Diary of a Wolfeman

It seems I was a bit presumptive in thinking I was going to get any time at all worthwhile in the new shop this week, since every day they keep coming up with new reasons why I am needed at the old one. While the incoming shelf is remarkably low on new work, the field operation has lit up again, and I am once again just fighting to get time in the new place.

I did get the boss to sign off on officially scheduling me in the new shop though, by way of taking on a documentation / paperwork plan we need and scheduling a due date and time to work on it: the Official New Build Checklist. Thankfully, I keep my old copies of MaximumPC around for just such projects.

I also found out today how to get extra cash out of the bossman – if I set up an appointment for our Managed Services guy to meet with a client and he sells them our extended services (which amount to having an IT guy on-site ten hours a month), I get a commission percentage off the account.

So, Greyduck – you say you need some occasional help down there, right?… ;)

Okay, so the two of you who read this thing are wondering where the hell I’ve been. I’ll try to catch you up a bit.

This week has been wierd because I had my daughter so much. With her mom coming down with a case of strep throat, Pookie couldn’t go home, so she’s been here since last Friday with the exception of yesterday. I love my dughter, but she is used to getting a lot of attention, which leaves me very little time. I couldn’t tell you how many times I have wished the world would slow down it’s rotation a bit and give me a 30-hour day.

Today was annoying in the extreme. I was at the new shop yesterday, and got a couple of projects started that I was looking forward to finishing today, but ended up stuck in the West shop all day to help the other guys catch up again with their workload. What I really wanted to do was get back to the new shop, and it bugged me all day.

The good news is, I was able to magically fix a laptop by the simple method of taking it all apart and putting it back together again. My trunk is currently packed full of goodies to put into stock at the new shop, and I’m booked there for almost the whole day tomorrow. I have answers for the customer that came in Wednesday, and I know how to rig the cash drawer to open without being connected to a computer. (The one at the West shop can only be opened using a Point Of Sale program, which is stupid, since our invoicing software can’t do it. We have a complete software suite installed to merely open the damn drawer.)

I talked with the boss today, and got the official word on my job track: I am designated as the Shop Manager for the East store. My main responsibility will be to keep it operational through sales and service work. There will be another technician hired to interface with the customer and answer the phones while I concentrate on fixing computers. Secondarily, I will be learning the operations of our various servers and networks, since they all reside in my shop. Further responsibilities include occasional field service work, but this will (eventually) be a rarity.

This makes me very happy, since I think I have done enough field work over the past 8 years or so. It’s time to get out of the car for a while. At least it will be once we get another field tech trained up…

Okay, maybe they aren’t all ‘go’, but things are shaping up here. And by ‘here’, I mean at the new shop.

I’m firmly ensconced in the basement now, which is going to be weird for me, since it reminds me so much of my garage – but I can’t smoke down here. I keep finding my hand reaching into my pocket for smokes.

Aside from some minor cleanup and organizing, the benches are ready for work, and I even took in my first customer this morning – one of the other guys is on his way over with the drive adapter and storage server I will need to actually do the work on this laptop.

The computer I’m typing on right now is pretty nice though – 3GHz P4 proc, a Gig of RAM, and a snazzy mod case with LED fans and a case window. We definitely won’t have any overheating issues down here due to the chilly temps, but it has all those extra fans just in case. This thing smokes right along, too, but I’ll have to shell out for a new video card on my own if I want to run any games on it after-hours.

All I need now is some nice speakers so I can play the music I brought with me :)

A terrible thing happened last Thursday. A young man applied for a job with us and arrived at our store for an interview. And then we all smiled at him and wasted the next two hours of his time.

I hate the fact that this happened the way it did. We should have all honestly looked him in the face and said “if you can’t be bothered enough to shave, shower and put on a nice, clean shirt for an interview, then we don’t want you working for us” and sent him on his merry way.

