The name requires an explanation!

Alright, this name is one I picked for livejournal some time ago when I thought that any blog I wrote would be the whole messy business of telescope sales that I had been involved with for the past five years.

An explanation: About 6 years ago I was a humble little museum educator with low pay and a job that involved a lot of travel, I was part of the museum's outreach program. It was fun, but it was also a job where the burnout period for the average employee was about 2 years.

I had lasted 8+ years up until that point. I had burned out on the job a few times but had always managed to recover. I don't know how I lasted that long, but I suspect it mostly because I really didn't know what else I could do for a living.

Salvation came from an ad in the local paper's job section. My then girlfriend, the illustrious spittingrage (whose blog you can find on this server easily enough), was looking for a job for herself when she spotted an ad for junior engineers. I read the qualifications, and I was definitely qualified for the job. (This was not a real engineering job per se, it was more like a tech support job for this companies products). I applied for the job, and then got a call from the companies HR person saying that I was a good candidate for that job, but also for another one they had open. It was a little vague, but I went in to the place of business for interviews with two people.

Long story short, I took the unlisted job. I was working for a catalog company that sold, among other things, telescopes, as well as with other science items. I would choose what products went into the catalog, and at times I would even help out in the company store. I found I was a very good telescope salesman.

It was a wonderful job, but it didn't last. The division I worked for was sold and I was out of a job. I sent out applications but was at a loss for what I would do. Surprisingly, I got another offer. I was offered a job to work for a devoted telescope company (*cough*Orion*cough*). I soon packed up, said goodbye to my friends and my hometown, and left for California.

At that company, I did all kinds of jobs. Unfortunately, as I did my job, That work I did would need to be taken over by a full time person. This meant that my job description was getting smaller and smaller. Finally, after working for 2.5 years there, the company realized there was little for me to do and let me go. Probably just as well. I made my way back to my hometown and that was the end of that.

So why "Telescope Mercenary"? Well, one thing we at the telescope were very good at was keeping an eye on the various astronomy/telescope message boards. We would do this to judge the reaction to the products we produced and see if there were any chronic problems that needed addressing. We had to take all things with a grain of salt, of course, online opinions area a dime a thousand and you could easily overweigh a few blowhards and self-selected experts.

Unfortunately, there were a few of these self-styled experts who tended to speak rather broadly about our company and its plans. These were folks who knew the names of the factories in Taiwan and China and assumed they knew everything about the business from the products they saw and knowing the names of the companies. Company policy stated that we could not participate in these discussions to correct these folks since doing so in the past had caused more trouble for the company than it solved. We had to grit our teeth and watch them blab untruths. The list of their assumptions was endless: We did not product development, just pulled off-the-shelf products from the factories, the factories did all the work and we were just resellers, and all of our parts came from the one factory, so when a rival started selling the same product with an inferior piece, they considered it to be identical to ours. All of these things were untrue, but we could not say a thing about it. We bemoaned our required silence, and actually talked of the day when we were no longer restricted by the company rules and would tell these bozos how they were wrong and were to get bent. I even talked about becoming the telescope mercenary.

Then, as I mentioned above, I was laid off. And a funny thing happened. I ceased caring about those online bozos. I simply lost interest. I had no desire to tell them where to get bent, as much as they deserved it. Lack of company loyalty I guess.

Now, I still love astronomy, and I still work in the field of optics. But what I do now has very little bearing on telescopes. I found myself with a chosen name and no real desire to use it. I'll probably post on things astronomical from time to time, maybe even directly telescope related, but the old competitive flare is gone. Mostly I'll just treating this like any other blog: With discussion of my hobbies, my interests, a bit of politics here and there. Just like plain blogs.