MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
This year, reorganised my department to ensure that the software and hardware on our automatic test equipment was standardised. Still a work in progress but makes us about 20% more productive by my estimates. I do derive immense satisfaction from working on things like the CD player below, because I know how much people appreciate them.
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I made sure all you lovely people got your Amazon orders out in time for Xmas haha, I think my willy wave is currently winning.
helped a patient shed 2st 6.5lbs in 10 weeks
Isn't that considered unhealthy? I've always been told you should only lose 1-2 lbs a week.
it's possible to lose a stone a month quite simply and safely.
Last month I did my first ever hour of live cameras and didn't get shouted at by the director/producer 🙂
Project Managed and designed a bunch spreadsheets and databases to aggregate and track thousands of projects that the Water Companies were proposing to do, and charge the consumer from the priviledge.
This allowed the regulator to assess the cost, effectiveness and suitability (based on everything from environmental factors to water quality) and agree the what they could do. This meant that the cost that would have been passed on to every single customer was reduced, significantly.
Not sexy, but I saved everyone in the country some money, which is nice.
I get to help people change their lives. That does for me.
I also as a bonus get to lead this bunch of legends 🙂
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About 15 years ago I attended a house where there were 2 children aged 3 and 4' , a brother and sister
They were begging for food from neighbours because their mother was a heroin addict and couldn't feed them.they were malnourished, and their teeth were falling out.
I had both children taken into care, and kept in touch fort 2 years, dropping them birthday presents off, they were taken into foster care.
About 12 months ago I attended a job at a local hostel, I was approached by an 18 year old lad, who said, "are you sgt wade."
I told him I was, and asked why, he tod me he was the lad I had taken into care 15 years ago, and thanked me for saving him from his mother, he had made good and was starting an apprenticeship, he had never been in trouble with the police
I had a good chat with him, gave him a hug,and cried my eyes out in the panda later.
His sister was not as fortunate, she was a heroin addict, but that one moment was worth all the shit I have put up with for the last 20 years
ace easygirl, just ace.
wors - MemberI get to design things that help pump the black gold out of the ground and make a few people very rich.
What things wors? Sounds interesting.
Some great stories here. Good thread!
I support young autistic adults. They all exhibit challenging behaviour (self injury/targetting staff), are non-verbal and severely learning disabled.
One of the four (my favourite) communicates through images by pointing at what he wants. We use digital photo frames with images of his staff member and the current or next activity. He usually points at things like food, the car, going out, his family.
Today I found out he's been pointing at my photo in my absence! This is highly unusual and reflects a closeness I am privileged to have earned 😀
i make stuff i can't mention for people i can't mention. but i'm good at it and that makes me happy,
i also made the ptolemy chamber for that beagle probe above ^^^ that now sits in the side of a **** off
crator on Mars, or in other words my work is now junk on another planet 😯
I hoping to get a job soon with another bunch who make different stuff but i can't mention that either. or they may kill us all. but i really want the job even tho' my salary would be half what i earn now
I've been involved with making parts of this car from the prototype stage a few years ago and more recently seeing them through into production.
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And also made some parts of these cars. I love motorsport so knowing something i've made is whizzing round a track or a rally stage is enormously satisfying 8)
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I did a spreadsheet once 🙂
I was probably 22 when I painted this. It's a big painting, 8x6 feet. It came about quickly, with little reworking, one of those magic days (in actuality two mornings) when everything flowed.
It was exhibited in London where I won a major prize, and was bought for a Norweigian collector. Years later I visited the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Olso. Nosing around the bookshop I found the catalogue from their opening exhibition. My work was included and illustrated along with some of the biggest names in European Art.
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I kept this letter from a client, I hope I'm not betraying anyones confidence by posting it here, but when things are bleak in the studio, I feel at least once in my life I did something that inspired someone.
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I can pin my name to things like doings the legals for the 2012 Olympic stadia, Stratford station (and many of the major rail infrastructure and rolling stock deals in the UK, US and further afield), a host of hospitals and schools...but that's just work.
The one thing that has properly made me [i]proud[/i] was a care home for mentally ill patients that I did the legals for.
As a bit of pro bono "all big corporate law firms aren't capitalist monsters" volunteering, the client (a PCT) asked if the lawyers who worked on the project would like to help out on "moving day", where the patients who were currently being housed in a horrible 1970's building would be moved to the new home.
