The least happy I've been was working 9-5 as an accountant. I remember walking down the long hall, over lit with buzzing fluorescent lights, at the same time every day to wash my hands before lunch. Day after day after day. I hated it.

I do love receiving the rent payments from my tenants every month. I think in a less crazy real estate market, I'd just keep adding properties. Right now, the Phoenix market is absolutely nuts.

The more success I have at my current job, the more I regret having ever worked for the man. I don't have a lot of regrets in life. But the time I spent as a wage slave is really being brought home by my current job.

You've been goofing off for years now Lee. :D If not slumlord, what's next?

I recommend Vietnamese food truck!

^ OMG we have a Vietnamese food truck locally.

They make a sort of Thai coffee....holy Hell that is addicting. And they make something called a bao. People don't realize that the French have a lot of influence on Vietnamese cooking. Their bakeries....as Sebastian Maniscalco says: "AH-maze--ENG!".

I bet one would do well in Phoenix.

I've suggested this to my SO. She has a gov't job with a nice pension, so she's not planning on going anywhere. I'm not sure if a pasty white guy selling Vietnamese food out of the back of a truck would go over or not. The part of town where my house is is woefully lacking in Vietnamese food. Have thought about opening a pho shop there and pasting her pics all over the wall with the label "owner." 😁

I was in Lisbon a few years ago. There is a giant square leading down to the waterfront. It is essentially vacant. I told my wife that a burrito truck or a small fleet of trucks would kill it there. And they would.

(ever notice that there is no mexican food in Europe?)

Lee, pasty white guy, Vietnamese guy... no one wants to buy food from from a truck from any guy.

You make the food, you drive the van, GenZ girls (Vietnamese or otherwise) sell the food. Opposite of Hooters girls, go with friendly but demure.

Ever notice where there is a McDonalds there is a Burger King, Wendys, and similar FF chains?

It's because the demographics of the area support the food choice.

You can't go anywhere in TX without tripping over a burrito, Mediterranean food, the places go out of business before the food inventory spoils.

Bikini Barista cart?

I got married at 27 & divorced at 39. During that span I worked as the Marketing Manager for a PR firm and the HSSE manager for a Haliburton contractor in Iraq then for a landscape/hardscape company in the states.

When the divorce was final, I decided to leave Atlanta and pursue a relationship here in NC . . . with a veterinarian. We started a mobile veterinary service which went well and now, six years later, we're in year two of having a mobile clinic and a brick & mortar location. I'm using my process management skills from previous jobs but am also working as a Veterinary Technician- which I never thought I'd pursue- and would definitely describe it as my favorite job.

LSS- it's possible & highly recommended. I wouldn't dream of doing anything else (except build Porsches, which I'm still doing in my spare time).

How to Make Vietnamese Coffee

Traded the corporate world for a ranch 25 years ago. Retired now. Loved every second of playing with livestock and every thing that comes with ranching. Maybe the best decision I made.

^^^^ I'm gonna become a Spambot when I eventually grow up ... mebbe ;)

im seriously considering two different career moves, one is clown college (100% serious), the second is math teacher.

both would be far more fun than what i do now, which is research and development of manufacturing technology, which was fun 10 years ago, but im now at the point in my career where i can sit down to a new project meeting and within 10 minutes determine if its a good idea and worth the research time/money or not. so i spend 99% of my time, not doing any engineering, and instead advocating up the chain for the projects i do think will work, and against the ones i dont. there isnt much of a mystery here anymore.

im not sure i could make the 100+ grand pay cut work, but im also within 2 years of paying off the house, and probably a few more years of being done with racing. without those expenses, i could live comfortably on a teachers pay. i think id be much happier, and feel like i was actually doing something.

Yes, if you get to a point in your job where it's no longer mentally stimulating, that sucks. I've hit that point in lots of jobs over the years, and I hate it. Fortunately, most of the time I've been able to move to another job that pushed me to learn/do more. I could probably make that move again if/when it comes to it, but my current job still comes up with a new challenge pretty regularly.

That would be tough. There are aspects of teaching that could/would be nice under exactly the right circumstances, but there are too many of the other circumstances. Years ago, I was taking a class and the teacher had originally been a HS, or maybe Jr High teacher, and then she switched to Jr college. Her opinion was that the Jr college was MUCH better, I think both due to less frustration and more money.

Clown school, cool! That would certainly be an interesting change of direction.

Once they meet you, they may decide to make you an instructor. ;) :D
j/k

i mean clown college is a serious thing. ive spent basically my entire adult life becoming good at things. racing things, working on things, fixing things, inventing things etc. but all about being good at things. and i am very good at things. i know how to become better at things.

clown college would be a lesson in being good with my body. something i have not spent a lot of time or energy to do. not like working out, but like learning to move my body in ways to communicate things on purpose that i cannot currently. clown is an amazing art form, one of those, slightly exaggerated expressions that reads as more real somehow.

i might just do it as a sabbatical from work one summer. we'll see.



teaching ... well teaching is the most misunderstood jobs in the world. and teaching math is the most misunderstood of the misunderstood jobs in the world. everyone hates math. but math is amazing. its beautiful. and it should be taught like its amazing, rather than how its currently taught. my opinions on this subject will offend every single person on these boards, but i also know more math than most of them, so like, i dont care what they think.




the golden handcuffs of engineering might hold onto me for longer. life is easy when you make a ****load of money at job you are good at without thinking anymore. hard to leave that security behind.

