Just remember - the "resolution" passed RE The Iraq invasion was intended as a declaration of war, and was stated to be so be the prime sponsor. Just because it doesn't say "we declare war" does NOT mean it's NOT a declaration of war
You are correct - but remember, the ground rules have changed
In the past, just about everyone's position was this. Sit down, relax, so you'll get delayed, and go on a trip to some stange country, and when you get there, we'll all go home.
Let's face it - that's what happened during hijackings
Then 9/11 happened
Today, it'd be impossible to hijack a plane the same way - the passenger mind set is - "we're all dead unless we kill you, so even if I have a 90% chance of dying, go for it"
That change is the REAL increase in security - making people realize that they MUST act
Ahhh - it would be easy to influence, because the machines in some areas are as GOOD as labeled!
Remember, most Election Districts are VERY predictable, and it's part of what makes "calling" an election from Exit polling more "fun"
For instance, almost ALL EDs in NYC will vote Democratic (North Eastern Queens sometimes goes the other way), Nassau County usually goes Republican. Want to throw out a few hundred votes of one type or the other - work that info - if Nassau goes Democratic - it doesn't matter how much you tamper - it's a landslide. Ditto is, lets say, Co Op City in the bronx goes Republican, you can forget about the Democrat winning.
Remember,with 80% of the voters, we KNOW how they will vote 4 years in advance - it's that other 10% that are "in play", and they are NOT evenly distributed - not even CLOSE
Which is why, once the primaries are over, most states will never see the candidates again - the state is a lock
It's also, that for technical reasons, most cell phones don't have what is know as "sidetone" - where they take part of your signal, and feed it back to the earpiece - regular phones do this to give you a clue about how loud you talk, cell phones don't
I've been both a Team lead, and a Manager - team lead can be FUN - I'm serious. If you get the team to "Gel" (Read Peopleware for the concept), it's great
Remember the following
1)ALL the people on your team have their own unique strengths and weaknesses
2)Often, people want to work where they are weak, so they can learn - LET them, but team them with the person who is a good teacher in that area - But, you also use them to mentor where they are strong
3)Praise the PERSON publicly, and give guidance (aka, NOT critisim) in private - show the person what went wrong, but don't blame
4)NEVER under estimate the power of SWAG. I was a team lead in a place where almost all the developers had this passion for oatmeal cookies from the downstairs bakery (all except one guy who loved M&Ms - plain, not peanut). When someone wrote a good rountine, put on a good demo, or whatever, I'd go downstairs, buy them a cookie, write a small note of thanks (often just a "thanks" signed), and leave the bagged cookie on their desk when they were out at lunch. You'd be surprised what that cookie ment to people. They also KNEW it wasn't in the company budget, so it was coming out of my pocket. Pretty soon, folks just KNEW that if they saw a cookie on their desk, it was my way of saying "Thank you for your hard work"
5)Spend time answering questions. Typically, Friday afternoons, around 4:00, I'd wander over towards the heart of the cube area (I was at one side), and start BSing with the team. We'd all end up sitting on various desks, leaning over walls, etc, discussing good ideas, what went right, what went wrong, cool stuff we read in some programming journal, odd bugs from previous projects, and sometimes the weather, food or whatever. That 45 minutes on Fridays was "free for all", and we all talked what was on our minds. Often it ended up with the 3 team leads, and all 3 teams, sitting around talking about programming. The GOOD part was the manager would never come by - if he did, he'd leave within a minute or two
about 50% of the time, that's the response - 50% of the time, you have guys who don't want you questioning anything they do. I've noticed that in certain jurisdictions, the POs are OK to deal with, in some, the POs are a PITA - jeck, here in the city it seems to vary shift by shift, Precinct by Precinct
Joke is? I've _NEVER_ been arrested, _NEVER_ gotten MORE than a parking ticket. I HAVE gotten a shit load of attitude when I was younger. I ASSUME that part of the problem is that I owned a home 4 block of a "Hopping bar strip". I was usually one of the folks CALLING the cops, but if I was walking home from the train, on a Friday night, the cops all seemed to assume that ANYONE walking along the street was looking for trouble/drunk.
