what is your job

[chakra]

I used to be a Master Pastry Chef till I had kids - have two undergrad degrees (creative writing and Anthro/Psych.) and am now doing a Masters in Counselling Psychology. I'm in school all Saturday and home the rest of the week - DH takes the kids on Thursday and Friday so I can get my readings done. It works really well!

But my *main* job till I started the Masters last Fall was SAHM to three kids, who are now 7, 4.5 (DD, the other two are boys) and 2. I am glad I still get the kid fix 3 days a week, and it is so great that DH gets that much time with them. And, yeah, being home is absolutley the hardest thing I ever did! Not coincidentally, also the most worthwhile.

I really enjoyed this thread - cycling clearly attracts a diverse group of talented people, united in their wit!

Chakra

[Fredwina]

Thooretically, I'm a contract programmer. However, I havn't written any code (computer instructions) for pay in over two years.
what I actually do:
I look at the code the other programmers submit and make sure that they don't have any obvious error and adhere to our style standards . I get to spend 9 hours saying things like "You can't promote this. It has compile errors" "How did you test this?" "That SQL won't update anything" "You're x minutes for the promotion" (we have a Crisis Du Jour everyday at 5:00).
In addition, I do minor database fixes. The system runs human services (Welfare/TANF,Food Stamps, Medi-cal(Or Medicaid)(Medical insurance for the Poor) for the nation's most populous County (over 9 million and growing!) - the system runs on 7 mainframe(server) computers, and one of my jobs to move cases from one to other so the system will perform better.
I also teach a programming class as a volunteer. The current system is written in what I call "The Rondey Dangerfield of programming languages" - COBOL, and I'm trying to update my cv by learning Java and Java stuff
I even find time to ride my bike