The Story of My Life so Far - Part 89 - 1988: I become an engineer at CR2A
This is the story of my life so far: 68 years and counting.
Prequel: A Brief History of my Family in France
The story starts here
Previous episode: Part 88
After I left active duty in the French Navy, I started to work as an engineer in a software house named CR2A, that has disappeared a long time ago. CR2A was located avenue Dubonnet in Courbevoie:
The name Courbevoie comes from Latin Curva Via and means "curved highway", allegedly in reference to a Roman road from Paris to Normandy which made a sharp turn to climb the hill over which Courbevoie was built.
Wikipedia
Courbevoie is situated some 30 km from Fresnes, and when I drove to work, it took me between 1 and 2 hours, depending on the traffic. So, most of the time I took public transportation: I walked to the Croix de Berny station, where I took the RER B, changed to RER A in the middle of Paris then took the train in La Défense Station to the Bécon-les-Bruyères station, then walked to avenue Dubonnet. The full trip was taking a little more than an hour, but it was cheaper and more reliable than driving, when there were no technical problems.
At some point, I decided to get up at 5:22, so that I could be at work around 7:00 and be back at home around 17:30. Why exactly 5:22? I have no idea why I had chosen this time, but it seemed a funny idea to tell people my exact waking time; they would ask "Why?" and I would answer "Why not?".
I had been hired by CR2A because they have won a contract from the DCAN (now Naval Group) to assist them to select the subcontractors for the networking computer system of a new tracking ship: the Monge
source: Wikipedia
Monge (A601), named after the 18th century mathematician Gaspard Monge, is a Missile Range Instrumentation Ship of the French Navy dedicated to tracking and measuring rocket trajectories.
Wikipedia
CR2A wanted to have somebody from the Navy that would understand the culture and that was also comfortable in software development: I was this guy.
I will describe in a future article my job and the people I was working with.
Continue to Part 90
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Summary
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8
Part 9 - Part 10 - Part 11 - Part 12 - Part 13 - Part 14 - Part 15 - Part 16
Part 17 - Part 18 - Part 19 - Part 20 - Part 21 - Part 22 - Part 23 - Part 24
Part 25 - Part 26 - Part 27 - Part 28 - Part 29 - Part 30 - Part 31 - Part 32
Part 33 - Part 34 - Part 35 - Part 36 - Part 37 - Part 38 - Part 39 - Part 40
Part 41 - Part 42 - Part 43 - Part 44 - Part 45 - Part 46 - Part 47 - Part 48
Part 49 - Part 50 - Part 51 - Part 52 - Part 53 - Part 54 - Part 55 - Part 56
Part 57 - Part 58 - Part 59 - Part 60 - Part 61 - Part 62 - Part 63 - Part 64
Part 65 - Part 66 - Part 67 - Part 68 - Part 69 - Part 70 - Part 71 - Part 72
Part 73 - Part 74 - Part 75 - Part 76 - Part 77 - Part 78 - Part 79 - Part 80
Part 81 - Part 82 - Part 83 - Part 84 - Part 85 - Part 86 - Part 87 - Part 88
Come to think of it: why would 05:22 be stranger than 05:30? Hm.
Did you have any doings with Thomson-CSF/Thales when you worked for CR2A? I used to work for them in The Netherlands, probably later, because I don't see any phased-array radars on that ship.
Indeed!
Yes, I did, and I have an interesting story about that, that I will tell later.
Good job.
@vcelier First of all you salute me, because you were in the navy, you have served for many days, have lived a lot of life today, standing in this place, an extraordinary experience, to read this post, I was curious about it It was great to read this post of a navy man, I learned a lot,,, many many thanks for the great information your post,,,