OT: Political dead horse

Customers can be great. They furnish interesting problems, express their gratitude and admiration when you help them, and write big checks. I an not such an artistic purist that I don't enjoy praise from guys who have billion-dollar budgets and responsibilities to match. When important people that I respect express admiration for my designs, it validates their/my worth.

As far as the business junk goes, you hire people to do all that stuff.

John

Please explain: what has to happen REAL SOON NOW?

John

I know a couple of educators who send me promising kids. I hire them on their say-so, for a summer... the only way you can really know a person is to work with them. If they're good, I hire them again, sometimes permanently.

There's nothing wrong with young people taking grunt jobs. It's good experience in showing up on time, and being responsible, things like that. Being fired a time or two can be salutory, too.

BSEE, B- average, and I barely managed to stomach that. I actually never graduated (I mean, who wants to stand in a black robe, in the New Orleans sun in June, and listen to fatheads drone on for hours?) but they did let me pick up the diploma.

I've hired, and worked with, lots of PhDs. But now I figure that anybody who wants to do serious circuit design wouldn't have plowed through all those years of academics... he'd be too impatient to get to work.

Besides, getting a doctorate teaches a guy to follow rules.

John

On 14 Dec 2005 18:06:55 -0800, snipped-for-privacy@ieee.org wrote in Msg.

and bin Laden and Saddam and Kim Il Sung. Although those are more right-wing than the Democrats, to be fair.

robert

["Followup-To:" header set to sci.electronics.design.] On Thu, 15 Dec 2005 01:17:33 GMT, Rich Grise wrote in Msg.

Look, Rich, this is not quite one-dimensional enough to parse with Thompson. It's anti-American.

robert

This doesn't exactly match my experience. I plowed through my years of academic study because I found it interesting, and because it was taking me to places where I wanted to go. Both my parents had graduated B.Sc. in chemistry and subsequently worked as chemists, so I knew and liked the subject, and was good at it.

I liked it a lot better when I moved on from under-graduate work to post-graduate research, and started acquiring new skills - glass-blowing, computer programming, lens grinding and electronics, in that order. It wasn't until I got involved in electronics that I learned enough about what ti involved and what it offered to get seriously interested.

Once I'd got that far, I was interested enough to want to do serious circuit/system design work, but not so interested that I'd throw away all the work I'd already done on the Ph.D. rather than hang on long enough to finish it.

And getting a doctorate doesn't teach a guy to follow the rules - it teaches them how to work within and get around the rules. After a few years as a graduate student, I regularly claimed that the most important skill you had to learn was petty theft. This was deeply shocking to the more conformist of the other graduate students (which was why I said it), but the other people who were doing real research understood exactly what I meant.

The Ph.D. isn't a label, but an experience. No two graduate students have the same experience, and what their specific expereience does to and for them depends on their characters and abilities. A blanket rejection of all Ph.D.s is as good an example of irrational prejudice as would be a blanket rejection of all Jews, of all blacks,or of all caucasians - probably a bit better, because you are rejecting a higher proportion of able candidates

------------------ Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Right on!

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Where did you read "cancel" in my statement? My smileys mean I'm happy ;-)

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Unfortunately, common sense isn't required to merely learn to be a good shot. Those lizards with the sticky tongues seem to be a pretty good shot, and - well, I guess the common sense level of today's repugnocrats is commensurate with that of a lizard with a sticky tongue.

--
Flap!
The Pig Bladder from Uranus, still waiting for that
hot babe to ask what my favorite planet is. ;-j

And not only that, but he's quite right.

--
Flap!
The Pig Bladder from Uranus, still waiting for that
hot babe to ask what my favorite planet is. ;-j

Yes, happy making death threats. One sick dude.

Have you introduced the Church of George to the Church of Steve yet?

Thanks, Rich

[snip] [snip]

My father-in-law was a machinist, ran shops in Huntington, WV, then in Houston for the big oil firms.

He was doing plasma machining in the late '50's.

Extraordinarily well-read fellow... probably could recite _every_ line from _any_ Shakespeare work.

Even back then he was lamenting how hard it was to find a high school grad who could read a blueprint ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

That rings a bell. One of the machinists at Kent Instruments in Luton used to cap my Shakespear quotes. Interesting guy. He took over from me as "office representative" for our trade union when I moved on to EMI Central Research in West London.

------------ Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Don't forget the lathe. Usefulness vs. complexity is much greater than with the mill. It's amazing how many problems can be solved in axial symmetry.

robert

Same here. Took a lot of friends-making with the hard core machine shop techs to get to the level at which they accepted me breaking an expensive tool (because they realized they could have broken it in the same situation).

robert

Disagree. Round things are boring (pun!?) Besides, you can turn stuff on a mill... chuck the work and put a cutter in a vise on the bed.

John

I've seen some nasty fights in shops. The guys work in close proximity, compete in quality and technique, and have sharp, heavy tools near at hand. A lot of them are gun collectors/makers, too.

John

What a P.O.C.

--
 Thanks,
    - Win

Gee Win, did it really take you a week to come up with that retort?

--
  Keith