I started my day at noon, the boss wanted to try to recuperate some of the overtime he knew I’d have by the end of the day.  Zai made some coffee and a batch of cinnamon rolls for breakfast, and spent the morning honing my skills in Rock Band, which has been my ongoing addiction since I bought it.  I didn’t end up getting any extra sleep, as usual, I woke up around 7:00am, even without the alarm.

I got to the office, took one last look at the floor plans for the counter move, and headed out.  I needed to stop in Merrillville to replace some faulty equipment, which went pretty well.  The new Motorola Droid was on display, which, by the way, is one of the coolest phones ever, and I played around with it a bit.  It was the launch, so I picked up some free cookies and a bottle of water, score.

I wanted to grab lunch at the Quiznos I used to eat at every day when I worked at Wal-Mart, but sadly, it is closed.  It’s sad, really, their sandwiches by far outclassed their rivals.  I still see the commercials on TV, so I know they’re fighting.

I arrived on site and scoped it out.  The store was still open, so I spent some time talking with the store reps and getting an idea for where everything was moving.  Just before closing, the low voltage vendor arrived, and we discussed what work he needed to complete.  One of the key factors for the move to be completed successfully is ensuring that there is proper data running from the switch to the computers.  The switch and the computers are my job, the cabling is done by the low voltage wiring vendor.

Shortly thereafter the electricians, carpet guys, and fixture guys arrived, and began tearing up the store.  I set to work dismantling the computer set ups and moving them out of the way, then wandered around to make sure everything was going smoothly.  Of course, it wasn’t.

The store manager came up to me, “Hey, something just happened.  My computer shut off, and I need to close out the store.”  I walk back to his office, and sure enough, there’s no power to the outlets in the room.

I ran up to the electricians, “Did you shut off the power in that back office?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, we need to turn it back on, the manager hasn’t finished the closing procedures.” I reply.

“We were told we could start by now.”

“Well, the store manager needs to close the store, so the power needs to be turned back on,” I say, “so that needs to happen.”   It was odd, the electrician, a man who easily rivals my father in both age and stature, grimaced at me, but ran back to the power cabinet to get the juices flowing nonetheless.  Here I was in a sea of people both older and more experienced than I, but they were all vendors, which meant it was my responsibility to keep them in line and put out little fires like that.  I’ve been unofficially in charge of new employees and such in the past, but it was my first time really managing a project.  There were a couple other little things that popped up… but really nothing major.

In the end, everything went fairly smoothly and the work was completed about 3:00am.  I had a long drive back, but it was a drive back after a successfully completed project, which felt pretty good.  I stopped for coffee and drove with the windows down occasionally trying to keep myself awake.  I ended up stumbling in around 6:00am, passing out before my head hit the pillow.

I woke up around 9:30am, still fully clothed and even still had my shoes on, I tried to sleep a little longer but couldn’t.  I think I trully am a day person now.

Zel-kun out.

My team here in IT are not exactly known for being the most politically correct group of people, but we’re all friends who know where to draw the line, and when to keep quiet entirely.  But most days, even the most innocuous statement can be turned into sexual inneundo.  It’s like working with a room full of The Todds.

But, this isn’t about my co-workers or any of the times they said, “That’s what your wife said last night.”  No, this is about inappropriate behavior, something that even my boss arched an eyebrow at, and took me to levels of weirded out that I didn’t even think were possible.

First, a tiny bit of backstory.  My IT group sits in a little secure corner of the building that most people don’t have access to.  While many important managers and executive enjoy free reign over most of the building, their security cards stop working at our door.

Our area is nice and open, our cubes cut low to allow for easy communication.  Dozens of times a day we need to speak to each other, and it would be inconvenient to have to walk around to everyone’s cube.  I like it because it’s open and doesn’t feel like a cubicle farm.  I’ve worked in offices like that, and it can breed claustrophobia.

Despite the security, there is one person in our little corner that’s not part of our group.  What she does is not really important to the story, but we were on amicable terms for the most part.  Mainly because I’m too nice to tell her to be quiet and that I’m busy.  Most conversations were one-sided, with me nodding my head while I worked on a computer or wrote some notes down.

Unfortunately the politeness was only a facade.  Over lunch one day my co-workers revealed that she tries to keep tabs on our group and get our boss in trouble, pulling all sorts of nonsense.  So since then I’ve tried my best to keep my distance while still being civil.  Things continued like that until a few weeks ago…

I was sitting at my desk and we had a full house, which meant that nearly all of my co-workers were in the office, which is something of a rare occasion.  Normally there’s anywhere between four and seven people out in the field doing work.  I was working on the desktop when she came over, and said something.  I don’t really remember what was said, but I was looking at my computer screen and she said to turn around.  I didn’t think anything of it until I turned around.

There, staring at me was a tattoo.  I don’t really remember what of because I turned back to my computer as quick as I could, but she had turned around and lifted her shirt slightly to expose the tattoo.  I nodded and said that was great, while I looked for something to busy myself with on my computer.

We’ll forget for a moment that she was not particularly attractive… or that she was old enough to be my mother…  If this had been any other office with those tall walls, I would have wrote it off as an odd part of the day and left it at that.  Unfortunately, this was not any other office.

No.

This was my office, with the short walls, and a full house.  EVERYONE saw her expose the tattoo to me.  So for the next full two days, I received a constant barrage of comments, “Didn’t know you had a girlfriend, what’s your wife think of that?” , ” I’d ask if you want to go to lunch, but you probably want to go with your new girlfriend,” and “Didn’t know you liked the older ladies, I gotta keep you away from my mom.”  It went on and on.

Finally, my boss called me into his office, “So, your girlfriend make you feel uncomfortable? (my boss, ladies and gentlemen) Because that display gave me the heebie jeebies.”

“Well…” uncomfortable wasn’t really the word, weirded out, sure, “Not exactly what I expected when I came into work.”

“Yeah, I’m sending out an email to my boss, that’s just weird.”

So, an email went out and I’m sure she was reprimanded.  Since then she’s been quiet and has not said one word to anyone in my group.  I guess it’s what we wanted, for her to stop bothering us.  I just wish it didn’t take something like this to make it happen.

