Some post career fair observations from a friend

Disruptor is a word that is nails on a chalkboard for me. When someone has to call themselves a disruptor you know they're crap.

Like "maker". "Oh, so you changed the cord on your MacBook charger? You must be a maker!"

W T F'in F people?

But not surprising. Back when I was teaching labs, I showed a student how to siphon liquids from one container to another...like you would siphon gas into a can. He looked at me like I was practicing the dark arts.

And this was college....
 
"Maker" is thing now?

That's going to rank with "Provider". STop.. IT!

:)
 
If you know the “Charm of Making,” you’re golden!

E3.jpg
 
"Maker" is thing now?

That's going to rank with "Provider". STop.. IT!

:)

Yea, man....dunno.

When I was a kid, I started out with model rockets & RC airplanes. I got tired of losing my rockets, so I learned enough electronics to build one of those little tracker things that worked with walkie talkies. That led to more electronics and tinkering with computers (Apple & some Z-80 CP/M stuff). Got reasonably competent at Basic and Pascal...enough to design a BBS system with a buddy that had some minor success.

But I was more interested in things that went fast and made loud noises, so while my buddy went into computer science, I did the MechE thing. What surprised me, though, was how engrossed people were with why things worked...rather that actually making things that worked. My class was a really nice group of folks. Really smart people. Not many, though, had an eye as to how to go from zero to making something work while most of my projects god made out of parts from the bargain bin from the hobby shop.

I've been back to school a couple of times since then, and it always surprised me how many people lack a basic, fundamental understanding of how things work, or better yet, how to make them work. Basic mechanics, basic electricity, basic fluids...it always seemed intuitive to me, but I guess not everyone is wired (or plumbed) that way.
 
Is 'maker' and 'provider' the new 'Who is John Galt?' bumper sticker? Congrats numb nuts, you've heard of a book.
 
Does anyone happen to know how long it usually takes to get an interview invite (if of course that's what they decide) from the time your application is pulled for review for Delta? Just wondering if i should give up hope for now or not. Supposedly my app was pulled back on Nov 1.

Sorry no one answered your question, lol. I wish I could help but I have no idea.

Anyone?
 
"Have you failed any checkrides?" Yes, my private and my initial CFI then STOP.

I'm sure you can elaborate. "Yes, my instrument and CFI. I learned more from those experiences than all of the checkrides I have passed combined."

You might get a follow up giving you an opportunity for a positive response, or it might move on. "I didn't realize what I didn't know, I studied it and it may have saved someone's life when XYZ happened 2 years later." I am nearly certain all of us could give an honest answer similar to that regarding a checkride bust.

Interviews are an opportunity to paint yourself in the best light. The circumstances and questions don't matter -- you are already talking, that's the hard part. Getting there. The answers are what you control. Think about the message and impression you want to leave, and work backwards from there.
 
- We recommend update your application monthly (particularly if you are actively flying and building your hours).

From the slide I cut out above... 5,000** hour "time-builders?" That's why you are going to work, to make 5,200 hours?

**average hours of new hires.
 
I don't let my instrument students get their IFR tickets in a glass airplanes. Why? Assuming they study the manuals and know the system, it takes me about 2-3 flights to transition a student to a G1000 after they get their ticket in steam gauges. The other way around? They almost might as well start from scratch.
...
Discuss?

Still somewhat actually teaching in both, and in my case it is to just barely keep myself instrument current (all my regular flying is VFR).

The glass/steam gauge doesn't make any difference. Instrument students are learning radio work, SA, how to brief charts, pre flight weather. What the panel looks like is maybe 5% of it. Early on, I don't even let them load the FPL- I just ask if what's on what they copied from DEL is what they want to load in it. Once they are doing it themselves, they've got a good grasp on the other stuff. I don't let them use the auto pilot until they get to that point either.
 
Yea, man....dunno.

When I was a kid, I started out with model rockets & RC airplanes. I got tired of losing my rockets, so I learned enough electronics to build one of those little tracker things that worked with walkie talkies. That led to more electronics and tinkering with computers (Apple & some Z-80 CP/M stuff). Got reasonably competent at Basic and Pascal...enough to design a BBS system with a buddy that had some minor success.

Which BBS system? I ran a few in the old days...

