough problems and come up with exquisite solutions was mandatory in many industries. It wasn't good enough to know how to launch a rocket. You also had to anticipate flight problems that never existed previously. On the job training simply wasn't enough. The ability to think through and solve problems is what that earned degree signifies. Some of those apparently useless courses, such as humanities, might not seem applicable to statistical analysis but the mental discipline and well rounded education goes a long way to help solve unanticipated problems. That's why big companies look for graduates. They don't have time to train their managers in the basic skills required to beat the competition and maximize the company's profits. That degree is some assurance that the applicant is capable. As we both know it's not a guarantee because even the student who graduates last in his in med school becomes a doctor. LOL
I think that is basically what happened to me when I worked at MRTC.
Not only was I next in line to take over as department head, I had also been in training for six months working directly with the department head who was retiring. It had always been company policy to hire within the company ranks, and never hire from outside the company, much less a person who worked for us as a job shopper/freelancer.
About two weeks before I was to take the reigns, and after I had been running the department on my own, with only the current department head lurking in the background, and he was more than pleased with how I was doing.
Suddenly the big shots came down and selected an outsider, a job shopper/freelancer to take the position, with only about 2 weeks of training to do so. My boss, the department head, just walked out, said he had some vacation time coming. Poof, he was gone.
I left a few weeks after he took over, but that was due to a family matter. Dad had a heart attack and I needed to take over his job at the flower shop. Although I would have quit anyhow before months end.
There is a bright light though. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't get that job, because the entire company changed for the worst right after I was gone. Even the guy who got the job I was supposed to get, now hated it, but was locked in.
Added all up, I've had over 18 years of college, but without a degree in anything.
Nearly all of the classes I took were taken as an auditor. So I paid like 10 bucks for what other paid 1000 bucks for. Same classes, same teachers, but I didn't get the piece of paper at the end.
Didn't really need it, since I was in a family business, and later owned my own businesses.
And those I hired to work for my companies, I hired people who knew what they were doing, not those who only had a piece of paper saying they knew what they were doing, because most didn't have any idea of how to do the job.
Ask any attorney if they were able to do their job after college without learning first how it is really done.
When I was studying at the University of Illinois there were a few classes which had student auditors sitting in the back. They got the same information that us up front students got, but the auditors were not allowed to participate in the discussions nor take any of the tests. Thus they didn't receive a grade and, of course, no credit for taking the class. I'm sure they all did it for the same reasons you did. It was cheap and they only wanted the knowledge, not the grade. That works fine in a family owned business, but when you are applying to be a project manager at Microsoft, for example, you won't even get an interview with that background. Neither path is better than the other, in my opinion. I did quite well without a degree working for a Fortune 500 company. I might have been wealthier when I was force to retire if I had a degree, but then, I think of my manager two levels up from me. We all were terminated and had to find ways to support our family after that. He had an advanced degree and many years experience managing, but the only job he could land after Motorola was a sales associate at Home Depot in their power tool department. The reason? Don't know for sure but he was well over the age of 40, as I was. The only difference was that I refused to be less that what I was when I left the company. Then, too, I didn't have kids at home to be concerned about.
I've heard a fair share of stories about people hired from the outside to do a job somebody on the inside was very capable of doing. Motorola did it because they felt they needed to change the business culture. When cell phones were poised to take off in a big way the old family style of running a company was no longer appropriate to fight the soon to be encountered fierce competition. Beating the competition was a matter of survival for the company and they felt it could not be done with the old way of thinking. Thus they had to bring in people who were not conditioned by their many years of employment within the company. Some new thinking was needed if the company was to survive. Well, the company survived but the cell phone business did not. Lenovo now owns what used to be Motorola cell phone manufacturing because the needed new culture never materialized soon enough. I don't really care anymore. My pension is now from an annuity Motorola bought from Prudential.
We got a copy of the test papers when they were handed out. But we could not turn them in to see how we did on them.
Even so, you know if you knew the answers or not, in most cases.
I actually took many more Seminars than I did college courses. Many of these were required to maintain certain licenses associated with the horticultural industry, and also in a few cases they had to do with the trades.
The very best classes I took were up in Canada, with Dr. Howard Resh who took me under his wing.
It was a mutual agreement, I needed to learn hydroponic chemistry, and he wanted to learn about my work in hydroculture. He took me with him when he changed which college system he worked for too.
I had bought into a pension at my late wife's job. They wouldn't let me keep paying into it after she died though.
Sorta glad I did get it though, because I get a check for $42.01 every month from the account until I die. Not much but it helps.
You certainly got quite an education even if it was a bit unorthodox. I like the idea of your sharing knowledge with Dr Resh. Obviously it was a win-win situation. I never had a single mentor at Motorola but I did learn a lot of bits from several different sources, mostly engineers. Sometimes I played dumb on purpose because those guys always loved to show off their brilliance. LOL
After working several years as a lab technician the company instituted a new policy. All people above a certain level had to take a number of classes or attend some other business related events each year. It was intended to get people interested in furthering their education at a school, but most people never followed through. After the first few years I ran out of classes related to what I was doing, or thought I was capable of doing. It became quite a challenge at review time to come up with goals that I thought I could achieve. After all, my next raise would be based on how well I accomplished those goals. I reached the top of my category eventually, but unless I got that degree I wasn't going any further up the ladder. Raises were kept to the cost of living too. I guess it was a fair system.
When I worked for Sverdrup & Parcell attending four seminars per year which they chose was not optional, and they paid for them. Many times they were in our same building so no excuse not to go, hi hi.
I never missed a one, which is probably why I got selected to work on some of their greater projects.
Although, most of the seminars had nothing to do with they type work we did.
I really hated it when I had an attack that caused me not to be able to do chip level repairs on gaming machines.
That is one job I really really loved, especially testing out the games and pinballs before sending them back out to the field.
I learned a lot about the gaming machines in casino's as well. And all I'll say about that is, you cannot beat a computer that keeps changing the odds on you. Some of the tricks used in the programming of those things alter the output of the random sealed generator portion that is inspected by the government.
Typical though, they think because they have secured the random number generator and it really is totally random, they never consider how those output numbers can be manipulated after the fact.
Or if you are in a casino that uses plastic cards with your data to play, how they manage to keep you playing while steadily going downhill. Best to put the card in to start the game, then take the card out to play. But don't forget to put it back in when you are done to claim your winnings or losses, else you lose them all.
