"Eisboch" wrote in message
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"D.Duck" wrote in message
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"Eisboch" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
ups.com...


"Eisboch" wrote in message
m...
I've been called in to help out today at.... (gulp) .... *work*.
A long-time customer is visiting and I have to provide some
sense
of
corporate continuity.

Gotta get this over with so Sam and I can go back to the boat.

Eisboch

So how did it go?

Not bad. He awarded the company a $800+K contract for a new thin
film
system.

Eisboch (still got the "touch")

Wow! Hope you get a good chunk of that Went back to work myself
this week, gonna' work on a local farm for the winter to get loosened
up a little and trade off a little horsie time for my girls. Don't
think I will be making as much as you did though Of course our
work could be somewhat similar, I was off shoveling ****, how about
you?


Nah, I don't get any "chunk". I have a long term "consulting" deal
that
pays just about minimum wage, but keeps Mrs.E. and I eligible to
participate
in the company's health care program.

When I was a kid living outside of New Haven, CT., I had a summer job
mucking horse stalls for a guy that raised and trained thoughbred
racing
horses. Not for me. In addition to the .... well .... you know, I
was
also allergic to the hay dust. I swore I'd never do it again and I
haven't,
despite Mrs.E.'s three horses.

If you want to get bored to tears, here's what I ended up doing for a
living:

http://www.vptec.com/

Eisboch

Not boring at all. Brings back memories of my work at Bell Labs, about
20
years ago, as a CRT monitor design engineer. I worked with a West Coast
company, OCLI, on a custom CRT panel with an AR coating.

The process was great for no reduction in display resolution and
anti-reflective properties. The disadvantage, cost. The panel added
about
20 bux to an already too expensive, custom size CRT.

The zero loss is resolution was just not appropriate for a plain jane
alpha-numeric display. Now for something like medical monitors it was
justified.

I finally convinced marketing that a much less costly acid etch process
applied directly to the CRT glass was appropriate.


We built sputter deposition equipment for Tectonics, applying a conductive
coating to the inside of ceramic CRT tubes. That technology was obsolete
before it went to production, and a spin-off was started doing
electroluminescent displays. We built equipment for them as well, and the
company became what is now known as "PanelVision", a major supplier of
flat
panel screens.

OCLI ? Very technically capable in their day, but a terrible company
for
an equipment manufacturer like us to deal with. They had quite a
reputation
of routinely sending out requests for technical proposals for systems they
said they were going to buy.
They would then review all the technical approaches taken by the various
responders to meet OCLI's requirements, select the best of them, and then
build the equipment themselves, using the technical specifications
supplied
by those of us that responded.

In all the years that we dealt with them, they never bought a system from
anybody.

We have had more recent contracts with JDS Uniphase, the successor to
OCLI.

Eisboch

I heard rumors about some unsavory business practices and OCLI. We only did
business with them for a couple of years in the early 80's.

Ahhhh, JDSU. Back in the 90's when I was a very active investor, JDSU is
one I "wish" I would have dabbled in. Made quite a bit of money leading up
to the "bubble". Should have listened to Greenspan and his "irrational
exuberance" speech. Oh well, I did very well and never complain.

Now as I approach 70 it's much more conservative investments. I do have
quite a bit of Intel stock, but I feel that's reasonably safe. "When" is
gets over $30 I'll get out and buy a bunch of CDs. My have things changed
for me as I get older and more cautious.