Like I said, human nature. They probably HAD been dealing with drunks all might
I can remember on incident where I got stopped - my wife (she is also a geek) and I were discussing real time programming while walking home for dinner. I was emphasising the clock pulses by slapin one hand into the other - something like "(slap) And then you gotta do X,(slap) then you gotta do Y, (slap) Then Z"
Well, we got stopped, and the cop was giving me a HARD time - he thought I was threating my wife. She assured him I was not, and explained the converstion. When I asked for his badge number (because he had used foul language when stopping me - I don't LIKE getting cursed at by a cop), I ended up, shall I say, detained, while he ran a full check on me - took about 30 minutes - and no, he never gave me his badge number. I was eventually free to go, with some threats about "Next time he wouldn't be so nice"
Maybe it's just one or 2 bad apples, but man, they do spoil it for the bunch - lets face it. Run into one or 2 cops like that, and your trust level goes WAY down
Well, over the years, I started doing Vol work (NOT to meet the cops, just because I want to). I found that once they get to know YOU, you get treated a lot more like a human, and you get a LOT less of the "Cop attitude" - which has been well documented. You know, the one where the world is divided into 2 classes, cops, and perps. Those that aren't cops are ASSUMED to be perps that they just haven't caught YET
Of COURSE it's not the way it should be. We also should have cops parking their personal cars in a no standing zone for hours, or running lights to make shift change because they are about to be late, or any one of dozens of things I see every week
My advice was based upon what I've learned up to this point in my life. Most readers here are, frankly, in their teens and early 20s - the classic 'angry young man'
What you learn when you get a little older is that often, the BEST and FASTEST way to change things is from inside the system, IF you don't become corrupted by the system. If you can do GOOD (working the parade committee for (name charity here)) while getting inside to the point where the folks in power will LISTEN to you, you get the BEST of both worlds
Well, If you pick the RIGHT thing to volunteer for, you'll get Karma points for more than the local Police officer!
That parade? It might be the one for MS, or MD, or the JDRF, or Breast Cancer, or "Make a wish" - and your helping out a bunch of sick people who could use the help. Maybe it make YOU feel good about yourself, and you get your cop karma - hey' REAL karma, and cop karma in one
Think about it....
as someone once said "The world is run by people who show up"
Trust me, they find something. At least around here, they get away with it. Heck, this is NYC. I've found (over 40+ years) the BEST way to deal with them is 1)Try to have as little to do with them as possible 2)Be polite when you do have to deal with them 3)Get to know them, and let them get to know you, in polite, friendly situations
Like it or not, they can make your life miserable. I don't LIKE it, but I deal with it
And asking a cop for his badge number is a GOOD way to find yourself with the stainless bracelets on. Even obviously LOOKING at his badge number if he's in a bad mood.
About the ONLY time you get them to give it willingly is when they have just HELPED you, and you've said thank you, and tell them you'd like to write a thank you letter for their files
BTW - if you local PD has citizens councel, show up, be polite, listen, and say hello. Aka, become known to the cops as "a good guy". Like it or not, once your local beat cops get to know you, you have less hassles - you don't get the evil eye. You get a nod. Just human nature - it's not supposed to play a role, but it DOES
Other things, if you don't feel like doing that? Join you local community board, or SOME social organization. The guys who run the charity parade, etc. The cops get to know these people - so do the local business men, and the local pols. THEN when you call you local Pol with a position on some bill, your not just "Joe Schmoe", your "Jim on the Parade committee"
Which is part of the reson I say the Federal Income Tax is the most evil law EVER passed.
It allows the Federal Government to control local laws by saying 1)We raise a specal purpose federal tax (Fuel in this case) 2)An then saying "Unless you do XXX, we won't give you the money back"
I think we should get at least ONE state with BALLS, who says "Fine, don't give us the matching funds"
agreed - I go to a coffee cart in Manhattan - If I DON'T want my usual, I have to stop them ASAP. Most morning the transaction is more like "Good Morning, how are you?" "Fine and you?" "OK - had to work late yesterday."
Netx morning it would be "You have to work late last night too?" "Nope, go home to the kids"
PLACE my order? Nope. And this is with a guy who serves a new customer ever 30 seconds or so from 6:00am till about 10:00am
Of course - remember the definition of a ME - a guy who can make for a buck what any fool can make for $5
The thing is, I'm thinking more about CEs (Civil Eng) - stuff costs way more than a buck . I _assumed_ that being we were talking infrastructure (the power grid) - my bad
Of course, you know the difference between Mechanical Engs and Civil Engs? Mechanical Engs make weapons, CEs make targets
Your right - MOST software "engineers" aren't. Guess what? If they were, you would NOT see death march projects, software would cost a LOT more, and when the chief "eng" on the software project (or for that matter any Engineer on the project) said "This can NOT ship, it's not ready", the company would have to suck it up, and NOT ship.
