Time flys...when you're havin fun

I thought I'd share this.....took the Starrett 1" Mike box out of the tool box drawer to grab a tiny center drill I keep stashed in it along with the mike, and found this note I wrote under the box.



It says: Oct 11, ....1983 arrow points to list on right of local companies visited.
A. LaFrance (American LaFrance)
Trayer Products
Elmira Stamping
F. Spring (Fairway Spring Co)
West. House (Westinghouse)

Oct. 10, 1983 "First day we went looking for contracts, 1st place....??....Sunmaster Corp"

The one place on the list that turned into a good customer was Westinghouse.
38 years, lots of water under the bridge since then.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

I wasn’t even a tadpole in my fathers balls at that time.

dkmc said:

I thought I'd share this.....took the Starrett 1" Mike box out of the tool box drawer to grab a tiny center drill I keep stashed in it along with the mike, and found this note I wrote under the box.

View attachment 313285

It says: Oct 11, ....1983 arrow points to list on right of local companies visited.
A. LaFrance (American LaFrance)
Trayer Products
Elmira Stamping
F. Spring (Fairway Spring Co)
West. House (Westinghouse)

Oct. 10, 1983 "First day we went looking for contracts, 1st place....??....Sunmaster Corp"

The one place on the list that turned into a good customer was Westinghouse.
38 years, lots of water under the bridge since then.

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Lotta same-name-unrelated outfits oufits around.

Wonder if it were the same "Sunmaster" one as made the passive-tracking evacuated-tube solar collectors I "beta" tested on my residence, their early-early-days?

Tubes were bought-in. Libby, not nearby Corning. They'd have formed the sockets, brazed the copper manifolds, formed the reflectors, fabbed an aluminium extrusion frame. Not a lot more to them.

The early 1980s recesssion...no fun at all....whole industrial areas with every building empty,forests of for lease/for sale signs.....friends calling asking for a loan so they didnt lose everything.....I had to sell of my motorbike collection to keep going....fortunately ,I got good money for what I sold.....Scrap fell to near zero ,the yards wouldnt unload ,you had to bring scrap in a tiptruck.

john.k said:

The early 1980s recesssion...no fun at all....whole industrial areas with every building empty,forests of for lease/for sale signs.....friends calling asking for a loan so they didnt lose everything.....I had to sell of my motorbike collection to keep going....fortunately ,I got good money for what I sold.....Scrap fell to near zero ,the yards wouldnt unload ,you had to bring scrap in a tiptruck.

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Would 'ha been about that time. My immediate next-higher was the CFO.

VERY proud he had made a profit that year by forcing operations to close three of our 18 units.

I said, f**kin' brilliant Marty! Close the rest of them, we shall all be RICH!

He said:

You sound just like <our founder and Chairman> !!!

Yah well. We 'went to different schools together."
He learned it as a merchant. I learned it on a battlefield.

Nobody ever won a war by quitting better and faster than the other guy!
What winners do is "prevail". Regardless.

CFO had called me in earlier that year to tell me to cut 15% of staff. Across the board. Whole corp was doing it.

I opened a notebook, showed him the profit over full burden each staff member contributed, net. By name and function.

Our unit was making 110% of Corporate profit. EG: Covering the losses of other units.

"You tell me how much of that profit you want to cut, I can gave you back a far lesser amount in reduction of what it costs us to earn it. It happens to be what you pay ME to make happen, so it you have some other goal? I'll be first out the damned door to give myself a pay rise under a more wisely run roof."

We kept staff. Then added. Made money, too for many years, thereafter.

Son took over from founding parents. Took him eight years to bankrupt the previous thirty-odd of steady growth!

I was eight and a HALF years already away, well into the second doubling of my income.

"S**t happens"?

No. Not really.

"S**t is what you are in when nothing good "happens" and you just SIT in it as if helpless.

Who TOLD you you were "helpless?" And why did you buy into the lie?
So some other go-getter could get a head start at gaining the most money, prestige, good meals consumed, and most wimmin' smiling?

Don't envy him.

Become he!

I still have my first 1" mic, and my first vernier. It's been many decades, but they still get used. I still have the first punched tape I ever made, from a Mori Seiki MV-45 with Fanuc System 6M-B.

DouglasJRizzo said:

I still have my first 1" mic, and my first vernier. It's been many decades, but they still get used. I still have the first punched tape I ever made, from a Mori Seiki MV-45 with Fanuc System 6M-B.

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Yep, the mic in the box is my first mic

My first mic, a Starrett 1 inch 436, bought new in spring of 1965, still in daily use.