[airplane]

I like a lot of things about my job. I work as an estimator for a road construction company. Basically I just work from home running a couple estimating programs on my computer. I stagger the submission of the estimates so that it appears as though I've been working hard and a good 40 hours a week even though I've only maybe done 20 hours work a week.

I don't have to go to job sites. I just ask someone to take pictures and email them to me. It's odd cause I'm not trained as an engineer but I'm doing an engineer's job. I'm really good with numbers though. If you give me just a touch of data, I can create a statistical model or whatever you want. And all my estimates are benchmarked and of course job tracking is done, so my work gets easier as it goes on. The work is screwed up though. There's a bunch of crookedness going on. There's supposed to be an integrity in submitting bids for jobs. But its well-known that there's sharing of estimates amongst competitors and sometimes we'll get the numbers of other companies and stuff like that, even on jobs that are public opening. It's kinda like that old saying that it's all about relationships. It really is. Sometimes we'll get screwed over on quotes cause we don't have a good relationship with somebody. Plus if we ever have to bid a job that's on Indian land, we'll have to buy the chief a new car or house or give him a bunch of money just in order to get the job. There's just tons of crookedness that goes on. That part of the work is kinda sad actually.

My real passion though is psychological assessment. That's much more inline with my training when I was a student at university. But it can't compete with the pay I got now and the convenience of my job. I can take a vacation whenever I want and as long as I bring my computer and dedicate about 3 hrs a day to my computer, all is fine. It's great to be able to spend so much time with my dogs at home.