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Last year the ship I was on escorted a World Food Programme through piracy waters into Somalia. To be honest it was pretty dull as the old tug was pretty slow but when the Captain mused that we'd got 2 million meals ashore a pretty big smile spread throughout the ship (hopefully the local war lords didn't nick too much of it).
sorry guys im not the architect, if you gave me a blank sheet and said draw a house it would look like a 5 year olds!
if however you had the architects faffy design i could actually make it work and stand up! My skills are currently being used on the shitty little housebuilder cubes that blight this land!
Made a lot of brides very happy in a previous job.
And a few bridesmaids 😉
Now I produce the material that people build with and change the landscape as well as getting personal satisfaction from the tasks themselves.
I've just discovered one of my houses sold for £1 mill!
Just how many houses do you have?
I was lead engineer (responsible for the permanent way construction) on:
Kettering to Harrowden 3rd Tracking (6.5km of new line)
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East Midlands Parkway Station
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Remodelling of Whitechapel Station for Crossrail
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But no life saving unfortunately
bruneep - not my house unfort! i did the drawings for it
Sunday night my team caught 3 car thieves red handed, then went on to dive in and rescue someone trying to drown themselves in the river (air temp was -4C). Night shifts always the most fun but this was one of the more eventful.
I occasionally save some animals, sadly a lot of owners/farmers think we are money grabbing toerags out to benefit only ourselves. Oh to have and animal NHS..
Featured in a couple of Brazilian trade magazines for my work presenting industry research there. 2 page spread, I think! 🙂
Although to be honest, the police/ fire/ paramedic work on here makes that look quite trivial...
I've just persuaded the school management to set up a whole school outdoor education programme which will put kids on the hills at least three times a year. And also spend £120k on refurbishing our outdoor centre. Not bad for a chemistry teacher. Does also mean I'll spend a lot more time in the hills.
I've just learnt the basics of VMWare ESX (i'm hyper-v qualified) and consolodated a massive number of servers saving my company a good bit of wedge/month.
Feeling pretty chuffed but that could just be the vast quantities of coffee.
over the last 3 years i've made an invisible but successful contribution to the making of this, of which i'm proud:
My first proper job after uni probably helped to save hundreds of lives - it was sticking HM Coastguard's search planning system onto this new fangled thing called an IBM PC so they could enter details about where/when someone was last seen plus tide, wind etc and the number & type of search units, and it'd tell them where to look and how to split up the search units. It even won an award at some s****y do at the Royal Society.
MIne is just in little ways - the worried demented person I have helped to calm down, finding the little things that makes life better for someone and the reward is a smile.
I get to design things that help pump the black gold out of the ground and make a few people very rich.
My longest job almost certainly saved the public purse many millions of quids and will continue to do so.
Owning our house in London but also just bought a small terraced Bungalow in
the Alicante region, which are our bigger purchases
I designed this and a few other speakers for Ruark, the most tangible/identifiable of my achievements.
http://sites.thestar.com.my/audio/story.asp?file=/1997/1/02tyruark
Otherwise, fixed a heap of shed like bikes, gave a heap of legal advice, amongst other un-noteworthy stuff.
No life saving involved but was my first big project and it all went up very quickly and comparatively quickly and pretty much to budget. By all accounts a very successful hotel too now. Few years ago and since then not very much exciting
Laings in Glasgow?
If so, its now closed and derelict
Good few years ago spent about 18 months chasing / harrasing a gang around the world; arranged to have various lieutenants and gofers potted all over the place, big lumps of gear; +350 kgs class A +300kg class B, tens of thousands in cash, all went to jail - some for not as long as they should've (one was a hitman in past employment) but at least they went, to a man they were all horrible people no redeeming characters. It was quite interesting and I made sure my team got the perks;no money but lots of foreign travel which helped a fair few of them in later life. Monumental p*** up at the end as well, which was nice
I had no idea that we'd made 4 satellites each a big as teh planet!
An important medicine was approved in Japan on the basis of an analysis I conducted.
When I was in recruitment I picked up the CV of a bloke in his mid 50s whose life had fallen about him like dust.
He used to be an export salesman - spending time building up agents and contacts in Africa & Middle East. His wife was unhappy that he was away all the time so nagged him to give it up and come back into the UK.
He came back and sank all his money in a crappy franchise scheme.
His wife then realised it wasn't him being away she disliked, it was him being at home so she kicked him out, his business went flop and he ended up sharing a room in a strange town.
Ended up with no home no money no job. For somebody in his mid 50s, that's a bit of a bummer.
I looked at his CV and thought with a bit of judicious trimming I could make it look OK. I then set about getting him in front of employers.
Eventually he was given an export assistant role and he phoned me up out of the blue a couple of weeks before Christmas. He loves the job, he's had a promotion, his firm love him, his customers love him, and apparently it was only my faith in him that re-ignited his own self belief and stopped him taking the big walk to the top of the multi-storey.
Gulp...
These are all really great things to be proud of people. Funny isn't it how the normal grind gets you down, but when you stop and think, you can say " I did that" or "I contributed to that".
Slaps to backs and high fives all round.
Nice work, BigJohn 🙂
Don't forget the whoops Mugsy_m8 whoops are essential too.
BigJohn can you look at my cv please.
Took a nanotechnology concept I had developed for pure research purposes and applied it to a real world problem I asked to look into and had proof of concept and patent application in 4 months when I was doing a research role at Uni on a contract for a large company. European and US patents now granted 🙂
Engineered some software to self-calibrate the frequency of a microprocessor, after some numpty left the crystal off the board design. Not sexy, but got us out of a huge hole, and I'm proud as everyone said it couldn't be done!
Proud of a few things over the years; one job that springs to mind was a project I worked on where I delivered bike riding sessions to pretty much all the primary schools in our region. First session was basic skills, then second session was an off road route. Seeing the kids enjoying themselves was very rewarding.
One particular set of kids had behavioural problems, which funnily enough didn't arise during the sessions, and having them thank me afterwards was very nice.
WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP 😆
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.
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.
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 😀












