![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A quarter century and a month
Nov. 18th, 2007 11:21 pmLast month at this time I quietly passed a milestone in my life. October 18 marked my 25th year of employment fondling the innards of billions of dollars of electronic test equipment, obsessing over the most minute details of accuracy and measurement techniques, and writing automated testing software that to this day runs on a platform that is compatible with Windows 3.1. The only thing I have been doing longer other than general living and scratching my ass has been working on cars. That predates my being able to legally drive one by several years.
The reason why this anniversary date went by with no fanfare (and no blog posting at the time) would be obvious to anyone familiar with my blog. My Mom was not here to celebrate it with me. Mom's longest stint at one particular place was just over 20 years; this was her accounting job for Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory from which she retired. While she was impressed that I had already surpassed her number of years, she was looking forward to doing something special for the big quarter-century mark. Alas, that could not happen. I had my usual sobbing session. I have resigned myself to having those feelings of loss at every major milestone in my life now. I am trying to temper them with finding my own way to celebrate, be it with Jeff, his family, etc. Time will tell how successful I am.
The 'rewards' of passing each five year increment have changed over the years as the division changed hands as well as management. Lately they have been going all out, relatively speaking, offering a catalog of items you'd typically find for service awards. I had a tough decision, since I already had a lot of luggage, Waterford crystal just aint my thing, and I dont wear wristwatches. Ironically, I selected a digital camera, even though I have four already. This one is a Pentax W30, a waterproof 7.1 megapixel ultracompact that I dont have to worry about getting damp or dirty. My first test of the camera's capabilities was to dunk it into the toilet tank and take pictures of the internal components. Needless to say, the results were amusingly commendable. Last weekend while in Pennsylvania, the camera got entangled with my keys and I was trying to pull them from my hoodie pocket, and I sent the camera flying more than five feet into the air and smacking the hard concrete drive. Other than a couple scratches, the camera still functions normally. Did I mention that a good part of that 25 years involves environmental and destructive/nondestructive testing?
Twenty-five freaking years. It's had it's ups and downs, and I generally enjoy the work. Still, I wonder what things would be like had I moved on to (possibly) bigger and better things.
The reason why this anniversary date went by with no fanfare (and no blog posting at the time) would be obvious to anyone familiar with my blog. My Mom was not here to celebrate it with me. Mom's longest stint at one particular place was just over 20 years; this was her accounting job for Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory from which she retired. While she was impressed that I had already surpassed her number of years, she was looking forward to doing something special for the big quarter-century mark. Alas, that could not happen. I had my usual sobbing session. I have resigned myself to having those feelings of loss at every major milestone in my life now. I am trying to temper them with finding my own way to celebrate, be it with Jeff, his family, etc. Time will tell how successful I am.
The 'rewards' of passing each five year increment have changed over the years as the division changed hands as well as management. Lately they have been going all out, relatively speaking, offering a catalog of items you'd typically find for service awards. I had a tough decision, since I already had a lot of luggage, Waterford crystal just aint my thing, and I dont wear wristwatches. Ironically, I selected a digital camera, even though I have four already. This one is a Pentax W30, a waterproof 7.1 megapixel ultracompact that I dont have to worry about getting damp or dirty. My first test of the camera's capabilities was to dunk it into the toilet tank and take pictures of the internal components. Needless to say, the results were amusingly commendable. Last weekend while in Pennsylvania, the camera got entangled with my keys and I was trying to pull them from my hoodie pocket, and I sent the camera flying more than five feet into the air and smacking the hard concrete drive. Other than a couple scratches, the camera still functions normally. Did I mention that a good part of that 25 years involves environmental and destructive/nondestructive testing?
Twenty-five freaking years. It's had it's ups and downs, and I generally enjoy the work. Still, I wonder what things would be like had I moved on to (possibly) bigger and better things.
