(no subject)
May. 24th, 2005 12:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dcseainThat five question meme...
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
Here are the questions![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
turtleduck posted for me (and my answers):
1. I think you'd make a good father. Do you think you'll ever want kids?
Thank you, and yes. I expect to eventually have at least a daughter. My sister even called me, unprompted, and said she'd surrogate for me; that was so sweet. :)
2. You have so many talents; how did you end up working in computers?
I ended up working in computers completely by happenstance. In high school i had to take 1 semester of Karel the Robot and 1 semester of Pascal. I also did an incidental amount of COBOL. I passed the Pascal course because the teacher took pity on me and upped my final exam to a D so i would pass. I HATE hacking. I love debugging, however. Because i had choices there, i did 3 years of genetics and recombinant DNA instead of computer stuff, along with Spanish and Mandarin. Because of high school, i swore i would never work with computers; alas, that tempted Fate.
In 1993 i temped for a few months at AT&T at their facility in Oakton, VA. I worked with Microsoft Excel there. From AT&T i went to temp at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. I started out in the School of Information Technology and Engineering. I rewrote their dBase III+ database to make it user friendly for the secretary who used the Mac. After that, i went the Office of University Publications. I rewrote their dBase III+ program they used for tracking the workflow through the office, while explaining to bigwigs at the university that "YES, your business cards MUST be PMS 342...Yes, i know your cards are currently black, but now they must be green...If you have issue with that you can call either the Board of Visitors, the Secretary of Education, or the Governor."
Then i moved to Boston. I temped at MIT, in the Bursar's Office, where my job was to download general ledger accounts from an IBM mainframe to a Mac, then reconcile those GLs using MS Excel, after converting the 1901 dates to the 1904 dates used by Mac, then converting the dates back again to upload the reconciled accounts. I went on to work at The Boston Company, which became Mellon Trust while i was there. I worked in the Corporate Systems and Technology Division, i.e. the people that run the servers. I ended up with no tasks assigned to me, and so wandered around the department looking for work. I tested software, designed templates for Word and Excel, and whatever else needed done: building servers, setting up offices, what have you. I walked out of there in Dec 1994 because i hated living in Boston. They offered me 70K to stay and run their phone systems. Sometimes i wonder that i walked out on that.
I spent 3.5 years of hell as a government contractor at the FAA, employed by Vitro, which became Tracor, which became BAE Systems in the end. There, i provided end-user support, hardware maintenance for equipment still under manufacturer warranty (i did say government contractor, didn’t i?), and did some database work in Access and Oracle. Oh, and help implement PCDOCS DOCSOpen there. I spent 5 months with a law firm as their tech guy for the DC and Tysons offices. Talk about your nightmare employers. Three practice groups left them in the month after i did, and i was the 6th IT person in that office in 8 months.
I took a breather with a 3 year detour, working at Whole Foods Market, as #2 on the front end, i.e. the cashiers, customer service, and the cash office. I also did tech support and Spanish HR stuff while i was there. Then back to hard-core tech with webMethods, again in a support role.
3. What is your greatest fear?
Never succeeding at anything for a sustainable amount of time. I have a long history of quitting or failing, at least in the eyes of others, to some greater or lesser degree.
This was the hardest of the questions for me to answer. There is little that i fear, or so it seems after several hours of introspection and chatting with people who've know me for a long time. There's one other person whose input i want on this one, so i may edit my response to this question tomorrow, oh, look at the time; i mean later today.
4. What annoys the living daylights out of you?
Willful ignorance (especially, though not only, when paired with self-righteousness), Bigotry of any stripe, & Leaf blowers, equally. I'm sure there are other things, but those are the biggies. And i know it's an odd grouping, but alas, if i could ban any 1 technology, it would be leaf blowers.
5. If you were independently wealthy, how would you occupy your time?
First, i’d buy houses: one in toward the city, one out in the mountains somewhere, on 600 or so acres. I would then go back to school and finish at least a BA in linguistics, specializing in some combination of Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic, and then see what happens from there. I think eventually i would go on to become a teacher, as that’s what i’ve always wanted to do.
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
Here are the questions
turtleduck posted for me (and my answers):1. I think you'd make a good father. Do you think you'll ever want kids?
