Hand forged tongs from rebar

[Charcold]

Just a few points:

On Math: it may seem your school lacks the engineering classes you desire but math=engineering. Working as a draftsmen who handles plenty of light engineering work i can tell you i'm constantly having to relearn math i've forgotten. And in my engineering classes i was constantly doing the same. If you're thinking of going that direction do yourself a favor and invest in math classes heavily, you'll thank yourself later.

 

On English: I have in my life worked a wide range of jobs. I worked in corrections, life insurance, machining, assembly, and now drafting/engineering. In all of these jobs I had training programs, resumes, interviews, etc. Your communication skills are constantly being scrutinized in these situations, most of the time when you don't even realize it. English and grammar are the backbone of your communication skills. Even if you feel that you won't be using these in your future career, and i can tell you from experience, you don't know what your future career is with 100% certainty. I thought i did, 3 times, and i was dead wrong. 

[ryancrowe92]

Just now, Charcold said:

Just a few points:

On Math: it may seem your school lacks the engineering classes you desire but math=engineering. Working as a draftsmen who handles plenty of light engineering work i can tell you i'm constantly having to relearn math i've forgotten. And in my engineering classes i was constantly doing the same. If you're thinking of going that direction do yourself a favor and invest in math classes heavily, you'll thank yourself later.

 

On English: I have in my life worked a wide range of jobs. I worked in corrections, life insurance, machining, assembly, and no drafting/engineering. In all of these jobs I had training programs, resumes, interviews, etc. Your communication skills are constantly being scrutinized in these situations, most of the time when you don't even realize it. English and grammar is the backbone of your communication skills. Even if you feel that you won't be using these in your future career, and i can tell you from experience, you don't know what your future career is with 100% certainty. I thought i did, 3 times, and i was dead wrong. 

the reason this is mostly true is because the us is so messed up and forgive me people if i hurt your feeling by saying bad things about our country but its true this country isn't as great as it used to be you cant even get a low paying factory job without a GED or High school diploma and this is really bad because the generation that used to you could drop out in the third grade like my grandpa and my dad who dropped out at 9th and my grandma who dropped out at 10th. and they could find jobs but my dad got a GED and he still gets paid like 24 dollars an hour or more. for 15 years of work consecutive after the takeover and now you have to go to collage to even get a say to say that you know what the hell your talking about because peoples word accounts for nothing these days you can, and most of the professors I've heard from people with experience with them will tell you that they are stuck up and will probably tell you to leave the first day and my teachers don't do that but you are right you have to have resumes and crap like that i don't think they had that back in the old days but people care too much about petty things i can have a meaningful conversation with someone understand them and then proceed to do what i think i need to do. no formalities and crap like that its just not how people around here act and by here i mean people i know and know well like you go to boy scouts together well, school well, heck Ive known there parents for as long as i can remember. but i agree with you communication is important but not too important

BTW if i forgot to tell you about my stuck up math teacher who was one of those professor people well she was my algebra 1 teacher and boy we didn't get along at all man there were times i wanted to walk but i never did but i did get back at here at the end of the year. at the near begging of the year she said that she has done this many times more than i have and to do it her way, but here way wasn't good for me and she said here will is stronger than mine. and i resisted her way all year long and my grades were one of the highest in the class but she wouldn't let it go and i got a hundred on the algebra 1 EOC and which is end of course test that's 20 percent of our grade for the year. and when awards day came i got that award and i shoved it in her face and said something i probably shouldnt have. Only teacher i have ever had a problem with i hate the stuck ups

[ThomasPowers]

And yet many professors were experienced and taught useful lessons.  I will never forget the Econ professor who lost over a million dollars bottom fishing commodities when the Chernobyl incident happened. My MatSci professor taught using a large store of actual failed items to show what stress corrosion cracking or hydrogen embrittlement can result in.  My Economic Geology professor showed us a picture of him at a uranium mine where the ore seam was so rich it was warm to the touch.  Even one of my Computer Science professors was also an executive for IT at Nationwide Insurance---he missed class one time because he was having breakfast with Bill Gates...