I’m sure that in her mind that it was no big deal, like it was normal.  Same thing as it’s normal for us to make lewd comments to each other.  Both are events we would not want reported to HR.  I guess the moral is to know your audience before you do something inappropriate, especially if your audience is a group of people  you’ve been complaining about behind their backs.

Zel-kun out.

I never really shopped at Circuit City… I’m pretty sure the only thing I ever bought there was a Toshiba PocketPC back when I was in college.  It wasn’t any dislike of the store that made me not shop there, it always worked out that Best Buy was more convenient to get to.  When I lived in Merrillville, I could get to Best Buy taking back roads and without crossing Route 30 (a very busy section of road in town), whereas I’d have to get through the mall traffic and drive along Route 30 to get to the Circuit City.  Then, when I moved to Illinois, there was a Best Buy just down the road, and the closest Circuit City was several miles away.  I’m not sure if location killed off the potential patronage, I’m sure inconvenience for me is convenience for someone else, but I’ve never seen a crowded Circuit City.  Whenever I would check up on one of our Kiosks, I would be one of the only people in the store.  I always wondered how it stayed in business.

So I guess thinking about that, it wasn’t too shocking when the news came down the line, but it didn’t hurt any less.  It was time for my department to kick it into gear, because we had some work ahead of us.

It was decided that I would be in charge of breaking down the three Indiana locations that were in our region: Mishawaka, Merrillville, and Shererville.  The premise of the job is simple enough: just get in there and grab the IT equipment.  However, as I’ve learned long ago, there’s a little thing called Murphy’s Law.  Murphy and I?  We’re good friends.

My day started at about 6:30am, as I began to drive to Mishawaka.  I wanted to be ready to grab that equipment as soon as the store opened at 10:00am.  It was about a two hour drive from my apartment, and Mishwaka is an hour ahead, so I had a little breathing room.  My first stop was actually our Mishawaka retail location, to pick up the keys for the kiosk.

The store, I discovered, had its own set of problems.  They were receiving a new register counter (we call it a POD, it holds one register) for the front of the store.  It was a prototype POD that no one had seen before, made wider and shorter to accomodate a handicapped associate.  To place this new POD, the existing POD would be moved to the back of the store, and the new one placed in the front.  This created a number of unforseen troubles.

Someone had moved the existing POD from the front to the back.  Which while it was part of the plan, was very strange being that normally a member of IT is normally present to ensure everything works once it’s moved.  As it turns out, it has not worked since the move.  The reason, I found out, is that there was no power or network cables run to the new location.

I found an available network jack and power outlet in the adjoining PODs, so I threw off my coat and started crawling on the ground.  I had to lift the POD and feed the cable under it, as I saw was done with the others.  Fortunately the carpet still lets the register sit flush on the ground without wobbling.  I plug the power cable in and continue running the network cable to the furthest POD with the available jack.  The cable wasn’t long enough, so I stood up cursing to myself.  I didn’t have anything longer with me, and I kicked myself for it.

“You might want to keep one of those cable extenders,” my co-worker said the day before, “never know when you might need it.”

And I scoffed at him, but kept one in my bag anyway.  At that point, I vowed never to make fun of him again.  I ran to my truck, grabbed the cable extender from my parts bag, and continued to run the cable.  I finally finished running the cable, and reached behind the jack (it was facing away from me) and attempted to plug in the cable.  Try as I might, it wouldn’t go in.  A horrible realization dawned upon me… I took the cover off the jack and confirmed my suspicions.  Of the standard network cable fed into the jack, only two pairs were punched in… it was configured as a phone jack.

I stood up and the little voice in my head shouted so much profanity I’m sure people around me could hear it.  I had to get with our facilities department and get a wiring vendor out there, and until then, the store would be without that register.  I wasn’t looking forward to delivering that news.

At that time, a couple movers entered with the new handicapped POD.  I didn’t pay them much attention, as even though a computer will go in the fixture, I have nothing to do with the fixture itself.   I focused on finding the manager, delivering the news, getting the keys, and getting out of there while I still could.

The movers approached me and said, “We have a problem.”

What problem could you possibly have? I thought to myself.  I was already frustrated at having spent half an hour on the ground running a cable and essentially accomplishing nothing.  It was ninety degrees in the store and I was sweating and irritable.  Of course, I was also mad at myself for just assuming I was looking at a network jack, and not a phone jack.  This guy didn’t pick the best time to come at me with yet another problem.

“We can’t put the counter where it needs to go, what do you want us to do?”  He brought me over and showed my a PVC pipe filled with data cables sticking about an inch and a half out of the floor.  It was dead center of where the old POD was, which wasn’t a problem.  The problem was the new POD (which should be adjoined to the POD next to it) had a support beam right there, so the pipe needed to be cut flush to the floor.

I spent the next twenty minutes hunting down someone in facilities who could get that scheduled.  After all was said and done, I didn’t leave the store until nearly 11:00am, an hour later than I had planned.

When I got to the circuit city, I introduced myself to the manager, who was friendly and accommodating.  My respect goes out to him, it must be difficult to work knowing your company is going out of business.  He provided a flatbed so I could carry the equipment out more easily, I set to work.  I dumped the little bag of keys I got from the store and tried opening the cabinet containing some equipment.  I had nearly a dozen identical keys, and not a single one worked.

I ended up taking a screwdriver and breaking into the cabinets.  I wasn’t worried because we were going to dispose of the cabinets anyway, and after I was done, there would be nothing of value inside anyway.  I loaded up the cart with equipment, and spent some time coiling the dozens of cables each machine has, smashing my thumb in the process.

Despite the delay, it was just after noon when I was finished, which put me only twenty minutes behind the schedule I had set for myself.  I had to stop at the Mishawaka retail location one more time to meet with a user who was having an issue with her laptop.  She was always on the road, and since we would both be in the area, I arranged for me to work on the laptop while I was there.  It was a sound issue, so I had hoped it would be quick.

It was noon, so I suppose Murphy was out to lunch.  After poking around the computer and discovering the sound drivers were properly installed and the sound device was recognized, I went into the advanced sound options and saw that the speakers were muted.  Un-check the mute box and bam.  Sound.

At about 12:30, I was on the road for Merrillville.  I was feeling pretty good, I was on schedule again.  I even had time for a quick lunch at Potbellies in Merrillville before I went to break the kiosk down.

