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What is your daily job ? ... any hobbies ?

BostonJack

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Let's see. I was trained as an EE. Have worked many years in tech industry, mainly in the Boston area, recently in the semiconductor industry modeling complex digital IC's and verifying them. Currently doing SQA and test automation, software build work for a startup.

Hobbies; AVID skier, semi-avid cyclist. I do some AT (uphill, backcountry skiing). Love to read. Maker of random conversation. Political junkie. I'm training (mainly barbell work) to really build my strength and agility. Medium term goal is to go to Chamonix, hire a guide, and go through an ascending degree of difficulty descents: mainly couloirs and steep lines. I'll stop and start more skills training when I suggest a route and the guide looks doleful and shakes his head gently 'no'. Hahaha.

Dream is to retire soon and spend 2-3 months per year in Chamonix as a dirtbag skier with a quick vacation at Le Grave.
 

Sal1950

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My dearest hobby has been sport shooting with pistols (ISSF disciplines) since I was 13. I've won 4 national championships now in seniors, but stopped practising some 25 years ago. I
Happily surprised at the number of sport shooters we have here. I still get out at least once every couple weeks, mostly handguns but long-gun on occasion. A number of them were my fathers so I try to take his M1 Garand and Carbine out to honor him on fathers day, his birthday, etc.
I'm still stuck working on a few committees here at our condo-assc. Sometimes fun but mostly aggravation. :mad: ;)
 

Rja4000

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Until 5, I was living in Bobby Jaspar's parents house.
At 10, I wanted to study aerodynamics and was drawing cars
At 14, I started programming
At 15, I was shooting with air gun to everything (but nothing alive) and wanted to understand everything about weapon mechs.
At 17, I started photography as a hobby
At 18, I was spending most of my free time in HiFi shops, asking questions and listening to everything.
At 20, I was doing 14 hours radio a day, control room side, 7 days a week, and 80 concerts a year, and I wanted to be a live sound engineer by profession
At 25, my girl friend wanted kids and a serious life, so I restarted my early-interrupted cursus at engineering school
At 28, I started to work for the local beer company here.
30 years later, I'm still working there.
We both grew.
Company is around 180000 employees worldwide nowadays.
I've been always busy with automation and industrial IT. More on the Industrial IT side of things.
I'm now managing automation at the European zone level. Building strategy and vision is what I like.
Especially rewarding when it comes to life.


If you ask people, they probably will tell you my main hobby is photography. I do that seriously since 1989 or so. Since last year, I started with some exhibitions, and that is quite good to hear people who like your work... so I'll go on, probably


I'm still recording, mixing, amplifying live music from time to time too. Less Rock now, more Jazz.
I'm very lucky to count several excellent professional musicians in my friends and to live in a city where there is a concert almost every day.


But, you know, I'm an engineer, since age of 10. So I want to understand, push the limits, and measure, for sure.
So here am I...
 
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617

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Bachelors in Industrial Design, Masters in Architecture, currently working in historical restoration after having done some high end international development work and some interior design.

Learning to read music and play guitar, sort of learning musical composition. Used to play pedal steel. Also enjoy macro photography but not of typical macro subjects.

Mostly interested in building speakers; have two projects underway. Building speakers is the most cerebral hobby I have and I enjoy learning about things which are hard to understand. It also presents unique challenges due to the fact that I am a plastic crab.
 

Tks

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+1 (gun-loving vegan here)



+1 for cooking, but no aversion of guns (despite staring down the barrel 2 times in my youth with slim chances of escape in at least one of these occasions).

I started my career as a management consultant and after several intermediate jobs served as a VP for a major Russian real estate developer and then as a VP for one of the mobile carriers abroad, partially funded by Russian capital (I had previous experience in that industry). Took a break in the wake of local financial crisis in 2015, from which I am still to come back.