I'd worked on this transaction for almost 2 years and knew the client very well from a number of deals, so decided this was a good deed and good for client relationships. Plus I'd never actually been in a structure I'd help build (with the exception of some at pre completion stage)!
We were basically there to help unpack their modest belongings and make cups of tea and stuff. Some of the people we helped move had been in the old building for over 20 years. Watching a grown man cry with happiness and excitement as he is shown his new room for the first time is something I'll never forget. That man will also probably never forget watching some lawyer bubbling away as he unpacked a box full of teacups 🙂
I don't cry often, but even thinking about that day still makes me well up.
Some of us have no idea just how lucky we actually are.
Nothing too dramatic but this year we got a load of people into university who without us, probably wouldn't have... And with a lot of these folks the alternatives aren't too rosy just now.
Back in the bank I did a few things I'm still proud of- frinstance HBOS were frankly sickening in how they dealt with bereaved family members, and a few of us raising absolute hell at ground level started that changing. It helped knacker my career tbh but sod it. Standing in a midden knowing you've done something clean is a good thing.
http://www.yorkhillchildrensfoundation.org/page/MediCinema.aspx
I built this place in the centre of Yorkhill Sick Kids Hospital in Glasgow a few years back. This came with big time feel good factor.
I have done nothing. At all.
I love that painting mcmoonter I remember seeing it before when you posted it, in fact I love it more than your recent tree felling thread 😉
Well I was responsible for doing the grunt work in getting the local Radiopharmacy Unit overhauled and upgraded to a modern standard and keep nuclear medicine running for the local nhs.
It involved finding out what was required, Liaising with the head radiopharmacist, the nhs trust and organising the other consultants (it was mainly a mech job), feasibility study, budget costs, doing the performance spec, tendering it and (mostly) overseeing it on site.
The low was chasing a tenderer who wasn't responding by email and being told that he had dropped dead of a heart condition (hence his lack of response). He was only 39. RIP Francis my man. For what its worth, you helped me immensely.
The high was going back in past a year after it opened (I left the company halfway though the construction phase) and have the radiopharmatist show round the completed thing. boy was he chuffed! As was I, he got what he wanted and more importantly what he needed. Not often you get that feeling of satisfaction on a services job.
It took three years...
Good show everyone...
I do those easy-to-make-sound-heroic things that us nurses do, but the things I'm most proud of are less obvious.
I spent the night looking after a young woman who only had a boyfriend; no other next-of-kin. The pair of them were poor as church mice, but he was kind, attentive, and intelligent. She died about 7 in the morning. I spoke with her boyfriend, did all the official stuff, then watched him walk out into the rain and start to walk home.
I knew where he lived, I knew he had an hours walk.
After spending 12 hours sitting with his girlfriend, he didn't even have enough money to get home.
Not having that, no way can I walk away and let that just go, so I got him some cash out and drove him home.
Still makes me think about how bad some people have things.
Genuinely heartwarming.
The most obvious thing I ever did was design a multi-function computer keyboard for use in bank teller positions.
Career!!!
Erm not got one of them.
So to add my most recent proud moment.
Conserving the habitat for several of the UK's rarer Butterfly species by means of scrub removal, hedge laying and surveying the site for eggs.
I was in the army and I'm now an A&E nurse, I always tried to do the best job I can and I am hoping one day I will bring them both into balance.
That's fine art work mcmoonter. Like very much.
And also helps keep all these safe:
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At least you didn't design the steering, its all over the place!
Young girl came into the our opticians, been tested at a prolific highstreet optician that perports to be cheap, she has a v high prescription and has been told she can only have bloody aweful looking glarres at a cost of £200 ontop of her NHS voucher, so we take a look choose a frame much better suited to her prescription with a aspheric (thinned) lense, all within the NHS voucher allowance.
Afew days later the little girl and mom come to collect the specs, both leave us in floods of tears as both mom and daughter cant believe the the glasses can look so nice!!
Thats a warm fuzzy moment for me and a little girl who now doesn't mind her glasses.
I inputted into the design, beta-tested and did quite a bit of sound design for these,
http://www.camelaudio.com/camelphat.php
http://www.camelaudio.com/camelspace.php
http://www.camelaudio.com/cameleon5000.php
and made quite a few sounds for http://www.camelaudio.com/Alchemy.php
Ended up getting a 'real' job and wish I had the time to go back to it.