I entered the store and just stared.  The people at Circuit City built a barricade around our kiosk.  Flat screen televisions were stacked all around the kiosk, only the sign stuck out of the very top let me know there was a kiosk there at all.

After twenty minutes of searching for a manager, I found someone who was willing to help me.  He wheeled a few televisions away so I could get to the kiosk.  I asked him for a flatbed, and he said they didn’t have any.  I insisted that there had to be some sort of flatbed they moved large piles of merchandise around on, and he caved.  After a few minutes, an associate wheeled a flatbed over to me.

The rest of the teardown went as expected, with the exception that I hit my forehead against a bolt that was sticking out of the side of a door.  It hurt, and I have a nice little cut on my eyebrow, but I’ve had worse.  I packed up the truck and continued onward to Schererville.

Schererville was the first location I went to without an unforeseen snag.  I spent fifteen minutes finding a manager, but I’ve come to expect that.  The manager, much like his counterpart in Mishawaka, was polite and accommodating, even stopping by once or twice to make sure I had everything I needed.  It would have been a smooth end to a particularly rough day, if not for one thing….

I parked the truck in front of the curb, turned on the hazard lights, and went to work inside.  It was an official loading zone, so I wasn’t afraid of getting ticketed or towed.  I took the first flatbed full of equipment out to the truck.  I stepped off the curb to open the rear hatch, stepped on the curb to grab a piece of equipment, then stepped back.

For those that haven’t seen me in person, I’m a tall man.  Standing behind the vehicle, the hatch is only an inch or so above my head, something I took for granted as I stepped from the curb, which added a few inches to my height.  The top of my head crashed into the sharp corner of the hatch, and I barely avoided dropping the monitor in my hand.  I cursed a bit and put a hand to the top of my head, after a moment, I looked at my hand and saw blood.  It wasn’t a lot, but enough to know I hit it pretty good.  I stood against the car for a few minutes, watching the snow fall, and breathing deeply.  I was trying to determine if I was dizzy or light-headed, I didn’t want to have gotten a concussion and not realized it.  After several minutes, I decided I felt fine…. well, fine besides the sharp pain at the top of my head.

I finished up the rest of the job without incident, periodically checking the top of my head.  It bled for awhile.  Nothing major, but enough to irritate me every time I felt that bit of wetness.  I would have gone to treat it, but the bathrooms were already closed.  I’m alive and well now… so it wasn’t that bad.   Still hurt like hell.

The last kiosk I went to was the next day, in one of the Chicago suburbs.  Fortunately there were no big surprises, just one heck of a suspicious manager.  I introduced myself and told him I was there to reclaim our IT equipment, and he just looked at me skeptically.  He asked me for identification, so I showed him my work ID/Security card.  He looked at the card and claimed I introduced myself with a different name than was on the card.  I told him that wasn’t the case, and that if he wanted, I could leave and tell my boss that I wasn’t allowed to reclaim our equipment.  After that, he let up and walked away.  I asked for a flatbed, and the only thing I could get was a glorified furniture dolly.  It was literally a board of wood with four wheels screwed to it.  It would almost have been more efficient to carry the pieces out one by one.

But finally, the work was done, and the world bids farewell to Circuit City.  I’m sure the economy will take a strong hit from all the job losses.  Hopefully something will fill the gap soon, and the economy will prove to be as resilient as I hope.

*bedobodedoboboo, bedobodedoboboo*

It was 5:34am.  The sun hadn’t come out yet, and my alarm wasn’t set to go off for another two and a half hours.  But that didn’t matter to my Blackberry, happily vibrating and beeping away from its spot on my desk.  I drag myself out of bed, nearly tripping over my laptop case as I did so, and answer the device that had insisted on rousing me so early.

‘000035422352 – CHICAGO RIDGE – PRINTER WILL NOT P’

I looked at the display blearily, grumbling.  The Chicago Ridge Gym has a broken printer.  My on call starts at 5:30, and I seem to have the misfortune of being called four minutes into it.  I pick up my cell phone and call up my office’s help desk.  And, like any good help desk, there’s two people working the twenty phones, and of course, if you are unlucky enough to have your call routed to an empty desk, you wait on hold indefinitely.  Sometimes I had to call three or four times to get in touch with a rep, and when you’re supposed to report a page within fifteen minutes of receiving it… the situation can deteriorate pretty quickly.

I never decided which was worse: calling early in the morning, and having to dial half a dozen times until I got someone, or calling in the afternoon and waiting on hold for ten to fifteen minutes.

Finally someone answers.

“Yeah, got the ticket for Chicago Ridge, go ahead and mark me as notified.”  I say.

“There’s another one that is coming in from Belmont, want me to notify that one too?” They reply.

“….Yeah.”  I say, hearing the Blackberry going off again.  I have not one, but two issues to deal with.

I get off the phone and drag out my laptop.  I log into the VPN and then call up Chicago Ridge.  After twenty-five minutes of remote troubleshooting, the printer is working.  I look at my clock, happily stating it is 6:02am.

I call Belmont, and find out that some dipstick moved the server rack to get to something (because the SMART thing to do is keep the server rack up in the sales area, not like it’s delicate equipment), and inadvertently unplugged something.  This means I get to drive to Belmont Avenue, on the north side of Chicago.

In morning rush hour traffic.

From twenty-five miles south of the city (I lived in Bolingbrook at the time).

To plug in some cables, because asking one of the jocks working at the gym to look for the loose plug and plug it in was not allowed.

So I call the help desk again, and let them know I solved the first issue.  I then get ready and head out into the world, the sun just starting to peak its head over the horizon.

As I’m driving, at about 7:00 or so, the blackberry goes off again.  So I call the help desk again.  Then I call the gym, and find out their inventory system crashed again.  This is something that happened nearly every day at every gym.  It meant I had to remotely connect to their inventory machine and restart the inventory application.  Nothing major, but annoying.  And nothing I could do while driving at the same time.