I've been back to school a couple of times since then, and it always surprised me how many people lack a basic, fundamental understanding of how things work, or better yet, how to make them work. Basic mechanics, basic electricity, basic fluids...it always seemed intuitive to me, but I guess not everyone is wired (or plumbed) that way.

I've wondered more than once if there would be a demand for a...some kind of pre-VoTech school or something that taught these very things.

My father was always a car guy, and as a retirement project/hobby, he decided to buy a machine shop from a friend. He's got this monstrosity of a Bridgeport mill and a lathe. He's teaching himself this stuff by making motorcycle and car parts for himself and his friends. This was after he went to the local vo-tech to re-learn some advanced welding skills, because he got bitten by the bug to make custom exhaust systems.

The man is 73 years old and refuses to stop learning practical things. I'm trying to follow his example..
 
Which BBS system? I ran a few in the old days...



I've wondered more than once if there would be a demand for a...some kind of pre-VoTech school or something that taught these very things.

My father was always a car guy, and as a retirement project/hobby, he decided to buy a machine shop from a friend. He's got this monstrosity of a Bridgeport mill and a lathe. He's teaching himself this stuff by making motorcycle and car parts for himself and his friends. This was after he went to the local vo-tech to re-learn some advanced welding skills, because he got bitten by the bug to make custom exhaust systems.

The man is 73 years old and refuses to stop learning practical things. I'm trying to follow his example..

It was a CP/M oriented system that ran on the Epson QX-10 called "The Classy System". Think about 1983 we had about a dozen systems up in various places. It was right on the precipice of when the IBM thing happened. We were deep into using screen control codes for full screen control and other fun stuff as we were trying to get away from the scroll text and "dump to dos" form of file downloads. Hard to do with just 1200 baud, but we had it worked out.

We had a 2.0 version in the works that would have been bleeding edge for the time. File downloads were still driving participation, but we had figured out that to drive the message sections, content was king and you weren't going to get there while people were downloading files, so we had a rough proto-system that would have shared messages and postings between systems.

There was a pretty rapid shift at that point to MS-DOS and as a couple high school students, we didn't have the resources to hang on. Those boxes were pretty expensive in those pre-clone days, but most of our base was switching over, so ultimately we shuttered the systems around the end of 1984. We were both leaving for school the next year anyway.

The QX-10 was a really neat box for its time. It had software driven disk controllers, so you could read practically any disk format for which you had the profile (always the big issue between different CP/M systems), and the drives could be independently assigned, so you could have one drive as an Apple CP/M format while the other was Northstar or whatever. Very cool for the time. The last year we had managed to save up for a 10MB hard drive. It was bigger than a shoebox and sounded like a turbine when fired up. We got it at a discount, but as I recall it was a cool grand retail.

Fun times. I've never seen a history of those times that got the scene quite right, but it really was the Wild West.
 
It was a CP/M oriented system that ran on the Epson QX-10 called "The Classy System". Think about 1983 we had about a dozen systems up in various places. It was right on the precipice of when the IBM thing happened. We were deep into using screen control codes for full screen control and other fun stuff as we were trying to get away from the scroll text and "dump to dos" form of file downloads. Hard to do with just 1200 baud, but we had it worked out.

We had a 2.0 version in the works that would have been bleeding edge for the time. File downloads were still driving participation, but we had figured out that to drive the message sections, content was king and you weren't going to get there while people were downloading files, so we had a rough proto-system that would have shared messages and postings between systems.

There was a pretty rapid shift at that point to MS-DOS and as a couple high school students, we didn't have the resources to hang on. Those boxes were pretty expensive in those pre-clone days, but most of our base was switching over, so ultimately we shuttered the systems around the end of 1984. We were both leaving for school the next year anyway.

The QX-10 was a really neat box for its time. It had software driven disk controllers, so you could read practically any disk format for which you had the profile (always the big issue between different CP/M systems), and the drives could be independently assigned, so you could have one drive as an Apple CP/M format while the other was Northstar or whatever. Very cool for the time. The last year we had managed to save up for a 10MB hard drive. It was bigger than a shoebox and sounded like a turbine when fired up. We got it at a discount, but as I recall it was a cool grand retail.

Fun times. I've never seen a history of those times that got the scene quite right, but it really was the Wild West.

That's awesome.

