What's the worse job you ever had?

MAKG1 said:
I used to work in an SGI shop. The Goddard high performance folks I worked with in the late 90s were almost exclusive SGI, from the T3E on the first floor to the Octane space heater on my desk.

And we still have an Origin here (!).

But, this occurred after SGI had basically killed itself producing Windows machines with some clever architecture, at an eye-popping $5000 per seat.

This was a SunFire, one of Sun's last products before (and after) Oracle bought them. It claimed to do pipelining. It sucked. It was basically a web server and nothing else.

Quite a lot of astronomy was done on Suns "in the day." The Kuiper Airborne Observatory is still packed with moldy Sun 2s in VME crates. Sun's reason for existence in the early days was integrated networking, a really really big deal, until every $150 motherboard started coming with integrated ethernet….

The days when this kind of simulation was actually challenging on the hardware are gone. We can run on anything that doesn't suck. I even developed off a Lenovo T61p until it finally blew up 6 months ago.
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Trust me on this chief, you could make a SUN SPARC do anything you want, but it was still RISC and was optimized for biz and not any kind of analog modeling or capture. The only reason it would do stuff like that back then was the lack of JVM and Apache embedded.

BTW, the Sun Fire brand name included U-SPARC II and U-SPARC III, but in later years also was sold with the crappy Intel Xenon chip inside. If you had a Intel Xenon Sun Fire, it was hopeless.
 
docmirror said:
Oh no, completely wrong architecture for the application. You were doing vector algebra and you were using a RISC based proc which was optimized for DB arch(Oracle or other Relational types).

What you needed back then was a IRIX based SGI platform. Those guys were the cats meow of vector based stuff. They did all the rendering for the early Pixar and other animae film, they did rendering for deep space light and sound capture, real time cloud and weather patterns around the globe. That was some hot stuff. SUN was always business modeled. We didn't do squat with vectors until the very end, and even then it was pretty poor.
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That's a nice thought if the software is developed for vector processing. If not then the vector machine is crap also. Chances are a good floating point processor is all that was needed if things were getting hung up on a square root function.
 
Clark1961 said:
That's a nice thought if the software is developed for vector processing. If not then the vector machine is crap also. Chances are a good floating point processor is all that was needed if things were getting hung up on a square root function.
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Yup.

Generating astronomical images doesn't load balance as well as you might expect. Some parts of it do (FFT and noise seeding), but Amdahl's Law is a *****.
 
Prolly could have been coding related. U SPARC II and III both have FPs on board. Don't know if the Xenon chip has one or not.

A good compiler, or a good instruction decode will do a look-aside push for vector streams. It's a mixed bag, sometimes it works well, sometimes not.

Back to bad jobs. :D

After the tire changer job, I went in the army. Things were starting to look up in basic training(yeah, I know that sounds weird). Then, one of the guys in my platoon hung himself on a cross in the chapel. We all got held up in the CID investigation for a week, and got pushed back into the next track. Of course, that made us look like a bunch of doofs that can't cut it, so things got worse for us. A few weeks later another guy can't cut it and blows himself away in the pit at the firing range. Sigh - more investigation, but this time we had a different DI so we got run around for a while then we finished.

I got to my first duty station in TX, and the first week I was there the CO got a call from CID asking to have me sent over to the local office for more questions about the shooting in basic. I was a marked man. It took me months to get away from the stink of that investigation, but I transferred(with the blessing of the CO) to another command, and told CID to leave me alone. Finally got some good work done.
 
I worked at a recording studio which was preparing cassette tapes for a psychologist continuing education class (oddly enough Studies In Psycology #9: The chronic depressive). The first day they set me down with a bunch of blank cassettes to stick the labels on them. After the first day I told my boss he could find me *ANYTHING* else to do the next day.

Day 2 was slightly better, pulling the leader out of C-0 cassettes and cutting it at the right angle.

Day 3 I got to learn out to run the duplicator. This is a device that where you splice on a the beginning of the program from a large pancake of tape recorded over and over again. You start the machine and it winds into the cassette until it hears the end of program tone and then fires the cutter automatically. You make the second splice , take up the few inches of slack and throw the product in the box and then start over.

Day 4 I got to the point where I could run two machines at the same time without having the machines sit idle at all. I worked my way up to round robinning to three machines but that's hard to keep up with.