Yes there were some duds; some were fun to mess with though. I had an English instructor (Grad Student) who it was a blast to come up with the weirdest essays I could imagine.  "Pre-Christian Holdovers in the Works of Dylan Thomas"  "The Concept of the Straw Death in Vicente Blasco Ibanez's Stories" etc.  Fun to write!  Stuck in Arkansas his expectations were *not* discussions of viking philosophy or Celtic religious tenets.   I had a Senior/Grad level medieval studies class I got to build a cross bow for---for credit!  (Now I told my younger Daughter that High School was just  training to live under a despotic regime...)

You may notice a lot of word play, puns, malapropisms, Tom Swifties, etc, here on this site.  A solid background in how to communicate your ideas helps!

And what happens when the truck drivers are replaced by self driving trucks?  I expect to see this well under way while I'm alive (and statistically I've got about a decade and a half!)  The maturation of industry is replacing unskilled jobs with automation, this will continue! (starts out where everything is a custom job done by a craftsman, then the factory where jobs are broken down to be done by unskilled workers, then the factory automates to replace workers with machines, finally the machines get advanced enough that everything can be a custom job again...not there yet but getting closer!) A lot of custom craftspeople now need to be able to maintain their websites and they sell around the world!

However pumping sewage out of septic tanks will still be a job for quite a while...

I've lived to see "science fiction"  become common everyday items.  (But I am still waiting for my flying car!)

[ryancrowe92]

one day we will get to a point to where we have everything automatized and we wont even be able to have a job anymore should of had those two years ago Oct 26 2015 the day we hoped we would see flying cars and hover boards but there not hover boards. we got to see the cubs go to the play offs though

[ThomasPowers]

So plan to be in the last job standing!

[JHCC]

And learn to appreciate Shakespeare! You'll need something to do in your copious free time!

[ryancrowe92]

that why when the day comes i will go into the woods with a lot of lead, black powder, seeds, flint, gas, oil, and my anvil and hammer and live off the grid.

and i have blacksmithing for free time. and doing stupid redneck things. so somebody watch this and hold my beer.

 

[ThomasPowers]

Very little free time in substance living; any time you have free you should be cutting firewood. I remember how astonished we were back in the '60's when folks wanted to go back to subsistence farming; shoot my kinfolks fought tooth and nail for generations to make it off the Ozark hill farms! My Father was the first to graduate from High School; my Daughter is the first Doctor Powers in the family.

[ryancrowe92]

my other grandpa the one i live with is the only one who graduated in my family and i do remember my youth day cutting up fire wood for winter. i got a logspittler

[Charcold]

Thinking back on my college and even highschool careers, the teachers who i got along with the least are the ones who taught me best. And tried to teach me against my will that i had a bad perspective that time would correct. At the time the fun loving teachers who gave me lip service were my favorites, but now i look back and thank my lucky stars that i had a few teachers willing to hand me subpar grades and tell me when i was dead wrong, even when i wasnt ready to hear it.  

  

I argued with math teachers for years about "showing your work". I'd say, "if i have the answer right, why does it matter." Now i am required to show my work professionally, so that when i'm wrong others can see where i went wrong and adapt the gameplan. in short, my biggest "complaint" from school is now something i see real value in. 

[ryancrowe92]

my god i look at the clock and its 240

 

[ThomasPowers]

Not when you are subsisting off the grid; save for the sledge and wedge!

[ryancrowe92]

my wasn't more about showing my work its more of doing the work her way when i can get the answer one way and still be right. she was like a mad hornet

[Buzzkill]

51 minutes ago, ryancrowe92 said:

but i agree with you communication is important but not too important

If you work for someone else, you represent them whether you like it or not.  If you interact with customers your employer will take into account the impression you will make on them.  When hiring someone, if all other things are equal I'm definitely going with the person who has communication skills.  If all other things are not equal then it's a judgment call. 

