Hear hear! Dad retired from the Marines when I was in high school (11 Towns and 19 Homes by graduation, including 2 civilian PCS) but it had become a way of life. I'm currently in State #8 (plus 2 Japanese Prefectures), Town #22 (including southern Japan growing up, and northern Japan for work), and Home #42 (including having purchased 5 houses and 1 condo). I've only relocated six times for work, having lucked into four jobs in my current area, but as a salaried engineer, night and weekend call-ins decreased as I progressed in my career.
Having my A&P would be nice, but annuals still require an IA who has to look at everything anyway (that's the "inspection" part). As an owner, I've participated in 11 annuals, but my current IA doesn't do it that way, and I miss the involvement and seeing that everything is shipshape and what I should watch or plan for next year; getting my A&P wouldn't help that. The 200-250 hours that I could retroactively log wouldn't help me a whole lot, would it?
On the other hand, I have no interest in learning about turbine maintenance; I had two classes in engineering school that covered how they work, one with a lab and a small turbojet to play with. And since they are daily becoming more rare, I don't want to learn about fabric-and-tube aircraft. And limited A&P to piston-powered metal aircraft just doesn't exist . . . .
So i guess I won't go back to school.and try to learn all those things that I'll never use, like I had to study NDB approaches and caring HSIs when the approaches were virtually nonexistent, and I'd never flown a plane with a functioning ADF or HSI. And yes, it's my loss, but so would be wasting all of the time and effort on those subjects.