Sr. Server Engineer (Vintage Systems) at Living Computer Museum,

A Ph.D., at least over here, is not really 'taught'. It's self-taught. You are expected to fidn out hwat you need, solve problems, and so on. That's the point of it. So when I needed to print out a report and some idiot had fed normal acetate sheets through the only laser printer (a CX), you can bet I learnt how to strip it down and fix it. And I am sur this knowledge (along with the other things I mentioned) has been a lot more use to me than, say, understnading the weak interaction (which I don't understand...). Problem is, people see I've got this bit of paper that says 'particle physics' and assume I will understand the weak interaction (which they don't need anybody to understand either) anf don;'t assume I can understnad SMPSUs, electronic design, etc. Oh well... Over here it's schools that seem to do their utmost to prevent learning. Fortunately they were not successful with me... -tony