This is inspired as a question having read another entry by a fellow member
If you had your time again, or if you are just starting, or thinking of a change
Where would you like to work?
For whom?
Doing what?
How much do you think you should be paid, local currency accepted.
Job title ?
On what types of system and running what ?
Yes you can come out of retirement, by choice.
No imagination, can be a historical event or job you did and for who ?
Something involving maths, computers, Australian outback, ecology, medieval history and preferably a religious institution. It does not exist in combination.
I had to be content with snippets of each.
System Admin for a visual effects studio - something like Weta in NZ…
i.e. massive “render farms” running Linux, massive hi performance storage backends running on Linux or UNIX or BSD… Maybe even desktop Linux support for the 3D artists… (I did desktop Linux support for an oil exploration company a few years back (~2007) - all the seismologists had RHEL4 desktop systems with high end NVidia quaddro GPU)…
That would be cool…
The worst jobs are where your main customers are bean counters - I never get on with these people…
Anything involving either art / entertainment / creative - or - science - nothing involving penny-pinching bean counters!
Many years ago I was a department head at a university and after 5 years in post bored ! So when i received an offer to work at apple, i jumped ship, my experiance there held me in good stead for the future, but the departure of steve jobs, next computing, I began to regret the move, the grass was no greener on the other side.
I then realised I could not work for anyone else, that I am unmanageable and totally wrong for a 9 to 5 working for someone else.
So i started my own company and have no regrets, i choose my clients, i choose when and if i work. Ok not the latest technology and if i dont work i dont get paid.
But now i can play out more and enjoy life.
Bit different to the other 2 examples, not a rebel without a cause just a lost cause !
I’ve been very lucky. I really liked each job I’ve had, and they were all slightly different from each other. COBOL and mainframe to Netware to Active Directory to IIS to Cisco firewalls and F5 load balancers to Linux to AWS. My current job is varied enough and busy enough I don’t get bored.
When I started on my current job 17 years ago, I was supporting a large-ish website hosted on Windows Server 2000 running IIS. We expanded the fleet to quadruple the original size. Then the whole thing was rewritten and ran on Linux, except for the database. Then the whole thing was rewritten again using AWS Lambda and just a few EC2 Instances running Ubuntu on Graviton2 processors (very recent).
I touch laptops, server hardware, virtualization systems like VMWare and Hyper-V. I help manage F5 load balancers and an EMC storage array. Mostly these days I would be considered an “Enterprise Architect” working on AWS.
I like the people I work with. I get to work from home the majority of the time.
It’d be nice to golf a bit more. 
I just told my manager this week that I plan to take Monday and Friday afternoons off to golf and burn up some of my vacation days. He thought that was fine.
Life is good.
For me it’s writing. No, not code, but fiction.
If only I can get a hold of my struggles with social media and news sites.
So fiction
Science or detective ?
Being provocative ^chick books^ , that may get a reaction !
Sf and Fantasy… Yeah, I know, popular.
You should try writing one and publish it through this site so we can all read !
No doubt criticism will be easy to do, especially by those who have never tried.
I look forward to reading
I think my favorite Fantasy series is The Saga of Recluce Series.
Looking at the site I see there was a new one added January 23, 2024. I’ll have to get that.
I would have liked to work for NASA (America’s space agency).
It was back in 1968, the space race was hot. I was still in high school and was fascinated by what was going on with the Apollo missions. At high school, on like a career day, I saw a short film about computer and how going to space could almost be impossible without computers. It was then I decided to learn about computers.
I went to school and learn Cobol. Got my first computer job writing programs in November 1969. No, it was not with NASA. It was in a small IT shop. I was the 3rd programmer and was on the ground floor for all the rapid changes that occurred in the 70’s and 80’s. Went from a programmer trainee to a supervisor of about a dozen people. Stayed with the company for 31 years and retired.
I have no regrets.
COBOL for the win!
Wow 31 years with the same company and a cobol programmer some achievement.
I could never sit still that long, think my record was 5 years with any one organisation and even then changed hat more times.
I always thought to learn new things i had to move and change boxes. Right or wrong i may never know, but did get a wide experience as a result. They say jack of all trades and master of none! That sums me up.
My wife spent 32 years teaching and almost all of it at the same 16 plus education establishment… when she retired she got nothing as a leaving present, same as me. Not even appreciation !
You would make a good farmer. They have to do everything themselves.
I retired into a farm. It is healthy and offers endless challenges, mental and physical.
When I read, I like to be transported back in time. I do not really know which ones fall into which genre or sub-genre, but I recently began reading the Pendragon Cycle series. I would say it is fantastical, but medieval, one of my favorite periods in history.
But I would love to read even a synopsis. I wish I had more time to devote to it like I used to, but life…
Sheila
I think I’ve read most, if not all of those… I kinda preferred the “Imager” series by the same author…
Not my favourite SF / Fantasy author though… I like SF, Fantasy, and to some extent history, like Mary Renault, Henry Treece, Steven Pressfield and Bernard Cornwell (I also love all those Russian authors like Dostoyevsky) - but - I also enjoy non-fiction, most history or natural history. And I also love “Magical Reality” genre by the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie, Gunther Grass and Haruki Murakami.