For me some of your posts on here are hard to follow.  I'm not picking on you.  I'm just trying to explain that being able to effectively communicate your ideas to others may be significantly more valuable than you seem to think.

[JHCC]

As I was just saying to my son last night while helping him with his math homework, it's not about the answer; it's about the method. Relying on shortcuts or alternatives may get you the answer to a particular problem now, but you'll be missing the skill that you don't yet know you'll need.

[ryancrowe92]

its probably that i dont care how i spell things or that i like run on sentences or ones that arent really sentences

what i hate in English is people are always questioning you like the kid with too many questions my god i think i know how my grandpa feels

I feel like i shouldnt have to explain my self unless i need to.

self explaintory

 

JHCC i was one of the top people in the algebra class and you know once you find a way of doing something you like you tend to do it that way the biggest thing we had a problem with is monomials and binomials and doing the foil method instead of the box method.

[ThomasPowers]

My spelling is atrocious; my browser pokes me when it thinks I've goofed---well it underlines in red; my wife used to poke me and proof read my essays.

I guess it's past time to get back to smithing or we'll descend to proving the existence of the Donatist Controversy using a ruler and a piece of string...

[ryancrowe92]

 i like the foil method and she like the box method thought that needed explainin

 

[JHCC]

Just now, ryancrowe92 said:

 i like the foil method and she like the box method thought that needed explainin

Good to know both.

[ryancrowe92]

i dont like the boxes i thought they were cool in 5th grade but that i got bored of

it

 

[JHCC]

2 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

I guess it's past time to get back to smithing or we'll descend to proving the existence of the Donatist Controversy using a ruler and a piece of string...

I'm not sufficiently pure.

[ryancrowe92]

it takes you 10 minutes to do somthing you can do in 2 or 3 minutes

i was always good in math but i forgot it over the summer and i took an algbera 2 pretest and i made an 80 and i don't know how i done it its like when i seen it just comes to you

i might go weld one of those blades in the hole that the blade goes in to be mounted 
for the cooking tramels

there is your blacksmithing topic

[Charcold]

If you don't properly learn the box method you will have a hard time with matrices, unless i'm misunderstanding what google is telling me. The box method didn't exist in teaching until i hit college, where they told us it would help in a lot of different calculus lessons. 

[ThomasPowers]

(JHCC, we know, we know...more time with the Tawse?  In my Church the BCP says that the sacraments count even if the presider is not worthy)

When I took CIS we were told the cost of maintaining software was 60 to 80% of the total cost. Meaning that taking time to plan, organize and comment your work was MUCH more useful than being fast and leaving a mare's nest for the people who follow you and have to deal with it.  (I think the Y2K issues did a good job of demonstrating this...)

For many critical jobs you don't need only the answer you need to show how you got it so it can be checked by others.

[Frosty]

4 hours ago, ryancrowe92 said:

i was never into English always hated it. its boring i mean who wants to sit through something they already know and know how to do. its pointless and if your ocd about grammar i dont really care if i misspell a word or few because as long as its readable then im OK with it

 

Ryan: It's OBVIOUS you hate English and it's even MORE obvious you do NOT know it well. You are frankly almost functionally illiterate. YOU may be okay with bad grammar, illegible and inarticulate communications skills but there aren't many employers who are. 

Being able to read and write proficiently means there isn't ANYTHING you can't learn, not caring means there isn't much of anything you CAN learn. Seriously, even the bottom rung janitor has to be able to read instructions or leave a note about problems. YOu DO want to maybe someday be more than a garbage emptier and floor sweeper don't you?

Do you ever want to be independent, make your own way, pull your own weight, live in your own house, be your own man, be a Father and no I don't mean start babies I MEAN be a FATHER? The sooner you put your big boy pants on the sooner folk will start thinking of you as more than a kid. 15 isn't too young to be a young Man.

Frosty The Lucky.