So I've been working 48 hours a month for the last 9 months at the library, getting a taste for being a librarian. And I like the work. I find shelving books relaxing. I'm good at polishing DVDs back into shape. I'm good at the job. Unfortunately, the librarians prefer to only work with the same gender, and as it stands the law isn't interested in correcting their bias. In the real world, some jobs just aren't allowed to men while women are in the position to insist or demand otherwise. The Personnel Dept follows their wishes and the threat of a male librarian is removed. So, what are the alternatives?
Meeting with a local company engineer there's the hint of a rumor of a job, maybe this time more than an interview a year ago. I'm calling this my final straw for this area. Either they hire me or I'm going down the mountain for work. I don't like that, but if the jobs are all in the lowlands I'm certainly not going to keep trying to find work up here with all the bright high school students fleeing as fast as they can graduate. That's the trouble with a region that has no industry but grocery retail and "medicine" and Medicine. One puts you in the ground and the other makes you not mind that's where you're going. I'll let you work out which is legal.
I wonder if all of rural California is just pot growing? If it were all legal, the price of the stuff will drop to nothing, or nearly nothing. Boutique value is probably not significant.
I read this week in the Sacramento Bee newspaper that a Grass Valley machinist company is bailing out of up here and moving to Rocklin (down the mountain) where there's a lot more machinists, and has a whole reality show about American manufacturing. The company founder is a vicious looking ex-con former boxer who is a master machinist with a stare that could peel paint. I don't think I would want to work for him, personally, but I approve of the pride in craftsmanship. He's got close to 20 years as a machinist, which is enough time to make mistakes and learn things and get some very firm ideas.
I wish I knew about being a machinist, but I'd want to start with a proper AutoCAD teacher, and then learn 3D CAD suitable for CNC part upload for manufacturing. I'd also like to learn about proper heat treating techniques and technology so that parts I made could be hardened properly into things like pistons and bearings etc. I want to build or improve engines and make vehicles. I despise the current choice for scooters and motorcycles. I want to build a motorcycle with the automatic transmission of a scooter, and I already figured out how to do it easily. Its so easy I am baffled why that isn't the normal way. Its one of those things where the words "are you stupid?" blurts out. Its never the right thing to say, and makes enemies rather than friends, but it still happens for the obvious reasons of shocked disbelief.
If I knew 3D CAD I could learn CNC, or at least enough as to know who to take it to for CNC manufacturing, and then off to heat treating and validation testing. I don't trust the quality of the Chinese, or rather I know the Chinese build to the exact specifications of the contract and I know engineering parts contracts are usually written by ignorant lawyers so the parts of often junk where it counts. I trust lawyers to be incompetent. I've dealt with their mistakes far too often industry, you see. All IT workers have. We know that lawyers are CYA jackasses. Quality comes from pride and better quality standards.
While I'm pretty sure there's a market for RVs, especially if you don't mind selling for bricks of marijuana, I'm someone who wants properly clean cash, not drugs. And while the American dream seems to be dead today, gnawed by brain eating zombies, I still want a paying job. There are many jobs I'd rather starve than do, including "inside sales" which is the current code phrase for telemarketing. Nearly the entire solar industry today is scammers. Tesla on examination is actually in the business of selling carbon offsets to other car companies, through trading lease-rights for electric cars to companies which don't make their own through complex schemes. One piece of investing advice from Warren Buffett, who was a geologist like me once upon a time, is "don't invest in any company whose product requires an accountant to understand". That's very good advice. This is why I stayed away from investing in housing derivatives and Enron. If its too complex, it is a scam. Also, any investment branch where its biggest fans say the phrase "You're crazy if you don't get into this!" is guaranteed to be a scam. There's even a Japanese version of the same phrase which caused their 25 year economic depression, still ongoing. I care about that because my investments typically make me a months wages a few times a month. Why do I still want a job? Well, retirement with compounding interest is nice and best to let that sit and grow. Better to have a job and maintain the low expectations. After all, the companies can crash, and then where would I be? If you can build a trailer to live inside you still have a roof over your head, even if that roof is on wheels. At least the floor comes with it.
It would be in my best interest to learn AutoCAD and 3D CAD in coming months. As much as I like being a librarian, and as welcoming as patrons make me feel because I answer their questions without stress or rancor unlike some I'd rather not name, the girls club will never allow me to be paid to do such an EASY job they pretend it SO DIFFICULT. No, its easy. Really it is. You don't even have to sell things. You just stand there, smile and operate the computer. Hardly any money changes hands. I deserve that kind of job because I am good at it and such an unstressful job should not be the sole domain of a gender that already avoids heart attacks. Mine needs it more. And I already do the work of three librarians. That's probably why they refuse to hire me. A threat, you see? The danger of being competent is you threaten those who aren't. They've NEVER allow a competent employee to make them look bad. Sigh. Unions. Oh well. It was nice work, time to move on.
I suppose I need to find a freeware version of CAD that uses the right commands, and a manual to teach me how to do it. Once I do climb that very steep slope into competence, I should have more options for employment in a field that has people who don't offend me.
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