[chrisser]

I haven't been in the classroom since my 1980->1983 time frame at Southwestern College. I left that position when my full time software engineering job made it impossible to devote time to teaching in the evening. I'm still working 50 to 70 hours a week at nearly age 59. I would not mind teaching at Idaho State University when I'm ready to get out of the frenetic world of commercial and DoD software activities. I won't be a "tenured old fart". Not enough time to get there. I'm simply not interested in laying around in retirement. Frankly, I think the economy is going to tank so badly that retirement is never going to happen.

I think it's somewhat ironic that the people who would be most useful in front of a classroom are the very ones who don't have the time. I've always felt universities could and should do a better job of recruiting people with industry experience, both current and former. I had three professors in my field that had extensive experience and I gleaned more usable knowledge from those three than from all the others.

Re: the economy - I recently took a $20k paycut to take a job in a very rural area. Still haven't fully moved everyone and everything there, but will have way before the end of the year. I've felt for several years that something is coming and it isn't going to be a fun ride. Would rather ride it out among those who tend toward self-sufficiency than being in the midst of the parasite class in the city. Doubly so if there ends up being no riding it out and the aftermath of the tanking becomes the new normal.

If I'm wrong, then at least I have better scenery...

[Myrddin]

I made the move in 2000. Sold the house in San Diego. Bought a nicer one in Pocatello. Had a good home office going until Obama took office. That necessitated leaving the family in Pocatello while I camped in a rented bedroom in San Diego for 5 years. My oldest son died during that interval. I returned home in Sept 2014 as my wife started a battle with breast cancer. The home office is back in business with work that doesn't require my presence in a spin dial room.

I encountered a funny comment in the "joke of the day" file while working as a UNIX sysadmin at PacBell. It was similar to "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, write. Those who can't write work for the Bell Labs Record". This is from a time in the early 1980's when UNIX was still very much an inside the Bell System product. I had read and understood the fully commented kernel source from the University of New South Wales in the Summer of 1981. It was June of 1983 when I finally laid my hands on a 3B20 at PacBell. Stroustrup's early C++ was on the machine. Life was good. C++ was more fun that writing raw assembly language on the 8080, Z80, 6800 and 6809. Writing devices drivers for UNIX was duck soup after 4 years of doing embedded microprocessors. By 1985 I was collaborating with Phil Karn, KA9Q, to do TCP/IP over AX.25 and applying the TCP/IP skills to upgrading PacBell's networks. I was porting David Korn's shell to 30 different platforms and pleased as punch that he was very responsive to bug reports. No complaints about my career path.