Weekly Stats:
Tickets: 8
Miles: 591
Listening to: 12 Rules for Life – Jordan Peterson
Reading: Memoirs of an Infantry Officer – Siegfried Sassoon
And that’s a slow week!
The first week back from being out of town is always interesting. You slot yourself into the metal turtle shell that is your car, slide your phone into its dashboard holster, flick on your headlights (it’s still dark outside), and roll down the driveway. It feels a little weird. It takes more than a week to forget how to drive, right?
Monday and Tuesday, Big Kerry (dad) and Little Kerri (me) got to work together. We found ourselves in a pediatric medical office, unboxing and assembly 68 monitors, along with laptops, desktop computers, and other extras. Needless to say, once you’ve cut 68 pieces of tape, unwound 273 twist-ties (four per box), and made approximately 10,000 trips to the dumpster, you start to wish you were on a ladder, under a house, in an attic… literally ANYWHERE doing ANYTHING other than unboxing monitors!
Wednesday I did the first 2 of a series of 6 tickets with the exact same scope: run one cable, install one TV. Simple, right? Yes, except when the ceilings are 12 feet high and you’re walking crabwise through a department store with a fully extended 10ft ladder over your head, navigating glass shelves, rolling lingerie racks, chubby toddlers, and moms pushing baby strollers.
Thursday was #3 and #4 of my 6 ticket series, but this time my 7:00am destination was in Austin – a two hour commute! But at least the fog kept the rising sun out of my eyes. I paid a little stupid tax this morning; I drove to Austin, checked in, got out of my car …. and THEN remembered that I left my drill at home. Thus it was I found myself, without a drill, without a jab saw, trying to put a hole in a wall that was two sheets of sheetrock on top of PLYWOOD! Luckily, Home Depot was literally across the street… and I had been meaning to buy a new drill anyway.
Friday was simpler, but still in Austin. That morning was a site survey at an apartment complex. I’ve worked with the buyer before, and apparently made a good impression. I’ve also worked with this particular officer manager before. So what do you do when the buyer says “great job. We’ll call you for the project” but the officer manager says “They’re pushing me around. I don’t have the budget for this?” You tell her to stand up for herself and to give you a call when she gets ready to change IT providers. A little self-promotion rarely hurts.
I also got to trick out my hard-hat. An old friend of my sent me some vinyl decals. Now my white plastic dome looks like someone has lived in it. (Also, THAT’S where my headlamp went. No wonder I couldn’t find it in my backpack.)
TheFieldTechLife 