blankCashier at "Mister Burger" (A&W rip-off). Manager came in drunk one night, burned his hand in the deep-fat fryer, took him to the hospital. Fired for leaving the door unlocked. </p>
Appliance salesman at K-Mart. Lasted quite a few years, made comission and hourly wage. Good money. Quit to move to a new town where father had arranged construction job. </p>
Electronics technician. Construction job turned out to be a big lie, really corrupted relationship with father. Fixed stereos and other electronic equipment, installed car stereos. Decent money. Quit to go to college. First year of college was a disaster. Moved to Minneapolis for broadcasting school.</p>
Roller Rink DJ. Lasted one day. Management wanted the first three paychecks to pay for uniform and skates, then an "equipment allowance" taken out of subsequent checks.</p>
Strip club commentator. Discovered that naked women can be boring. Quit after graduation from school, moved to Colorado. </p>
On-air radio personality. Talked on the air a lot, made a few thousand commercials. Pissed off the owner by making fun of Ogalalla Nebraska (Take the 'L' out of 'Ogalalla' and it's 'Oga-a-a'. Got moved to midnight shift, then midnight shift cancelled. </p>
Television engineer. Responsible for producing two TV news shows a day. Station was sold, wiped everyone across the board. Moved back to Minnesota to help with family; second Big Lie from pop. Went back to college.</p>
Radio personality. Several years, part time while going to school. Different stations, different owners, fired for different reasons, none really realistic. Dealt with huge laughable egos. </p>
Janitor. Worked for Servicemaster. Good job, better pay than radio, better work situation all around. No egos, good boss. Graduated college suddenly. </p>
Programmer. First "professional" job. Started off doing file format transfers, promoted into R&D of electronic fingerprinting systems. Did some amazing work, made the company tons of money and several patents. Got a coffee cup. Started looking for a different job. They found out. Whoops.</p>
Contract programmer. 3-month contract developing communication & networking firmware for hydraulic servocontrollers. Lasted 13 months. Laid off when work was done. </p>
Contract engineer. Designed high-end audio products. Cool job, lots of fun, good boss, not great money, but sufficient, and lots of cool toys. Lasted five years, company imploded. </p>
Contract engineer. Designed front-end controller for automated assembly machines. Doubled throughput of machines. Good work, fun, good money. Contract ended. </p>
Partner in video production business. Produced a sales training video. Needed to sell 86 units to break even. Sold five. Business folded with a big financial loss. </p>
Senior Design Engineer. Contract, designing several different hardware & software products. Cool job, learned a tremendous amount, good people, good money. Economy started to crumble. Contract ended, not renewed. </p>
Software engineer. Conract. Continuation engineering of previous work. After comissioning the work, the originating company reneged on payment.</p>
Senior software engineer. Contract, large medical company. Designing communication software for obsolete equipment across company subsidiaries. Economy smackdown, company division dissolved. Contract ended, not renewed. </p>
Senior software engineer, DSP. Designing cool technology, support engineering of existing product. Permament position. Company lost DOD contract and 80% of their funding. Laid off after six weeks. </p>
Senior software engineer, DSP. Contract, continuation work on prior project. More patents. Company wanted to hire me full-time, but did not have enough funding. </p>
Senior software engineer. Contract. Designed software for advanced vehicle testing systems. Drive to Owatonna and back every day. Good pay, sucky drive. Contract ended. Good recommendations. </p>
No Pants last night. Got to see old friends again, which was nice.
chebutykin looked a little sick, hope she's okay. It's been so long since we've been out that I'd forgotten that it's nice to be able to order food and drink. We didn't. And we weren't able to go out afterwards.
Mystery meat of the day:
Possibly pork.