This was temporary work over one christmas break.

I have to say I was lucky to never have to work food service. I went from mowing lawns to:

Marking up Arbitron TV surveys for computer entry.
Computer operator.
Writing inventory control software for a company under contract to Polk Audio
Tape duplicator.
Maintaining test equipment at a psych hospital.
A research internship at the medical school doing database work.
Student system admin/programmer.
Research intern doing computer work at the Army APG.

and then I graduated.

I've had a few side jobs:

Book editor.
Professional Course Instructor.
Systems admin for a law firm.
Helping the Air Force get off a bogus IP network.
NASCAR Official
 
Physically, walking beans and bailing hay in 100+ degree weather. Emotionally, being a probation officer and having one of the people I was supervising commit suicide because he could not kick his meth addiction.
 
JB1842 said:
When were you there? I was assigned to the embassy in Tbilisi for a little over a year. And I do remember the power outages, but we had a generator at our house. We used to have "friends" that were Peace Corps, and let them abuse our guest shower when they came back to civilization.
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I was in Tbilisi in 2002-03. We lived on Tarknishivilli st just up from the Philharmonia and worked over near 26 of May Square. We didn't have room on our balcony for a generator as it was just a small 10" or so ledge.
 
docmirror said:
Trust me on this chief, you could make a SUN SPARC do anything you want, but it was still RISC and was optimized for biz and not any kind of analog modeling or capture. The only reason it would do stuff like that back then was the lack of JVM and Apache embedded.

BTW, the Sun Fire brand name included U-SPARC II and U-SPARC III, but in later years also was sold with the crappy Intel Xenon chip inside. If you had a Intel Xenon Sun Fire, it was hopeless.
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That would be crappy, as there is no such thing as an Intel Xenon processor. :D

Now, there is an Intel Xeon processor. :D:D
 
Ghery said:
That would be crappy, as there is no such thing as an Intel Xenon processor. :D
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What? They don't make anticollision strobe lights?

Not that you would need anything more than a 555 chip or an old-fashioned bimetal flasher to run those.
 
Telemarketing for a company named Xentel. When I interviewed for the job, I was told they paid $12/hr, plus commission, which was very good at that time for a telemarketing job. I would be doing telesales for the Fraternal Order of Police and a few other organizations.

When I started, I was told that the hourly rate was $8/hr, but if you worked all 40 hours, you would be paid $12/hr instead. If you were not getting your sales, you were sent home early. If you were getting your sales, you were rewarded by being sent home. Basically, no one made $12/hr. When you reported to work, you reused a headset that others had been using all year. We were allowed one set of foam covers to use, and if you wore through it, you could not replace it without having a paycheck deduction taken. Most people just used the nasty grimey headsets without the foam covers.

On top of that, I had to deal with the fact that we were only giving like pennies on the dollar to the FOP and other organizations, which was just mind-blowing.
 
SkyHog said:
Telemarketing for a company named Xentel. When I interviewed for the job, I was told they paid $12/hr, plus commission, which was very good at that time for a telemarketing job. I would be doing telesales for the Fraternal Order of Police and a few other organizations.

When I started, I was told that the hourly rate was $8/hr, but if you worked all 40 hours, you would be paid $12/hr instead. If you were not getting your sales, you were sent home early. If you were getting your sales, you were rewarded by being sent home. Basically, no one made $12/hr. When you reported to work, you reused a headset that others had been using all year. We were allowed one set of foam covers to use, and if you wore through it, you could not replace it without having a paycheck deduction taken. Most people just used the nasty grimey headsets without the foam covers.

On top of that, I had to deal with the fact that we were only giving like pennies on the dollar to the FOP and other organizations, which was just mind-blowing.
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Holy crap Nick, I belonged to the Fraternal Order of Police and I voted against telemarketing to solicit money. I want to apologize to you personally.
 
Ghery said:
That would be crappy, as there is no such thing as an Intel Xenon processor. :D

Now, there is an Intel Xeon processor. :D:D
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Ya got me. Give yourself 1,000,000 internet snark points.

Oh - you googled? Sorry, but that just cost you 10,000,000.