I did a lot of work for this http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/file/3989/core_path_plan which was quite satisfying but they've ruined my lovely maps in making this low-res version 🙁
Made this.....(about 6 months)
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A few that mean a lot to me, but nothing worth posting on here after reading all the great stuff folks have done.
this is why I like STW so much, people from all works of life and types of jobs, some truly heart warm stuff here.
As for me, from my aviation days fixing a few aircraft over night so hoilday makers could get to go on time.
Last year thou, a few things I am proud of, from starting my own company and what I like to think been a small part of helping some top MTB riders/teams reaching there goals and results, to the faces/smiles of some of the kids when I do bikeability.
And this year is looking more of the same. 😆
Sorry but easygirl & crikey and you others in the community services have just made me cry quite a bit.
I'm my wife's primary carer (secondary progressive MS) and its tough enough dealing with someone you know & love, but I would be a total basket case given some of the the situations you lot have to face.
A great thread without the usual bickering and trolling that happens with regularity on here. Its quite humiliating to see what the STW massive can achieve when they are not slagging each other on here.
Back in the 1990s I volunteered with Oxfam in their South West region after being made redundant. I organised two very successful fundraising campaigns. One was donations of warm clothing for refugees fleeing the various troubles in places like Kurdistan, Afghanistan etc. which overachieved its target by 400% and presented some significant logistical problems have to find storage for it all. The second was managing a fundraising campaign which raised over £0.25 million in just over a month to fly a planeload of emergency supplies, such as water purification systems from Filton airfield in Bristol to the Rwandan refugee camps in Goma.
More recently I have been chair of a well-known advice centre in Bristol for 8 years and led the organisation through a trebling in size which has enabled lots more people to have their problems resolved - its great to hear the difference we make to people's lives when they are in crisis.
I've also volunteered with the Prince's Trust for nearly 4 years helping over 300 young people look at setting up their own businesses which is extremely rewarding.
hhhhmmm ... none for me until now, perhaps there is but I just cannot remember any. 😯
We're pretty ****ing ace aren't we, lots of heart warming stories, lots of talent and ingenuity too.
To reflect Crikey's post, yeah as health care professionals we do some stuff that make people say "Oh my God that's so special" but it's sometimes the smaller details that help. Filling out vulnerable adult forms so the elderly get the care they deserve and then being called back to see their house cleaned, the furniture replaced, equipment to help them lead or normal life. Or simply just getting the care they should have had but had been missed or not given.
I make Andrex...
Reading this has made me a bit miserable to be honest. Can't think of anything notable. I spend most days enthusing and helping tomorrows engineers, which is fun, but hardly something to shout about!
I work in a college as an eLearning and educational Technology Coordinator. It doesn’t sound much but I love my job and try making teachers and student’s lives easier every day. I have been lucky enough to be pretty successful at it two from helping staff and students with disabilities to the simplest of 5 minute training sessions. I’ve I have been putting some of the more news worthy stories on my blog [url= http://michael-bolton-learning-technology.blogspot.com/ ]http://michael-bolton-learning-technology.blogspot.com/[/url]
Lots of people doing little things makes a big difference.
Wow. There are some amazing stories here.
The thing I'm most proud of seems a little trivial in comparison. When I first started teaching PE in a school in Batley, there was a pupil with a severe form of muscular distrophy, who would not participate in normal PE lessons due to his lack of mobility. He was a lovely, well spoken asian lad; very bright, but just unable to take part. The PE department at the time weren't prepared to differentiate the learning to include him, and so he missed out on everything.
We were teaching the high jump inside the sports hall, and he stood there watching all the other kids have a go. I took him to the other end of the room, set up a low bar (10cm I think) and worked with him for the rest of the lesson to at least give him the opportunity to try. And that bloody kid worked so hard at getting it right. He would not give up, despite the fact he was unable to run, jump or perform anything vaguely similar to what was expected. And afterwards he thanked me for helping him try the high jump for the first time ever, and I went into the toilet by my office and sobbed.
Only a small thing, but it taught me a fundamental principle that had underpinned my educational philosophy ever since.