So 8:00 rolls around as I pull into Belmont.  I go in and make my way to the server rack, unpacking my laptop and setting it up on the counter.  I connect to the network and proceed to reset the inventory application for that other gym.  It was an old DOS-based application that ran in some sort of emulated session, and was extremely prone to crashing.  I always thought it was odd that the gym had loads of money to throw at the most expensive hardware (and the machines the applications ran on were high-end for the time), yet their software looked like it was designed by high-school programming students.

Even their web-designer, whom I sat near, said he couldn’t make the gym’s homepage display properly in both I.E. and Firefox (it looked all jumbled-up on my computer with Firefox), so he chose I.E. because more people used it.  I took him at his word at the time, but now I realize he just didn’t know as much about web design as he SHOULD have being in the position he was in.

At the gym I worked for, even the simplest problems blew out of proportion due to convoluted practices.  If a keyboard broke, we couldn’t ask someone to replace it, I had to drive out there.  If the homepage on one of the internet kiosk machines was changed, the machine needed to be re-imaged, because the image was so locked down, it was impossible to change the homepage on the public account.  I asked them, “Why not put a ‘make this my homepage’ button on the gym’s webpage, that would save us (me) hours of work every week.”  For whatever reason, they refused.

After a long time of contemplation, I came to the realization that the month and a half I worked for that gym was the worst job I’ve ever had, and I’ve had some pretty bad jobs.  Before, Wal-Mart held the dubious honor, but I realized that I hated Wal-Mart because I put up with three years of crap with no chance of it getting better.  I remember the first few months being not so bad, and some days actually being fun (the days when I got to work with Pete, Kyle, or Paul).  But one the third or fourth day working for that gym, I began to hate it.  It quickly became something I dreaded doing.

The money they laid out on the table when they offered me the job had my eyes flashing with green dollar signs, so much that I would have kept working there, despite it all.  But now, I make more money, and am much happier at my job.  Looking back, getting fired from there was the best thing that could have happeend.

A bill payment kiosk is one of those large automatic machines that people who go to the stores can pay their bills at.  It has a touch-screen, computer, printer, credit reader, and cash acceptor all put together in a four hundred pound monstrosity that’s bolted to the floor.  It’s a pretty alien device for someone who’s spent his job fixing desktops and laptops, but it’s not all that different once you learn where everything is located.

When a bill payment kiosk (BPK) breaks, and it’s more than fifty miles away, the company that manufactures the BPK sends a technician out to the site to fix it, which is a load off our shoulders here in IT.  When a far-off BPK breaks down, it’s actually more of a blessing than if the one across the street broke.  Unfortunately, they wouldn’t be able to make it out until Monday, because the part wouldn’t arrive until Saturday and their techs didn’t work on weekends.

But we DID have the part necessary at the office… so I packed up my tools, grabbed a company car (woo), and began my voyage.

The trip takes me through the West Suburban landscape, then right past the heart of Chicago, and through countless miles of forests and cornfields.  By the time I reach Elkhart, I feel as though I went on a cross-country roadtrip.

The store in Elkhart is tiny… maybe four times as large as my cube, and it is packed to the brim with customers.  It surprised me that so many people even lived in such a remote area.  I made my way past them to the BPK, right in the center of the store.  I set to work, replacing the ‘head unit’ which is basically the computer and touchscreen.

Replacing the unit is easy enough, but I had to flip the lid up to get to it, meaning I had to work upside down.  If I wasn’t careful, when I removed the last screw, the whole unit would fall.  Putting the new one in is slightly tricky because I had to hold it in place while screwing it in.  But after about half an hour, it was replaced, and I powered it on.

For about a minute, everything was fine: The fans started up, the screen lit up and displayed the Windows logo, and then it went out and an acrid smell began to emanate from the machine.  I quickly opened the cover to see smoke coming out of the head unit, specifically, out of the hard drive bay.  I unplugged the machine and pulled the hard drive out in time to see the last bit of flame die on the end of the connection pins.  The drive had shorted out, completely frying the part I brought with me.

I called up the BPK manufacturer and explained what happened.  They said that they could have a new part there the next morning, but that meant I would have to return Saturday morning to fix it.  My cousin’s wedding was that day, and I had already arranged to not be on call that day.  So, I began texting all of my co-workers, asking if they could make it out.

Unfortunately, no one could, so I had to formulate a plan that would have me complete the job, AND make the wedding.  It wouldn’t be easy, but I’m not one to back down from a challenge.

My plan was to get ready to go to the wedding, and head out with Zai to Elkhart in my own vehicle.  If we left early enough, we’d be there just as the part arrived, and I could be in Merrillville (about an hour and a half or so from Elkhart) in time for the wedding.

It took about two hours to get to Elkhart from Chicago, putting us there at 10:00AM EST.  I went into the store and was informed the part had not arrived yet.  I sighed and leaned against the counter, and began to wait for the part to arrive.  I didn’t really have much of a choice.  Zai went to the Starbucks nearby, and I chatted with the manager and killed time taking the old burned out part out of the machine.  When the new part arrived, I’d be ready.

Just before 11:00AM, the part arrived, and I set to work.  I placed the part and booted it up.  Sure enough, the Windows logo came on and everything worked just as it should.  I configured it and tested all the devices on the machine, and everything tested out just as it should.  I started up the customer-facing program, and everything loaded properly.  For a moment, the universe actually tricked me into thinking that something went right.

I packed my bag and took one last look at the machine, right there on the welcome page was a big “Receipt Printer Not Working On This Machine.”

Awesome.

I broke into Windows and ran the test again, and again the test passed.  I double-checked the configurations, and once again, correct.  I needed help, which is hard to find on a Saturday.  I texted one of my co-workers that was on a cruise in Alaska, he had me reboot the machine and run a couple different tests, nothing.

Called another co-worker who was apple-picking, ran a couple other tests, and everything checked out fine.  I tried calling the manufacturer, with whom we have a support contract, and was unable to get through.  After a few hours, I finally decided that the machine wasn’t going to be fixed that day.  I was loathe to admit it, but I had reached the end of my options.  I requested a new drive for the machine from the manufacturer, and told the manager we’d have to take a look at it on Monday morning.

It was 4:00pm CST when I finally left the store, which meant I had fifteen minutes to make it to the wedding.  Being as my car was incapable of driving at 450mph, I wasn’t going to be able to make it.  I called my dad to tell him and he said he wasn’t going either, that he’d be attending the reception.  I had more than enough time to make the reception, so at least the day wasn’t entirely lost.

