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Work experience
I am what is referred to as a “Mustang”. I came up through the shop. Early on, I worked in a speed shop, in Seguine Texas. A senior in high school, we were building hot rods, go carts, motorcycles, air planes, and rebuilding a very old South Bend lathe. Mr. Dawson showed me how to rebuild equipment.
I went to an A&P school in Waco Texas, then Lone Star Army Ordnance, in Texarcana Texas. I learned non destructive testing and destructive testing, and safety.
I went to Commercial Diving School in Houston Texas. It was taught by old retired master chiefs from WW2 . I learned how to build a pipe square in the cold wet dark, and get back alive. There I met my Mentor. Floyd. Few of us ever really have a chance to become friends and work with a true master. I was fortunate. Floyd taught me that money was just numbers in front of the decimal. Don’t be afraid of it. Don’t use your fingers to line up shackle pins, and follow your umbilical back to the down line.
While going to dive school I worked for a fiberglass company. Jack showed me how to find things that were mostly what I wanted, and how to redesign with other parts to make something different.
Taylor Diving and Salvage. Brown and Root’s Diving Division. New Orleans La., good place to go be crazy, stay there too long, you go crazy. “ The word Diver is not an accolade, it is only a mode of transportation.” I became a global citizen, and learned to travel. I discovered that the time to get home, from the moon, is the same as decompression 500 F.t. in the North Sea. I learned what heavy is ( if you have to lift 60 tons, get a 100 ton crane.) and what storm really means (Force 12). Day rate and depth pay. Remote vehicles don’t care if they get depth pay or not.
During one oil field slump, I got a job as a test subject at the Water Emersion Facility at Johnson Space Center. I learned that the Government has no end product in mind, neutral buoyancy is very similar micro gravity, and that oil field language, cannot be spoken to scientific community. If you tell a remote operator on the moon to pick up a can, it will be crushed by the time your tactical feedback tells you it has it. All you got to do, to collect all the helium you want, is to put a Haskel transfer pump in orbit.
I worked for 4 different companies, as a Diver/Supervisor, and Project Manager on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, for over 20 years. I learned about the low bidder, lock out/ tag out, and prevailing wage. I saw how to create an oil shortage by turning off the input vales at the refinery. Turned it over to the next generation, and retired my Diving gear.
I am about to retire City Zoo, where I design and construct animal enclosures, transports, exhibits, Vet. medical devices and animal enrichment articles (toys). I learned that nothing is elephant proof, you are a different person after a lion roars in your face, and that if you leave folks around a big pile of money, long enough they will figure out a way to get it, without doing anything.
I have always had my own shop, at least in the background, and did whatever I could do to make money. Mostly legal, if you don’t count the Brown and Root Stuff that never happened…
I have my own shop to retire into. I want to build prototype projects. I want to do it right from now on. Model it first, then build it, send it out the door, and have the royalties sent to the bank.
You can teach an old dog a new trick, it just takes a while…