Yeah, I absolutely understood that you really mean "clown college", as in learning to be a clown, and I think that's very interesting and would love to hear about it if you do it. I suspect it would be a hell of a thing, and not necessarily easy or trivial.

I also love math, and have "taught"/tutored many, many people up through calculus 1 and 2.

I think young kids should be taught to use the abacus (Chinese/Japanese style) early on as it's a different way to think about and visualize some of the basic math/numbers that may help some of those folks that really struggle with the usual visualization. I haven't had to deal with any of the "new" math, but what I've seen of it online looks like they are trying, but going about it wrong.

Responding to your last line, yes, absolutely.

not to get too far into it, but common core math was a big step in the right direction. we need to go farther. common core tried to teach math the way math works in practice, which is to understand the relationships between things, and how every *real* math problem in the world, you want to figure out multiple ways to solve it, because you wanna be damn sure of your answer when you build it. common core had that from the start.

instead we spend years teaching children about whats happening in the one's place of a long multiplication problem ... a problem no one solves, and no one cares about the answer to. literally never has whats happening 3 to 6 orders of magnitude smaller than the lead digit ... matter. no one cares. its unimportant. we spend *years* teaching kids this garbage. no wonder they ****ing hate math.

and everyone i ever tell that to, says "yeah but what was wrong with the way we learned math?"

and i say "yeah but what do you think of math?"

"i hate it, avoid do it whenever possible"

welp, thats why we should teach it a different way ya dingus. it didnt work on you, it didnt work on me. in fact, ive never met a person that math education actually worked on them. everyone i ever encountered who actually uses math, figured out there own way to love it, and to understand it.


the notion of mass educating a society is less than 200 years old.

so the "old" way, isnt even old. its just bad. its not how people learn. its not how people learn to solve problems. its just the way mathematicians think of math. and we cannot entrust math to the mathematicians alone.

in conclusion,

1. math education is ****.
2. the "old" way isnt even old, and its ****.
3. we tried to do some new stuff, but everyone complained it wasnt the old way.
4. so we keep doing it the old way, which is ****.

and we get **** outcomes, everyone hates it, and only those who go through a decade of math classes, and then practice doing it for years, get to some place where math actually makes flowing sense.


imagine if we taught music this way. decades of scales, memorization, modes, chords ... before you could play a single song. everyone would hate music if that were the case.

Since it got bumped by a bot...

Since 2021, I've quit that middle age career reboot and did it again. Took it serious, went full time telescope stuff, now I have the rest of the year lined up with jobs. Stupidly busy, and a lot of 5 figure observatory construction projects in several SW states. A bunch of Boomers with too much retirement money, and I'm going to find a way to take ALL of it! :)

I only lasted about 5 years in research. When I was a technician breaking things and designing test rigs it was fun, but when I got "promoted" I was bored out of my skull. Too much time spent in meetings and writing proposals, i.e. doing nothing.

when i get to do things, its great.

but the old rule remains: he who makes the power points makes the money.




the meritocracy lie exposed: working harder or doing better work doesnt make you more money. selling it up the chain is what makes you the money. ive been pretty successful, though i hate being a salesman.

Who ever told you that is your enemy .
As I embrace my middle age, and look around me, the people that I see who are doing the best are more often than not, the guys who consistently worked their tail off and always put in the extra effort .
It does not always seem like it will pay off in the short term, but all those extra hours and extra hustles add up over a lifetime .
Carry on Mr Punk.

It is funny now, looking back 22 years, but when my boss at the dairy told me my position ( area manager and sales rep) was being cut in 8 months, they wanted me to stay through that period and had a package for me afterwards, I was in shock and a bit worried. I shouldn't have been. I did home energy audits for a couple of years then was asked to work in tourism in the area. That lead to working with the provincial department as a customer service trainer and becoming certified as a heritage interpreter. I got to talk to folks from all over the world and had a blast with none of the headaches.
I often said, if I had known on that day in 2003, when my boss gave me the news, what I know now, I might have kissed him on the mouth. He changed my life for the better.

sorry the real world is not a norman rockwell painting highlighting work ethic.

its mostly folks who can network and sell themselves better who get ahead, and the work is a pretty minor component. this gets more true the higher up in the company you get too. because you stop doing your own work, and start managing workflows or processes or people.

sorry. the meritocracy was a lie.

Update to this thread. I was just scrolling on Craigslist jobs 1.5 years ago. I searched "Tempe" as it's the suburb of Phoenix where I live. Saw an ad that caught my eye.

It was for a commercial painting company estimator. Some construction experience? Yes. Can you read blue prints? Yes. Good with numbers? Yes. Hmmm... Sent off my resume and found myself having lunch with the owner of the commercial painting company the next day. Got an offer letter a few hours after that lunch. Hey, LeeH... what do you do?

Glad you asked... basically, I run through numerous RFP (request for proposals) that come in via email looking for jobs that work well for our company. If I like it, I download the blueprints and run through them to assess the surfaces, finishes, size, location, etc. If that all looks good, I use a piece of software to measure the square footage of the spaces from the blueprints and use those figures to create an estimate in another piece of software. Since I spend all day paging through blueprints, I've learned much about how buildings go together. We're a small company and mostly work in offices, warehouses, retails stores.... we've painted over 80 Starbucks in and around Phoenix. I get paid decently and the owner appreciates my accounting background as I also cleaned up some messy books and maintain those, too. Pretty cool job to have as I near retirement. Owner is laid back and flexible. If I need to be off for any reason, I just go.

So, yeah... picking up a new gig is possible, even for us older folks!

Well done, sounds like a great fit!