Monday morning I was able to get in touch with the manufacturer’s support staff.  After two hours of troubleshooting, we decided that the image was, in fact, bad, and the drive needed to be rebuilt.  I was about to resign myself to the fact that I needed to go back out there, when a co-worker said he was heading out that way.

Score.

He rebuilds the drive, and everything finally works.

Until the next day, when the check reader died.  But since it was another issue entirely, I let the on call person handle it.  From what I hear, that machine broke down every other day for the next two weeks.  That is one unlucky location.

My first visit on this trip was supposed to be a site in Tulsa, a hundred miles northeast of Oklahoma City, which was where I landed.  In the morning, I was informed I would need to drive to Oklahoma City, but I didn’t have my laptop, as it was supposed to be shipped to my hotel room that afternoon.  This meant I had to first pick it up from the UPS facility in Owasso, about ten miles northeast of Tulsa.  The trip was looking up.

That afternoon, I arrived in Oklahoma City, it was a little cold, but nothing compared to the temperature in Chicago.  It was about forty degrees, which was nothing for Wintertime up north.  I passed the jobsite half a dozen times before I finally found it, pulling up to the tiny black speaker, which was the only sign that this place might just be where I’m trying to go.  The building was short and unmarked, surrounded by a tall barbed-wire fence, it looked like a military compound.

After checking my credentials, I was led into the compound, where I began to work.  My job was pretty straightforward for the most part, to take asset inventory in the location and import the data into a new inventory system.  There were different nuances, but that was the basic routine.  The room I worked in was large, spacious, and cooled to the point where I could occasionally see my breath.  The room was divided into aisles with towering cabinets housing the equipment, each one seven feet tall.  It was easy to lose yourself in the aisles, with nothing marking your location other than a letter or two at the top of each cabinet.

At the very front of the room was a door and two windows.  The door led into the control room, where the operators sat and monitored the performance of the site.  The windows were so the operators could see into the room.  I spent three days in that room, entering one piece of equipment after the other into the database, occasionally taking breaks to show one of the operators how to use the new system.  The job had its tedious moments, but being in a different location somehow made it seem more exciting.

On the third day, as I was nearing the end of the last aisle, I opened a cabinet to see it full of unfamiliar equipment with no serial numbers visible.  I check through my entire book that shows the numbers for models with no visible model numbers, and there’s nothing there.  I call my project manager and begin describing the equipment.  He tells me to wait.

So I wait.

Half an hour later he calls back to tell me how I’m to input these new devices into the database.  It is slow and tedious, with it being nearly ten in the evening by the time I’m done.  As I’m finishing, the lights go out.  I’m standing there in the dark, surrounded by millions upon millions of dollars of equipment.  I carefully pack up in the dim glow of the machines, and make my way to the control room.

The control room is dark and empty, everyone had gone home.  I flip the lights on and call out, “Anyone here?”  After a few moments, I realize that I have, in fact, been left here alone.

Great.

I call my project manager, who is probably upset that he’s still working, and I tell him that I’m alone.

“Alone… what do you mean?”

“Well, they all left.  There’s no one here, the lights are off.”

There’s silence on the other end.  In hindsight, this scenario happened pretty often on my trip, me being able to render my poor project manager speechless.  “Don’t move, those places have some tight security systems.”

“I’m in the control room now,” I respond.

“Good, don’t move, I’m going to try to get in touch with some people.”

Sure enough, he can’t get in touch with anyone, being ten in the evening, and calls me back, “I’m not sure what to do, you can’t leave, if you set off that security system, we’ll all be in a lot of trouble.”

Just then, the door to the outer hallway opens and in walks a young kid, maybe eighteen or nineteen, and grabs the trash.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have never in my entire life been so happy to see a janitor.  I catch him and ask him to let me out of the building.  He complies, and relate the news to my very relieved project manager.  A few minutes later, I’m standing in the cool night air of Oklahoma City.

I take a deep breath, grab my things, and walk to my car… on the other side of a giant, electronically locked, barbed wire fence.  I lean against the wall, shaking my head.  Out of the frying pan and into the fire.  I kept thinking that any minute, a cop was going to drive by and see me meandering around this secure area.  He’ll see my out-of-state license, and complete lack of credentials for the place in which I stand, and he’ll throw me in the back of his car.

Luckily, that never happened.  But I did have to stand out in the cold for another hour or so until the janitor finished his shift.  He let me out, and I was finally able to leave Oklahoma City.  But I chose to go back to my hotel room and sleep first.

Zel-kun out.

Ever have one of those days? Let me give you a rundown of my day…

WARNING: I get a wee bit technical.

9:15 – Come in to work, late because of two accidents on 355.

9:16 – I am informed that a printer I installed last night isn’t working properly. I spend twenty minutes with the print server administrator getting the right drivers uploaded.

9:50 – Everyone can print to the printer except for one person.

10:30 – After troubleshooting, it turns out that Windows 2000 is incompatible with the driver. I begin work to hunt down an older driver and load it to her computer locally.

10:45 – She is printing, so I finally return to my desk and am handed a laptop I’ve been expecting. So I load it up and while doing so, fire off a Zelkun update.

11:00 – The lady who’s printer I was working on calls to complain about her computer not working, completely bypassing the ticketing system. I head on up.

11:15 – I find out the docking station for her laptop is bad, making her external monitor flicker. I run upstairs to grab another.

11:30 – The new docking station works, but I find out her network jack in the wall is broken. I painstakingly crawl over the fifteen picture frames on TOP of her laptop to disconnect her, then crawl over the bags of random items under her desk.

11:50 – After successfully relocating her to a new location, I find that the network jack in the new location is inactive.

12:20pm – I get a call from Jeremy, a friend of mine from TekSystems, we were supposed to go to lunch today, and he had arrived at the building. I tell him I’m finishing setting the lady up, and I’ll be about ten minutes.

12:30 – After finally getting her set up at a working port with a working docking station, her computer flickers and freezes, tapping the chasis causes it to freeze, so I head upstairs to swap her hard drive.

