I was not the best at keeping a diary, but the following shows the general buzz of the first week of January, 1990:
Monday. 1st.
Last Night spent at O'Tooles, A good blast!! Last day off before work, yet another attempt at a diary... We'll See!
Tuesday 2nd.
Being back at work isn't so bad when you know you're going to finish at the end of the week. Frank Sapala is going to leave as well. Picked up my glasses.
Wednesday 3rd.
Did absolutely sod all (Well, I expect that's wots expected from me, so I don't want to let them down)
Thursday 4th.
Took the car in for it's service (it's in for a shock next week) I was in for a shock too. $390 for a bloody service! I'm going to start doing these myself [*]
Friday 5th.
That's it!. Two years of Canada. Two years of Dowty...said my goodbyes and packed my stuff into three boxes. Went for a pint at the squirrel.
[*] never happened.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Bondage
At the beginning of 1988, Dowty had paid for our flights and the costs of moving our furniture from the UK, all they asked for was that I guaranteed to work for them for two years.
As 1989 was drawing to a close, that two years would be up, give or take a week.
Tony Burgess, a jobshopper in the design office and a larger than life type of character had decided to throw his hat amongst the agency types, moving on from a draughting job to be a partner in an aerospace contracting agency called TDM.
I'd had many a conversation with Tony about jumping ship when my bondage was up, when he left late in the year I asked him to keep his ears open for something at one of the other aerospace companies.
Another name I have remembered from back then is Frank Sapala, another design contractor who also encouraged me to "go jobshopping" as soon as I could.
It was late in the year when the phone rang, Tony had an opportunity and that was going to be at the mirror image landing gear company (strangely the same company that started my entire foray into North America back in 1985).
Menasco.
Or, as the bizarro company would call them, Brand-X.
The Chief of Stress at Menasco was Larry Abram, a man that had worked with Jim Collins many years before and after my call from Tony Burgess, I confided in Jim (who had become our Stress Office manager) about my devious plans. Jim was a very good friend and I knew that he would be helpful.
So started a few weeks of skullduggery and secret goings on as November moved along, I drove down to Oakville for an interview and met Larry, another larger than life character, his first gruff words to me, with a wicked smile on his face were:
"So's, you wants to be doing some Job shoppeuring does ya?"
Jim had already talked to him over the phone and I think he had already convinced him I was a safe bet.
Larry, a no nonsense guy, from the North of England (The Fylde) gave me the once over, a sort of intimidating, yet highly amusing, interview (which set the stage for our long relationship) and left everything sort of up in the air, I remember driving away from Menasco with a sort of tremble in my legs, knowing full well that a phone call in the next week could change everything for us.
Exciting times.
As 1989 was drawing to a close, that two years would be up, give or take a week.
Tony Burgess, a jobshopper in the design office and a larger than life type of character had decided to throw his hat amongst the agency types, moving on from a draughting job to be a partner in an aerospace contracting agency called TDM.
I'd had many a conversation with Tony about jumping ship when my bondage was up, when he left late in the year I asked him to keep his ears open for something at one of the other aerospace companies.
Another name I have remembered from back then is Frank Sapala, another design contractor who also encouraged me to "go jobshopping" as soon as I could.
It was late in the year when the phone rang, Tony had an opportunity and that was going to be at the mirror image landing gear company (strangely the same company that started my entire foray into North America back in 1985).
Menasco.
Or, as the bizarro company would call them, Brand-X.
The Chief of Stress at Menasco was Larry Abram, a man that had worked with Jim Collins many years before and after my call from Tony Burgess, I confided in Jim (who had become our Stress Office manager) about my devious plans. Jim was a very good friend and I knew that he would be helpful.
So started a few weeks of skullduggery and secret goings on as November moved along, I drove down to Oakville for an interview and met Larry, another larger than life character, his first gruff words to me, with a wicked smile on his face were:
"So's, you wants to be doing some Job shoppeuring does ya?"
Jim had already talked to him over the phone and I think he had already convinced him I was a safe bet.
Larry, a no nonsense guy, from the North of England (The Fylde) gave me the once over, a sort of intimidating, yet highly amusing, interview (which set the stage for our long relationship) and left everything sort of up in the air, I remember driving away from Menasco with a sort of tremble in my legs, knowing full well that a phone call in the next week could change everything for us.
Exciting times.
Cracks in the Ice
The work at Dowty Canada, or Dowty Aerospace Toronto was always interesting, always driven by what seemed like insane schedules and the pressure was always on.
In the almost two years since I had started I was elevated to the dizzy heights of "senior" stress analyst and my yearly pittance had rocketed up from $34,000 to around $38,000 augmented by overtime but eroded by that horrible taxation thing.
Four people in the office had a distinct effect on me that year, the first, Jim Collins who had been a "Job Shopper" in the past and in the office, within whispering distance, three current Job Shoppers, Tony Burgess, Pete Clarke and Dave Rutherford.
And a couple that were working for me, names withheld to protect the lazy.
A Job Shopper, for the uninformed, was a contractor, someone who worked for an agency as a sole proprietor or was unique as their own corporation (for tax and liability purposes) - basically, someone who was (usually) capable and did what they were told in the office.
A jobshopper, at the time, would earn above $40 an hour, work an average of fifty (or more) hours per week (overtime at time and a half) which equated to a yearly salary closing in on the $100,000 point.