I grew up on the Trash 80s systems, learning basic on a Tandy Color Computer 2 for a while....but didn't get into BBSs until 1987 or so....just a couple years behind you guys. Microsoft had just come out the cool - but insanely buggy - Mach 20 board that would turn your 80286 machine into a 80386 (I may be remembering that wrong) box. Suddenly, my games were uncontrollable/unplayable because they were too fast.

It made playing "Yeager" a hell of an interesting task. I was definitely an MS-DOS guy, though....never had the patience to learn other systems because I was more concerned getting things done than understanding how they worked to get things done. It was just the times we were in...PC AT clones and the brand new 386 machines were getting cheaper, and thus the race to the bottom in hardware began.

Anyway - I ran with a couple of different BBS packages before settling on PC Board - which was the defacto standard by 1988. Ran door games, message content, had two phone lines (I was a privileged kid) and couple of Everex 2400 baud modems. Was *just* about to get into FIDOnet and start syndicating message content when the family abruptly packed up and moved from Atlanta to Dallas and, being teenaged and of short attention span, I shut the thing down and started focusing on other things.

The scenes exploded and became incredibly diverse....I don't think any one story of the times was really quite right because no story has enough scope to cover how drastically different things became in different places. Look at us - we had VASTLY different experiences only 3-4 years apart. The pace back then is what's normal now...but our hair was blown back because the sheer scope of capabilities was opening faster than we could take it in.
 
That's awesome.

I grew up on the Trash 80s systems, learning basic on a Tandy Color Computer 2 for a while....but didn't get into BBSs until 1987 or so....just a couple years behind you guys. Microsoft had just come out the cool - but insanely buggy - Mach 20 board that would turn your 80286 machine into a 80386 (I may be remembering that wrong) box. Suddenly, my games were uncontrollable/unplayable because they were too fast.

It made playing "Yeager" a hell of an interesting task. I was definitely an MS-DOS guy, though....never had the patience to learn other systems because I was more concerned getting things done than understanding how they worked to get things done. It was just the times we were in...PC AT clones and the brand new 386 machines were getting cheaper, and thus the race to the bottom in hardware began.

Anyway - I ran with a couple of different BBS packages before settling on PC Board - which was the defacto standard by 1988. Ran door games, message content, had two phone lines (I was a privileged kid) and couple of Everex 2400 baud modems. Was *just* about to get into FIDOnet and start syndicating message content when the family abruptly packed up and moved from Atlanta to Dallas and, being teenaged and of short attention span, I shut the thing down and started focusing on other things.

The scenes exploded and became incredibly diverse....I don't think any one story of the times was really quite right because no story has enough scope to cover how drastically different things became in different places. Look at us - we had VASTLY different experiences only 3-4 years apart. The pace back then is what's normal now...but our hair was blown back because the sheer scope of capabilities was opening faster than we could take it in.

Man that's a cool blast from the past man!

Yea, "generations" moved pretty fast in those days. I wouldn't even consider my bro and I "second generation" or even third. You had the guys hammering away on TRS-80 model 1s and Commodor Pets, and the "old timers" on the IMSAI and S-100'systems before that who considered the consumer stuff toys.

I had a PMC-80, which was a TRS-80' clone and a Apple 2+ after that. I had the 2+ pretty tricked out with a CP/M card, 80 column card and and two drives. The Microsoft softcard was actually really capable and turned the Apple into a darn fine CP/M machine, and you still had the Apple side for games. I always regretted selling it.

My first modem was a 300 baud Hayes Micromodem, and those early BBSes circa 1981 were really quiet for the most part, and you only heard rumors of places like "Pirates Cove" and the infamous "OSUNY".

Despite the BBS network, people were still isolated and finding out what's what meant tackling a local guy for a copy of a copy of a copy of a service manual or waiting for new versions of BYE to creep around via that weird Brownian motion that files seemed to follow. Some guys were really tuned in and had good technical info they were willing to share, but around '82 those able were just starting to turn pro, and those that didn't seemed to weird out. The college scene was probably much different.

Good times for a high school kid, but I couldn't see doing it for a living. My buddy was much better at it than I was, and to quote Ricky Bobby "if you're not first, you're last" so I went into stuff that went fast and made noise.

To make it big in that business requires a LOT of luck. Right place, right time and you just happen to have the code that SuperBigCo wants, or you manage to tag a trend at the just right time. Or you catch the wave at the right time and sell sell sell like some of the early box pushers did that grew into big companies.
 
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