Seeing Through the Spin
Two different high-profile news stories have really flipped my “curmudgeon” switch this week. It irritates me that the general public is distracted by ridiculous excuses […]
Many Ways In — But Just One Way Up
We’ll get back to our “origin story” project soon. One thing I have noticed about the guest blogs so far is that the people kept […]
The Importance of Dirty Hands
My dear friend Octave’s account of his co-op experience (see Tuesday’s 1-29 post) reinforces my belief that no one should trust an engineer or designer […]
From Co-op to Vice President: Octave A. LaBathe
I was attending the University of Cincinnati in the college of engineering. After my freshman year in 1960, I started my co-op job with the […]
Old Methods to Teach New Technology
For most of human history, skills were passed from one generation to the next by some form of apprenticeship. Only in the last couple of […]
Retail Management Career to Gear Manufacturing: Who Would Have Guessed?
In 2012, Rj Link International hired Matt Rossiter as a gear machinist and entered him into the Rock River Valley Tooling & Machining Association Apprenticeship […]
Lessons Learned the Hard Way
Chris’ account of putting aside his original goals to continue his father’s firm reminded me of an interesting story about an early co-worker in development […]
Getting into the Gear Trade: Chris Trochelman
Here is the first of our guest blogs on the topic of how you entered the gear trade. Chris Trochelman (pictured above, far left) would […]
The Journey Continues
An apprentice gets to ask lots of questions. The person responding to those questions determines whether you feel empowered to keep asking. Most of my […]
Luck of the Draw
Forty-eight years ago, I was finishing my freshman year at a community college. I was on the Dean’s List but I was also broke, working […]