12:50 – The symptoms are resolved with a new laptop chasis, unfortunately, Windows refuses to recognize the network card. I call Jeremy and tell him it doesn’t look like I’ll make it to lunch.

1:20 – For some reason, a flash drive I borrowed isn’t working. I burn the network drivers to a CD. Oddly, the 32MB CD takes ten minutes to burn. After which, my computer locks up.

1:30 – The drivers don’t work, a couple co-workers and I pronounce the laptop dead. Preparations for rebuilding and deploying a temporary laptop are underway.

2:00 – The external hard drive I’ve been backing up the data to fails. At the same time, a machine I was imagining gets caught in a boot loop.

2:30 – After a second attempt at imagining, I set the machine aside and begin building a new one. At the same time, I build the replacement laptop and begin a new data transfer onto a flash drive.

2:50 – The data transfer is a success, and the replacement laptop is nearly complete. After turning down a kind offer to replace machines on the twelfth floor, I grab my jacket, ask Mike, a co-worker, to name a machine when it finishes imaging, and escape to eat.

3:10 – I eat a Wendy’s Chili and a side salad. They are very good. The straw for my Dr. Pepper has a hole in it and sprays me a little.

3:40 – I return to work to find that Mike forgot to name the machine I was building. (to clear the air, I don’t blame him, but it did add to the day)

4:20 – A guy knocks on our door. Like an idiot, I ask if I can help him. He then shows me a nice Blue Screen of Death. So I move over the three computers I’m working on to make just enough space for his, when Mike says he has a lot of space and a it of free time, and takes the laptop off my hands. While he tries to pull data, I pull another laptop to replace his.

4:25 – Steve (another co-worker) tells me he just happens to have a laptop nearly completed. Which takes another bit of burden off of me. That’s when I look at the laptop I grabbed from the back and see that it won’t power on. I add it to my pile.

4:50 – With the machines I’m building nearly complete, I see a ticket for a lady that needs an aircard installed. I figure I have just enough time to help her. I find out that the entirety of her aircard management software is corrupt, and must be repaired, manually deleted, uninstalled, registry entries cleared, and reinstalled. All remotely.

5:50 – I finally hang up with her, and set to deploy the machines I’ve been building.

6:10 – The machines placed, I run away from the place as fast as I can.

6:50 – I arrive home, and toss my coat on my bed. My stepfather then asks me to look at his computer, he’s having some problems.

7:15 – I eat dinner.

7:30 – I help my stepdad out with his computer some more. (I love him, but I am SO sick of computer problems at this point.)

7:50 – I finally sit down to write the tirade you just read.

Thank you and good night.

Zel-kun out.

I had received the call the previous evening, asking if I’d be willing to leave the next day.  I was to replace someone who had been sleeping on the job, and they needed someone immediately because the project had already started.  I had been unemployed for about a month at this point, so I was not about to turn down an offer for work.

I woke up at three in the morning, so I could be out the door by four, and arrive in Peoria by seven.  I got to the address, which had no markings, it was a small building with a communications tower, I had no idea if this was the place or not.  I pulled out my cell phone (a parting gift my old job kept active for me for quite awhile), and called my contact.  Sure enough, it was the place.

The guy’s name was Steve, who can best be described as easygoing and neurotic all at the same time.  Steve gave me the crash course in what I would be doing during the project, all the while lamenting on the status of the project at the time.  I could sense his frustration when one of his techs called, who was sitting outside a site in California because no one was there to meet him.  So there was a tech, on the clock, doing absolutely nothing during a project where already the time constraints were apparent.

After a few hours of training, he gave me the information I would need for my flight and rental car and all that.  At three in the afternoon, I arrived at the Peoria airport.  I parked my car in the back of the lot (as if I had a choice), and began walking to the airport, lugging my luggage (appropriately named so, it would seem) across the chilly parking lot.  I was very grateful when halfway there a shuttle bus came to pick me up.

I’m not certain if its custom to tip the shuttle bus driver, but I handed him a five, I was grateful to avoid the full walk.

I got to the counter and handed my ticket to the attendant, who informed me that since the ticket was just bought this morning, they couldn’t approve the credit card without the holder being there.  SoI call Steve, who promises to compensate me on next week’s expense check.  I hand the lady my card, who swipes it and says, “I need to inform you that since the ticket purchase was made today, you will be getting the full security search.”

Well isn’t that dandy.

So I take off my shoes and watch some aging security guard with a fancy TSA badge root through my bags.  He swabs the fabric with q-tips and places them neatly aside.  He runs his hands over my clothes, checking for hidden items I assume, then pauses at the CD spindle I had on one of my bags.  I knew I would have a laptop on this trip, so I packed a few games and DVD’s.  Apparently, this interested the TSA guy, who proceeded to open the spindle and examine the CD’s individually.

I’m just glad he didn’t find my CD labelled, “101 ways to bring down the American Capitalist Society of Infidels with Homemade Bombs.”

So he closes my bags, takes the swabs and tells me to head on to the next step of security.  There is a lady who hands me a large plastic tray and asks I remove all metal items from my person.  I remove my belt, wallet, keys, cellphone, pen, ring, glasses, 9mm semi-automatic pistol, and put them into the tray.  She sends the tray through a scanner and I see a man at the other end snapping on a white latex glove.

Oh, hell no.

Fortunately, he just put it on to closely inspect my pen for the concealed superflu vial I hid in there.  Another man took me behind a glass screen and asked me to stand along a line with my feet apart.  I then explained that he was going to pat me down, and assured me that only the back of his hand would come near my genetalia.

Reassuring.

So, finally, with my shoes back on and my dignity fully lost, I wait in the terminal for my plane to arrive.  I was a little nervous, I hadn’t been on a plane since I was seven, and I had a fear of heights.  I sat there looking out the window as a small propeller-driven plane pulled up.  The door opened and a man announced, “Flight to St. Louis, now boarding.”

I stood there in disbelief for a long moment.  I’ve seen larger SUV’s than this thing.  I pictured a dozen scenarios with that plane spiraling out of control and slamming into the ground.  But as much as I didn’t want to, it was time to board the plane, so I boarded.

The inside of the plane was even smaller if that were possible.  The floors were metal, the walls and the ceiling were metal, and the chairs looked like they were ripped out of a van, leading me further to believe that this was just a car with wings glued on.

