What is it about playing golf that makes it your passion?
My sport is as legitimate as any.
And consists of a number of Olympic games
A bunch of foolish prejudges remarks here
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What is your daily job ? ... any hobbies ?
- Thread starter solderdude
- Start date
What is it about playing golf that makes it your passion?
My sport is as legitimate as any.
And consists of a number of Olympic games
A bunch of foolish prejudges remarks here
If it were not for our strict gun controls I would shoot regularly, marksmanship always captivated me as a kid and I’d spend hours with a old air rifle shooting various targets in the garden.
I loved the smell of that old thing, the tension of the trigger and learning to squeeze it just right, breath right. Ah I wish I’d of been able to carry that on into adulthood with some proper iron.
No need to get defensive. I was just curious and not judgmental at all. I've asked other gun owners the same question and most of the time the answer was a non-answer.
I don't play golf but j get your point.
restorer-john
Grand Contributor
I had an English BSA .22 calibre air rifle with a Tasco sight when I was young kid too. Same smell I remember. We used to go down to Kmart to buy pellets. I shot maybe two birds, lots of 'targets', several street lights, my very first pocket transistor radio my Dad gave me when I was 3, and a few ceramic HV insulators. I never forgave myself for killing that innocent bird on our TV antenna. I climbed up on the roof, retrieved it and gave it a decent burial.
Then I proceeded to rebuild my transistor radio PCB I had shot to pieces. It was arguably one of the first restorations I did. I must have been about 9yo.
Fired a Ruger 308 rifle at an Army rifle range with a mate several years ago and decided shoulder dislocations (not quite but it hurt) weren't my thing. I was actually quite good a hitting the targets and I can see how marksmanship is a great skill, but just not for me.
maxxevv
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My day job is in mechanical design. For most of the past decade, I have been working on converting normal cars to 1:1 RC for purposes of autonomous systems integration. Been quite a ride and seeing how things progress from the other side.
Hobbies will include photography and to some extent audio. But my main spare time endeavor remains cycling on the roads.
Hobbies will include photography and to some extent audio. But my main spare time endeavor remains cycling on the roads.
oivavoi
Major Contributor
Cool. Was indeed wondering whether your nick was a reference to Proust!
I've been a bit of a journey man engineer in life. I started my working life as an engineer cadet in the merchant navy working for one of the big containership operators. After working my way through to chief engineer via Antarctic survey vessels and specialised offshore vessels I left the sea to work in electricity generation. While in electricity generation I realised my HND and chief engineers ticket didn't carry much weight ashore so I self funded a degree in mechanical engineering specialising in combustion thermodynamics in my spare time. I ended up as a strategic development engineer leading a design team designing new thermal power plants. I missed the marine sector (though not the sea, I've never felt the slightest urge to go back to sea) and my employer made a few bad investment so in 2010 I went to work for a marine classification society. A classification society establishes rules for the design and construction of ships and then surveys them during design, construction and through life. I did design approval for the propulsion systems, particularly torsional vibration calculations which is one of those awfully dry and tedious things you need to do because it is very important. Then I moved to emissions and emissions control, I did my masters in emissions at that time and when they moved my office as part of a corporate relocation decided to leave and now am basically a lobbyist for a part of the maritime sector, attending various regulatory forums and such like, I am in the happy position of basically being paid just to talk 
My other hobbies are model trains and reading history (I won't say study, as that would imply that I did it seriously). And driving my boy around England and Wales every other weekend to play in ice hockey games and alternatively sitting shivering in the local ice rink waiting for the boy to finish ice hockey coaching or for the girl to finish her figure skating coaching, they're bleeding me dry and seriously depleting the piggy bank which I have for audio gear and model trains
My other hobbies are model trains and reading history (I won't say study, as that would imply that I did it seriously). And driving my boy around England and Wales every other weekend to play in ice hockey games and alternatively sitting shivering in the local ice rink waiting for the boy to finish ice hockey coaching or for the girl to finish her figure skating coaching, they're bleeding me dry and seriously depleting the piggy bank which I have for audio gear and model trains
That maybe so, but I am genuinely curious. If music leads to someone becoming an audiophile, what leads someone to like guns? I hope its not violence
It is commonly spread prejudice. If you like guns you like shooting at target, not shooting at people. In Europe most guns per household you will find in Switzerland, the country with one of the lowest guns commited crimes.
I trained shooting for more than 7 years regularly (twice a week) and I like guns - or better to say rifles.