Software Enginners would have to carry E&O insurance (Think of it as malpractice insurance, like a MDs). It MIGHT be supplied by their boss, but...
And in exchange for taking on this risk, what would a software Engineer EARN? You'd better believe it would be a LOT more than it is now.
You would still have "coders" - in fact, MOST "software engineers" would go back to their pre title inflation title - "Programmer". The SE on the job would be responsible for all the code that the programmers wrote
Just like MOST jobs don't have to be signed of by a PE, most software would NOT have to be signed off by an SE - but if you use software that wasn't signed off by a SE, and you caused 50b in losses, you would loose YOUR shirt
At this point in time, it seems that the people of the US just have NOT found the need to come up with the idea of a licensed SE. I predict it will happen, and within the next 25-30 years. There have been movements withing the programming trade to do this. it's coming - but when?
Right now, software development is very much like the "guilds" of the Middle Ages. You didn't have PEs back then - you had folks who learned from other folks, and you had projects that failed massively. Eventually, things became codified, and a lot of the failures stopped - at least for day to day stuff. But guess what? Buildings still fall down, even in construction (read the book "why buildings fall down"). It's just that for "common" designs, it doesn't happen
Hey John, I can think of a better V Day's gift for us married geeks - find a place to stash the kids, and just go on a nice date with the geek of your choice. Nothing kinky needed - just quiet to talk without "Daddy" or "Mommy" interrupting you every 30 seconds +- 20 seconds
Except for a few rare uses - for instance, here in NYC, if you apply for a pistol permit, you MUST type it on THEIR formm with NO corrections
You print something - rejected You make a correction - rejected etc etc
BTW One of the questions on the form is, have you ever been denied a permit. Guess what, if they reject your application, you have. Now they deny your permit, because you have been denyed a permit
Walk the barrel my man, walk the barrel. Buy a lathe and milling machine. There is NO reason you have to spend that lind of bucks - do the labor yourself!
"Standard" binding posts are 5-40, as well as the clamp screws on the toolholder for my lathe
I only keep one or 2 types of 0-80 and 2-56 in stock. I have a couple of dozen boxes of each of the other sizes (Not a full assortment_ - the other one you left out that is VERY common is 10-32. I use that more than 10-24!! (think racks)
One of the "smart" things I did about 4-5 years ago - there was a guy selling stainless "drops" on ebay - mixed bags of stainless nuts, bolts, washers (lock and regular). The stuff went about $1-$/lb - I think I bought 10 lbs. Well, for a LONG while, when I was on this one support gig at work (sit and watch a screen for a red flag), I sorted hardware (the boss even helped me- we were both bored) - now I have a stack of nice stainless hardware
In fact, the D-88 of that era, with the STANDARD Gas engine (305) was and IS a great car - Dad's 84 is STLL going strong, as is a friends Chevy (same body)
Interesting story - In the same year (83 or 84), My Mom and Dad bought the D-88 with the 305, and 2 of Mom's 3 bosses bought D-88 diesels - the diesels were GONE within 4 years. Mom and Dad's is running WELL 20 years later. In about 88 (can't remember exact year), Dad bought Mom a new car, and took over the D88. The replacement car has come and gone, and there is another new car in the driveway, right next to the D-88
Yep, true horologists are rare as hens teeth. Even the guys who do clocks, which are easy compared to watches. I knew a now passed on watch maker - amazing stuff, - and I can run a lathe and mill, and do basic clock repair
OK, now days, this is a common enough problem. Look for "Patrol Boots" that have carbon fibre shanks instead of steel. Pick your favorite brand. Right now, I'm finding my pair of inexpensive "Magnum Technology" boots are OK, but the ones I have are steel shank.
I hear VERY good things about the Adias GSG-9s, but don't know how metal detector friendly they are, and they are hellishly expensive and hard to get - I've head some good reviews of a few other brands, but darned if I can find them right now
Slashdot Mirror
Just remember - the "resolution" passed RE The Iraq invasion was intended as a declaration of war, and was stated to be so be the prime sponsor. Just because it doesn't say "we declare war" does NOT mean it's NOT a declaration of war
You are correct - but remember, the ground rules have changed
In the past, just about everyone's position was this. Sit down, relax, so you'll get delayed, and go on a trip to some stange country, and when you get there, we'll all go home.