Spend most of the time now reading books (mostly economics [my university major], philosophy, and psychology), cooking, travelling a bit, practicing yoga, watching YouTube and listening to podcasts (Mindscape, Making sense with Sam Harris, TED Interview, After On with Rob Reid, The Tim Ferriss show, Joe Rogan and Work Life with Adam Grant among others).

Time-wise, podcast/YouTube to music listening is now around 10 to 1. Very happy to have got DX7 Pro + HD 650 for that at home.

Gun-loving but impossible-to-get-a-gun-in-NYC vegan here ;P

Not too compelled by high power stuff, I find pistol designs fascinating. Or anything with one handed operation tbh. Oh and small art-knives from the likes of Chris Reeves for example. Of course knives also not easy to get here and such.

 

Fledermaus

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Dayjob : MD, head of the local hospital's clinical chemistry lab (was too lazy at school to become an audio engineer).
Besides hi-fi/audio, which has been my most chronic symptom since my teens, hobbies have included reading, horseriding, bike riding, motorbike riding, photography (no firearms yet), all in Asperger mode: one at a time, exclusively and thoroughly until I felt the subject was totally exhausted and I got bored, then switching for something else.
Now that I'm in my late 50s : walking the dogs, feeding the cats, gardening, attending and translating buddhist teachings.
 

digitalfrost

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I'm a network engineer. You know computer networks. Internet.

I grew up on tennis courts, mountainbikes and lego. Then I got a PC. Kinda quit everything else for a while. As I got older, I realized I needed to workout if I'm sitting all day. Started weight lifting. Never quit since. Eventually I remembered how much fun I had on my bike as a kid. When people tell you you don't need to do cardio, they're right. Until you're above 30. I always wanted a full suspension bike but they were unobtanium when I was a kid, so



Also I always liked watches. Even in primary school I was scolded for looking at my watch too long. I never know what time it is, I just marvel at the beauty. I think I have ~ 14 now.

By proxy of watches, I got into knives (damn you Nick Shabazz). I have more than I need and I try to keep them hair shaving sharp. Then I open boxes with them once in a while. And I bought myself some lego recently. It's funny how you come back to that stuff you liked as a kid once you're settled isn't it? I can't be the only one.

Hifi has always been with me since I was a kid. My dad had a pioneer stereo from 1986. Loved the digital VU meters. Still do. I spent evenings while my parents were watching TV next to the stereo with headphones on. I had to stand on a stool to even reach the buttons. I read all the booklets despite not understanding a single word of english. Still am good reading stuff I don't understand.
 
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LTig

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Dayjob: EE, worked 5 years as service engineer installing and fixing NMR spectrometers for solids and liquids, afterwards changed into software department writing control software for said spectrometers, and stayed there since. Have seen quite a change in hardware - started with hard disks in a 19" housing 6 HE high and 60 cm deep and some 40 kg weight, with barely 24 MB storage; hand designed 24 bit CPUs made from 4 bit slice TTL chips. Today I have a micro SD card with 128 GB in my phone and a 8 core/16 thread CPU with 16 GB main memory and 8 TB harddisk in my private workstation. :eek:

Hobbies: Music (live and recorded), Audio/DIY[1], photography, reading. No firearms! Had to stop climbing and serious ski mountaineering hence more time for the other hobbies. Still work for free at the local Alpine club and as house photographer for the friends of the local state opera house.

[1] serious DIY projects:
  • preamplifier for line level and MC phono, headphone out for 300 Ohm cans. Currently used a phono preamp only.
  • MM phono preamp added inside a Rotel integrated amp which lacked one, for a friend. Still in use.
  • digital patchbay 6 in 4 out, supports SPDIF Coax and Toslink, AES/EBU (no protocol change, just simple hardware). Still integrated into my main system but barely used any more.
DIY projects in planning:
  • load for a power amp which can handle 500W for an hiour and up to 2 kW short term - maybe 5 minutes (currently searching for a cheap but very big heat sink)
  • maybe a front end preamplifier for the RME ADI-2 PRO fs. I thought about the autoscaler but I fear that its distortion will swamp the quality of the RME.
 