The answer is actually quite simple: folks who love guns either like to collect them or to use them in shooting practices and/or hunting. personally, I'm not a big fun of hunting anymore, but it was fun to me when I was young. I guess I'm more empathic toward animals now.
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Yea mine was a old circa WW2 Era BSA .177 , I built a army barracks with some soft wood and shot at my old toy soldiers and when I got good I’d practice on a thin side of a penny... the odd bird copped it too but I’d feel bad doing that , a moving was hard to turn down though lol.
The sensory memory being so fresh kinda surprises me, a nice surprise. As for the practical uses for such skills, they have bought me favour with the odd girl while visiting the fair ground but the big toy ya win is worth less than the money you paid to play ( obviously I kept those thoughts to myself, else the ‘own goal’ would of scuppered my plans for later lol).
Those of us who like shooting like it because... well... it's fun. I'm a lifelong vegetarian so don't hunt, but I really enjoy perforating targets- it's a good combo of mental and physical activity. And it gave me a newfound appreciation for my wife; I'm pretty good with a handgun or a rifle, she is frighteningly good with both, and blows me away at skeet (figuratively).
My day job, as I've mentioned, is running a chemistry research group, specializing in surface modification, siloxane synthesis, electrochemistry, and corrosion management. Over the years, I've started and sold off companies in electronics (specifically force and position sensors for human-machine interface, with Microsoft being one of our big customers for some time) and wine (I invented the coextruded synthetic wine cork now used worldwide). And I spent a few years in the research grant game, sucking up a few million in American taxpayers' money to study endocrine disrupting chemicals in food packaging.
My night and weekend job is doing test and measurement reviews for AudioXpress. My wife and I also run a political discussion website under different identities to keep things separate from our professional lives (so don't ask, I won't say). This got rather more popular and time-consuming than we had originally anticipated, with about a million user-generated posts per year.
My day job, as I've mentioned, is running a chemistry research group, specializing in surface modification, siloxane synthesis, electrochemistry, and corrosion management. Over the years, I've started and sold off companies in electronics (specifically force and position sensors for human-machine interface, with Microsoft being one of our big customers for some time) and wine (I invented the coextruded synthetic wine cork now used worldwide). And I spent a few years in the research grant game, sucking up a few million in American taxpayers' money to study endocrine disrupting chemicals in food packaging.
My night and weekend job is doing test and measurement reviews for AudioXpress. My wife and I also run a political discussion website under different identities to keep things separate from our professional lives (so don't ask, I won't say). This got rather more popular and time-consuming than we had originally anticipated, with about a million user-generated posts per year.
My day job is too coerce a bunch of smart engineers into doing things in a coordinated way. I do IT stuff at scale (i’am hiring btw). I’am focusing on cluster management and machine learning.
I used to work in a startup and be an assistant professor in applied math.
I have been mastering classical music for a long time. My next project is to build a room correction software open source, portable and easy to hack. It looks like I will never have the time to be serious and start to dev it for good.
I used to work in a startup and be an assistant professor in applied math.
I have been mastering classical music for a long time. My next project is to build a room correction software open source, portable and easy to hack. It looks like I will never have the time to be serious and start to dev it for good.
bobhol
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Day Job
Sitting at a desk for 8 hours waiting to retire (6 months away). My employer says I'm a Quality Assurance Engineer
Hobbies
Amateur musician. Play Euphonium(Tenor Tuba) in the Fort Wayne Community Band. Sing Bass/Baritone in a student/Community Choir through Purdue-Fort Wayne.
Sim-racing on the computer with an online Community
Avid bike rider (the type of bike with pedals)
Home Owner (also as an Amateur)
Husband
Sitting at a desk for 8 hours waiting to retire (6 months away). My employer says I'm a Quality Assurance Engineer
Hobbies
Amateur musician. Play Euphonium(Tenor Tuba) in the Fort Wayne Community Band. Sing Bass/Baritone in a student/Community Choir through Purdue-Fort Wayne.
Sim-racing on the computer with an online Community
Avid bike rider (the type of bike with pedals)
Home Owner (also as an Amateur)
Husband
I am a retired engineer.
My hobbies as a boy were working on the farm, motor racing and music.
I wasn't sure whether to be a Vet or an Engineer since I liked the machinery and the animals but ended up doing engineering hoping to get involved in motor racing eventually.
I started recording music as much as I could in my mid teens and have continued ever since.
I started looking into hifi when I left home. I wanted to play my records now that my Mum's record player was no longer available!
