I\'ve done a few things ... dredging up memories, some not as fond as others.
Started out on family ranch breaking in horses, doing rodeo barrel racing, calf roping (remind me to tell you of the time that I got \'ran over and stomped on\' by one angry near grown calf), feeding and the obligatory shoveling of stalls. Didn\'t pay well as it was family, but as a teen it wasn\'t too bad.
Got into computers when we moved (and I worked oh so hard to loose that Texas accent in California), did odd jobs here and there, played mostly. Then one night I got a call from a friend that said, \"Hey, you wanna playtest a game for this company? They\'re providing Pizza\'. Of course ... there was pizza!
So I got into playtest games, went to work for Sega of America, did some heavy work for the Sega Saturn and I was the primary on BUG! (some of you may or may not remember it). Sounds like a fun job, but doing 90-110 hours a week (I had a bed in the back of my truck for power naps) of repetitive stuff wore on ya.
Then got a call that launched me into computers instead, and I became the Quality Assurance Manager for Domark Software and built up their whole QA department. That was fun, but long hours again, and I ended up having to get up at 3am a lot and trudging into the office, making calls to England to keep up with one of the software groups there, and then back to bed and back again. In the end, I got screwed over there and lost my temper.
Decided it was time to move on, my father had been trying to get me into airline work for years and I figured between computers and airplanes I could make something work so I went to school and picked up another associates, and three licenses (A&P and FCC certifications). I hated it, for the longest time.
Then I got on with a major (Northwest Airlines) and life was set, figured I would put my 30 in, get out and enjoy life and fly all over the place. That worked out pretty good till a little thing called September 11th. Spent two years on the road trying to keep my job, and finally the horse was shot out from beneath me.
Bit of unemployement, then defense contracting with Lockheed Martin working, or I should say, building the F/A-22 Raptor. Don\'t exactly like my job, but food on the table and all that.
Might make it out of this crazy industry one day ... hopefully not in a box or without a paycheck.