Let's face it - that's what happened during hijackings
Then 9/11 happened
Today, it'd be impossible to hijack a plane the same way - the passenger mind set is - "we're all dead unless we kill you, so even if I have a 90% chance of dying, go for it"
That change is the REAL increase in security - making people realize that they MUST act
Total darkness isn't that strange - heck, I've done it with a dark room - takes some doing (most darkrooms are NOT perfect, but...
Ahhh - it would be easy to influence, because the machines in some areas are as GOOD as labeled!
Remember, most Election Districts are VERY predictable, and it's part of what makes "calling" an election from Exit polling more "fun"
For instance, almost ALL EDs in NYC will vote Democratic (North Eastern Queens sometimes goes the other way), Nassau County usually goes Republican. Want to throw out a few hundred votes of one type or the other - work that info - if Nassau goes Democratic - it doesn't matter how much you tamper - it's a landslide. Ditto is, lets say, Co Op City in the bronx goes Republican, you can forget about the Democrat winning.
Remember,with 80% of the voters, we KNOW how they will vote 4 years in advance - it's that other 10% that are "in play", and they are NOT evenly distributed - not even CLOSE
Which is why, once the primaries are over, most states will never see the candidates again - the state is a lock
But you forget the BEST definition of stress
:)
NOT being able to choke the S**** out of someone who desperately needs it
Just remember this phrase:
"Think faster"
It's also, that for technical reasons, most cell phones don't have what is know as "sidetone" - where they take part of your signal, and feed it back to the earpiece - regular phones do this to give you a clue about how loud you talk, cell phones don't
I've been both a Team lead, and a Manager - team lead can be FUN - I'm serious. If you get the team to "Gel" (Read Peopleware for the concept), it's great
Remember the following
1)ALL the people on your team have their own unique strengths and weaknesses
2)Often, people want to work where they are weak, so they can learn - LET them, but team them with the person who is a good teacher in that area - But, you also use them to mentor where they are strong
3)Praise the PERSON publicly, and give guidance (aka, NOT critisim) in private - show the person what went wrong, but don't blame
4)NEVER under estimate the power of SWAG. I was a team lead in a place where almost all the developers had this passion for oatmeal cookies from the downstairs bakery (all except one guy who loved M&Ms - plain, not peanut). When someone wrote a good rountine, put on a good demo, or whatever, I'd go downstairs, buy them a cookie, write a small note of thanks (often just a "thanks" signed), and leave the bagged cookie on their desk when they were out at lunch. You'd be surprised what that cookie ment to people. They also KNEW it wasn't in the company budget, so it was coming out of my pocket. Pretty soon, folks just KNEW that if they saw a cookie on their desk, it was my way of saying "Thank you for your hard work"
5)Spend time answering questions. Typically, Friday afternoons, around 4:00, I'd wander over towards the heart of the cube area (I was at one side), and start BSing with the team. We'd all end up sitting on various desks, leaning over walls, etc, discussing good ideas, what went right, what went wrong, cool stuff we read in some programming journal, odd bugs from previous projects, and sometimes the weather, food or whatever. That 45 minutes on Fridays was "free for all", and we all talked what was on our minds. Often it ended up with the 3 team leads, and all 3 teams, sitting around talking about programming. The GOOD part was the manager would never come by - if he did, he'd leave within a minute or two
My 94 Mazda b2300 pickup, which is a Ford Ranger with different badges has 327k miles on it with no major repairs, and the original clutch
about 50% of the time, that's the response - 50% of the time, you have guys who don't want you questioning anything they do. I've noticed that in certain jurisdictions, the POs are OK to deal with, in some, the POs are a PITA - jeck, here in the city it seems to vary shift by shift, Precinct by Precinct
Joke is? I've _NEVER_ been arrested, _NEVER_ gotten MORE than a parking ticket. I HAVE gotten a shit load of attitude when I was younger. I ASSUME that part of the problem is that I owned a home 4 block of a "Hopping bar strip". I was usually one of the folks CALLING the cops, but if I was walking home from the train, on a Friday night, the cops all seemed to assume that ANYONE walking along the street was looking for trouble/drunk.
