Well, That Was Decidedly Unfun

I went to Hereford today. When the job came up, I believed that it was possibly because they had a tech back out; when I got to the site, I found it was even worse.

After awhile on certain jobs, you develop a sort of sixth sense, and I decided it would be prudent to stop in when I got into town, about an hour before I was set to begin. Nobody knew where any of the equipment was, so I needed to get ahold of the company, verify the equipment and find out who signed for it to hunt it down.

A little sleuthing found that the tech that had been hired as an underbidder (I bid the job out, but it went to someone else when it was first offered) had looked inside the box of the first hard drives they sent and designated the box as trash. He had apparently never seen a solid state drive before, because he never moved the paper packing to look for it and told receiving the box wasn't big enough for it.

Then, despite very specific, to the letter instructions (to a tech, this project is pretty easy. To a non tech, it is not), he decided one of the computers wasn't configured properly, and left it undone. So basically, he installed one computer and made me play Blue's Clues to find the other equipment to be installed.

This is my frustration, in a nutshell. I am no longer competing with techs, I am competing with day labor! These people are being lured onto the site off of places like Craigslist because they will, say, install video game displays, and once they're on the site, they are being recruited to do major network project installs because when these guys offer $20 an hour for 6 hours it looks pretty danged good to a guy whose regular job is the night shift at Five Guys!

And part of the reason for the excessively long hold times on this project has been the support on the other end dealing with the providers asking them what a Mac address is!

It wasn't always this way; at one time, there was a labor bubble on these jobs. You could ask for, and receive, a good price for your work. Now you're competing with buyers who figure that knowhow can be circumvented with a good technical writer, and providers who, in trying to make a living, will take any job that's offered at any rate, and then tout that experience to get IT jobs in place of qualified personnel at a fraction of the price.

I'd give it up, but I love the work. I just hate being disrespected in a field where I've worked so hard.

But there were a few upsides: I salvaged a pretty decent week that didn't look too promising early on, and I did have the best Kung Pao chicken I've had in years at the Hunan Chinese Restaurant on 25 mile road. Stop in sometime and tell 'em the High Tech Hobo sent you. They won't have a clue who I am, but they'll probably be happy you came by!

All Revved Up and Somewhere To Go

Well, it didn't look like it was going to be much of a week. That's not unusual, though, for this time of year, so I was happy to receive the work that I've had, especially since it didn't involve driving (which IS a rarity!)

But I guess they had a backout on part of a project in Hereford, so I'm in. Not too bad of a drive, and I've worked with this project a few times before, so it should be relatively painless. It does kind of fail on one level, though, because I have to change up some plans in town a bit.

At one point today, there was work in Odessa on Saturday, but I wasn't going to book that unless I got the Hereford job. I'm strongly debating detouring into Amarillo on Saturday and working with a local group to feed the homeless. Depends on what time I wrap up in Hereford, as I may just want to get back to the brown, brown grass of home.

Taxes are filed, so the move is officially imminent. Meanwhile, I am thinking of a crowdfunding campaign to purchase some equipment that will help me gain extra work, and trying to drum up some perks to go with. I may be launching some High Tech Hobo merch, so if anyone has any ideas, please send them my way; either here, on the Facebook page or via email at handofjustice42@hotmail.com

I am really trying to drum up followers on the page so that I can begin building the business side of it more, so if you happen to read this and support what I am doing, I would appreciate the shares. 

Stuck in Neutral for the Week

This week was ok, but not too great. No travel unfortunately.

Winter can be that way, especially January, and it's sort of a mixed blessing. The good part of it is, I don't have to deal with winter storms when I'm not on the road, and as it's too cold to use the vehicle for shelter, it keeps me from being at the mercy of the local hotel industries for lodging.

The bad is, no jobs = no pay. I did get a small local job this week. I had to go in last Sunday and run diagnostics, then they wanted a solution to a problem that was there, but not the problem for which the customer had called. I told them the fix they were requesting would not solve the problem, they relayed to the customer that dispatched me that I was stubborn and they weren't happy with me.

