Anyone in the market for a good used machine tool should talk to Noel Dempsey, a dealer in Richmond, Virginia. Noel’s bustling warehouse is full of metal lathes, milling machines, and table saws, and it turns out that most of it is from schools. EBay is awash in such equipment, also from schools. It appears shop class is becoming a thing of the past, as educators prepare students to become “knowledge workers.”
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I began working as an electrician’s helper at age fourteen, and started a small electrical contracting business after college, in Santa Barbara. In those years I never ceased to take pleasure in the moment, at the end of a job, when I would flip the switch. “And there was light.” It was an experience of agency and competence. The effects of my work were visible for all to see, so my competence was real for others as well; it had a social currency. The well-founded pride of the tradesman is far from the gratuitous “self-esteem” that educators would impart to students, as though by magic.
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Following graduate school in Chicago, I took a job in a Washington, D.C. think tank. I hated it, so I left and opened a motorcycle repair shop in Richmond.
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There was more thinking going on in the bike shop than in the think tank.

wonderful wonderful essay which reminded me strongly of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"

[Gold Star. I'm tempted to give it two. This is hands down one of the best essays I've ever read.

I think that I'll have a lot to say about it, but I'm going to need to spend some time on it. In the meantime, go, read it.

It is vrey much applicable to those of us in the InfoTech/InfoSec world. I see many parallels in our work to those of a tradesman -- writing software can be dull and monotonous or it can be vibrant and engaging, largely depending upon the personality and skill of the developer, but also largely depending on the environment in which he works.

I'll stop, but I'll be back with more.
-k]