Unlikely Inspiration & Timely Luck that Made Greats

[Beanz]

Tony Iommi losing the tips of two of his fingers the day before leaving his job at a sheet metal factory.

Still too painful to play, even with new plastic finger tips made from washing up bottles he downtuned his guitar to D# and C# standard and helped invent the lower doom laden heavy metal sound that inspired a million headbangers.

[SlimTrae]

Tony Iommi losing the tips of two of his fingers the day before leaving his job at a sheet metal factory.

Still too painful to play, even with new plastic finger tips made from washing up bottles he downtuned his guitar to D# and C# standard and helped invent the lower doom laden heavy metal sound that inspired a million headbangers.

Cool! I thought he was born that way. Gr8 thread whoever started it!

[SlimTrae]

Well this didn't make me great, but it was unlikely that a guy from the hood who barely graduated (without military I would've been held back in 12th grade) would survive, then thrive in IT.

Took a scam class from a community college for computer programming. No one hired me so I got my first gig(s) known then as a printer operator or peripheral operator working in data centers with computer operators.
The oldest computer mainframe had data stored on tapes. Looks like an 8 track cartridge along with large printers called impact printers.
1996ish contractors were despised, considered job thieves. & After the company I 1st worked at forced about a dozen workers to quit from my temp/contractor, I was the last one they could find.

Reason for quitting:

All temps were forced to do either tape mounting -which was exhausting if say 15 tape requests, you had to run to a library of moveable shelves to find them or... constantly unjamming large printers, stacking unstacking 40lb boxes of paper.
Computer operators kept resigning because they wanted to use their brain for monitoring/resolving issues.
Well they saw me and knew I wouldn't last. Keep this guy running for boxes of paper and tape mounts.

What they did not know was how fearful I was, no knowledge, no confidence. Had they put me on a console no doubt I would've quit! I didnt know shit about Ca7 scheduler, TSO, editing programs, nada!

After a month a problem occurred; they realized they were getting comfortable not doing those physical duties. And I began watching what they were doing to resolve issues be it software (DBA, programming) or hardware (server)related. aka gained confidence.
if a server needed to be rebooted I noticed how they wondered from one row of servers to the next to find it(3-7 minutes)- shit I thought, none of this is documented? In my spare time I documented every row, ever cabinet, every shelve. Name of server, IP address, static or dynamic (didnt know what it meant back then).

So when they saw how cool I was with doing manual labor, they thought they could get rid of me by asking me to reboot a server- request to fire him for taking too long to find it, but I went str8 to the location and did it within a minute.
My boss had me put it on the latest technology back then known as Lotus notes 1-2-3 today Xcel spreadsheet.
Top out pay 1998 was like 45k. & because they were all 40 & over, they didnt know jack about Lotus notes or Word perfect (Microsoft word).

Because major corporations (3 thousand employees or more) can't get off mainframe, and no college university to teach it, I got my recent gig at 65K-cause most skilled mainframers are A. retired B. dead.
Who would've thought a guy who dropped out of a high school class called computers in 2 weeks, would make a living in computers.

The very group of operators who never made more than 45k, got me this gig I'm at today was by refusing to let me do console. Shit backfired! I had a ball- putting on my Walkman, earphones, listening to Morris Day & The Time, Prince while mounting tapes & doing what I did in factories -lifting 40lb boxes for 20k a year.
I'm 1/2 as knowledgeable as they were yet I out earn them by 20k a year!!!!!
Only in America!

[SlimTrae]

[SlimTrae]

Today tape operators are almost nonexistent. Cylos or robotic arms do the job faster & efficient.

Sometimes a person will get tired and put the tape in the wrong slot making it hard for the next worker to find. We called it transposing. If you cant find tape 52471, look for it in 52417.
Humans can send the wrong tapes out to be stored as backup.

Tapes now hold WAY more data, no longer a need to 1,000 tapes a day. The robotic arm & densely stored media means an operator only needs to take in/out tapes once every few months or so.
If ever. Once you put those tapes in manually human intervention is done.

[SlimTrae]

Take away the tape mounting & this is what I've done for the past 30 years minus a few layoffs!

[SlimTrae]

Great youtube series called Tales from the Tour Bus. Rick James, James Brown to name a few. They retell some outrageous things that led to their rise/demise.

While most know James Brown Godfather of Soul began Funk, it would be his bassist William Bootsy Collins that left & took that Funk to George Clinton.

What I did NOT know was how/why George started off doing that acid rock genre. Well based on this 2 minute clip; It was White Liberals @ Harvard that started this trek LOL!

Initially he wanted to go the MOWTOWN route, but they werent on that level. One night playing for some college students...they were introduced to LSD!

They didnt change their style- that was Bootsy, what they did change was them dressing regular, acting normal!!!!!

This is how the Funk group Funkadelic started off playing acid rock & dressing outrageous! @NoSavingByTheBell @El Kabong @Spicoli @ykdadamaja