My favourite SF / Fantasy authors are :
Christopher Buehlman (especially The Daughter’s War [2024] and The Blacktongue Thief [2021]).
Jack Vance (probably my favourite!)
Mark Lawrence (from UK)
James Islington (from Australia)
Neal Stephenson
Patrick Rothfuss
Jeff Vandermeer
Ursula K Le Guin
Lev Grossman
Josiah Bancroft
John Wyndham (my intro to SF at 12 years old)
Madeleine Miller
Clive Barker (mostly known for horror fiction, and movies - I prefer his fantasy)
Stephen King (like Clive Barker, I prefer his fantasy, like the Dark Tower)
There used to be others - but as I get older, I can’t really get into stuff that I read voraciously as a teenager like Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny etc.
I’m constantly tinkering with world building for a science fiction or fantasy setting - but when it comes to building a story from that? I never make any inroads 
.
At the risk of sounding archaic, have you tried Fred Hoyle?.. fiction and NF.
Has a reputation for proposing radical ideas… for example he predicted a coming ice age and proposed that we should heat up the oceans to prepare.
This is a great question @callpaul.eu , thanks for posting it.
If I had my time over again…
I would have happily worked for Satoshi Nakamoto on testing the early versions of Bitcoin along side Hal Finney.
It would have been such an amazing experience to be mining Bitcoin, bootstrapping the network and trying to break the Proof of Work consensus mechanism using CPU miners.
Because I would be working with Satoshi, this would have given me the opportunity to express to him some of the flaws with Bitcoin early on. One of the biggest flaws (which many still think is a feature) is it’s transparent blockchain ledger.
If Satoshi wanted to create a surveillance coin then Bitcoin is perfect, however, I don’t think that was his intention and it’s probably why he abandoned the project. But we will never really know and that’s why I think it would be amazing to have been part of his inner circle. That would have been an awesome experience.
Interesting choice, i know very little about bitcoin, dispite going on a course some years back around how the technology works. I could not have named anybody involved in it conception.
Does bitcoin still exist, is it still popular, does it work better than money… not seen much in the press reciently but there again have not looked or researched
Hi @callpaul.eu, You’ve asked some great questions.
Bitcoin definitely exists and is very much alive and well. Here’s how much 1 Bitcoin (BTC) is worth today (see below) this is the price chart for just this year from https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/bitcoin
Perhaps now you’ll know why if I could go back in time, I want to work on Bitcoin with Satoshi Nakamoto and Hal Finney. It would have been an extraordinary time.
But unfortunately, Bitcoin can’t really be used as digital cash as it’s been shuffled into the “digital store of value” corner rather than being good for use as digital cash.
It’s other flaw is it’s not as private like cash.
Once you transact in Bitcoin and someone knows your wallet address, they can search the blockchain for all your other transactions as your wallet address is stored on the blockchain for eternity (it’s an immutable record). They will even be able to work out how much bitcoins you have in your wallet. So, for that reason, it’s not really good as a replacement to cash and it doesn’t have the inherent privacy features built into the base layer.
But for those in this community interested in learning more about cryptocurrency I highly recommend it.
There are many, many smart developers who want to see a future where …
Sorry, I can ramble on as I’m very passionate about this space… bottom line is this, can you imagine what the world world be like without wars funded by the money printer at the central banks and controlled by corrupt governments?
What if the world could return to a sound money system that has limited supply and scarcity that could not be controlled and counterfeited by any government?
They print money out of thin air and it erode every ones’ purchasing power (it’s the hidden tax called inflation).
Unfortunately Gold and Silver coins/bars are just not portable or convenient in this digital era or the Sci-Fi era we are heading into.
Can you imagine your grandkids having to bring a bars of gold with them on their holiday to Mars?
Paul, I hope you can now see why Bitcoin is still popular, but unfortunately it’s does not work better than money.
But there are newer and better technologies in the pipeline that are even more interesting. The cryptocurrency and blockchain space is very vibrant and is full of very smart developers who have figured out the shortcomings of Bitcoin (E.g. it’s lack of privacy) and are actively fixing them.
Once such crypto project that aims to be a better form of money is Epic Cash (learn more at https://epiccash.com ) Epic Cash = Bitcoin’s Private Twin
It follows many of the same principles laid out in the original Bitcoin Whitepaper written by Satoshi Nakamoto, for example, scarcity through having a fixed supply of 21 Million coins.
I think Epic Cash (and many other privacy cryptocurrency projects) will have a much better chance at being a better form of money.
I leave you this final thought…
The next major battle will be over what we use as money in the upcoming Sci-Fi world. The US Dollar is being destroyed and is losing it’s purchasing power through massive debt and inflation - look at http://usdebtclock.org
So, the next big war will be: CBDC vs Opensource Cryptocurrencies
Here’s a good way to think about it…
CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) are closed source (like Microsoft Windows). These will be controlled and programmed by Central Banks.
Opensource Cryptos (like Bitcoin, Epic Cash and others) are made by humans for humans. Anyone can review the code, fix bugs and contribute. It is like Linux.
Take a guess as to which one will prevail?
The answer lies in user adoption. So for those that haven’t dipped there toes in the world of cryptocurrencies, I highly recommend you start today for the freedom of future generations may be at stake if we get lazy are adopt CBDCs as money.
Please note: Nothing in this post should be considered financial advice.