I sat in the tiny seat, my elbow crammed against the window, and my head against the luggage rack above me.  I saw the other passengers filter in, there were seven (including me) in total.  Then came the steward, hauling a little case with him, which he put next to him as he took his seat, facing the passengers, smiling away.

The plane started moving, the little propellers spinning.  I gasped as the ground fell away and things such as houses and cars became smaller and smaller.  I don’t know how high we were, but I can’t imagine it was all that high, everything seemed too big.

But then, I don’t really have a point of reference.

In the middle of the flight, the steward picked up his case and opened it, “Would anyone care for something to drink?”  He pulled out plastic cups and began filling them with ice.  He then lined up a row of sodas and began pouring the orders.  He handed me a Dr. Pepper, which did quite a bit to soothe my nerves.  I kept expecting us to fall right out of the sky.

But, the plane landed safely in St. Louis.  Despite my fears, the ride was smooth and the service was exemplary.  If the plane had been built to house a tall man like myself, I daresay the ride would have been downright pleasant.

I spent the next two or three hours at the St. Louis airport, waiting for the flight to take me to Tulsa, Oklahoma.  It was dark by then, so I wasn’t able to see the St. Louis cityscape out the window.  Which was a pity because I love cityscapes.  I also love the word cityscape.

My plane finally pulled up, and I was relieved to see it was much larger than the last one.  I boarded the plane, took my seat, and rested easy.  This plane did not have Dr. Pepper, so I settled for a 7up.  I then proceeded to fall asleep and spill it on myself.  The stewardess, a comely southern lady who appeared to be in her late thirties, helped clean up the mess with utterances of, “Oh, you poor dear.”

I might have been more embarrassed if I wasn’t too tired to care.

The plane landed and I stood there by the carousel, waiting for my luggage to come by.  I knew I could spot mine easily because I attatched red zip-ties to the zippers.  So a bag with red zip-ties came down… and it wasn’t mine.  It seems a lot of people shared my idea, so I had to closely examine several bags in hopes of finding mine.

The luggage carousel seems like a bad idea.  There’s no administration involved.  There’s no way to prove or disprove which bag is yours (at least not that I could see).  What would prevent me from taking the wrong bag?  Would I get to the hotel and find my bag full of women’s undergarments?  Would my bag suddenly have eight severed heads?  And if I wanted to take an extra bag, what would stop me?

I walked to the attatched rent-a-car place and gave them my information.  Unfortunately, they had no full-size vehicles left, which meant I had to drive a mid-size.  While it wasn’t the smallest car I had been in, it wasn’t the largest, either.  When I put the seat all the way back, I could sit somewhat comfortably, even though my knees were up against the steering wheel.

But it was enough, and I was finally on the road to my hotel, at ten in the evening.  It was a tiring day, and I was glad to be done with it.  Oklahoma was an ordeal in itself… worthy of retelling, I should think.

Zel-kun out.

I give you, the Mountain Grove Saga:

Awhile back, I was on the road for TekSystems, doing some work for U.S. Cellular.  (those of you who read The St. Louis Chronicle already know this)  This had me going to some pretty interesting places.  Though I suppose no place is as interesting as Mountain Grove, Missouri.

By the name, one can deduce that its a village in the middle of nowhere.  One would be quite correct in that deduction.  Miles and miles of wilderness and rain (it was rainy during my entire stay in Missouri.  If it wasn’t raining, it was either about to, or just had), broken only by the narrow highway that bore right through valleys of rock.  It was a long drive, accompanied by my Creedence Clearwater CD’s, which seemed all the more appropriate on this particular stretch of road.

I drive to a tiny bit of town which consisted of a bowling alley, a Kentucky Fried Chicken, and a Best Western.  I couldn’t even see houses, they may have been hidden in the forested hills which surrounded the tiny oasis of civilization.  I stretch to call it civilization, its like a tiny slice of a real town had been cut out in 1980, and was then deposited into the hills.

Usually, my accomodations were handled by fax, so all I needed to do was check in.  This place didn’t have a fax machine, so I had to pay out of pocket and get reimbursed later.  So of course, internet was out of the question.  I sat in my room, watching the local FOX affiliate.  There was no cable, so after nine, there was very little to watch.  My cell phone, which had served me royally my entire time on the road, was showing zero bars in this desolate place.  I deeply regretted World of Warcraft being the only game I had brought with me from home.  Without the internet, all I had was a fancy icon on my desktop, hanging solemnly beneath the equally useless ‘Internet Explorer’ icon.

I then discover something interesting, I see the little wireless internet icon glowing in the corner of my screen.  I had found the wireless network ‘Bestwest1′.  Well hot damn!  I open the browser and am redirected to the Best Western homepage, asking me for my network password.  (its very common for hotel wireless networks, they give you a number to put in so their gateway actually lets you out to the internet)  Elated, I go to the front desk and ask what the password is.

“We don’t have internet.”   The weary-eyed woman responds.

“But, its called ‘BestWest1′, it links me to your homepage, your motel has a wireless network.”  I insist.

“No, we don’t have the internet, sorry,” the moronic woman repeats, obviously clueless.

I sigh and return to my room.  Out of curiousity, I type my room number as the password, and it works, I am on the internet.  I wanted to carry the laptop over to the front desk and show it to her, but I decided against it.  It was late, and I had things to kill in World of Warcraft.  Besides, I needed my rest for what would happen the next day…

With directions to my next site in hand, I leave Mountain Grove, jubilant in my mood because after this site, I go to Jefferson City, where I would spend the next week.  A week in a city of food and internet was definitely going to be better than the rural land I’ve been entrenched in for the past week.

I drive through the hills, past farms, and through forests.  I make my final turn and follow the road down for 5 miles, as the directions state, and slowly look around for anything that might be the site I’m looking for.  I see an old beat-up sign on the fence of a pasture, telling me not to tresspass, that the land belongs to U.S. Cellular.  I see that a ways into the pasture is a cellular tower and a tiny shack at its base.  I shrug my shoulders, open the gate, and drive on in.

It was wet, as it had just rained earlier in the morning (I was in Missouri, as stated before, its always raining), so I had to drive slowly, as the road was more mud than gravel.  I had to stop for a moment as I waited for a cow to get out of my way, and continured to the little fenced-in facility.

