I’m an archaeologist which I think is a pretty cool job. And I work in California which, as far as archaeological diversity goes, is even cooler. But if I had to pick a really, really cool job, I guess it would be directing one of those massive tomb/temple excavations in Egypt or Central America. I guess those guys would be considered the superstars of the field.
Please don’t tell me you don’t spend a fair bit of your time outfitted with leather jacket and fedora, bullwhip in hand, dodging Nazis and outwitting ancient boobytraps.
Leave some of my illusions intact. 
Stranger
Well, there was this obnoxious backhoe operator that I impaled with my trowel because he wouldn’t stop asking me if I had ever found a dinosaur…
So, did you ever find…never mind.
Stranger
CS/AI : there’s a lot of potentially cool jobs, especially with regards to the cutting edge of technology. Designing software that controls a robot, work with virtual life, games programming etc. all sound cool.
Every job in my field is cool to an outsider. I have a degree in film production.
19 hour days and egotistical directors aside, of course.
I work as a software tester. I have worked as a tester on computer games. Lots of people outside the computer industry think that testing computer games would be a dream job. Unfortunately, those people don’t really understand what being a tester is. If you’re a tester on a computer game you don’t spend all day playing the game and writing a bug if you happen to find a problem.
No, you spend most of your day going through menu structures following test cases. Or doing stuff like verifying that every offensive spell works correctly against a matrix of every defensive spell. For every build. And you get a new build every day unless there is a disaster.
Yeah, we did hire people to sit in a basement and play the game for 10 hours a day, but they got paid $8.00/hour. And if you work as a software tester, game testers, even actual testers as opposed to playtesters, are pretty much the lowest rung of testers.
In my boat driving days, I was a 41 foot Utility Boat coxswain. It’s a great workhorse of a boat, but boring by some standards. The boat drivers that get all the attention in my field are the surfmen driving the Motor Lifeboats:
Airdales are also considered as having the “cool jobs”. To be honest, I don’t think wingnuts and surfmen get paid enough for what they do everyday.
[QUOTE=Lissa]
We, too, have gotten calls from the White House. Last time Bush was in the state, his staff called to get some historica facts to sprinkle into his speech.
[QUOTE]
I hope I’m not the first person that is not enamored with the job Bush has been doing and could have had a field day with a request such as this. I wonder if you could get in trouble for passing along info that would be considered factually inaccurate?
Umm… I’d say making prosthetics.
My friends would say drawing all the naughty bits.
I think I have the coolest job (to me anyway). I am a sociologist and a professor, so I’m never bored. I’ve done alot of things in my life (professional musician, etc) that people would consider cool, but they all have their downsides. If I wasn’t what I am, I’d prefer to fly planes. I kinda love flying.
Well, I think I have a cool job. I always look forward to going to work. I’m a gymnastics coach, and I’m one of the luckiest in our club because I get to work with the most talented kids. I love 'em, they’re so enthusiastic.
An even cooler job for me would be to manage an entire gym (which is within my reach - I’m currently finishing a management degree), or coaching elite gymnasts (which is a bit of a pipe dream).
So I work in the ground and space department of a company, doing all kind of really cool stuff. However, the guy that has the best job?
Solar surfer.
I’m not kidding. This guy performs corrections on satellites using their solar panels and surfing the solar wind to get the the bird back into position.
I honestly don’t think I’ve ever heard of a cooler job, in my industry or not.
My last job as a programmer was for a small start-up company.
There were six of us who worked in this giant room with giant desks and sweet computers with 2 monitors each. We were working on cool technology and had stock options and we were sure that we were all going to be rich one day. We got paid well and always went out to eat.
In off hours, we had poker games in that big room, and played tons of Quake (3?) with great avatars and landscapes. We had catalogs of crap from Napster that we’d play through good computer speakers.
Then we all got laid off.
That was a pretty cool job.
Working for a start-up still is pretty cool if you’re a programmer, but not so cool if you have a mortgage and car payments and a wife.
I like to think I have a cool job as a Foreign Service Officer. I’ve gotten to go to lots of cool places, meet interesting people, and try and make things better for both foreign countries as well as American Citizens.
The Foreign Service does everything from finding people after natural disasters to helping you get a new passport when it’s stolen to clearing landmines and assisting victims of human trafficking. This year alone, I got to meet Clinton, Bush 1, Wolfowitz, Colin Powell, Dan Rather, Christiane Amanpour, Anderson Cooper and a whole bunch of Senators and Congressmen.
Oh, and I get free rent and get to live in neat places and travel the world.
A writer. Hoo yeah! 
Or journalism, which is pretty cool, too.
Me, though? I’m gonna be a professor. How’s THAT for a cool job?
I give away money, and it’s not my money. 
I work for a philanthropic foundation as a program officer. It’s my job to screen the nonprofit agencies who approach us for funding. I get to find out all sorts of things about organizations–which satisfies my curiousity bone and I meet all kinds of new people. I get to go to fancy schmancy parties (with the donors who have lots of money to throw at causes) and open houses of organizations (who have their board members and volunteers there) and client graduations from all types of programs.
And everyone loves me. Although, I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that my word is the loudest when it comes to advising who gets the grant monies. :dubious:
I am a beach watcher which involves the marine mammal stranding network. My cool job involves babysitting seal pups on the beach where I live and making sure humans don’t touch them until their mothers return and take them back to the sea. It also involves responding to stranding on the beaches on Whidbey.
My husband has a cooler job than me; he is a mechanical and marine engineering consultant. He fixes big diesel engines and propulsion systems found in power plants, water treatment facilities, boats, well wherever there are big diesel engines and his current project that he is consulting on is the X-Craft, an experimental catermeran that is being built by the Navy. It is cool because it’s so big and does 50 knots. I think it is ugly in the water though. He gets to write ship test plans, conduct sea trials and has his fingers in everything that is X-Craft related. As a result of his job, I got to go to a Navy ship christening, and hang out at a ship yard, which is pretty neat. He gets to learn about tide pools, marine mammals, watersheds and our beaches as a result of my volunteer job.
I think my job is really cool (if not extremely lucrative). I am a Google Answers Researcher. People pay me for identifying old movies, locating obscure information, finding out what color penguin poop is, and other trivial matters.
The job that everybody outside the field thinks is cool is acting. Glamorous, attractive, costumes and combat, all that onstage-offstage drama…
The job that everybody within the field knows is cool is teching. “Hey, Sam, can you rig me up a light change that looks like the sun rising underwater at the equator?” Fifteen minutes later: “PERFECT!” Or, “Hey, Carrie, we need a sound for a bowl of anchovies being thrown against a silk curtain.” That afternoon: “GREAT!”
Sometimes I think that good techies must go to The Seriously Awesome School of Ridiculously Competent Output.