I bought a Garrard deck from my local shop and was surprised to find it didn't have a cartridge included so I decided to educate myself. I started off with a ceramic cartridge connected to the microphone input of my tape recorder (mono) then built speakers using Wharfedale units and a Heathkit amp.
In 1970 whilst a student at Imperial College I wrote a programme to optimise racing car suspension geometry, this got me into motor racing part time.
I did an engineering apprenticeship and ended up in noise and vibration research (and helping a racing team with my suspension) doing lots of measurements, often using transducers I had to design by myself.
I took a job at Garrard analysing record players and how they work which was fun but I really wanted to go motor racing and eventually got my first proper full time job doing it in 1976.
I continued designing and running racing cars until the end of the 2009 season.
I had originally told my wife I couldn't see myself standing in the pits next to a racing car when I was 40 but actually only stopped when I was coming up to 60.
My hobbies have been collecting cameras and listening to music. The cameras are sold but the music goes on, I married a musician so there is live music several days a week, from practice to performance.
My hobbies as a boy were working on the farm, motor racing and music.
I wasn't sure whether to be a Vet or an Engineer since I liked the machinery and the animals but ended up doing engineering hoping to get involved in motor racing eventually.
I started recording music as much as I could in my mid teens and have continued ever since.
I started looking into hifi when I left home. I wanted to play my records now that my Mum's record player was no longer available!
I bought a Garrard deck from my local shop and was surprised to find it didn't have a cartridge included so I decided to educate myself. I started off with a ceramic cartridge connected to the microphone input of my tape recorder (mono) then built speakers using Wharfedale units and a Heathkit amp.
In 1970 whilst a student at Imperial College I wrote a programme to optimise racing car suspension geometry, this got me into motor racing part time.
I did an engineering apprenticeship and ended up in noise and vibration research (and helping a racing team with my suspension) doing lots of measurements, often using transducers I had to design by myself.
I took a job at Garrard analysing record players and how they work which was fun but I really wanted to go motor racing and eventually got my first proper full time job doing it in 1976.
I continued designing and running racing cars until the end of the 2009 season.
I had originally told my wife I couldn't see myself standing in the pits next to a racing car when I was 40 but actually only stopped when I was coming up to 60.
My hobbies have been collecting cameras and listening to music. The cameras are sold but the music goes on, I married a musician so there is live music several days a week, from practice to performance.
Amazing background! You seem like the perfect candidate to achieve the car-loving audiophile's dream - a turntable setup in a car!
My fav response to "how much" was always
"Speed costs money, how fast would you like to go"?
And it is -very- expensive now.My fav response to "how much" was always
"Speed costs money, how fast would you like to go"?
In my first season of F1 the whole cost of the season was £220k, there were 18 of us in the company, the race team was 8 people and we went to the airport in 2 cars. I was the only graduate engineer. We were the smallest team though, and I moved on to a bigger one (23 of us...) which grew quite big (600 now).
When I stopped in 2009 a top teams were spending £200 million, race teams were over 70 (and that was limited, before the limit Ferrari took 120 people to a race) and the teams have hundreds of graduates.
Fast cars and music and photography - all relate to different forms of speed. that is amazing!
I work for a "technology integrator" tweaking a gigantic cloud service for various customers. It's very boring...
My hobbies are time lapse video and lightning photography, finding cacti species that will grow outdoors here in East Tennessee, headphone-related audiophile pursuits, and many interests scientific, technical, and musical. I entered audiophile land in my teens, had many vinyl and digital systems, listening rooms, over the years. I'm probably overly sensitive to room acoustic problems, now I just do headphone listening.
Here's something kinda cool: years ago my buddy and I built a fast switch box for amplifiers, we used to take it around to stereo stores and set up level-matched blind listening tests between his little Sansui 90-watt integrated amp and whatever high-end stuff the store thought could beat it. Short of clipping the amps, never once could we or the sales people tell a difference, even on some incredible speakers they had. Surprise, surprise.
My hobbies are time lapse video and lightning photography, finding cacti species that will grow outdoors here in East Tennessee, headphone-related audiophile pursuits, and many interests scientific, technical, and musical. I entered audiophile land in my teens, had many vinyl and digital systems, listening rooms, over the years. I'm probably overly sensitive to room acoustic problems, now I just do headphone listening.
Here's something kinda cool: years ago my buddy and I built a fast switch box for amplifiers, we used to take it around to stereo stores and set up level-matched blind listening tests between his little Sansui 90-watt integrated amp and whatever high-end stuff the store thought could beat it. Short of clipping the amps, never once could we or the sales people tell a difference, even on some incredible speakers they had. Surprise, surprise.