Thank you, and yes. I expect to eventually have at least a daughter. My sister even called me, unprompted, and said she'd surrogate for me; that was so sweet. :)
2. You have so many talents; how did you end up working in computers?
I ended up working in computers completely by happenstance. In high school i had to take 1 semester of Karel the Robot and 1 semester of Pascal. I also did an incidental amount of COBOL. I passed the Pascal course because the teacher took pity on me and upped my final exam to a D so i would pass. I HATE hacking. I love debugging, however. Because i had choices there, i did 3 years of genetics and recombinant DNA instead of computer stuff, along with Spanish and Mandarin. Because of high school, i swore i would never work with computers; alas, that tempted Fate.
In 1993 i temped for a few months at AT&T at their facility in Oakton, VA. I worked with Microsoft Excel there. From AT&T i went to temp at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. I started out in the School of Information Technology and Engineering. I rewrote their dBase III+ database to make it user friendly for the secretary who used the Mac. After that, i went the Office of University Publications. I rewrote their dBase III+ program they used for tracking the workflow through the office, while explaining to bigwigs at the university that "YES, your business cards MUST be PMS 342...Yes, i know your cards are currently black, but now they must be green...If you have issue with that you can call either the Board of Visitors, the Secretary of Education, or the Governor."
Then i moved to Boston. I temped at MIT, in the Bursar's Office, where my job was to download general ledger accounts from an IBM mainframe to a Mac, then reconcile those GLs using MS Excel, after converting the 1901 dates to the 1904 dates used by Mac, then converting the dates back again to upload the reconciled accounts. I went on to work at The Boston Company, which became Mellon Trust while i was there. I worked in the Corporate Systems and Technology Division, i.e. the people that run the servers. I ended up with no tasks assigned to me, and so wandered around the department looking for work. I tested software, designed templates for Word and Excel, and whatever else needed done: building servers, setting up offices, what have you. I walked out of there in Dec 1994 because i hated living in Boston. They offered me 70K to stay and run their phone systems. Sometimes i wonder that i walked out on that.
I spent 3.5 years of hell as a government contractor at the FAA, employed by Vitro, which became Tracor, which became BAE Systems in the end. There, i provided end-user support, hardware maintenance for equipment still under manufacturer warranty (i did say government contractor, didn’t i?), and did some database work in Access and Oracle. Oh, and help implement PCDOCS DOCSOpen there. I spent 5 months with a law firm as their tech guy for the DC and Tysons offices. Talk about your nightmare employers. Three practice groups left them in the month after i did, and i was the 6th IT person in that office in 8 months.
I took a breather with a 3 year detour, working at Whole Foods Market, as #2 on the front end, i.e. the cashiers, customer service, and the cash office. I also did tech support and Spanish HR stuff while i was there. Then back to hard-core tech with webMethods, again in a support role.
3. What is your greatest fear?
Never succeeding at anything for a sustainable amount of time. I have a long history of quitting or failing, at least in the eyes of others, to some greater or lesser degree.
This was the hardest of the questions for me to answer. There is little that i fear, or so it seems after several hours of introspection and chatting with people who've know me for a long time. There's one other person whose input i want on this one, so i may edit my response to this question tomorrow, oh, look at the time; i mean later today.
4. What annoys the living daylights out of you?
Willful ignorance (especially, though not only, when paired with self-righteousness), Bigotry of any stripe, & Leaf blowers, equally. I'm sure there are other things, but those are the biggies. And i know it's an odd grouping, but alas, if i could ban any 1 technology, it would be leaf blowers.
5. If you were independently wealthy, how would you occupy your time?
First, i’d buy houses: one in toward the city, one out in the mountains somewhere, on 600 or so acres. I would then go back to school and finish at least a BA in linguistics, specializing in some combination of Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic, and then see what happens from there. I think eventually i would go on to become a teacher, as that’s what i’ve always wanted to do.
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-24 05:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-24 07:52 am (UTC)Five for Nosebeepbear
Date: 2005-05-24 08:33 am (UTC)2. What is your biggest hope/desire for your daughter?
3. What is the thing you have done in your life about which you are most proud?
4. What is your greatest expectation of humankind?
5. If you had the opportunity to start a civilization from scratch, how would it be governed?
Five for Chelona
Date: 2005-05-24 09:06 am (UTC)2. What is the shape of justice?
3. Whence comes your handle; it appears to be Greek?
4. Have you considered seminary? Why or why not?
5. What do you want most?
Re: Five for Chelona
Date: 2005-05-25 12:08 pm (UTC)