Like I said, human nature. They probably HAD been dealing with drunks all might
I can remember on incident where I got stopped - my wife (she is also a geek) and I were discussing real time programming while walking home for dinner. I was emphasising the clock pulses by slapin one hand into the other - something like "(slap) And then you gotta do X,(slap) then you gotta do Y, (slap) Then Z"
Well, we got stopped, and the cop was giving me a HARD time - he thought I was threating my wife. She assured him I was not, and explained the converstion. When I asked for his badge number (because he had used foul language when stopping me - I don't LIKE getting cursed at by a cop), I ended up, shall I say, detained, while he ran a full check on me - took about 30 minutes - and no, he never gave me his badge number. I was eventually free to go, with some threats about "Next time he wouldn't be so nice"
Maybe it's just one or 2 bad apples, but man, they do spoil it for the bunch - lets face it. Run into one or 2 cops like that, and your trust level goes WAY down
Well, over the years, I started doing Vol work (NOT to meet the cops, just because I want to). I found that once they get to know YOU, you get treated a lot more like a human, and you get a LOT less of the "Cop attitude" - which has been well documented. You know, the one where the world is divided into 2 classes, cops, and perps. Those that aren't cops are ASSUMED to be perps that they just haven't caught YET
Of COURSE it's not the way it should be. We also should have cops parking their personal cars in a no standing zone for hours, or running lights to make shift change because they are about to be late, or any one of dozens of things I see every week
My advice was based upon what I've learned up to this point in my life. Most readers here are, frankly, in their teens and early 20s - the classic 'angry young man'
What you learn when you get a little older is that often, the BEST and FASTEST way to change things is from inside the system, IF you don't become corrupted by the system. If you can do GOOD (working the parade committee for (name charity here)) while getting inside to the point where the folks in power will LISTEN to you, you get the BEST of both worlds
Well,
If you pick the RIGHT thing to volunteer for, you'll get Karma points for more than the local Police officer!
That parade? It might be the one for MS, or MD, or the JDRF, or Breast Cancer, or "Make a wish" - and your helping out a bunch of sick people who could use the help. Maybe it make YOU feel good about yourself, and you get your cop karma - hey' REAL karma, and cop karma in one
Think about it....
as someone once said "The world is run by people who show up"
Trust me, they find something. At least around here, they get away with it. Heck, this is NYC. I've found (over 40+ years) the BEST way to deal with them is
1)Try to have as little to do with them as possible
2)Be polite when you do have to deal with them
3)Get to know them, and let them get to know you, in polite, friendly situations
Like it or not, they can make your life miserable. I don't LIKE it, but I deal with it
And asking a cop for his badge number is a GOOD way to find yourself with the stainless bracelets on. Even obviously LOOKING at his badge number if he's in a bad mood.
About the ONLY time you get them to give it willingly is when they have just HELPED you, and you've said thank you, and tell them you'd like to write a thank you letter for their files
BTW - if you local PD has citizens councel, show up, be polite, listen, and say hello. Aka, become known to the cops as "a good guy". Like it or not, once your local beat cops get to know you, you have less hassles - you don't get the evil eye. You get a nod. Just human nature - it's not supposed to play a role, but it DOES
Other things, if you don't feel like doing that? Join you local community board, or SOME social organization. The guys who run the charity parade, etc. The cops get to know these people - so do the local business men, and the local pols. THEN when you call you local Pol with a position on some bill, your not just "Joe Schmoe", your "Jim on the Parade committee"
Which is part of the reson I say the Federal Income Tax is the most evil law EVER passed.
It allows the Federal Government to control local laws by saying
1)We raise a specal purpose federal tax (Fuel in this case)
2)An then saying "Unless you do XXX, we won't give you the money back"
I think we should get at least ONE state with BALLS, who says "Fine, don't give us the matching funds"
agreed - I go to a coffee cart in Manhattan - If I DON'T want my usual, I have to stop them ASAP. Most morning the transaction is more like "Good Morning, how are you?" "Fine and you?" "OK - had to work late yesterday."
Netx morning it would be "You have to work late last night too?" "Nope, go home to the kids"
PLACE my order? Nope. And this is with a guy who serves a new customer ever 30 seconds or so from 6:00am till about 10:00am
Of course - remember the definition of a ME - a guy who can make for a buck what any fool can make for $5
The thing is, I'm thinking more about CEs (Civil Eng) - stuff costs way more than a buck . I _assumed_ that being we were talking infrastructure (the power grid) - my bad
Of course, you know the difference between Mechanical Engs and Civil Engs? Mechanical Engs make weapons, CEs make targets
Your right - I was thinking more along the lines of a consulting PE - who really works for himself.
