It seems like every swinging d!ck on the boards is either a software programmer or a patriotic killer, so I thought I'd run this poll for fun and edification.

It's difficult to choose an appropriate answear. I am a student - but I earn my money with computers. Studying is not paying my bills - so should I choose computer? Or should I choose student - because it consumes most of my time?

White collar AND academic? I'm working full-time for the Canadian government this summer while working toward my M.A. in Economics.

I'm a peace-loving, tree-hugging Canadian and in no way a patriotic killer.

Finally, I avoided a career in programming, but just barely: it was a close call. I was pretty good at it in highschool though and I'm still a big-time gadget freak.

Tear-assing around in the mud in 4x4. Yes, some people actually manage to swing making a job out of that.

Tirsales: Perhaps you don't know that the phrase "make a living" is a colloquialism for "earn the money that you need to buy necessities"?

I am a patriotic killer, but strictly amateur.

Blakkie, I'd call that blue collar.

I'm a finance guy that does supply chain and sales forecasts and budgets.

tweak

Blakkie:

Teach me!

If you really meant "make a living", why did you bother to include "student" under Academic?

Me, I'm a Computers-Academic-Artist (writer and actor), but the only one of the three that's ever paid any bills is Computers.

~J

I suppose "gene therapy researcher" is academic, if I work for a university...

Kagetenshi: I included "student" to cover people who are really living on loans, grants, and/or their parents' money while they go to college. They might be doing 15 hours a week at the beer drivethrough, but really they're professional students.

Full-time student, but work a blue collar, warehouse, job 20 hours a week while going to school, and I spent nine years in the military (embassy duty and counter-intelligence) I probably know the least about computers out of all of us...

Full time student, part time, literally blue collar, University Security. Leaves lots of time for 3rd shift dumpshocking when I'm stuck at the radio dispatch station.

Hey, Nerbert...I did campus security at Kent State University for four years

*high five*

I all ways found the folks that worked security to know gaming material better than anyone else.

tweak

A lot of the folks I work with are into WoW. But I have yet to meet any P&P gamers. Thought its possible that they're just in hiding.

I'm a teacher for mental handicaped people. Voted "Blue Colar". And i study Public Health (BA), starting at october.
So sorry, no computers and no weapons here.

Well, i work with mentally hadicapped people too!

Not as a tacher, but in day care for the elderly among them.

Marc, newbie

I started Blue Collar, then went to law enforcement/civic service and part time blue collar, worked my way up to Computers for a year then got knocked down on my ass and have been Blue Collar again ever since for the past 8 or 9 years.

Flakjacket:

No, but I was area advisor for library security in 1998, which basically means head of library security. The Kent State library is I think twelve stories tall, biggest building in the county, and holds the administration offices, including the president's office.

There is a student organization at KSU called the May 4th Task Force. Every year, we'd get a day off classes on May 4th, and the Task Force would organize a memorial/sing-along/anti-war protest (whether we had a war or not) in memory of the May 4th, 1970, shootings.

In the mid-seventies, the school had built a parking lot on a grassy area where three of the dead had fallen. There had been protests at the time, but they had not succeeding in preventing the parking lot from going in.

Well, for some reason, in 1998, this old controversy got reheated, and the May 4th Task Force and its allies wanted the individual parking spaces that now lay over the spots where the dead had hit the ground to be set off as memorials, never again to be used to store automobiles.

So, on May 4th, 1998, they marched on the president's offices with their demands. I was at work to oversee my end of this siege, with one of my subordinates and a squad of KSU PD cops (the cops did not take orders from or much notice of my lowly student-security self). As may not surprise anyone, the hippy army had shitty information security, and we knew what they were going to do before they did. So when about three or four hundred of them marched resolutely to the library, we had the doors locked.

Some patrons of the library criticized us for trampling on freedom of speech. I told them that anyone who wanted to hear what the protesters had to say could go right out into the quad and listen until their bladder overflowed; anyone who wanted to hear their message could watch it on the television news; I had hundreds of patrons and staff who were trying to work and study and carry on the business of the university, and I wasn't going to let that become impossible because four hundred Joan Baez fans (who, by the way, included Ron Kovic himself as the keynote speaker of the May 4th observances that year) were singing Kumbayaa in the lobby.

We opened and closed one door at regular intervals to let patrons in and out in small groups. We repelled a few infiltration attempts (two girls with pierced belly buttons, one football player, one skinny guy with no bookbag in a Bob Marley T-shirt and a boonie hat, saying cheerfully to us, "Fight the power, man!" Which one of these is different from the others?)

The President did allow a small delegation to meet with her. They were successful. Today, three parking spaces are set off with little lights, and little triangular pieces of marble in one corner, set flush with the asphalt, bearing the name of the dead.

True story.

Where's the option for Welfare Bum ... er, I mean Retired?

Fortune! My oldest friend!

Used to be Patriotic Ass Kicker, in the Navy for 9 years, then got out to real life, and straight into Blue Collar hell as a forklift driver.

Well, lately it's computers mostly, though that is technically white collar if you do it for a bank, which I do. though in the beginning I not only worked for a bank fixing computers, I made change at a porn store and bounced at a goth/industrial club on the nights and weekends.

Now I just fix computers. I miss bouncing though, it's fun when people offer you their date in exchance for continuing to have sex in the club, even if you don't accept.

16 years (so far) USMC, working in military intelligence (and no, that's not an oxymoron)

Derek

Former Patriotic killer (497 trans, and 2cnd Ranger Bat- Huah!) turned failed student (damn you Evercrack) turned computer guy. Which is what I am doing now for the State Of Alaska. It only took 6 years to get a decent paying job.

Uhm, does working in the games industry count as Computers, Academic, Artist, or White Collar?

You didn't have a category in there for the medical field, unless you include us in 'white collar'?

-Xiad DDS

Meh... white collar, then.

True. Very true. An ape with a banana has a more impressive resume than half the workers up here.

I'm the only Asskicker on the boards? By profession I mean. I'm sure you're all asskickers preserving your amateur status, maybe for an Olympic run.

But you know, as a former USMC infantryman (0311) and a current doorman, there's very little asskicking to it. Its mainly being able to talk to people and getting them to understand that doing something (not coming in, leaving, not fighting, paying their tab) is whats best for all involved. Its a business, and there's no real benefit to roughing up the customer base. (I find being sarcastic is a lot more effective than attempting to be physically threatening.)