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I work in IT for a large financial services firm in Des Moines, Iowa. I've held various other positions, including jewelery sales, computer training sales, retail, and collections, before I decided to go back to school and getting a degree in a field that I really love.

 
Currently an Army Officer, just dropped my retirement last week after 24 years. Bought my 73 after my first deployment to Afghanistan in 2002 and financed her reserection with two additional trips to the Middle East (thank goodness for tax exemptions!!) Still trying to grasp what it will be like to actually have to buy real clothing for the next phase of life.:D

Update: Well as soon as my retirement hit the system, the Army offered to keep us posted where we are for a few more years rather then sending us to El Paso, TX. Since I'd rather be in Iraq or anywhere else than El Paso, we decided to stay on active duty for a little while longer. We kinda like the job security and the school systems here are fantastic for the kids so we are going to continue to "pad the retirement". My new job will have me traveling and training units preping for deployments and gives me a great chance go find parts all over the states and maybe have a beer with a few of you.

Marty

 
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I do a little of everything. started as a programmer then hardware designer, started my own manufacturing company.

as a CEO i pretty much dabble in everything, yesterday i was a plumber when the water intake to a machine shattered and sprayed water all over at high velocity.

now i know what it is like to be on a submarine and a pipe bursts.

 
Currently a civilian Contracting Officer for the Navy, but I'm about to retire in early November after 30 years of service. Before that I was a store manager for an auto parts store. I plan on taking a couple of months off, then probably go back to work for a contractor.

I've owned my 73 convertible since 1974, but I was with my girlfriend at the time in 1973 when I talked her into buying it new at the Ford dealership. I bought from her after she had it about 8 months. She had to have one of the new Mustang II's!

 
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I am a union journeyman wireman (electrician) for Local 68 in Denver. Currently working for Sturgeon Electric at the Purina plant out here.

 
We've owned a signage and graphics franchise in Florida, Sign-A-Rama, for the past nine years. Prior to that, I worked in the newspaper business in sales and marketing for about 20 years.

 
Tommy,

I have a similar build to yours in my '73 Grande, except I am using the Edelbrock cam (234/244) along with the Edelbrock 750 carburetor. I am also using a 3.50 gear with Traction Loc and big valve D0VE heads.

What made you decide to go with the FMX versus the C6? My C6 is beefed to the maximum and I still worry about all the torque I am putting out with the 472. What, if anything, did you do to the FMX to prepare for the Lima's output?

BT

 
I recently retired from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). I served as an electronics technician, instructor, and manager over the 30 years. I was an avionics technician in the USAF for 4 years prior to joining the FAA. I was a wrench at a Lincoln dealership in between.

Chuck

 
So does your car have half integer spin or integer spin?

Chuck
Nobody really knows what spin is, much beyond the fact that it is an

attribute of an elementary particle. Charge, mass, speed, energy, and angular momentum are among other attributes. You've probably noticed that some of these attributes are intrinsic to the particle and can't be changed (e.g., mass, charge), while others can be gained and lost (e.g., speed, angular momentum). Spin is actually

two attributes, one of which is intrinsic, the other of which can be

gained or lost.

More about this later.

Although we do not have a deep understanding of what spin is, we do have a mathematical description of how it behaves -- in particular, of how the total spin of a system of particles depends on the spins of the constituents. This allows us to compare spin's behavior to the behavior of other things that we feel we understand better. One thing

we have noticed is that spin behaves a lot like angular momentum (which also is really two attributes).

Angular momentum is a vector quantity (something that has both a magnitude and a direction, like velocity) that can take on only certain values in quantum mechanics. Think of angular momentum as an arrow of some length that can point in different directions, but you cannot ever have complete information about the direction. In particular, if you have measured the projection of the arrow along the z axis, you have

gained a clue about what the total angular momentum might be, but you have also destroyed any information you might have had about its projection along any other axis.

Another thing we know about angular momentum is that, in quantum

mechanics, it cannot take on just any old values, but only certain specific ones. If a particle has three units of total angular momentum, then its projection can be any of (-3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3) and that is it: projections must differ by an integer number of units. Very weird, but quite

a handy fact: if you know that a particle's angular momentum can take on only two different projection values, then you know its total angular momentum must be 1/2, and the projection values are (-1/2, 1/2). If you know there are three projection values, then you know the

total angular momentum is 1, with projections (-1, 0, 1).

Spin acts like this, so everything you've just learned about angular

momentum is also true of spin. In fact the mathematical description of the way spin behaves is so similar to the math of angular momentum that we can even do a mathematical trick that allows us to

pretend that spin and angular momentum can be added together. However, the magnitude of the spin quantum number is an intrinsic attribute of a particle. All electrons have total spin 1/2, with two possible projection values, as we've seen. The projection can be changed, but the total spin of 1/2 is fixed for all time. It is part of the

definition of an electron. All photons have spin 0, and for them "projection" does not seem to make much sense, but it is

clear anyway that the number of possible projection states is one.

A curious and very mysterious thing is that the quantum mechanical rules for particles that have integer spin are very different from the rules for particles with half-integer spin.

All the half-integer particles (e.g., electron, proton, neutron) must be

distinguishable from each other: if they are in the same system, they must differ in at least one quantum number.

Not so for the integer-spin particles (e.g., photon, meson, gluon). These are allowed to be indistinguishable, and they can all have the same quantum numbers including position. It so happens that particles with half-integer spin are the particles we think of as making up matter,

and the particles with integer spin are those we associate with forces.

Why spin should be the thing that distinguishes stuff from the forces between stuff is unfathomable to me, and that spin

should do this in such an apparently arbitrary way (half-integer as

opposed to integer) suggests to me that our understanding is fundamentally flawed, and that the real answer to your question

-- if we ever discover it -- will be part of a deeper understanding of

/way/ more than spin.

 
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