Mea culpa
Your right - MOST software "engineers" aren't. Guess what? If they were, you would NOT see death march projects, software would cost a LOT more, and when the chief "eng" on the software project (or for that matter any Engineer on the project) said "This can NOT ship, it's not ready", the company would have to suck it up, and NOT ship.
Software Enginners would have to carry E&O insurance (Think of it as malpractice insurance, like a MDs). It MIGHT be supplied by their boss, but...
And in exchange for taking on this risk, what would a software Engineer EARN? You'd better believe it would be a LOT more than it is now.
You would still have "coders" - in fact, MOST "software engineers" would go back to their pre title inflation title - "Programmer". The SE on the job would be responsible for all the code that the programmers wrote
Just like MOST jobs don't have to be signed of by a PE, most software would NOT have to be signed off by an SE - but if you use software that wasn't signed off by a SE, and you caused 50b in losses, you would loose YOUR shirt
At this point in time, it seems that the people of the US just have NOT found the need to come up with the idea of a licensed SE. I predict it will happen, and within the next 25-30 years. There have been movements withing the programming trade to do this. it's coming - but when?
Right now, software development is very much like the "guilds" of the Middle Ages. You didn't have PEs back then - you had folks who learned from other folks, and you had projects that failed massively. Eventually, things became codified, and a lot of the failures stopped - at least for day to day stuff. But guess what? Buildings still fall down, even in construction (read the book "why buildings fall down"). It's just that for "common" designs, it doesn't happen
Hey John,
I can think of a better V Day's gift for us married geeks - find a place to stash the kids, and just go on a nice date with the geek of your choice. Nothing kinky needed - just quiet to talk without "Daddy" or "Mommy" interrupting you every 30 seconds +- 20 seconds
Except for a few rare uses - for instance, here in NYC, if you apply for a pistol permit, you MUST type it on THEIR formm with NO corrections
You print something - rejected
You make a correction - rejected
etc etc
BTW One of the questions on the form is, have you ever been denied a permit. Guess what, if they reject your application, you have. Now they deny your permit, because you have been denyed a permit
Bill of Rights? What's that?
Walk the barrel my man, walk the barrel. Buy a lathe and milling machine. There is NO reason you have to spend that lind of bucks - do the labor yourself!
"Standard" binding posts are 5-40, as well as the clamp screws on the toolholder for my lathe
I only keep one or 2 types of 0-80 and 2-56 in stock. I have a couple of dozen boxes of each of the other sizes (Not a full assortment_ - the other one you left out that is VERY common is 10-32. I use that more than 10-24!! (think racks)
One of the "smart" things I did about 4-5 years ago - there was a guy selling stainless "drops" on ebay - mixed bags of stainless nuts, bolts, washers (lock and regular). The stuff went about $1-$/lb - I think I bought 10 lbs. Well, for a LONG while, when I was on this one support gig at work (sit and watch a screen for a red flag), I sorted hardware (the boss even helped me- we were both bored) - now I have a stack of nice stainless hardware
In fact, the D-88 of that era, with the STANDARD Gas engine (305) was and IS a great car - Dad's 84 is STLL going strong, as is a friends Chevy (same body)
Interesting story - In the same year (83 or 84), My Mom and Dad bought the D-88 with the 305, and 2 of Mom's 3 bosses bought D-88 diesels - the diesels were GONE within 4 years. Mom and Dad's is running WELL 20 years later. In about 88 (can't remember exact year), Dad bought Mom a new car, and took over the D88. The replacement car has come and gone, and there is another new car in the driveway, right next to the D-88
Yep, true horologists are rare as hens teeth. Even the guys who do clocks, which are easy compared to watches. I knew a now passed on watch maker - amazing stuff, - and I can run a lathe and mill, and do basic clock repair
OK, now days, this is a common enough problem. Look for "Patrol Boots" that have carbon fibre shanks instead of steel. Pick your favorite brand. Right now, I'm finding my pair of inexpensive "Magnum Technology" boots are OK, but the ones I have are steel shank.
I hear VERY good things about the Adias GSG-9s, but don't know how metal detector friendly they are, and they are hellishly expensive and hard to get - I've head some good reviews of a few other brands, but darned if I can find them right now