Featured America's Manufacturing Failure (Autoline After Hours)

I'm a great fan of Sandy Munro and this is why:
- YouTube

It also explains why he isn't invited as often as he should be.

Bob Wilson

 

Gosh I'm glad you posted. After the recent storms in your area, I was wondering how you' all were doing.

He had some rough spots with the government and I spent four years in the Marines which took awhile to recover. As for education, my favorites were math and vocational tech electronics. I took the "advanced math" and "physics" classes and soon realized I could have taught them better than the designated teacher. The head of the math department forbid us from forming a calculus self-study group. <GERRRR>

It would have been better if instead of going to college, I had spent several years becoming a journeyman electrician. Then I could have paid my own way through college and never looked back.

In College, I got an "F" in my first programming course, Fortran, even though I completed every homework assignment. Then I realized the grade came from two tests, the mid-term and the final. When I retook it, I read the first half of the Fortran manual before the mid-term. Then read the last half before the final and got an "A". I never considered software to be anything but a 'game of chess.'

The Marines decided I was a computer operator which was OK because of the air conditioning and time to study college courses at the local universities and extensions. But within one year after getting out, I was invited to join our IBM mainframe system programming group (COMNET a computer service company on McArthur Blvd, DC.)

The first year I learned something new every 30 seconds. The second year, it slowed down to 90 seconds. And then management changed and a typical Masters of Business Administration type was put in charge.

On the first day, he showed an inverted pyramid with us individuals on the top and he was apex at the bottom. My first thought, "That is unusable, fall down, and go boom." Three months later, I was out the door on to my next job and never looked back.

Sandy rants about closed minded, MBA type, intellectuals who can't handle technology but instead pester those of us who can. I share his attitude which was first formed in the Marines and later re-enforced within every company I worked in. I became adept at realizing when it was time to go and left when I wanted. So 10 years in the Washington DC area and later I tricked my wife to moving to Huntsville AL where I reside today.

Someday, I'll drive over and we can swap war stories about our careers. In many respects, Sandy's rants match what I found to be true.

Bob Wilson