Hey Y'all,
I am still around, and the Katatonic is still in pieces, but thats not important...oh wait, hold on...yes it is....
I was an Electrical engineer for a company that makes computer-controlled conveyor systems (tense agreement fail). Its pretty cool stuff, seeing boxes get moved at 630fpm and sorted down a specific lane - its what modern commerce is made of. The company was great, cool people, gave me all the tools I needed to work, but the time spent on the road and on short notice travel (when a customer buys a $4m system, this is not unexpected) was getting to be too much. I got two little sons aged 7mo and 2.5years - I gotta play with them while I can.
So I jumped ship, (this was a month ago, I lost the link to twt.net) I didn't even look that hard, when I mentioned my dismay on a local car forum I had 3 guys PM me saying "yeah, we could use a controls engineer". I sent 3 resumes, interviewed 2 places and got 2 offers - both for more money (go capitalism) and I took the one with Duke Energy (the local power company). Now I work running capital projects on the power plant that are electrical in nature. OR, I come in behind the mechanical engineer who didnt realize that electrical controls are not free, nor can they be installed in one day...
I like the place, a lot of guys who have been there 25 years or more, and a lot of co-ops (a few are chicks even...in engineering...what year is this ?). Its nice to see stuff that has been 'broken in' already - at the old place, I just bought all new stuff, stormed in, installed everything and then took off for the next job. I must assume that electric utilities are more stable jobs than anything retail-related. This current economy might test that though...
Which is fine, because my guard unit got called up to go to the sandbox in January =) So even if Duke fires me, I'll still have 4mo of steady income =)
If I get a permanent job at Duke (right now I'm a contractor) then I'll be making good money while I'm gone, and definitely get the Kat fixed or buy something that the wife would enjoy (we got married on the Katana, so I must get something burgundy that we both can ride...). If I dont get a FT slot at Duke, then we'll see how much money is left over when I come back - my wife knows that I miss riding. With 2 little guys, I'd rather hang out with them than do a lot of things though.
Oh well, this post is too long. Just wanted to say hi again, and answer the question MD put to me in an email when I told him that some links on his page didnt work.
Good to see everybody is well, getting better, having fun on couches or falling off of them =)
-John
