Technician Appreciation Quotes

45 Bistro Restaurant, East Broughton Street, Savannah, Georgia The Gulfstream Corporate Weekly Dinner was being held at 45 Bistro this week, and the usual gang from Customer Service and Marketing always hosted a splendid meal.  Aircrew from all over the world flew into Savannah, Georgia for semi-annual training, as did new owners, technicians, and anyone else affiliated with Gulfstream for the week.  It was their special night out, all expenses paid, to show their appreciation for the business they gave Gulfstream. 

The Entrepreneur has to do is find out what those wants are and what they will be in the future. As a result, the world is a continuing surprise, a treasure hunt to The Entrepreneur. To The Technician, however, the world is a place that never seems to let him do what he wants to do; it rarely applauds his efforts; it rarely appreciates his work; it rarely, if ever, appreciates him. To The Technician, the world always wants something he doesn’t know how to give it.

A CLASSIC WAITS for me, it contains all, nothing is lacking, Yet all were lacking if taste were lacking, or if the endorsement of the right man were lacking. O clublife, and the pleasures of membership, O volumes for sheer fascination unrivalled. Into an armchair endlessly rocking, Walter J. Black my president, I, freely invited, cordially welcomed to membership, My arm around John Kieran, Pearl S. Buck, My taste in books guarded by the spirits of William Lyon Phelps, Hendrik Willem Van Loon, (From your memories, sad brothers, from the fitful risings and callings I heard), I to the classics devoted, brother of rough mechanics, beauty-parlor technicians, spot welders, radio-program directors (It is not necessary to have a higher education to appreciate these books), I, connoisseur of good reading, friend of connoisseurs of good reading everywhere, I, not obligated to take any specific number of books, free to reject any volume, perfectly free to reject Montaigne, Erasmus, Milton, I, in perfect health except for a slight cold, pressed for time, having only a few more years to live, Now celebrate this opportunity. Come, I will make the club indissoluble, I will read the most splendid books the sun ever shone upon, I will start divine magnetic groups, With the love of comrades, With the life-long love of distinguished committees. I strike up for an Old Book. Long the best-read figure in America, my dues paid, sitter in armchairs everywhere, wanderer in populous cities, weeping with Hecuba and with the late William Lyon Phelps, Free to cancel my membership whenever I wish, Turbulent, fleshy, sensible, Never tiring of clublife, Always ready to read another masterpiece provided it has the approval of my president, Walter J. Black, Me imperturbe, standing at ease among writers, Rais'd by a perfect mother and now belonging to a perfect book club, Bearded, sunburnt, gray-neck'd, astigmatic, Loving the masters and the masters only (I am mad for them to be in contact with me), My arm around Pearl S. Buck, only American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, I celebrate this opportunity. And I will not read a book nor the least part of a book but has the approval of the Committee, For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and not hit, that which they hinted at, All is useless without readability. By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms (89¢ for the Regular Edition or $1.39 for the DeLuxe Edition, plus a few cents postage). I will make inseparable readers with their arms around each other's necks, By the love of classics, By the manly love of classics.

I once had a foreign exchange trader who worked for me who was an unabashed chartist. He truly believed that all the information you needed was reflected in the past history of a currency. Now it's true there can be less to consider in trading currencies than individual equities, since at least for developed country currencies it's typically not necessary to pore over their financial statements every quarter. And in my experience, currencies do exhibit sustainable trends more reliably than, say, bonds or commodities. Imbalances caused by, for example, interest rate differentials that favor one currency over another (by making it more profitable to invest in the higher-yielding one) can persist for years. Of course, another appeal of charting can be that it provides a convenient excuse to avoid having to analyze financial statements or other fundamental data. Technical analysts take their work seriously and apply themselves to it diligently, but it's also possible for a part-time technician to do his market analysis in ten minutes over coffee and a bagel. This can create the false illusion of being a very efficient worker. The FX trader I mentioned was quite happy to engage in an experiment whereby he did the trades recommended by our in-house market technician. Both shared the same commitment to charts as an under-appreciated path to market success, a belief clearly at odds with the in-house technician's avoidance of trading any actual positions so as to provide empirical proof of his insights with trading profits. When challenged, he invariably countered that managing trading positions would challenge his objectivity, as if holding a losing position would induce him to continue recommending it in spite of the chart's contrary insight. But then, why hold a losing position if it's not what the chart said? I always found debating such tortured logic a brief but entertaining use of time when lining up to get lunch in the trader's cafeteria. To the surprise of my FX trader if not to me, the technical analysis trading account was unprofitable. In explaining the result, my Kool-Aid drinking trader even accepted partial responsibility for at times misinterpreting the very information he was analyzing. It was along the lines of that he ought to have recognized the type of pattern that was evolving but stupidly interpreted the wrong shape. It was almost as if the results were not the result of the faulty religion but of the less than completely faithful practice of one of its adherents. So what use to a profit-oriented trading room is a fully committed chartist who can't be trusted even to follow the charts? At this stage I must confess that we had found ourselves in this position as a last-ditch effort on my part to salvage some profitability out of a trader I'd hired who had to this point been consistently losing money. His own market views expressed in the form of trading positions had been singularly unprofitable, so all that remained was to see how he did with somebody else's views. The experiment wasn't just intended to provide a “live ammunition” record of our in-house technician's market insights, it was my last best effort to prove that my recent hiring decision hadn't been a bad one. Sadly, his failure confirmed my earlier one and I had to fire him. All was not lost though, because he was able to transfer his unsuccessful experience as a proprietary trader into a new business advising clients on their hedge fund investments.