Well, here's the deal: you're working off of a flowchart that offers possible solutions. First, you are not in front of the computer, second, you don't have the years of experience in the field that I do. If you want a monkey to turn wrenches, I suppose I can be that monkey, but it's my experience that customers want fixes, not a runaround until you find the right solution on a spreadsheet.

I went back to the site knowing this, figuring I would simply do what they told me. In their troubleshooting, they changed the configuration of the machine entirely, so it couldn't be compared to other sites where the problem didn't exist. Flowchart problem solving.

I made the repairs they requested, and held my tongue when it didn't solve the problem. I asked my dispatch if it was to be kept open, he replied that no, we had done as they asked, time to close it. I think he was getting a little perturbed as well.

The perception of some of these folks seems to be that if we had any knowledge at all, we would not be dispatch techs. What they fail to understand is that ageism is rampant in the tech industry, and some of us live in tech deserts where these sorts of jobs are our only option. They used to want my expertise; now they only want my Phillips screwdriver.

Whatever, I suppose. As long as the check clears.

Home Again

It was a long week, but a productive one. I am home now, trying to rest up for whatever next week brings. Right now, I have nothing; my best hope for the week just closed up.

As I was speaking with support on one of the calls, they lamented that most of the techs they had worked with didn't know anything, and expressed appreciation for the fact that I did. Unfortunately, I've lost most of the bids on this project because they are initially offering them at rates that are about 20% of what they should be. I don't know why they expect qualified techs at near minimum wage rates.

As I was driving home today, I calculated up the totals for the week. If you don't count my travel time, I made a little above minimum wage. If you do...well, let's just say I am seriously considering looking at day labor options in Amarillo this week. Still, it was enough to keep us going through the week, inching us ever closer to tax time, which right now is waiting on the delivery of some W-2s.

Next week the Toyota's going in the shop to get a new timing belt. That will mean I will pay a bunch more in gas, but the prices are low right now, and if the weather holds, I may be able to skate without a hotel. It's not comfortable digs, but it's cheap digs, and that's all that matters at the moment.

I am thinking about branching into art, but need to keep working at it. I am also trying to work my way towards busking regularly, but I have difficulty being brave enough to venture out there. If this goes on much longer, though, I don't think embarrassment will be a concern anymore.

And so I wait. I have laundry to catch up this weekend, and a few household projects, so I will try to knock those out. I did put in for a job on Feb 1 over in eastern Arizona; if I get that, I may just look for work over towards Flagstaff and see if I can make a Grand Canyon stop and put my concerns into true persspective.

The Dark Side of Camelot

It is no secret that I am fond of cheap motels. Not because they are pleasant, but because of what the walls could tell, if they would. Stories of drunken travellers and sordid affairs that still linger in the musty hallways. Sordid stories of love found, and broken, of a worn out roughneck falling asleep in the arms of a middle aged barmaid while the test pattern blasts a beacon of light across the room.

Cheap hotels are the keepers of secrets and the nurturers of dreams, as road warriors put in for the night for a room that can be had with a couple of green slips of paper with pictures of Andrew Jackson on them and a not-so-subtle surrender of data into the data mines of the NSA.

One of my favorite cheap motels, in Amarillo, is the Camelot Motel. It's a broken down shadow of what it once was, a remnant of the mother road, one that surely must have played host to families with the means to afford a room overnight. I can say with fair certainty that in its heyday, the eyes of every kid under the age of 12 must have lit up when Mom and Dad pulled that old Nash Rambler into its parking lot.

We've stayed there our share of times; most recently on the pre-Christmas shopping trip when the rain was coming down hard and we knew we couldn't take the Acura home because it was after dark and the headlights long since ceased to work. It's a serviceable motel for what it is, and it always seems to attract its share of patrons.

Tonight I saw the dark side of Camelot. The wings of the hotel fold around into a "U" making a modern sort of keep for derelicts and drunkards, and as I was travelling alone, I got my ticket punched to the dark side of the hotel. It looks like a place that's seen not a few police visits, and the hoods of at least two cars were open as their owners cussed over a 40 and tried to restore them to running condition under the glow of the parking lot lights.

