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Getting to know you-- Question 2


Airehead

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Well I don't have kids, so I guess I'd say keeping employed and supporting myself through out my life.  When I was young and just starting out, I always worried what would happen if I lost a job (either through a resource action or my own stupidity). I didn't have a family with a second income, so it was just me.   Luckily I had parents and extended family that I knew would be there for me, but I didn't want to have to rely on them.  I've been working for decades now, and various jobs have had ups and downs, but I've been able to house, clothe and feed myself and that's something the 20 year old me would find reassuring.

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Interesting perspectives from @Kirby and @petitepedal.

My mom was there for me through my mid 40’s (she actually passed 8 years ago today) but I remember thinking in my late 20’s i had gotten to a point where I really didn’t her for anything.   It was kind of a liberating feeling knowing I had control of my own life.  

I’m contrast, when my mom passed and we were cleaning out her house to sell it, my brother refused to get his stuff out. My sisters were getting really pissed & yelling at him.  I asked my sisters to STFU and let me handle it. 

I just asked him what’s going on, you know you gotta get your stuff out, why aren’t you?  He said he always felt he could go back to the house, it would always be his safety net. He was divorced twice and each time moved back in with my mom and kept a lot of his crap there.

 He was just having a hard time coming to grips that the safety net was gone but recognized he had to get his stuff. Getting his stuff was the final step in that realization.  

That struck me as odd as I never thought that way. 

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2 hours ago, Zephyr said:

I am sensing a pattern here. 

Children are half chance at best.  Many are serial killers. 

I think how they turn out is often just dumb luck, but influenced about 50% by parenting (good or bad parenting).

I am proud that I am not a (convicted) serial killer, but am glad that RO is not (yet).  She is eight years old, so it is anyone's guess if she will be one.  Genetics on the mom's side is worrying.

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3 hours ago, maddmaxx said:

75 years of undetected crime.

So you are the serial killer. 
 

I am proud of the girls but as @Randomguy pointed out there were lots of things making them who they are and I could have helped them get their negative traits too. They had it tough all and all. 
 

 

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For all the things I've learned from a wide, diverse range people I've met and worked/laughed with in different sectors. When travelling the journey of life, it's not just what you see/experience, it's who you meet along the way.  I'm not sure it's an accomplishment but more happenstance and just taking opportunities to make changes that seem hopefully, right/good.

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Hmm, maybe when I was in 4th grade. Test results as an MGM (Mentally Gifted Minor). I out scored all the 5th graders in the state tests so I was skipped from the 4th to 6th grade. Never had to do 5th grade. 

Was an accomplishment but turned out to be a curse if you ask me. My birthday was late May and being skipped up, I was almost 2 years younger than most of the kids. Would never wish that on my children.

 

Next would be kicking the snot out of the forum members who challenged me on rides. :D  FTR, I never challenged anybody, I just accepted challenges.

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5 hours ago, sheep_herder said:

Receiving the Sustained Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Range Management.

http://rangelands.org/awards/pdf/2004_slaa_haferkamp.pdf

255 published articles. An accomplishment to be proud of for sure but I am also in awe of your photography. 

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Biggest Practical Accomplishment:

I did teach chemistry and physics to a lot of kids who became chemists and other scientists and engineers and IT people, but something else involved millions of kids.

Around 1980, I developed the first synthetic process that made non-carcinogenic fibers low-cost in the manufacture of kids' flameproof clothing.

When the chemical Tris was shown to cause cancer and leach out of clothes onto kids' skin in flameproof clothing, the first major non-carcinogenic replacement that became part of the fibers and not leach out was called "BA-50."

I didn't invent BA-50, a brominated carbon compound, but I came up with the first way to synthesize it at a low-cost, whose market the Japanese had previously cornered. Not only did that allow low-cost flameproofing for kids' clothes but, thanks to the low manufacturing costs, we grabbed 25% of the market from the Japanese in the joint venture between my company, Minerec-Dow and Great Lakes Chemical (we needed the Bromine for BA-50 from their Bromine wells in Kansas).

Biggest Theoretical Accomplishment:

I developed a novel, dry-acid technique for synthesizing 2-alkoxy-1,3-dioxolanes, a type of "Orthoester" (three oxygens bonded to a single carbon atom) with a 5-membered ring where C-O-C-O-C were the ring members with another O coming off the middle C, and whose properties have been exploited to find better ways of making things and whose unusual properties have been used to understand the underlying mechanisms of organic acid catalysis.  I made three dioxolanes that never has existed before because previously known techniques kept breaking the materials apart before they formed a ring.  It was a thrill watching the liquid of each one drip out of the end of a distillation unit, knowing I was the first person to ever make and see each one of those compounds!

My thesis was published in 1975 with complete information on the synthesis, which has been repeated and confirmed by others and my thesis and coauthored-papers in Journal of the American Chemical Society, etc. over the next several years have been referenced in publications and patent applications into the 2010's.

 

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17 hours ago, MickinMD said:

Biggest Practical Accomplishment:

I did teach chemistry and physics to a lot of kids who became chemists and other scientists and engineers and IT people, but something else involved millions of kids.

Around 1980, I developed the first synthetic process that made non-carcinogenic fibers low-cost in the manufacture of kids' flameproof clothing.

When the chemical Tris was shown to cause cancer and leach out of clothes onto kids' skin in flameproof clothing, the first major non-carcinogenic replacement that became part of the fibers and not leach out was called "BA-50."

I didn't invent BA-50, a brominated carbon compound, but I came up with the first way to synthesize it at a low-cost, whose market the Japanese had previously cornered. Not only did that allow low-cost flameproofing for kids' clothes but, thanks to the low manufacturing costs, we grabbed 25% of the market from the Japanese in the joint venture between my company, Minerec-Dow and Great Lakes Chemical (we needed the Bromine for BA-50 from their Bromine wells in Kansas).

Biggest Theoretical Accomplishment:

I developed a novel, dry-acid technique for synthesizing 2-alkoxy-1,3-dioxolanes, a type of "Orthoester" (three oxygens bonded to a single carbon atom) with a 5-membered ring where C-O-C-O-C were the ring members with another O coming off the middle C, and whose properties have been exploited to find better ways of making things and whose unusual properties have been used to understand the underlying mechanisms of organic acid catalysis.  I made three dioxolanes that never has existed before because previously known techniques kept breaking the materials apart before they formed a ring.  It was a thrill watching the liquid of each one drip out of the end of a distillation unit, knowing I was the first person to ever make and see each one of those compounds!

My thesis was published in 1975 with complete information on the synthesis, which has been repeated and confirmed by others and my thesis and coauthored-papers in Journal of the American Chemical Society, etc. over the next several years have been referenced in publications and patent applications into the 2010's.

 

You are a very smart man. 

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