I guess I'll post in here.
I think I turned thirty-two at my last birthday. Thirty-one or thirty-two, it's not like I have candles to remind me anymore, but I think my wifey would say I'm thirty-two. I'm just a laborer. I work for a good-sized manufacturer of commercial cooking equipment where I've been for eight years. Our speciality is stone-hearth cooking and most of our products use a proprietary blend of refractory ceramic. At the moment I mostly do production wiring and R&D. I work with our electrical engineers to design new wire harnesses, redesign old ones, plan wire routing, wire management, layout, fixture construction and testing. I also work with our mechanical engineers in the early stages of new product development. Before that I ran our Fanuc/Lincoln robotic welding cell for the first few years that we had it, designing and building fixturing, programming and production. When I was first hired I mostly did production TIG and MIG welding. I also do a little machining, both for production and R&D obviously. It's a great company to work for. Always something fun.
I never attended college.
In my last two years of high school I spent a lot of time in welding and machining. My shop teacher got me a fantastic job after high school with a local Wenatchee company called VanDoren Sales, a fifty-year-old company that designed and built fruit handling systems for sheds. I spent five years there as a fabricator and machinist before pulling my 401k and going to Italy for three months where I rented an apartment and attended a small language school, not a stone's throw from the Vatican Museum doors.
At various times in my life I have worked weekend jobs in addition to my regular job, just for fun. I spent a year at Gilman Antique Gallery in the Bellvue area, which was at that time the largest gallery on the east side. I also spent a year as a paid gunsmith for a small gun store that was just breaking into that market.
That's about it. I used to do a lot more tinkering in my spare time, but now I'm married and mortgaged with a reliable modern car that has airbags and just RUNS. These days I mostly do small gunsmithing jobs and furniture hardware for friends and coworkers. If anyone is in the Bellingham WA area and would fancy a round of trap or some indoor rimfire, shoot me a pm. Thanks!