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I know what you mean, how small do they make violins anyway? In a 24/7/365 cargo operation for a hundred years the port chemists were on call to open their lab

I know what you mean, how small do they make violins anyway? In a 24/7/365 cargo operation for a hundred years the port chemists were on call to open their lab after hours and on weekends & holidays each time our ships came in, to operate the office no differently than when you get a vessel during the regular workday. But during regular office hours you definitely need to be there too. These ships are big and they don't always come in every day or on time very often. You get an ETA but very few things can make a vessel get there early, and many different things can delay a vessel, either case being unpredictable. For these call-outs excessive after-hours fees would be added to the nominal invoice, and good incentive pay would trickle down the food chain. Statistically since there are only 45 office-hours in a 168-hour week, most of the vessels had always incurred call-outs. After being in my own private practice for a while one day there was a little flood and lost everything I had worked for for 20 years. I could recover better financially with a business than a home, and I couldn't keep both so I gave up domestic life and started staying in the lab. Sure I was "homeless" but I had a roof over my head and I worked with what I had remaining, to survive attending to the vessels where I still had capability. Since I was always there, I made a deal with a small contractor to get right to work whenever they needed it, charging only decent basic fees per vessel regardless of after-hours. They were expected to benefit by not passing on this arrangement to the ultimate clients who would still be charged after-hours premiums, which was most of the time. It made survival possible and he was only revealing to clients that things were now covered 24/7 without having to wait for people to be called in. Within a few weeks all of the much bigger international operators in our ports had changed over to full 24 hr shift coverage along these lines just to compete with little old me, the homeless CEO.

unixhero 6y ago
You deserve a bigger audience. Write more! Great story for my friday afternoon work procrastination. How is it going now? Are you still in this business?
- fuzzfactor 6y ago
  Thanks for the kind words, but be careful what you ask for :) Actually still in the same business, it's a profession that will always be with me even if I do something completely different next. After the flood it was clear I would have to close eventually, my lab and my life as I knew it were ruined, I just kept working in the ruins. Closed my company seven years ago after my surviving equipment finally wore out, and went to an employer where I had already served them as a contractor since the 90's. Like any other place they needed help so I went right in and added an extra $million in capabilites the first year with just the gear they already had. Haven't stopped yet. Of course there's staff there 24/7 now and I'm a senior scientist so it's a straight day job for me but compared to what I am known to do it's been like retirement to have all nights, weekends, and holidays off, so I've kept up 50 to 60 hr weeks the whole time, just to keep up the pace I've always had. Get more than twice as much accomplished this way, not declining performance which many people understandably find occurs to them. Didn't stop overcoming operational problems and preparing for exponential growth, but with a few disasters hitting this company, that was not able to be deployed. So with 12 more years progress in only the last 6 years that totals more than 80 years of progressive accomplishments in only the last 40 years. Now with covid, economy is down and a bit of our equipment is idle too often, I'll be "retiring" and selling these enhanced solutions better than my employer can do. So I'll be an entrepreneur again since I've reached the point where their shareholders and myself will be better off with me on the outside after I've built about all the foundation that can be done for now. Some of the people I've been working with in the labs have said I must work like Elon Musk or something. Definitely not I said, he's much younger, I've been doing it much longer, he works like me.

unixhero 6y ago

You deserve a bigger audience. Write more! Great story for my friday afternoon work procrastination. How is it going now? Are you still in this business?

fuzzfactor 6y ago
Thanks for the kind words, but be careful what you ask for :) Actually still in the same business, it's a profession that will always be with me even if I do something completely different next. After the flood it was clear I would have to close eventually, my lab and my life as I knew it were ruined, I just kept working in the ruins. Closed my company seven years ago after my surviving equipment finally wore out, and went to an employer where I had already served them as a contractor since the 90's. Like any other place they needed help so I went right in and added an extra $million in capabilites the first year with just the gear they already had. Haven't stopped yet. Of course there's staff there 24/7 now and I'm a senior scientist so it's a straight day job for me but compared to what I am known to do it's been like retirement to have all nights, weekends, and holidays off, so I've kept up 50 to 60 hr weeks the whole time, just to keep up the pace I've always had. Get more than twice as much accomplished this way, not declining performance which many people understandably find occurs to them. Didn't stop overcoming operational problems and preparing for exponential growth, but with a few disasters hitting this company, that was not able to be deployed. So with 12 more years progress in only the last 6 years that totals more than 80 years of progressive accomplishments in only the last 40 years. Now with covid, economy is down and a bit of our equipment is idle too often, I'll be "retiring" and selling these enhanced solutions better than my employer can do. So I'll be an entrepreneur again since I've reached the point where their shareholders and myself will be better off with me on the outside after I've built about all the foundation that can be done for now. Some of the people I've been working with in the labs have said I must work like Elon Musk or something. Definitely not I said, he's much younger, I've been doing it much longer, he works like me.