First in-the-wild reference I've seen to some of my favourite books. I feel your watch as Goblin makes more sense if it's stuck around with you for a long time and generally works but is a bit of a pain to use. Thanks for the share.
Almost my entire education has been OJT (On the Job Training). I'm a high school dropout, with a G.E.D. I've spent my entire life, looking up the noses of folks that just assume they are better than me. Gets a bit grating, but the plus side is, is that I have to prove myself, over, and over.
Besides that annoyance, it's been excellent. Directing my own learning has been amazing. Having to prove myself, over and over, and over again, has taught me to deliver results, because no one is willing to front me anything, or give me the benefit of the doubt. Delivery is my "at rest" state, and that kind of thing is hard to teach (Play A Boy Named Sue, by Johnny Cash).
What you talk about works well for people like me (and you, from the sound of it), but a lot of folks need more structure. A lot of institutions also need that paper. There are many doors that are closed to people like us.
My first formal school was a fly-by-night tech school, created to milk the GI Bill, after Vietnam. The school has long since, fallen to dust, but it was exactly what I needed, at the time. It taught me structure, troubleshooting, and problem-solving. When I left, I was ready to immediately jump into the deep end.
I like the idea of vocation-oriented post-K12 schooling, including things like union apprenticeships.
The problem is that, in the US, these aren't really supported by "The Establishment," so we tend to get rather dodgy outfits (like the one I attended).
I have heard that German University is highly vocation-oriented. I've been impressed by many of the Germans with whom I've worked. I feel that they are extremely results-driven. That may be because of the particular company that I worked for, and the types of engineers that our field attracts, though.
I remember one night my dad drove up to a building with three letters on it. Walked up to some lady behind a desk inside the front door, and after arguing for a bit, pulled out his checkbook and wrote on it, passing the check to her. I watched as he turned and walked back to the car looking a sad mixture of dejected and pissed.
Tertiary education in Germany is pretty much a continuum. On one end, you have "Berufsakademien" that offer bachelor's degrees with integrated vocational training – you need to find the employer yourselves, they pay your fees and some salary that you can live off (more or less). On the other end, there's Ivory Tower Academia where no one cares about what happens outside of the classroom. And there is everything in between those two poles.
I mostly agree, but I also find that deliberately using more effort than "necessary," sometimes helps me to "feel" the relationship with my task more effectively.
You see this with musicians, all the time. They "throw" themselves into their performance; even when sitting in a studio, in sweats. It helps them to "feel" their output.
Artists also frequently have idiosyncrasies that seem to be impediments to performance.
I can't remember which bestselling author it was, but I heard of an author that writes everything by hand, on legal pads. They pay someone to transcribe it to electronic form.
Rhiannon Giddens is known for performing barefoot. I suspect that she even did that, at her White House gig[0] (note the very long dress).
I'm pretty sure that it helps her to "feel" her music.
I was a senior manager, for much of my career, and had about a 30% hit rate, with folks listening to me. My employees had to listen to me, but I actually encouraged them to talk back, if they had issues with my direction.
My bosses and peers?
...not so much...
This was especially true of the Japanese (I worked for a Japanese company). Even though I had a pretty significant level of influence (for a Westerner), I still had to beg for folks to listen to me.
My favorite, was when my team was assigned to help a Silicon Valley startup that my company had made a deal with, after the ink was dry on the contract.
There were a lot of problems with that relationship. Most of them, were because the senior Japanese management had made some really big mistakes; chiefly because of cultural differences between the companies (the startup was actually really good, but they were a fairly typical "smoke and mirrors" Silicon Valley startup, and had a different approach to pitching that didn't work well with the Japanese. Neither side really understood the other).
We did our best, but our hands were tied. It did not end well, which was pretty disastrous.
If someone had asked me to help out, before they signed the contract, it would have been a much better outcome. I'm no captain of industry, but the problems were pretty glaring and obvious, even to us mensches in the trenches.
> I think I never read as much in my life as during the month between announcing I was leaving my previous job and joining mytaxi.
I liked reading that. I would love folks to do that kind of thing, more often.
The bed is only 4.5' long. The 5.5' short bed available on an F150 Lightning is too short for me, the ICE F150 with a 6.5' bed at least lets you have flat sheet goods with the tail gate down.
Makes sense to me…
But seriously, naming things is always a sticky wicket.
I tend to name my various devices as characters from Glen Cook’s The Black Company.
My iPhone is Thai Dei, my iPad is Soulcatcher, my Watch is Goblin, and my Mac is Mogaba. It helps me to keep them distinct from my simulators.
If I wanted really crazy names, I’d use Garret P.I. As a source.
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