Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

I've spent over a week off the road due to my wife's health concerns, and as a result, nothing is coming in. I have a few receivables, but that money is spoken for, as is my wife's partial remaining check from work. She will be out at least 3 weeks, so the time has come to get back on the road.

The biggest problem with this method is it requires that I commit. There is work out there this week, but at the moment, none of it is close. That will undoubtedly change (it usually does) as the week progresses, but I can't take too much of a gamble in waiting. I have to get out there.

Right now, everything I am looking at is between 350-400 miles out, meaning I'm not coming back without another gig to bring me home. That's a little frightening, but it's kind of what I signed up for. I'm not sure of the potential to gig in any of these places either, may have to ultimately take my chances.

Tough call this week. But something will come together. It always does.

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.