Hi All,
I hope Im not too late. Just found this thread. I usually stick to the website critique board - cause I dont want to get hooked on another -) Anyhoo - here is my spiel:
Im Stephen, 24 from Ireland with a girlfriend of 11 months. I grew up very keen with woodwork and technology. I was good with my hands and excelled at woodwork in school. While doing woodwork in school I became very interested in metalwork and engineering building off-road karts etc. As a result of my ability and interest in woodwork - I decided to study woodwork teaching in college. Once in college - I became hooked on computers and websites. I put together a kartbuilding website ->
http://www.kartbuilding.net bringing together my web and metalwork. My interest in woodwork fell by the wayside. It was too much like work sanding and having to painstakingly varnish and finish the pieces of furniture I made. Building karts etc. where a simple weld could do so much appealled to me more. I could actually drive and race karts - where as with a bit of furniture - well it went into the corner of my parents and sisters house. Anyhoo - I completed the woodwork teaching degree - it was an excellent course providing me in a firm base of everything from woodwork to building to metalwork to technology to electronics.
Im not too keen on going teaching - at 2nd level anyways. Teaching is increasingly becoming more like crowd control and dealing with uncooperative students. As a result I stayed on in college and started a PhD - which I am at for 3 years. Its on sustainability management, dealing with social, environmental and economical aspects in small engineering companies. In order to bring my computer interests to the front - I plan (sort of started) to do a management portal for sustainability where companies can come together and network sharing ideas and solutions. My interest and motiviation after the 3 years is at an all time low. My nearest distraction was getting involved in the university computer society -
www.skynet.ie and which I have worked up from member to contributor to admin, looking after linux boxes over the past 14 months. I since have setup and maintain my own xen cluster on a rented server, providing well... any service I care to setup -) It still hasn't got the mangement portal as part of the PhD moving tho! I would like to go on and do a bit of web development on the side. I have done a few websites - but no major ones where I got large sums for. But all that will have to wait until I get this PhD out of the way - which is best described as a black cloud over my head.
And as for what to go working at when I finish! Well I hope god knows - cause I dont have a clue!! At this stage (or when I finish the PhD would like to work in Industry and have a VARIED job - doing different things. I wonder could I swing, environmental manager, IT admin, Webadmin and CAD designer into one job. Would be nice ,-) Here is wishing to that. I probably will start with looking for a CAD designer job when I finish the PhD. Its the area I most skilled in and have a good interest in. I currently do a bit of lecturing of Solidworks and AutoCAD here in the university (
http://www.staff.ul.ie/sburke/solidworks )- but its only breadcrumbs really, and full-time-jobs are nearly a thing of the past. Also maybe down the road when I get a proper job and income, and if I get time - I could get back into building and designing off-road and racing karts. Perhaps build enough karts to setup a karting track - who knows.
So thats my outline. Im really a jack of all trades - but dont know what to go at. I was also suprised to see a good varied age group here, from Andy to mark to ober etc. and also how a good few of ye, especially around ~26yrs are married with kids. Je. It'll be a good few years by me if I can help it -)
Anyhoo - chat ye later.
-steve