But seeing the dark side of this shell of a hotel (the second floor is no longer open) won't deter me from returning. It is what it is, warts and all, and I'm happy to lend to the walls the story of an IT guy on a stayover working the scraps of jobs that he can get in order to make a go of things.

do These Glasses Make Me Look Like Buddy Holly?

I blame Mac Davis.

Everytime I get a dispatch to Lubbock, I feel a shudder. A strange disturbance in the Force, if you will, and it's all Mac's fault. I'm referring, of course, to his well known ditty about happiness being Lubbock Texas in the rear view mirror.

My sojourn home was brief enough, and in preparing for Thursday and Friday's work, I had to decide if I wanted to drive 4 hours out tonight, or in the morning. There's not enough caffeine in the world to make me make that trek, and still have a smile on my face when I reach the jobsite, so I rolled out, literally counting every milepost after I left Amarillo.

Whoever designed Lubbock's highway system must have been a road engineer who defected from Microsoft. It twists and turns, and, of course, I know better, but once I saw an exit for the road the job site was on, I followed it.

Big mistake. Being tired, after dark, and in a strange city is a nightmare combination. After ending up completely off track, I finally found my way back to the road I had come over on and decided to seek out a hotel room. A stop by America's Best Value Inn netted no rooms, and so I decided to look for the next cheap place. Terraced balconies seemed to greet me everywhere I went, and usually terraced balconies don't mean cheap.

I finally found a Super 8, and pulled in. I rang the night bell, and as the proprietor greeted me, a smell of curry wafted through the open door. It looked clean enough, and any port in a storm, I figure.

I surveyed the surroundings: a WalMart across the street, a Denny's down the road, a Taco Bell on one corner and a convenience store lobby on the other corner. Given that I had just driven 250 miles, I really wasn't keen on getting back in my car for the Taco Bell drive through, and I just wasn't feeling Denny's late at night, so I settled for the "Taco Express" at the cstore.

I have a feeling I will know what "Express" means by tomorrow morning. Grease is the word!

So I'm sitting here typing up my day's journal at the desk of my motel room. Hoping tomorrow goes smoothly, and looking forward to being back in more familiar turf.

No Rest for the Weary

Well, I headed home last night for a day's rest, some grocery shopping and a quick consultation with the mechanic regarding the Toyota. I'm going to have some work done next week, nothing too major, but something to keep the car on the road. The gas mileage is incredible, and it should pay for the work in two months' time.

Fortunately, payment has come in on a couple of jobs, so I've got a little more than a wing and a prayer to work with out there. I also picked up a second job in Amarillo for Friday (or Thursday if I finish up early enough in Lubbock to shoot up 27). It doesn't pay much, but will help fill in a little extra cash on a route I am already travelling.

I had my hoped high for next week when I saw several jobs in the Texas Panhandle, but those went out to someone else. I still have another bid out, then may be travelling down to Odessa. If I get out there, I may amble back up home a little slower than normal, taking in some sites along the way.

The weather has cooperated enough that I'm tempted to sleep out of the car, but I have to remind myself that although it is very moderate, it could turn at any time. And my being equipped to handle staying out in such weather is still a stretch down the road.

All in all, things look promising at this point for my first time out in awhile. And we're holding our own at home; winter's about 1/3 of the way over, and we still have a lot of the woodpile left.

We're Not in Kansas Anymore, Toto

After I checked in at the hotel in Garden City, I decided to pick up some woodcarving tools. They had to be hand tools; for a project I am planning for the near future. I picked up the tools and went to look for some found wood for the project. Specifically, I was looking for a broken pallet, but found some plywood pieces in a vacant part of the lot. Score! A little big for what I was planning, but a pretty good test piece.

When I unpacked my guitar to settle into the room, one of the other guests asked if I was going to play. If I weren't horribly out of practice, I might have suggested a little jam in the lobby, but I've been in a funk recently, and really wasn't ready to play in front of anyone. I spent the evening carving wood, watching the Peter Jackson version of King Kong, and playing guitar. I fortunately grabbed the AmericInn hotel, right next to my job site.

