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

[Vovgan]

I'm a lifelong vegetarian so don't hunt, but I really enjoy perforating targets

+1 (gun-loving vegan here)

Retired here, audio is a somewhat distant fourth these days to cooking, Chinese brush painting, and golf. OTOH I love to help out others on problems just to keep the analytical side of the brain working.

BTW even the sight of a real gun incites a gag reflex, this has been true for decades and I don't know the reason.

+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.

 

[bakker_be]

That's even sadder. (Never been a fan of their drivers)

Back in my speaker-building days they used to have some really nice tweeters and midrange domes ...

 

[LLL]

Day job(s): Turning around a high-end interior design product company I acquired last year. Fashion Photographer. Recovering EE faculty at University of Washington (I am not far from @amirm). Angel investments. Sole male board member of a women-focused non-profit. Developing two next-gen medical devices. Peer-reviewer for two energy storage journals. Previously: Consulted for Microsoft, Boeing and a ton of startups. Started/sold a medical software company. Process Engineer for some enormous semiconductor company. Racecar driver. Wrote for a British HiFi magazine (20+ years ago). Opera singer. Paid for college by winning karaoke competitions.

Hobbies: see day job(s) + wife, cat, and dog. Writing on Quora. Debunking anti-science nonsense on Twitter. Mentoring @ Foster Business School @ UW. Modernist cuisine (and used to help run a sous vide device company)...

I am weird. And I still don't know what I want to do when I "grow up".

 

[Shadrach]

UK subject.
I was a scientist/Engineer. Mostly working for an avionics company in acoustic research for Ministry Of Defense contracts.
I made a bit of an error in judgment and lost my security clearance, vital for work in that field.
I was quite content being unemployed for a couple of years.
I decided I didn't want to go back to management politics, working in a lab, shirt and tie etc and joined a friend who erected security fencing.
Started my own fencing contracting company eventually. I did this for 12 years. I had a bad accident and broke a few bones.
I spent the majority of my youth on an uncles farm and an opportunity arose here in Spain to manage a small farm/smallholding.
I'm still doing it.
I became fascinated with chicken behaviour and have written a book on it. Hopefully it will get published next year.

Hobbies apart from audio.
Aikido.
Motorbikes for many years.

I designed and built with some help the earth bermed house I live in. I've gone a bit feral.
I make stuff out of the wood I find here.

 

[KozmoNaut]

Hobbies: Primarily focused on music, mostly metal and hard rock. I handle the promo releases for reviews on a local metal website, so I'm exposed to anywhere between 50 and 100 new releases every week. On top of that, I go to 3-4 concerts every month and at least 3-4 festivals every year, and a whole host of related events. If I'm out and about walking or on public transit, 99% of the time I will be listening to some new album I'm checking out.

I'm also very interested in food, both cooking and eating. I like trying my hand at cooking food from all over the world, from Ethiopia over Thailand over South Africa to Cajun and everything in between. On top of this, I'm very interested in good beer and spirits of all kinds, especially whisky.

All vacations I go on with my girlfriend tend to revolve around food and walking/hiking. I've always been an avid walker, if time is not a concern I prefer walking to cycling, driving or public transit.

Perhaps it's not a hobby as such rather than a philosophy, but I do try to stick to things that are repairable and will degrade gracefully if they are at some point returned to nature. So in other words I prefer metal and wooden kitchen utensils over plastic, I prefer oilskin/waxed cotton/leather jackets over modern synthetics and so on. I know most (all?) of these materials do take more resources to initially produce than modern materials, and they're heavier and take more care to remain waterproof etc., but they also last longer and I can repair most of them myself.

I also dabble in electronics and miniature painting, though not so much anymore.


Job: IT at a major telco/ISP, primarily web applications.

 

[PaulD]

I spent the majority of my youth on an uncles farm and an opportunity arose here in Spain to manage a small farm/smallholding.
I'm still doing it.
I became fascinated with chicken behaviour and have written a book on it. Hopefully it will get published next year.
Hobbies apart from audio.
.

Super! Peter Lenox is a sound spatialisation researcher et the Uni of Derby and he is also into chickens! He wrote a fabulous piece for The Times Higher Education here https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/pecking-order/410238.article
I will attach a pdf in case it's behind a paywall...

