OT: IT Professional in this group

Real farm work is crap. Lots of people who run them never take a holiday in 15/20/30 years as they can't get anyone to look after it. Day off is a trip to market. You have to work like a dog and hang on half a lifetime in the hope of getting a good property deal. My mom's uncle has sold a dozen acres and rented out all the rest of his land to owners of horses and ponies and now spends weeks at a time enjoying life with P&O. Can afford to get someone in to properly finish and decorate the new farm house that he built 45 years ago.

"An"? Isn't there only one? In the UK I mean.

Think yourself lucky you're not the world's leading authority on Wing design optimisation. I know him, very nice blerk, gets paid a pittance despite having saved Airbus a bloody fortune.

Sheffield on around =A38-ish/hr. OK up to 6 points and being young isn't=20 much of a barrier.

--=20 Conor

America: A democracy so successful, even the Ukranians copy it.

Missing 't in that last sentence, possibly?

FWIW, we have a small farm. The only way we can afford to run a farm is to have other jobs and to pay someone to farm the land. We don't keep livestock because of the commitment in time and the fact that we would never be able to leave home. Arable works, and my planting schedule is dictated more by "what takes the least input" than anything else. A crop that can be planted then ignored is ideal, that leaves me growing beans, sunflowers, wheat on rotation but as you know still means harvest is a fraught time trying to reserve time off the other work when you're trying to meet a moving target.

Lost the entire November harvest because I couldn't drop the client I had to do the harvest (which got delayed by a fortnight because of bad weather). It was a pisser, best year ever I'm told.

I have lived (and worked) on a farm all my life, so I know it's not a piece of piss. It is, however, a lot nicer than an office job IMO. Obviously, some farms are like that, and my Dad's not been on holiday for god knows how long, certainly not in my lifetime, but with the stuff we're growing now (bedding and strawberries), we're busy in the summer and the stuff we do in the winter is just to keep the place ticking over.

Nah it won't be gone, but it will be opensource based, and running totally stable production 64bit code by then.

Worst thing to be effected will be long term embedded systems that have run as needed for 20 years, and never been patched because they never needed to be. Then we might see things go silly.

Yeah, people tend to get funny about the destructive nature of that.....

Peter

-- "The humble bic biro draws 13 beards, 9 devil moustaches and 49 penises on newspapers in it's lifetime."

Or getting qualified as a surveyor or something similar in the building industry, enables you to earn similar money, for nil physical labour. My brother left school at 16, and started working as a trainee for Mowlem for around £8k/year. Within about 6 months or so he was on about £13k, then moved to another job for about £19k or so, then moved again to another job, quantity surveying for a brickwork contractor, at around £30k (he's now a few weeks short of 21), with a fully expensed company car (of his choice, within a given budget, he's got a 147 Selespeed and actually seems to *like* the gearbox, strange lad), and due to the arselicking (bribery/corruption) nature of the building industry, he gets taken out lots by various people, and gets to take them out on expenses etc as well. He also did a day release and did an HNC or HND (whatever the part-time one is) in something to do with construction management, and a year or so ago did an evening course in CAD, all paid for by his employer at the time (which is a handy skill to have if you're between jobs, £20 or so per hour casual temp work).

Doing things that route mean you won't have to do any manual work, and could quite happily progress to things like project management, which pays decent money. And of course, being in that industry gives you the opportunity to develop good contacts so that if you did want to make a few quid on the side doing up property (whilst living in them at the same time, or even not living in them) then it makes it that bit easier.

Peter

-- "The humble bic biro draws 13 beards, 9 devil moustaches and 49 penises on newspapers in it's lifetime."

erm, that's "INFINITE" :-)

Peter

-- "The humble bic biro draws 13 beards, 9 devil moustaches and 49 penises on newspapers in it's lifetime."

Is he quite fat? Does his stomach block his view of the bottom of his legs? Let him know that's where his feet are :-)

Talking of taking long times off - I was talking to a mate of mine about your typical 4-on 4-off warehouse job, which are generally 4 days on, 4 off,

4 nights on, 4 off, etc., working 7 til 7 shifts. We basically figured the (very obvious) fact that even though you're doing 12 hour shifts and the overall hours are the same, you literally have 6 months a year off, in terms of actual free time. Add a month to that for paid holiday, and that's 7 months a year off. Now it would be bloody knackering, and you'd not have a life at all outside work, and maybe an hour or two at home to eat/watch tv before needing to go to bed, but surely if people could job-share (i.e. find two people mad enough to want to work 5 solid months in order to have 7 months off a year), you could do exactly that. Like I say, 5 months of each year would be virtually nothing but work and sleep, but the other 7 months you would be completely free, and still get a reasonably annual salary over the whole year.

You're another incarnation of me, you are. I could virtually say snap to all of those statements there:

I tried a Music and Sound recording degree (Tonmeister at Surrey) - one of the best and most unique courses of its kind, and I was very lucky to get a place, but then realised my interest in Sound Recording was virtually non-existent, and all I wanted to do is write songs, attempt to write comedy, and come up with entrepreneurial ideas that'll hopefully make me loaded one day.

My course wasn't difficult persé, as you had to be pretty smart to get on it, but it did require constant hard work, and I just didn't do that as I wasn't motivated.

I don't want a career - it's never interested me in the slightest - there's not one career path in the world that I'd want to start at the bottom of, and work my way up. I'd much rather use my own ideas and initiative to set up businesses, invent cool little gadgets that people would buy, and make my money that way, and hopefully make something really big of it, and then have the time to do the things I really enjoy, namely music and comedy writing. Many people would consider my ideas to be just pipe dreams, but if I got off my arse and put things into action any amount closely resembling what I say I'll do, I'd be a millionaire by now :-)

That's not to say money's the be all and end all - it'd just be a means to an end to give me the nice things in life - a nice house in a nice location to live in (or a few nice houses.....), the free time to do the things I really enjoy, and to go travelling and just enjoy life, something I haven't done much in the last few years. One day I'll get there.

And yeah, uni debts are a bitch - still got around 7k outstanding on my student loan, accruing interest at a massive one point something percent :-)

Peter

-- "The humble bic biro draws 13 beards, 9 devil moustaches and 49 penises on newspapers in it's lifetime."

A big earner for farmers around here is barn conversions into office/light industrial units. Loads of them around here, very trendy and in decent areas with little traffic. I quite often see them knocking new units up, so I guess it must be worth their while.

Peter

-- "The humble bic biro draws 13 beards, 9 devil moustaches and 49 penises on newspapers in it's lifetime."

ooh yes please - that's me back in the money....

Even if they push retirement up to 70 I'll have been retried 10 years when the shit hits the fan.

in news:S08sd.1436$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe6-win.ntli.net, "AstraVanMan" slurred :

And, whilst we're having a go at Nom's spelling, I'll throw in "Lunacy" :)

Agreed 100%. Even companies recruiting graduates will look so much more favourably on candidates who have worked summers/gap year in the industry rather than in tescos/travelled australia.

Fuck you all :)

That would get kinda messy :-/

------------------------------------------------ "We are all individuals" "I'm not!"

I'm game.

Douglas

At this point I feel it necessary to put a (c: on the end of that statement.

Douglas