Why do you have those keys pinned to your top?
“To make sure I can get back in the house.”

“I was working one day when she locked herself out. So she had to call my husband to come let her back in her own house.”

“He’s a saint. He’s real patient with me.”

“He knew what he was getting into. We warned him.”

“Yeah, I had a long talk with him before he asked her to marry him. I said, ‘You sure you want to do that? It’s just me and her. I have no husband. You will be the other man. Anything that goes wrong, you’ve got to fix it.’ And he agreed to it.”

“He has to fix her computer all the time.”

“He’s in IT, and he knows I’m pretty much computer illiterate. So if it doesn’t work I’m like, ‘Adam, I need you again.’”

— Marcia Stewart, with daughter, Lindsey Ramirez

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“I got my first job when I was 4 years old. I delivered eggs for a penny a dozen. While growing up, I had a newspaper route. I was a caddy for two summers. I worked at a big department store. I worked at a sewage plant. I was a welder at age 14 at the Ford plant in Cleveland, Ohio. After joining the Air Force, I was a disc jockey at WVMI in Biloxi, Mississippi. When we went to Spain for three years, I built a radio station in my spare time. We beamed American music to the housing area about 25 miles away. The strong work ethic my mother instilled in me when I was young has kept me busy throughout my life.

“I have a 1919 Model T that I take to car shows. So I’m pretty active on the weekends. My wife says, ‘You should slow down.’ I say, ‘No.’ People ask me, ‘When are you going to retire?’ I say, ‘I’m not.’ What happens to a shark when it quits swimming? He just rolls over and dies. I’m not going to roll over and die. I’ve known too many guys who retired and became stagnant. All they do is sit in their chairs, watch TV and smoke cigarettes. They waste away and die.

“Now I did have a heart attack kind of sneak up and kick me in the butt in February. I’ve kind of slacked off here lately until I fully recover. But I’m not planning to stop any time soon.”

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“I’ve had an interest in electronics since I was very young. I just had an insatiable curiosity about how things worked when I was growing up. It evolved into computers, radios, TVs and things like that.

“We had the old tube type television, and I’d be sitting there watching TV with my family. The TV would go out, and my father would come along, hit me in the back of the head and say, ‘Go fix it.’ So I learned how to pull the tubes out and make a diagram of which tubes went where. Then I’d get on my bicycle, pedal down to the drug store or gas station, and use their tube tester to check which one was bad. I’d buy a new one, bring it home and fix the TV. I was a genius.

“I still have that curiosity about how things work today. That’s one thing that interests me not only in electronics, but in the computer industry now. With all this hacking and stuff going on, cyber security is a big deal. So I got certified, and I got both of my instructors certified. We’re going to start cyber security classes in the fall.

“When 3D printers came out, I ordered one. It’s new technology. Students need to know how these things work. And I just bought 10 more. We’re going to set them up in a classroom and teach coding so that they can become proficient using them.

“It’s interesting keeping up with all the new technology. I enjoy it, but I do it for my students. That’s the most satisfying part of this job, seeing them graduate and move on to be successful out in the world.”

— Chuck Ganze, 74

Related:

• Mom gets the credit for his strong work ethic
• In his spare time, he’s teaching kids how to fish

The post ‘Insatiable curiosity’ feeds interest in technology appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“The company I work for is very flexible. When it’s needed, it’s really accommodating to be able to work from home. Plus nowadays, I can pretty much do everything I need using my phone and laptop. As long as I have those essentials, I can do my job.”

Do you think people today rely too much on those devices?
“I know that when my phone battery runs out I’m thinking, OK, how do I get around, what am I going to do now? I cannot communicate because I hardly ever memorize anybody’s phone number. Since I don’t have phone access I go to the next best thing, my laptop, which is my lifesaver. Not that we don’t know any better, but I guess you could say we do take those devices for granted. They’re pretty much a part of everything we do.”

— Ezequiel Buenas

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