Its obvious I’m the only one there, and there’s no way I can get in as the fence surrounding the tower is heavily locked.  This wouldn’t be the first time I had to go to an unmanned facility, oftentimes a tech from the area would be by to let me in and do my work, so I leaned against the car and waited… in the middle of a cow pasture… on a chilly and wet Missouri morning.  The whole thing felt a tad surreal.

A half-hour passes, and no one comes, so I pull out my cell phone.  Oddly enough, I have full signal (I AM standing right next to a tower), and I call my project manager.

“Hey Scott, how’re you doing?”

“Hey, how’s the site coming along?”

“I can’t get in, its locked.”

“No one’s there?”  He asks, in that somewhat befuddled manner that can only be achieved by a manager who has already dealt with way too many problems.
“Nope.”

“Hang on…” The phone goes silent a moment.

“Hello?” a gruff voice asks.

“Hello Bob (honestly can’t remember his name, so I’m calling him Bob),” Scott says, “I’m here with my tech who’s supposed to be visiting your site today.  And he says he’s there and can’t get in.”

“He’s here?  I don’t see him.  You sure he’s at the right place?”

“Well, there’s a lot of cows, and a tower.  Along route 35 (can’t remember the road either, let’s call it route 35)?”

There’s a momentary pause, “That’s our remote site, the main switch is about 35 miles south of there.”  I smack my forehead, I was given the wrong address.  And now I was standing in the middle of a cow pasture, as it began to drizzle, in Missouri.

So, I get the right address, and the right directions, and say my goodbyes to the tech and my project manager.  I get in my car and step on the gas… and go absolutely nowhere.  The left rear tire was stuck in the mud.  I knew that if I didn’t get out of there soon, not only would the project be thrown off schedule, but I would lose my sanity.  Already I thought I saw the cows mocking me as I was stuck in the mud.  I put the car in neutral, and step out.  I step behind the car and do my best to push the car out of its little mud hole and back onto some firmer gravel.  My nice dress shoes sink into the mud but I manage to push it just a little.  I get back in, and with a mighty heave, the spinning tires throwing mud onto my trunk, the car moves forward and I leave the cow pasture, heading for an even more remote location…

Down deserted roads and through a thick forest I drive.  I head along the road as it spirals upward, as I begin to see more of the surrounding area below me.  I am driving up a large hill (or a small mountain?  it was pretty large), and the view was actually pretty spectacular.  Even with the fogginess, I could see for miles across the hills and forests.  Its a pity I didn’t have my camera.  Finally I reach the top, next to a ranger station is the site, and the tech who sees my muddy feet and muddy car and laughs.  He knows exactly where I’ve been.

I am led in to the small and cramped site.  It was once manned, but now operates automatically, a layer of dust on the desks at the front.  It was almost sad in appearance.  But I opened my laptop, and set to work, as the tech sat in his chair and went over some papers.

“Oh, before I forget,” he says, “Watch out for scorpions, they sometimes get in here.”

Well that’s just super…

Well, I didn’t see any scorpions, which is definitely positive, and the site was small so I finished in a few hours, also a good thing.  I finally was able to get in my car and leave the wilderness behind.  I’ll miss the view, granted, but I will not miss Mountain Grove.

Or the cows…

I hate those cows…

Zel-kun out.

1. It was the longest non-solo project I’ve been on, meaning I worked with a team of technicians.

2. The hours were 11:00am-8:00pm, with lunch at 1:00pm, which really messed with my rhythm.

Tuesday:

I left my home with an address,  looking for the DeVry building.  I was looking for 500 Park Blvd, simple enough.  But there’s something you should know about Illinois…

We don’t believe in putting addresses on buildings or street signs on our roads.

I figured the building would be clearly labelled.  A big ‘DeVry’ sign or something.  I was not so fortunate, instead, I am treated to a large business park with five nondescript buildings, with one address between them, 300.  So I am now bouncing between the buildings, in the hopes of walking into the lobby of the right building.  It is then that I find out something interesting…

500 is the Wyndham Hotel… not exactly the DeVry building I was thinking it’d be.

Luckily, I found the people I was looking for in the Hotel Lobby.  Apparently the refresh was taking place at the hotel during a convention.  A handy little bit of information I could have used earlier.  So we all go to this tiny room where we’re going to upgrade about 200 laptops, and we set to work.  Nothing really else to note for Tuesday.  Save for one of the techs ordered lunch: Seven large pizzas for FIVE technicians.  Nothing like a $174 lunch…

Wednesday:

I receive a laptop with a note from the user…

“This computer is slower than watching my 80 year-old grandfather taking a dump”

The next computer had a nearly pornographic wallpaper of a little girl on the toilet.

One of my fellow technicians, Rich, brings his own laptop and sets his MP3 player going.  There’s something surreal about ‘Paint it Black’ followed by ‘Too Sexy for my Shirt’ (or whatever the hell the title is), then ‘Freebird.’

Another tech, John, begins complaining about the music.  The beginning of every song prefaced with a phrase like, “Oh god, I’m going to shoot myself.”

Thursday:

Another member from DeVry joins the team, a girl by the name of Dana.  I don’t see many girls in IT, so its refreshing.  She gets calls on her cell phone, her husband asking where to put snakes, frogs, and spiders.  She just moved into a new home, and is deciding where to put the 400+ animals she has.

We then talk computer games, and I am made fun of for playing World of Warcraft, stating, “That game’s for girls, you don’t blow any shit up.”

For lunch, in this fancy, five-star hotel, the staff sets out large covered silver platters.  Underneath… Bagel-Bites and White Castle hamburgers.

Friday:

Friday I worked from 11:00am to 1:00am the next day .  Nothing really to note besides the fact that John began getting on everyone’s nerves.  “My god, you bitch more than my crazy-ass mother,” proclaims an agitated Dana.

I also see a sign in the Hotel Lobby, “Devry Privite Reseption.”

I also saw a truck “Professional Fastening: Expert Service” And its gas tank was open and the gas cap was dangling as it flew down the highway.  I shouldn’t have to say why this is hilarious.

Well, that’s all for now.

Zel-kun out.