Testing jobs

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Alistar7

Lifer
May 13, 2002
11,978
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No dice can't find the disc with the pic :(

Bust is on display at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the curator would be delighted to share the tale I am sure. Fair warning, he and his crew are all, shall we say, likely to befriend you in an airport bathroom ;)


I can share a story from a field test I was sent out to handle. Ski Resort in the Smoky Mountains, one main large hill with a small lake at the bottom and a 9 hole golf course right after that in the valley. My assistant and I were given a couple of days to complete the testing, which we actually finished in under 4 hours. It was done at night, the lack of light aided in our inspection due to the testing method employed. We of course were put up in nice lodgings, per diem, all the perks, we also were given complete unsupervised access to the resort. It was late in the fall, too late for golf but too early for skiing, essentially it was closed and it was just he and I.

Bored out of our minds after finishing so quickly we had races down the grass covered ski slopes, using golf carts :) Being night it was basically impossible to see, and more than once we almost put a cart or two into the lake at the bottom. Several times we hit slight bumbs that pretty much launched the carts. OK, so that wasn't actually part of the testing, but if you think hurtling down a mountain in a golf cart and whizzing past trees in pitch darkness towards a lake with really no realiable way to stop is boring, then you got bigger balls than me....
 

miniMUNCH

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2000
4,159
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Originally posted by: Alistar7
Originally posted by: miniMUNCH
I can't believe there are folks who like testing...It must be a personality thing.

If someone wanted to torture me all they have to do is force me to do code tests or product testing. I'd crack in about 2 hours for sure.

Depends of what you are testing, and the method of testing. Trust me, there are many that you would find fascinating. I have done digital radiography scans of some of the masters paintings (picasso, van gogh, rembrandt) among other extremely rare and valuable museum pieces. Items that are not even displayed, the rest of the world will probably never see them and even if so certainly not as intimately. Some recently discovered items I was one of the first few people to actually get to see them. Helping to conclusively determine their validity, condition, and value was rather exciting.

I will have to look for a pic I saved years ago, If I can find it I will upload and post. X-ray taken of a bust depicting a 14th century saint, film was scanned and transferred into a digital image file. There was an "urban legend" associated with the statue of an actual piece of the saints bone being cast inside. The bust was made well after his death, supposedly the artist covertly dug up the saint and retrieved a section of bone, then refilled the grave. I found it, a section of a lower arm bone cast into the upper arm area of the statue. No way to conclusively prove if the bone inside the statue was actually from that saint without damaging the artwork and exhuming the body, but there is no doubt there is a piece of human bone inside.

I have done testing on some "items" for the military that I can't even discuss, but I sincerely doubt you would find them "boring".

Alistar7... that is so not "testing" as being commonly bandied about in this thread. I would classify your stuff as incredibly cool investigate science.

I do ultra-high vacuum surface science... all my experiments, most of which are original / 'never been done before' type of experiments, would be considered 'tests' by your standard. The folks who discovered the first high Tc superconductors did 'tests'...

Now semantically, you are right, I grant you that.

But 'code testing', for instance, is sitting at a desk in front of computer and running tests on compiled code and documenting bugs... boring. If I had a job doing that... I'd be dead by 40.
 

KillerCharlie

Diamond Member
Aug 21, 2005
3,691
68
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I've done quite a bit of wind tunnel testing, which is usually pretty fun. It's pretty amazing how a wind tunnel test lasting a couple months can cost well into the 8 figures.
 

Alistar7

Lifer
May 13, 2002
11,978
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Actually the testing methods employed are very strictly governed by International procedures and standards, all based in quantitive science and rigid acceptance criteria. Original experiments have no place in these fields.

Very much unlike code "testing" which I would compare to trying to make the perfect cake recipe using a trial and error method.