And, they had numerous tax benefits, so they kept a lot of it.
So, here I was, an overworked, underpaid, salaried employee on numerous tight schedules, giving orders to a couple of guys who could not do their jobs on an hourly basis without asking fundamental questions.
The three guys I mentioned worked in the design office, Pete and Dave would barrage me with a strange form of heckling, ridiculing the hoops I was jumping through to get work out of the office, adding to the mental anguish minute by minute (and loving the sport) and adding a large portion of "not helping" and pointing out the shortfalls of the two guys I had "under my wing"
It was funny, sort of.
And it was making me think, I talked at length about it to Jim Collins and this other guy, Tony Burgess.
I'll talk more about them in the next post.
In the almost two years since I had started I was elevated to the dizzy heights of "senior" stress analyst and my yearly pittance had rocketed up from $34,000 to around $38,000 augmented by overtime but eroded by that horrible taxation thing.
Four people in the office had a distinct effect on me that year, the first, Jim Collins who had been a "Job Shopper" in the past and in the office, within whispering distance, three current Job Shoppers, Tony Burgess, Pete Clarke and Dave Rutherford.
And a couple that were working for me, names withheld to protect the lazy.
A Job Shopper, for the uninformed, was a contractor, someone who worked for an agency as a sole proprietor or was unique as their own corporation (for tax and liability purposes) - basically, someone who was (usually) capable and did what they were told in the office.
A jobshopper, at the time, would earn above $40 an hour, work an average of fifty (or more) hours per week (overtime at time and a half) which equated to a yearly salary closing in on the $100,000 point.
And, they had numerous tax benefits, so they kept a lot of it.
So, here I was, an overworked, underpaid, salaried employee on numerous tight schedules, giving orders to a couple of guys who could not do their jobs on an hourly basis without asking fundamental questions.
The three guys I mentioned worked in the design office, Pete and Dave would barrage me with a strange form of heckling, ridiculing the hoops I was jumping through to get work out of the office, adding to the mental anguish minute by minute (and loving the sport) and adding a large portion of "not helping" and pointing out the shortfalls of the two guys I had "under my wing"
It was funny, sort of.
And it was making me think, I talked at length about it to Jim Collins and this other guy, Tony Burgess.
I'll talk more about them in the next post.
Hamvention
Those first couple of years saw the Commodore 64 setup expanded with a Commodore Amiga A500 and then the expected replacement of all of that by a PC.
Jim Collins was a ham radio guy (VE3OYE) and was also interested in the advent of packet radio and the Newmarket Ham radio "Fest" which by the time I started being interested in the PC was morphing into a Hamfest and Computer Fest. The latter becoming an annual or bi-annual event around the Toronto region.
In Spring 1990 Jim and his wife Sarah invited us on a coach trip down to Dayton, Ohio. An exciting trip in itself to be off down to the USA, even more so for myself as the prospect of a high speed modem was in the offing and boxes full of used stuff at the massive "Hamvention".
A high speed, affordable, modem in late 1989 was a 2400 baud external serial offering, that item became the prize of the trip for me (double the 1200 baud I was currently running) Of course, within a year I would be running a US Robotics HST modem at 14400 baud.
The trip to Dayton was great fun, after an early morning journey we arrived at the Motel Six and threw our stuff into the rooms, this was followed by the Hamvention and the rushed feeling of never being able to see everything in the acres of tables. happy times indeed.
The prize, apart from a couple of useless gizmos, a Zoom 2400 baud external modem, something that was examined many times during the journey home.
The Hamvention marked the start of a much more "serious" computer hobby for me, within 18 months I would be building computers from boxes of old stuff, experimenting with motherboards, video cards and what have you, it was also at the same time as a temporary furlough from my relationship with Jim Collins as I moved from one landing gear company to another, far in the distance, on the other side of Toronto.
They called it Brand-X.
Jim Collins was a ham radio guy (VE3OYE) and was also interested in the advent of packet radio and the Newmarket Ham radio "Fest" which by the time I started being interested in the PC was morphing into a Hamfest and Computer Fest. The latter becoming an annual or bi-annual event around the Toronto region.
In Spring 1990 Jim and his wife Sarah invited us on a coach trip down to Dayton, Ohio. An exciting trip in itself to be off down to the USA, even more so for myself as the prospect of a high speed modem was in the offing and boxes full of used stuff at the massive "Hamvention".
A high speed, affordable, modem in late 1989 was a 2400 baud external serial offering, that item became the prize of the trip for me (double the 1200 baud I was currently running) Of course, within a year I would be running a US Robotics HST modem at 14400 baud.
The trip to Dayton was great fun, after an early morning journey we arrived at the Motel Six and threw our stuff into the rooms, this was followed by the Hamvention and the rushed feeling of never being able to see everything in the acres of tables. happy times indeed.
The prize, apart from a couple of useless gizmos, a Zoom 2400 baud external modem, something that was examined many times during the journey home.
The Hamvention marked the start of a much more "serious" computer hobby for me, within 18 months I would be building computers from boxes of old stuff, experimenting with motherboards, video cards and what have you, it was also at the same time as a temporary furlough from my relationship with Jim Collins as I moved from one landing gear company to another, far in the distance, on the other side of Toronto.
They called it Brand-X.
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