I'm such a soft bastard. I'm crying now! (it's the lack of sleep and the new baby...) 😉
There's a little boy running about in Pollok who has Allan with two "L"s as his middle name. My first delivery that was all mine. Won't forget that.
A fair few years ago got the chance to go to Albania for a few weeks to play football with and tryto help three big orphanages around the country (not all orphans though!).. Gave away some kit, spent half the day training with them, the other half trying to improve where they stayed, doing maintenance etc. Got to go out meeting the folk, learn about the country and drink a fair bit of home made Raki. An amazing and humbling experience. Came home looking a bit like a lobster and with a totally different perspective on life.
Ps, boardinbob.. If that was the laings in Glasgow it's being turned into student flats now. Cracking location!
Helped deal with the aftermath of the 7/7 suicide bombing at Aldgate as one of the initial police responders. On duty for 19hrs and back in after 5hrs sleep. Not a day I'll forget in a hurry.
I spent a long 4hrs on the phone one evening convincing a client that suicide was not there only option.
Ian
Pilgrim - ( and others) Little things make a difference. ( and that was not so little) Sometimes even sharing a smile is enough to change yours and someone else's day.
Windows 7 was totally my idea.
Isn't that considered unhealthy? I've always been told you should only lose 1-2 lbs a week.
the chap came to me 10 1/2 weeks ago after spending 12 weeks at weigh****chers on a GP prescription and only lost 2lbs in total over the whole period. we started at 25stone and we're still going down 🙂 he still eats 3 meals a day, and the next step to maintain his level of weight loss is to increase his exercise from 30 minutes of swimming a week to swimming twice a week.. his weight loss is having a more positive effect on his mental health than 7 years of intensive support. we monitor his blood sugar, blood pressure etc etc regularly and he has regular blood tests at the GPs. all safe and sound 🙂
agreed with the other social workers, nurses, A&E staff, support workers and such. its not necessarily the big events, its the little things that change someone's life for the better that happen nearly every shift.
That's cool ^^
In 1972 I was a crack commando and sent to prison by a military court for a crime I didn't commit. I then promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, I survive as a soldier of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find me, I might be able to help you out if I'm not doing owt else
A mate posted on facebook the other day asking for volunteers to help teach kids about programming. I am really excited by the possibility actually. Hope it comes off 🙂
cynic-al - Member
BigJohn can you look at my cv please.
So many answers to that, Al. 8)
cozz, can you have a look at a tricky plumbing job for me?
cozz, can you have a look at a tricky plumbing job for me?
I'll be round later, I'm just busy welding a plough to the front of my van in preparation
Phil - what is your actual job then?
My first day as a wholetime firefighter.
I was sitting getting the 'welcome to the shift' talk from the gaffer getting told that it wasn't all blues and twos...blah, blah... and the bells went. We were called to assist a neighbouring brigade at a block of flats on fire. On arrival the other crew was dealing with the fire (re-homed psychiatric patient set fire to her bed in ground floor flat) and my team member and I were sent in for search and rescue on the upper floors. We found the door of the first, 1st floor flat, made contact with the occupant and told them to get to their window for rescue, asked them if any of their neighbours were in, they didn't know.
We then found the door of the next flat, it was open. There was very heavy smoke logging so we continued on with our search. My partner shouted that they'd found a casualty. When I went to help we found it to be a dog! We worked our way through the flat room by room, found another dog in the hall and one in the kitchen. We then found the livingroom and I came across a cat on the sofa...Oh no, wait, this isn't a cat! It was a small baby! When I picked it up, the breathing was stridulous, a horrible sound that I'll never forget! We had a quick sweep round to find the parents but couldn't locate them. We then ran out of there as fast as we could and grabbed our resus pack. Fortunately an ambulance drew up and we handed the baby over to them. We were sent back in to locate further casualties, we searched that flat from top to bottom, there were cots and playpens in almost every room and every time I stuck my hands blindly in to one I feared the worst! We cleared every room and cupboard in that flat and found no further casualties. No parents, no one!
I later found out it was a 10 month old wee girl who was rushed, in a very serious condition to Yorkhill, sick kids in Glasgow where she went on to make a full recovery!
Her parents had left her lying on the sofa with the dogs to look after her whilst they went to the shop and then on to visit someone in another block further down the street.