 

[Shadrach]

Super! Peter Lenox is a sound spatialisation researcher et the Uni of Derby and he is also into chickens! He wrote a fabulous piece for The Times Higher Education here https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/pecking-order/410238.article
I will attach a pdf in case it's behind a paywall...

That was thoughtful of you. Thank you very much.
I'm always on the look out for other nut cases.

 

[StevenEleven]

Day job: attorney (definitely will not steer my kids in that direction—the legal system in the U.S. is just plain broken, and I’ve seen enough of it for one lifetime).

Hobbies: Mediocre photographer and totally incompetent musician and computer and technology lover and trying not to get even more fat (i.e., “fitness”j.

Pastimes: Watching sports and news and reading newspapers and especially listening to live and recorded music.

i try to make up for all of this by being a good husband and father and a nice guy. Not sure how well I do there either though. ; ).

Been away from the forum for six or seven weeks as the tone was getting to be a bit of a downer. . . Spent a couple of hours reading here tonight. .. looks like it’s back up to form. So this place is a nice pastime too (again).

 

[Ceburaska]

Very recently retired. Hopefully will be able to stay so.
Worked as an accountant for a multinational consumer products’ company, in the recreational pharmaceutical sector, operating in almost every country in the world.
Love music, books, rugby, tv/films. I especially enjoy live performances, mainly classical music and theatre. Season ticket holder for Gloucester Rugby, but no longer a shedhead.
Love food, wine, driving and travelling. Spain, Italy and France preferably. Have a UK professional qualification in wine (WSET L3) but only use it for consumption. Been to 55 countries, but have several friends over a hundred.
Did a masters degree in east European politics and history, and fascinated by the Soviet era. Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Bartok, Lem, Bulgakov, Grossman, Shalamov, Havel, Uspensky and Solzhenitsyn have all made their mark. Alas I’ve forgotten almost all the (limited) Latvian and Russian I learnt while abroad.
Love science fiction and fantasy, but find a lot of it unreadably badly written.
Love art, have a lot of original pieces, none of it by anyone famous! OK, one print by Yinka Shonibare. My favourite is Daisy Millner, https://www.artslant.com/global/artists/show/322682-daisy-millner?tab=ARTWORKS
I’ve got several by her, including this

Be kind...beauty is in the eye of the beholder...and I love it!

 

[digicidal]

I'm not even sure what my job description would even be at this point... but I guess "solutions architect" is fairly close (though the reality is far less glamorous than that makes it seem). I planned on a life in art - figured commercial for survival and fine for enjoyment... but wound up working for a very large company with a horrible IT department. After the fourth or fifth time I had to fix their infrastructure just to get my own work done, they canned the previous department and stuck me and an EE that did all their equipment controls in a new one. After a few years I got sick of the big corporate politics and found a small (tiny actually) company and took over basically everything with a cord.

Software authoring, procurement & implementation, administration of all servers/infrastructure, etc. - all the way down to setting up quick-dial selections on the users' phones. In exchange, I'm pretty well compensated and can work whenever I feel like it - which is usually 5 minutes after everyone leaves and until they come back the next morning.

Still hoping to get back to fine art, as a hobby at least, at some point... but audio, movies and literature (and my wife and cat) fill out the rest of the time nicely for the present.

@Shadrach I raised chickens when I was young... they are indeed very interesting behaviorally (although they can be real a-holes to each other... "pecking order" is a very real thing as I'm sure you've observed).

 

[Berwhale]

I work in IT. At present, I work for a multinational insurance company where I run the Infrastructure Engineering team for the EMEA region. Prior to this, I spent most of my career (17 years) working for a US investment bank in the City of London. Whilst I was there I worked in Desktop & Trading Support, Desktop Architecture and Engineering, Project and Programme Management, Infrastructure Engineering and Application Development. I liked working for the bank, but I don't miss the 1 hour 45 minute commute that I ended up with (it's less than 40 minutes now).

In addition to ASR, my hobbies include: computing & networking, a bit of gaming, listening to music, reading (generally science fact or fiction), cleaning the fish, walking the dog, fixing up the house, tidying up after my kids and the odd bit of cycling.

 

[digicidal]

I liked working for the bank, but I don't miss the 1 hour 45 minute commute that I ended up with (it's less than 40 minutes now).

In addition to ASR, my hobbies include: computing & networking, a bit of gaming, listening to music, reading (generally science fact or fiction), cleaning the fish, walking the dog, fixing up the house, tidying up after my kids and the odd bit of cycling.