Sal1950

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House de Kris

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I like to claim I retired in 2010. Since then I was a chicken rancher, and when I realised that making $20/week wasn't the retirement nest egg I was hoping for, I had to look for some additional income. Landed a job at a seasonal fall festival, which turned into a year-round part-time job mowing their acres and acres of grass. I moved up to operations manager full time and designed new structures and attractions for the kiddies, in addition to tending sheep and goats, while still mowing the grass. Then health issues took me out of that gig. Oh yeah, I also drove for Uber for a while. It helped with putting food on the table, and you meet some interesting people. You also meet jerks. I also teach my own blend of yoga/Tai chi/qi-gong from time to time. Guess that's actually more of a hobby, though.

Before retiring, I was a hardware design engineer making automatic test equipment (ATE) for the semiconductor industry for 30 years. For almost my entire career, my title was analog design engineer. I specialized in converter testing (ADCs & DACs) for a decade. My last decade was spent in flash memory testing. Our corporate motto was, "driving down the cost of consumer flash." It would appear to have worked.

Hobbies circle around my former occupation. I love music, both listening to it, as well as making it. Stereos are a hobby. I also like to record music. This last fall I was stage manager at the fall festival, and I got the opportunity to record many bands. I also enjoy designing and building synthesizers, in addition to playing them. Photography occupies some of my time, and just aimlessly wondering about my ranch is fulfilling, too.

Since guns seem to be the subtopic here as well, I'll share my opinions on them. When I lived in California, I never thought twice of owning any sort of firearm. But, after living in Texas for four months, I announced, "I gotta get me a gun!" Varmints killing my chickens (and eating into my pocketbook) were really pissing me off. Whacking raccoons in the hen house with a broom stick just makes them look at you like, "hey buddy, you wanna knock it off with that damn stick?" Besides if you don't stay up all night repairing the damage, they just go right back in as soon as you leave. Thus, the need for a gun. My first weapon was a Smith & Wesson 642 revolver. It's small, fits in the pocket, and comes out easily because it has no external hammer. In California this would be a great 7-11 holdup gun. In Texas it is the perfect chicken coop defense when loaded with shot shells. I became a fan of guns when I first examined them. The solidity of the build, the heft, the smooth machining of materials, the precision of the fit of parts. They are a marvel of manufacturing, even without firing them.

Then there's that too, the actual shooting. To get good at anything, it takes practice. Whether it be playing a musical instrument, typing on a keyboard, or shooting a firearm. It's rewarding to increase your skills. At first, rodents would just laugh at me because I was such a poor shot. But who's laughing now that I usually get them with the first shot. Buying one gun leads to more and more. Rifles, shotguns, semi-automatic pistols - they all have their place. All of them have been beautiful examples of precision machining.

Shooting a gun is nothing like in the movies. It annoys me when the actor casually shoots a .44 revolver off to the side with his elbow bent, and there's no kick at all. Or, there's a massive shootout indoors between good and evil, then one of the good guys whispers to his buddy to circle around. Yeah right, like they'd be able to hear anything short of a shout. But, I digress.

But, with great power comes great responsibility, and I've learned my lesson. At first I was hell bent on eliminating all snakes from around the chicken coop. And I did. After all, constrictors swallow a couple eggs whole, then wrap themselves around a tree to break them inside. Big mistake. Want to know what happens when you kill off all the snakes? You get over run by rats. Turns out I'd much rather have snakes then rats. I pray to baby Jesus every night asking to have the snake return, He ain't budging - I must live with the rats. Lesson learned: don't screw with the delicate balance of nature.
 

