210907 Sentinel, Thinking, Happy, Lucky

mobile theme

Thinking

As I sit here this morning it occurs to me how much I have learned and practiced in my life is now worthless. For instance, I learned about Ohm’s law covering voltage, current and resistance in a series or a parallel circuit. The law is still a foundation for electronics, but no one works on component level electronics anymore. I learned how to replace and adjust ignition points in the distributer of a car or truck. It was once an extremely important job to perform on a vehicle. Now it is all done by a computer module. My old 1985 truck went 144,000 miles and I never had to do anything with the distributer. I studied and worked on TVs and radios for years. I troubleshot down to individual component level and replaced parts to repair a TV or radio. Now I don’t know where a person could get an individual capacitor or resistor or transistor for an old TV. The new TVs have all the electronics on 1 circuit board and they are so tiny a man would be hard-pressed to unsolder and replace a single component, assuming he could find one to purchase. These days TVs seem to last for years without needing a repair.

Happy

I am happy today, thinking that I don’t have to have a job to earn a living anymore. I remember getting up early in the mornings and rushing to work to clock in on time. If one clocked in one minute late he/she was tardy and three tardiness marks was grounds for dismissal should the company want to enforce the rule. A single minute could go against a person. By the same token if one wasn’t clocked out within 15 minutes of the end of his/her shift, that got them a tardy. That seems so silly now, but it was important at one time.

Lucky

I was lucky during my work career. I was never fired from a job and always had one as long as I chose to stay. The last job was at Litton and I was ready to walk out the door, almost did just walk out 2 times in the last week before the news came in that the entire plant was being shut down. I had my social security all set, my IRA all set and my paltry Unisys pension ready to go. Once the news was disseminated I knew it was worth my time to hang out there until I was released. I was a very lucky fellow conserning the final ending of the plant.
This picture was taken not long before the Litton plant closed. It was back 50 pounds ago.