Man, I get irritated when my commute takes 30 minutes - during rush hour - since I'm used to driving during off hours where I can do it in ~8 mins. (as long as my radar detector stays quiet that is). I'm assuming that second bit concerns their tank? I can't imagine how frustratingly difficult it would be to clean the actual fish! Or are you referring to preparing fish for eating?

 

[Berwhale]

Man, I get irritated when my commute takes 30 minutes - during rush hour - since I'm used to driving during off hours where I can do it in ~8 mins. (as long as my radar detector stays quiet that is). I'm assuming that second bit concerns their tank? I can't imagine how frustratingly difficult it would be to clean the actual fish! Or are you referring to preparing fish for eating?

My current commute is a 22 minute train ride through the countryside with a less than 10 minute walk at either end. When I first worked for the bank, I lived opposite the building. I was so close that I could use my DECT cordless home phone at my desk on the trading floor.

Yes, I mean clean the fish tank - I can't let the wife and kids near it, it wasn't good for the fish the last time...

 

[digicidal]

Despite the fact that I love driving (as fast as possible mostly)... a 22 minute train ride through the country would be pretty easy to get used to. Definitely a good stress reducer I'm sure.

 

[Martin]

I work from a virtual office in my home. I swapped my 1-3 hour one-way commute in San Francisco Bay Area traffic for a 20ft. walk through my living room about 14 years ago. I moved to southwest Florida about 9 years ago. Both changes improved the quality of my life dramatically.

This is the view out my office window:

Martin

 

[Twitch54]

Do you give senior discounts?

only if you buy from our Viagra machine ........

On a serious note, I'm a third generation railroader. Hired out with the Penn Central RR in April 1974. I've been in the management side of the biz for the past 41 years, planning on retirement next year.

 

[Sal1950]

I moved to southwest Florida about 9 years ago. Both changes improved the quality of my life dramatically.

Without a doubt!!!

 

[Juhazi]

I am a dentists, graduated in 1983. I worked for public health services for 22 years, including orthodontics and adminidstration. In 2006 I moved to another city and started as private practitioner doing GP and some surgery and prosthetics.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=997027210661782

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 have a referee license too. At 13 I also started to listen to music and got interested in hifi/diy speakers. I couldn't learn to play or sing, sad to say. I go to concerts and theatre regularly.

One long time hobby has been being a board member for several associations, also chairman, secretary, treasurer. Now I'm happy to say that I've finally got rid of those! I've had some motorbikes but not enough time to ride. Skiing, bicycle etc. outdoor activities but not seriously.

House and summer cabin maintenace can be called a hobby too? Raising up 5 kids and a dog?

 

[Willem]

I am a professor of economic history, with a quite international career behind me (UK, US, Israel, Germany, France). I am slowly sliding into retirement due to the mandatory retirement age in the Netherlands, but do not really want to, so may move abroad again temporarily. I bought my first serious audio gear as a student (Quad 33/303, ELS 57) and kept that for a very long time. I am now on my second system of a very similar kind (RME ADI-2, Quad 606-2, Quad 2805, plus sub). So when I started in the early 1970s audio was a very scientific and rational thing, which suited me fine. In my Cambridge days I met Peter Walker who gave me one of his blind ABX presentations. I guess my professional training has made me a hard nosed rationalist with a keen sense of long term value (I worked hard as a youth to buy that Quad system). So I have never believed that technical progress was fast, hence apart from CD and now streaming I never suffered from an urge to upgrade, or from audiophilia nervosa. My student children also like music and are quite pleased that I gave them nice audio systems.
I do have other hobbies apart from music: one is modern architecture and design (we live in a beautiful modern house that we had designed for us, and sit on mid twentieth century design classics). The other is cycle touring and custom steel touring bikes. Last summer my wife and I toured in central Italy, camping most nights. The provisional plan for next summer is to tour together in the Netherlands, plus a short solo tour along the German coast and a longer solo ride to the south of France. But plans are there to change. Unlike some here, I am not keen on cars, and I cycle to work.

 

[rgpit]

Retired now, but I was an Technical Field Sales Rep in the electronic components industry for 35 years. In my younger years I worked in the audio industry as a retail salesman and later as factory rep.
I've been an audio and music enthusiast since the sixties.