Some tech, some not. 62 jobs in 40 years.

Raised in Maine

1. Stocked shelves with Shaklee vitamins for my parents in-home company. They earned a ’81 Ford Thunderbird. $3 / hour income.
2. Carpenters helper on a new home job site.
3. Bakery bookkeeper, stocker and cashier at farm market.
4. Church janitor with my father.
5. Tractor driver in apple orchard.
6. Dishwasher at a restaurant.
7. Lawn mower at a restaurant.
8. Dock boy at a marina.
9. Typed up term papers for fellow students on a Mac with Apple’s first laser printer. Did some presentations using one of the first computer projectors. It was all greenscale then.
10. Yard Manager at a boat sales lot. Included boat and engine repair, sales, hauling trailers, sea testing, creating computer labels for sales, and general computer accounting.
11. Warehouse stocking in mail order department of L.L. Beans.
12. Multilevel marketer for water and air filter company.

Maine Lobster from Eric (Photo credit: man pikin)

Moved to Colorado 1990

1. Ski shop manager. Included driving large U-haul trucks to ski swaps in the mountains to sell the merchandise.
2. Ski shop manager in Vail, Colorado.
3. Accepted a job and picked up my uniform to work at Copper Mountain ski resort as a dishwasher, but decided to move back to Denver.
4. Contract labor for my Architectural teacher while in school.
5. Car washer at auction site.
6. Telemarketer for 3 days. Got out of this quick.
7. Shift manager at Pizza Hut.
8. Sold some **** for one week. BAD CHOICE. It was the only way I could buy a plane ticket home for Christmas.
9. Commercial low voltage wire puller in a Denver warehouse.
10. House painter.
11. Car repair part-time.
12. Waiter at 5-star restaurant.
13. CAD drafter for Eagle Windows & Doors. Also did sales quotes.
14. CAD drafter for interior design firm that specialized in Fortune 500 office space design in high rise buildings.

Steamboat Springs, Colorado Mountains (Photo credit: DaggieW)

Moved to Florida 1994

1. Live aboard deckhand on a 92’ private motor yacht. Traveled to Bahamas and up the Eastern seaboard to Nantucket & Rhode Island. As is the case with most of my yacht jobs, duties included washing boat, polishing stainless steel, maintaining the tenders & jet skis, steering and navigating the vessel, maintaining large diesel engines, and computer administrator.
2. Live aboard 1st Mate on a 95’ motor yacht. Traveled to Key West and the Bahamas.

A yacht (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Moved to Maine 1995

1. CAD drafter for mechanical and HVAC engineering firm. Created first 3D drawing of a robotic paper pulp egg carton producing machine & 70 foot dryer. I was subcontracted to a national engineering firm to create CAD drawings for electrical, piping, mechanical & sprinkler systems. Subcontracted to hospital to do CAD drawings of water, oxygen, waste & sprinkler piping systems in a new 10 story wing. Developed construction drawings for clean rooms at Fairchild semiconductors, and of paper manufacturing machines at a few of the New England sawmills.
2. Dispatch supervisor for computer & printer repair company.
3. Built 2000 micro sized wooden lobster traps for a seaweed food supply company that was selling at LL Beans.
4. CAD drafter for the Big Dig tunnel project in Boston, MA. Created drawings of all utility lines that would have to be moved for the tunnel construction.
5. Started computer repair company.
6. Pizza & sandwich maker at buddies pizza parlor part-time.
7. Bouncer at a bar.

Moved to Florida 1997

1. 2nd mate on 162′ private yacht with 8500 hp of jet propulsion. Traveled to 30 islands throughout the Bahamas and Caribbean during my yachting days.
2. 2nd mate on 146′ mega yacht with helicopter on board.
3. Various deliveries of many yachts, including a trip up the intercoastal waterway (parallels the Mississippi river) on a 114’ yacht, from Gulf of Mexico to West Virgina.
4. Started a computer repair and CAD drafting company. This is where I did my first network wiring and wireless network setups.
5. Website designer and server administrator for a friends online sports/concert ticket company.
6. CAD drafter for landscape engineering firm.
7. Driving luxury vehicles between Florida and Cape Cod. Assisted these clients with moving their computers and home offices for the summer.
8. Computer and printer repair technician for national company. Provided assistance to the Office Depot headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida, and the West Palm Beach Clerk of Courts.
9. Started yacht software company, which my partner took to fruition.
10. Cleaned various other yachts while in school for my US Coast Guard Captains License.
11. Wrote a business plan for a contractor website (very similar to servicemagic.com). Wrote business plan for online used book sales company. Never got to start either of these business’s.
12. CAD drafter and 3D drafter for renown Architect.
13. CAD drafter and designer for another architect. He asked me to become a partner.
14. Training for road bicycle racing. Career ended with catastrophic bicycling accident on 9/1/11

Moved to Maine for the summer. 2002

1. House painter.
2. ‘Playboy’ with the money from my bicycle accident insurance.

Moved to California. 2002

1. Carpenters assistant and airplane polisher.
2. Designer, engineer, installer & programmer for home automation & home theater company. Server administrator. (Clients were mainly Fortune 1000 execs and celebrities with the home automation companies.)
3. Home automation engineer and lighting design CAD drafter. Server administrator.
4. Head of tech support department and builder of multi TB video/DVD servers.
5. Technician, designer, programmer at another home automation company that was owned by Best Buy. It wasn’t Magnolia.
6. Technician and programmer for home automation company.
7. Beta tester for home automation software company.
8. Started computer/network service, home automation and home theater company.
9. CAD drafting part-time for renown Australian architect.
10. Office manager and now partner at Chiropractic practice.
11. Started children’s play structure and outdoor apps company.

English: Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, USA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I do understand that there is a negative connotation associated with not keeping a job for a very long time, but I wouldn’t be able to come up with my play structure and app designs if I hadn’t have had so much hands on experience in so many fields.

A couple of examples:

I had to design a smart heating/cooling system for a mega-mansion in Carmel, California. Using my knowledge of architecture, HVAC, home automation, windows and CAD drafting; I was able to develop a system that would decide whether to use the costly air conditioning system vs. natural outside air cooling, based upon the outdoor temperatures. If the temperature outdoors was cooler than the indoors, the main gallery 2nd story skylights would open automatically, the HVAC system would switch the damper to pull in outside air, and the system would turn on just the fans to circulate cool air through the home. If the outside temperature was higher than inside, the skylights would close, the damper would switch to re-circulate mode and the normal AC system would cool the home.

I was also asked to design a scuba diving room on one of Paul Allen’s yachts, Octopus. The room was on the side of the yacht with a large door that opened downwards to create a platform to enter and exit the yacht while diving. The room was used for holding all the diving gear, and re-filling the compressed air in the scuba tanks on-board. I used my architecture, 3D modeling, piping engineering and scuba background to design a room that was well-organized and optimized for diving storage.

I know a couple jobs are missing, and I’m sure they will come back to me in the next few days. The only things I haven’t done are being a politician, a doctor, lawyer or porta-pottie cleaner.