What else can you ?( what talent do you have)

[Liam]

From my time as a graphic designer, I picked up some decent Adobe Photoshop skills. Aside from being useful in an office setting (photo restoration/manipulation), I have a real good time giving my family grief just for fun. Photoshopped my wife into #1 photo since she took the initial picture. In #2 I put my horse-owning brother on a goat. And in #3 I sat my son next to Ernest Hemingway. All in good fun.
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[Allen]

Adobe Photoshop skills. All in good fun.

This reminds me of the refinery again. Occasionally group pictures of each crew would be made and published on our website. Someone (not me) would always come along and merge the pictures with someone else so the women would have mustaches or such and the men would have boobs or whatnot. The facial photos would always be a combination of 2 people so you could tell who was being combined. It too was in good fun, no one complained but they probably should have fired us all.

[dave]

At the refinery I worked at that started out as a job for a specialist. Then it became a duty of our maintenance dept. Then it became part of our routine duties as a operator. A magnetic probe was placed on specifically marked areas of the inboard and outboard bearing areas of pumps, motors and turbines. We would record it with our portable hand held monitors and later download it to one of the PC's in the control room to the "system" where it could be viewed by the engineers and stored as a record. The sensor picked up vibrations and heat. Our larger more crucial equipment had permanent probes that recorded straight to the operating consoles in the control rooms along with alarm points.

As an operator we were the only ones that were in the operating area of the refinery 24/7/365 so as time went on we ended up doing most everything except overhauling of equipment.

I also was at a refinery, did not have computer consoles at the units, were starting such installation when I left. I supervised 3 men who did the predictive/preventive checks on the equipment each day. They had hand held sensors which only read the intensity of vibration. I had a system similar to what you describe but I down loaded to the shops computer, then wrote out work orders, if necessary. The Company sent me to a school to learn the job. This was back in early 90's. Refinery was a small one (80 thou. barrel day) Has been closed since 2003. What refinery did you work at? Ours was sold several times and I ended being a Valero employee and retiree. I was also an operator for most of my time there, (40 yr.) but got tired of shift work so bid into maintenance.

[Allen]

What refinery did you work at?

Chevron. 330,000BPD = about 6M gallons of Gasoline and 6M gallons of Jet/Diesel per day. Very large and complex.

I believe you said once you worked for Arco?

[dave]

No it was Clack Oil & Refining, an upper mid-west independent based in Wisconsin. They owned 3-4 small refinery's, one I worked at was just south of Chicago in Blue Island. Another down near St. Louis and in Ohio. After 'ol man Clark died his son's did not want the business so it was sold at least 3 times by the time I retired in '97. The last being Valero. Had problems with all the new pollution regs, by the state (had the head of our clean water/air dept. go to prison!) Finally shut down, just can not make money and compete against large volume refinery's with small refinery's anymore!

[Sandpebble]

I was a brick and stone mason for 30 yrs. Did a real apprenticeship . Fire places , walls, and huge brick and stone arches along with run of the mill commercial projects, in three countries and 11 states.

Pictures of my work have been published in advertisements here and Australia and in County Living Magazine ...... just braggin.... about doing a job a Mexican couldn't do ...

but its a dead art now because it costs money and it seems the richer we get... the less we want to spend for quality

[dryheat]

Now, out here they build houses with fake rock facades. Looks like ****. If you gave me one, I'd put it up for sale tomorrow. Then there's the "castle", another fake rock monstrosity. On another route I take there's the "mud house". Yes, it looks like kids threw dirt clods at the place.
I have never done any masonary or brick or stone work, but I did take a course in geology and I know what looks like real stone and what looks like Disneyland.
That was a rant as they say.
I don't have any real talent. I used to have a good arm, but I broke a ligament at 18. I have a good eye; Just this morning I found two pennys and a dime on the ground. That's not to mention the two $100 bills and smaller bills I've picked up off the ground. I don't fall for Somalian scams. I have never for a minute believed that creatures from outer space are cruising our planet. If I wake up in the middle of the night it will always be "on the hour". Years of working on a tight schedule have imprinted a clock in my brain, I always know what time it is.

[Jim in Salt Lake]

Jim,

One of the things I liked to do with my kids was to take them down stairs on a rainy day and let them take things apart. It taught the kids some valuable lessons and gave them a comfort with mechanical things.

The very best thing we ever took apart by far was a manual typewriter. Those things are amazing, all the intricate parts working together. I truly appreciate what a work of wonder they are.

Hopefully I can find one to take apart with my grandkids.

We never got anything back together again but it didn't seem to matter.

KTK

I did the same with my kids! I called that "teaching them the touch" and they can both use hand tools well and are good at following mechanical motion. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of those skills that IBM taught me all those years ago. I don't know where you'd get them today.

[Darreld Walton]

There was a time when I was the 'go to' guy for installing safety wire 'blind' on interior components and connectors of solid fuel ICBM's........other than that, I made a herd of kids, and could play piano with my right hand, and bass on accordion with the left simultaneously.....world changing talents, I know.

[dryheat]

I'm impressed. A real piano? A real accordion? That's good. BTW, I know how to safety wire a bolt or nut but I never got to the point of doing it blind. That's a real attainment.