I could quite happily of retired after that knowing that I'd been part of the process that had not only saved the wee lasses' life but also helped better it. If that was to be the only rescue I performed in my career then so be it. Fortunately/unfortunately depending on your viewpoint it's not been but that one incident, on my first day as the sprog on shift will live with me until the day I die. I remember every step, sound, feeling in that pitch black, smoke filled flat like it was yesterday...and it wasn't 😮
I received a commendation for my actions on that day but that paled in to insignificance compared to how happy I felt about what I had done.
Whilst at work do I moan about some of the things that I have to do? Yes, it's my prerogative! 😀
Am I proud of what do? Absolutely!
I took some rubbish to the tip just after xmas, which gave me much greater satisfaction than just about anything I've ever done in my tedious paper shuffling office job.
[note to other self in parallel universe - do not do Mechanical Engineering at University]
sometimes it's the smaller details that help
+ 1 million - not least having the time to talk to patients.
One of my fave memories from work was looking after an old guy who had been brought in after a massive PR bleed. I'll call him 'Jim'. After having been scoped & sorted, Jim was passed back to us in surgical admissions. He was too zonked for any conversation when I first met him, but whilst helping him to wash the next morning I couldn't help but notice extensive scars all over his legs & torso. Judging by his age I guessed what they might have resulted from, and casually asked if he'd ever been in the Forces. Yes, he had - having dropped into Europe as a 19 year old Para during the Normandy campaign. On day 2, one of his friends stood on a mine and was blown to pieces, leaving Jim alive but badly wounded. Over the course of the morning shift, I grabbed a chat with Jim whenever I had a spare moment. After being patched up, he'd returned in time for the endgame in Germany, and then went quietly back to his job as a dockworker.
At the end of the shift, as I waved goodbye, he said: "Thank you for talking to me about D-Day."
"No Sir, thank you!"
I've just been blogged about:
http://liveliketheboy.co.uk/2012/01/18/matt-antrobus-a-suitable-surface/
Kinda weird reading about onesself!
Top 50 Travel Websites of all Time - The Guardian, July 2011
Travel Tip of the Month - Independent, March 2011
Best of Travel on the Web - BBC, September 2011
Spark of Genius Start Up - Mashable, November 2011
plus a few other bits and pieces in the guardian and other travel blogs/websites.
not saved any lives (through work, anyway), but to have had such good press (esp top 50 travel websites of all time) within 18 months of launching feels great for me and my 4 colleagues.
i think our 1st paycheck from it will be a happy moment, though!
+1 about it sometimes being the little things. As a copper I've been in a position to be involved in some headline-making type incidents but one of the most impactive was more "trivial". Dealt with a vulnerable old man who'd been befriended and exploited by a drug using former burglar, who'd inveigled her way into his life as an informal carer. His family became suspicious and confronted him but hid pride meant he couldn't see what was happening, and he cut off communication with his son.
So one day we are called by a local bank branch. He is trying to withdraw the last of his life savings, and there isn't much left. We investigate, catch her, get her through the courts and into prison and in the papers*, but the real reward was standing in a bank lobby seeing the tearful reconciliation between a father and son. Pretty sure it was dusty and I got something in my eye....
Pilgrim, as others have said its often the smaller things that have a profound impact on both you and the subject.
I dont seem to be able to add tags, but Thread Of The Year seems appropriate. None of it willy waving, all of if affirming.
I forgot that this may sum up what I do (ignore the nonce in the bunnet a couple of minutes in, he knows nothing 😉 )
This has got to be the thread of the year so far, what a talented lot you are, i feel so insignificant in your prescence.
Another one who is humbled by the life savers. I'm just proud of the folks who've gone on to build something big after being seen giving one of the presentations I've coached them for.
It's easy to do the 'life saving' thing if your job is 'life saving', it's not a big ask, it's not out of the ordinary. The real heroes are those who do stuff that no one tells them to, the really good guys are those people who do the right thing because it's the right thing to do.
You, the people who do these things, the people who take a chance, the people who see good in others, the people who think 'I've got to do something' even when they aren't sure what to do, the people who actually care, you're the heroes.
Ahem...
Some great stuff here, for people to rightly be proud of.
Matt - I went to Ardeonaig at primary school as a kid and loved it. Regularly drive past on my way from Kenmore to Killin and it brings back good memories.
You local then?
No, based in Fife at the moment but I get about 😆