Sorry. :lol:
 
My worst was delivering newspapers to the route people during junior college. I had a week of "training" then solo. We got the bundles from the majors (The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald) about 4am, split them into route bundles, pack the truck, and get your ass moving. I swear the trainer (about 2 years younger than me) drove 90 miles an hour where he could. We finished HIS route about 6.30. I finished close to 8am. Third day solo, there was an ice storm over night and I put the truck into a fire hydrant and took out the right front tire. SOB boss made me finish the route in MY car. Missed my first class that day since I didn't finish till after 8.30.
By the way, it was my last day! Apparently, none of their customers liked getting their AM paper delivered late afternoon. The route kids were all school aged, and if Mom wouldn't deliver the AM papers, the kids would be doing them after school.
 
Busboy and dishwasher: age 12-17. Cleann horse #% out of horse stalls: age 18. Hod carrier ( carry bricks and concrete on construction sites)...for sure THE worst,most hot most brutal) age 19. HUGE motivation to finish college...
Best jobs: white water raft guide, flight paramedic.
 
Other than being a field tech going into some peoples nasty disgusting homes, the absolute worse job I had was working maintenance for a medical waste facility.

Nothin worse than climbing into a huge auto clave that is jammed while thousands of used needles are sticking into your boots.

The smells of rotting flesh and blood in the summer of all that bio waste , when they would open the back of the tractor trailers or in the plant to process was enough to gag a maggot.

They also operated a small crematory for pets at the same facility. Watching some dude just tossing someone's pets around without any respect really ****es an animal lover off.


The jobs one will take when laid off to make sure your newborn has insurance.


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Wow, ok, I think that may be the worst one yet.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the absolute worst job has to be Mike Rowe's. He had to do everyone else's worst job. I'm amazed that guy lasted more than one show. He must either really need the money or have steel cojones.
 
I can't think of anything grosser than using shoes worn by countless other people.
.

.

.

Oh yeah; sticking my fingers into bowling alley balls. :yikes:



John Baker said:
Pinsetter or pinboy in a bowling alley when I was eleven, 1954

We set five and ten pins, each kid had two alleys. No racks, you jumped into the pit, put the ball on the return rails, picked up all the pins, stepped on a peddle and metal pins would come up out of the alley, you set the bowling pins on them. When you took your foot off the peddle the metal pins would retract back int the alley, leaving the bowling pins in the exact perfect position.

The place was about as mile from the university. On weekends all the college boys would play five pin because they could lob the ball almost the entire aley length before it touched the alley. The real game was try to hit the pin boy. When one got hit, a big cheer went up. I think that is why they hired kids, we were fast and could get out of the pit in a second or two.

Every now and then a kid would get hauled off in an ambulance, usually a head wound or broken limb. I never got hit, but I was grazed a few times, which taught me to be more alert.

I did that for around a year, then one night I freaked out, could not stop crying. One of the kids had not shown up so two of us were setting three alleys each, I had gone into some sort of autofunction mode, I could not stop moving. so they fired me. Kids were lined up for those jobs.

In those days I think it was more about selling beer than selling alley time.

I've hated bowling alleys ever since, can't even stand the smell of them.

-John
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MAKG1 said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the absolute worst job has to be Mike Rowe's. He had to do everyone else's worst job. I'm amazed that guy lasted more than one show. He must either really need the money or have steel cojones.
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For his paycheck? I would put up with far more $h!t than I do now.
 
I've been a car washer (winter in New York), stock boy, a ditch digger, a garbage man, a blaster, a warehouseman in a frozen food warehouse, a tape librarian, saw combat in the Middle East and twice in Vietnam, an IBM Field Engineer, a physicist\computer scientist, and a pastor, but the all time worst job was picking apples at a local fruit farm as a kid. For years after the smell of an apple made me retch.
 
I got my first job when I was 12. I worked after school and on weekends pulling weeds at a plant nursery. After I mastered that, they promoted me to digging holes for landscaping.

At 15, I worked summers cleaning cages at a veterinary hospital for the summer.

At 16, during the school year, I worked after school and weekends selling shoes at a chain shoe store. When summer came I started heavy labor at a metal fabrication company. Did that for two summers.

At 18, I did construction work during the summer.

At 19, I did construction work during the summer

During my last three years of school I worked two jobs simultaneously to pay the bills.

They were all crummy jobs and I hated them. But in the long run they taught me the values of hard work.
 
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