It was shortly after I settled in that I got the news of Glenn Frey's passing. Seems like a lot of good ones recently. The Eagles have been part of my life since, well, I had a life, and were important enough to make the road trip stop in Winslow. First Lemmy, then Bowie, then Glenn. This is starting to suck on a greater magnitude.

So I got to the job site at 11 today, to find that nobody knew anything. I called to check in, sat on hold for 15 minutes, called the company that actually did the dispatch, they said the queue was much longer than 15 minutes.

So I sat on hold. For over an hour. Then a vague part of the documentation had me having to call in again. Another hour on hold. Onsite for 6 hours; spent about half of that on hold. I can't say I'm disappointed that today's was an hourly job. Since this is a project, though, always have to do the first one to really figure out the actual onsite time. I'm heading to Lubbock and Amarillo later this week on the same project.

I'm trying to secure a couple of piggyback jobs at the end of this week. So far, though, so good. We're still not dancing in the streets, but the money's looking better than it has for awhile. I'm back home now, trying to relax for a bit.

THAT didn't go quite as planned

I went out on my first road trip in awhile today. I learned a couple of things from the last go around, so I had my trunk packed and was ready to roll on this one. I hit the road nice and early, and as I drove on out towards Dalhart, the sun gave way to a dense fog that followed me most of the day. As I passed Sunray, I drove along on roads familiar, but not quite familiar, having trouble trusting my memory at each junction, as I wasn't travelling the main roads, and these backroads, once familiar, haven't been under my wheels in several years.

Today's job was pretty easy, so I was on and offsite in about an hour and headed on to Kansas. The game plan was that I would stop along the way and print out my documents for tomorrow. What I didn't count on was that it was Martin Luther King Day. I thought about it fleetingly at the job site when the customer was commenting about the current economic realities with the tag, "maybe WE ought to be the ones marching". I have to admit, I wanted to ask her what "we" she was talking about, but all I had to do was get the job done and the paperwork signed, not start a holy war.

So as I drove by the library in Liberal, I saw an empty parking lot. Nothing major, but it did mean I should probably put up in Garden City rather than an hour away, and preferably find a hotel with a business center. That rules out the cheapies (although in Garden City these days, there ARE no cheapies).

The roads of southwest Kansas are mile upon mile of monotony. I know there are people that wouldn't trade it for the world, and God bless 'em, because someone's gotta live here. But to me, it's part of the route, and I could drive it at night and not end up feeling like I'd missed anything.

Pickings for a hotel room in Garden City are pretty slim on Mondays, as I discovered. There's a ton of growth here, and the business folk head in on Mondays through Wednesdays, and head home for the weekend. I missed out on a couple of hotels, and settled on one right next to the job site. I had someone take a look at my guitar and ask if I was going to play, making me wonder if down the road I might be able to make a buck or two sitting in the lobby.

The guest computer was broken, thwarting my plans for using the business center, but fortunately there's a library here that opens an hour before I have to be onsite.

Tomorrow, it's just a matter of knocking out the job and rolling homeward. Then out to Amarillo and Lubbock near the end of the week. I overspent on the hotel room, but that will even out in the summer when I'll be able to put in at a roadside stop instead.

Applying Lessons Learned to the Road Ahead

So, I've been evaluating things as I prepare for the return to the road. I did a few things right the first go around, but missed a lot of opportunity. And the one good thing about the year and a half off of it is that it has given me a chance to evaluate what to keep, what to throwaway.

The first thing I am ditching, until I am established, is refusing hotels. Yes, I will camp before I lodge, but when whether doesn't permit (as Santa Fe taught me), or when it means spending days away from the shower and washing my hair under the bleachers, I might be better off finding a motel of the fleabag variety. Eventually I am hoping to remake Townes as a mini RV; if I do so, I will rig up a small shower enclosure in the back. I will probably also use that space for a kitchen area.

My hope is to find an adequate way to heat Townes by next winter; I am debating pulling one of the windows and replacing it with materials suitable for me to run stovepipe through, and getting a tiny woodstove for that purpose. I am hoping for one that could be used for cooking.