Trdat

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Back in the days I was a personal trainer working with injuries, training clients such as pianists, surgeons etc and in general people with shoulder injuries and back injuries. I suppose Tony Boutagy is largely unknown within the industry in the States but he and Charles Poliquin would be in my subjective opinion the pinnacle of Strength and Conditioning. I had the honour of working with Tony hands on and on a research level and thank him for my knowledge and for being a mentor as well as the only health professional who really helped with my major health issues. And with my allergy to all things but meat and vegetables, it literally deepened my research on things like paleo, diet, gluten, IGE responses, IBS, gut microbiota, and the link between damaged stomach lining and inflammatory diseases, etc. Totally over this part of researching....

Moving forward a number of years I moved to Armenia(from Sydney) things change and you got to hustle. Perhaps people living in a developing worlds understand there is no career in these countries just powering on. So, I am an editor for a think tank, obviously for the English content. I can't even structure normal sentences in ARS Lol! but hey I got the knack to write academically and to edit...

I also have a goal of starting my own Audio business which is still in its infancy, with a goal of providing DIY speaker and multi-channel set ups with its DIY cabinets and digital DSP crossovers/ I want to sell low end Chinese amps that measure well, to anything hi end that measures well. I also dabble in acoustics so would like to take on jobs with studios and stuff... The goal is to undercut branded speakers, I will do this to make audio more affordable to the locals without the bullshit plus people will save on huge shipping costs on large speakers when purchased from me. I have no income from this yet and I suspect it will take up to 5 to 7 years for the market to open up in the country but hey at least I do what I love! Not much competition in the country either, so I am scrambling to get my concept out. Hence why I am so inquisitive and keen to learn! And really appreciate people patients when answering my questions.

Hobby; well I am an imagery analyst, or OSINT hobbyist. I analyse open source imagery in regards to military and resumption of hostilities in a few regions. I make no money from this unfortunately, but I write for a pretty prestigious website, and no no yet at Jane'ss Defence but perhaps one day.

Everything i do is self taught.
 

Boris Badinov

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I am curious about what 'audio science review' members do for a living (or are retired) and if they have hobbies other than audio.

I'll kick of.

Daily job: is designing, building (manufacture), FAT and service electronics for railway measurement systems.
Used to work in audio/video repairs, installs, service untill about 20 years ago.
Worked for the Dutch importer for Technics/Panasonic and later for JVC and after that for a high-end AV shop.

hobbies: did photography for many years , audio (headphones mostly these days), filling maintaining a website, designing electronics for others and myself also used to ride motorcycle now and then.

had a technical education and continue to learn every day.

I was a master plumber for 30 yrs and the final 8 as a tech in water filtration. Now I'm retired, so every day is Saturday!
This has led me to renew my interest in home audio. I had a nice Pioneer and Teac set-up purchased when leaving the SE Asia war games. It was stolen yrs later and life got in the way and I never replaced it till the end of 2018.
Hobbies: shooting, motorcycles and a little woodworking
money.jpg
 
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Snarfie

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A
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.
Any change you did your engineering apprenticeship at Lotus. Did visit many times the F1 in Zandvoort was lucky to get into the pits an saw in the 70ties the Lotus with ground effect with JPS logo awesome car.
 

Snarfie

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For 95% retired from the Financial market data industry. Was a managing director at a market data vendor my specialty was low latency feeds day trading an the whole risk-managment around that specific for market makers based on asset pricing models like black & scholes an other VAR models. Still advising/consulting in the financial market data industry. Hobbies are Cycling, walking, playing tennis (still at a reasonable level), Golf (stop with that because most of my friends have a foot-wedge):facepalm:
Music & quantum mechanics (the philosophical side) are my biggest passion it keeps me sane. I like ASR because valid arguments are key. You don't have to deal with social codes (besides behaving your self) as in the corporate world where valid arguments are a lot of times reasoned away with a lack of valid arguments mostly no arguments or any oppostion which is quite tiresome.
 
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Sal1950

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Actually I'm a hit man but I can't reveal that in public. :facepalm:
 
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