Speaking of which, that's my second ditch item. Too many meals on the road. Yes, I occasionally need to sneak over to McDonald's or IHOP for the wifi, but I need to try to explore truly free wifi at libraries or other facilities first. I'm going to try to get creative with it, and share what I know. My eventual goal is to use this experience to help others coming through behind me.

The other mistake I made is not focusing on other sources of revenue. I'm not ever going to be called a great musician, but if I give myself the chance, I can make a little bit of money there. I am learning that the phrase "every dollar counts" is especially true when living out on the road. Piling up those dollars doesn't hurt. I may even hit the highway to scrap for cans.

I also spent too much money driving in town. Not only will walking more aid my overall health, but my financial health as well. With the rates folks are paying, I need every dime.

Also, I didn't write/blog nearly enough. There's a lot of gold in what I'm doing, and hoping to hone it and work on being a better writer. I have always beat myself up over my poor attention to details; while a truly great writer would see a weathered house with wood siding cracking from years of deterioration, offset by a lilac bush that's barely holding on against the dry and hot that's covered this area for years, I see a house with shrubbery. I need to fix that. I mean, I see these things, I really do; I'm just not weaving them correctly to give them depth, to give them meaning and paint a truly memorable word picture.

I kind of get frustrated against the literary decay I've allowed myself. More frustrated at that, honestly, than the physical.

I also intend to surround myself with reading material. Cheap motel forays have taught me there are only so many episodes of "Storage Wars" and "Pawn Stars" that you can watch before your brain begins to disintegrate. That probably has more to do with the writing decline than I would like to admit, unless I am being utterly and completely honest.

Not only CAN I do this, but I must! The honest truth is, unless I want to manage a Taco Bell or dumb down my resume, my options are limited. But if I do this right, they are limitless!

Onward and upward!

On the Road Again

So, tomorrow, it starts, again. In my little red 1993 Toyota Corolla, I will be rolling out to Spearman, Texas, then to Garden City on Tuesday. Back home on Wednesday, then back out to Amarillo and Lubbock Thursday and Friday. Because we're mired in the middle of winter, I'll not try to sleep in the car or anything stupid like that, but I'm still looking for cheap digs, as I bid low on travel and lodging expenses.

This is becoming increasingly competitive as I struggle to win bids against people with less skill and lower expectations for compensation. "Cheap" is the new "quality" these days, or so it seems.

I ultimately need to figure out a way to make some dollars in between on these jobs. I'll make enough on these trips, but need to figure out a way to bring in more revenue. There aren't a lot of cheap motels on the Texas to Kansas stretch (and, truthfully, not a lot of cheap campsites, although the Garden City WalMart is a serviceable place to overnight). I may hit the highway for some cans if that looks promising enough.

Unfortunately, our cash reserves are low, so it will be peanut butter and bread most of the way. Still, one could do worse, I suppose.

Still, this week will net me a decent wage. That will be useful for the move.

Getting Back Out There

Well, it's been a long time between posts. There's good reason for that, as my "day job" kept me from pursuing a lot of options, and then began to have the constraints of a full time job, without the hours, or the pay. I loved it, but had to give it up because the people who collect their share of your income do not care one whit about job satisfaction or doing what you love. What they care about is pictures of dead leaders, and lots of them.

So, I'm starting back, which is slower than I would like because in the interim, I couldn't defend my turf. It's a very competitive field right now, and techs are driving further and further for less and less compensation. So I need to rebuild my client list by getting some of these jobs done. That has proved to be easier said than done as I've been passed over for many of the jobs I bid in the meantime.

I'm in the final week at the radio station and needing to pull down some jobs, so I was delighted when a job came up on Tuesday afternoon. There was an earlier job as well, but unfortunately, I still have to work out the station job, so I had to pass on that.

I have a second vehicle for road trips, one that won't take nearly as much gasoline, but doesn't give the luxury of space. The plan at this point is to outfit Townes for the more extensive road trip, and save this one (to be named later) for the 1-2 night jaunts and shorter hauls, with the eventual eye on replacing both.

So, it's onward and upwards to a better 2016! See you on the road, maybe?