Instead, we actually interviewed him. And he didn’t do that bad, really. We weren’t looking for an experienced tech, so that wasn’t a real issue – he has some basic skills and knows how to delete spyware, which is really our bread and butter. But for him, the position he was applying for involves alot of face-time with our customers, and his appearance simply was not going to cut it.
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In other work news, the new shop is >-< this close to being actually open for business. I have a couple of test stations ready to go, and LOTS of bench space to expand upon as we go. Our credit card reader is in place, and I've even got some sodas in the 'fridge waiting for me. Now I just need the ok to actually go there and work. Yeah, there's more to be done before it's really finished....There's a couple outlets I need to get the contractors back in to repair (wire faults and one dead outlet) and I still need to move my data recovery machine in, but it's all stuff I can work around in the meantime. Besides, it's not like a Techie's shop is ever really a static environment, ya know? ----------------------------------------------------------- The Little Black Beastie seems to be doing just fine now. I replaced the air cleaner and the valve cover gasket last weekend (no more oil leaks!) and it has been running smooth both hot and cold since last Monday morning. With the exception of Thursday, that is. I went up to Vancouver to pick up a laptop for repair, and all was well on the way up, but as soon as I got back in the car to leave it started missing a cylender. Looking under the car, I could see the problem: a spark-plug wire had jumped off the coil, and I could see the damn thing arcing to the engine. WTF!?! Three points go to the boys over at the Les Schwab outlet across the street - they put the car up on a lift and put things back together for me at no charge. It's a shame I can't afford their prices for tires, I'd go back and buy from them next time to repay the courtesy. ----------------------------------------------------------- On the personal front, last Monday I went out to dinner with my most-recent ex girlfriend to try and smooth things out between us. My roomate is still a very close friend of hers, and the only truly convenient place for them to just hang out is our house, but with the tension and general wierdness between her and I, it was making things difficult. Things went pretty well. We were able to just sit there and chitchat for the first half-hour or so, and managed to delve into the deeper subjects without seriously pissing each other off or causing additional hurt. We isolated a few more instances of us simply not understanding what the other was aiming at, and concluded the whole thing on a friendlier note. On a frighteningly friendly note at one point - I gave her a ride home since she is carless now, and when she got out and said goodbye, I had a minor flashback to other, happier times. Not a painful flashback, but one that brought a good memory for me to reflect upon. It's nice to be able to remember the good times. We passed the first test as well, when she came over last Thursday to watch CSI with the roomie. they watched from his room, but we still passed each other on entrance and exit and held friendly chitchat without problems. Good. I hate to be a cause for friction between my friends. Damn - Thursday was a bit eventful, wasn't it?

Well, I got some work done on the car today, and we have progress. My girlfriend’s sister’s fiance is a mechanic, and he did me the favor of running the Beastie through his scanners to find out that there is a problem in the timing and I had a bad fuel injector.

No, boys and girls, those are not the ignition coils like I had expected. This is good, because those things are a bitch to replace.

Anywho, he replaced the injector for me and reset all the trouble codes in the car’s memory. I’ll drive it for a few days and see where that gets me – there’s still a chance something has gone wrong with one or two of the sensors, and I need to build some more symptomatic data before a diagnosis can be accurate.

The good news is that the car starts every time I turn the key again, but on the way home there was some sputtering and missing whenever I accelerated from a low RPM range. Hopefully this will smooth out as the car gains usage data and reprograms itself for the replaced injector.

Modern diagnostic bonuses aside, I still miss the days of simple engines.

Things have been nuts at the shop, what with preparation for opening the new location and our rather booming business. I finally got to set some time aside over yesterday and today to build the three new machines for the new shop. (A gig of RAM per box…drool…)

Wouldn’t you know it, but the very first chassis I finished ends up with a bum power supply. (Who the fuck names their company iCute, anyway?) Grr. So, I swap in a replacement (we’ll RMA later) and go off in search of the Windows XP license keys the Boss told me about…

…And they cannot be found. I spent an hour sifting through a half-ton of useless MicroShaft paperwork to no avail. It seems quite likely the employee they fired for pilfering a couple months back nabbed them along with the other stuff he got. All he left were the server licenses.

So, the Boss spends an hour on the phone this morning with Redmond getting replacement keys, and I finally get the time again this afternoon to install XP…

Read the rest of this entry »

Wow – basically a week since I’ve posted anything. I guess I’ve been busier than I thought.

Most of this has been due to work – amazing how having a full-time job cuts into my internet time. Hell, I’ve barely had time for lunch, most days. The rest of my free time is being divided up between kids and my lady. Things are going well on both fronts.

The Ratboy surprised me the other night with his first plans for moving out of the house; he hopes to implement them by this summer, when he will only be 17. I laid some conditions down that he must accomplish before I will give this serious consideration. Worst case scenario, he gets his grades straight. I love it when he hands me the means by which to chain him to his studies :)

The Pookster’s next school has pretty much been chosen as well. The EMC is a pitbull when it comes to planning our daughter’s future, so my part of this decision was largely to say “sounds good to me,” which it did. Having gone to magnet (magnate?) type schools herself, the EMC knows all the ins-n-outs of getting the best choices, so she is emminently qualified for the task.

The Little Black Beastie has once again validated my wish to return to a good, old-fashioned musclecar. She is in need of replacement ignition coils, which are far easier to purchase than they are to install. I don’t know how things are now, but in the late `80’s, Chevy didn’t know how to put a medium-sixed engine into a small space and still make it accessible for repair. The Book says it’s a 1.5 hour job, but I beat my head against the wall for two hours before calling it quits. There’s just too much junk in the way, and it really needs to be on a lift instead of jack stands. So, until I can scrape up some extra dough, I’ll just need to be cautious in how I drive it.

Unless, of course, anyone knows a mechanic with computer problems – I’d be happy to trade labor rates :)

This will be a recurring topic, so watch for it to be updated in the future. Here I will describe some of my fellow inmates at the assylum for your bemusement.

Note that aliases have been granted to protect the guilty.

At some point in our lives, usually not long after we leave home, we all end up in some sort of multiple-roomate situation. Here’s how The Townhouse went down.

Follow the bouncing toad… Read the rest of this entry »

Who Put the Donk in the JL421 Badonkadonk?

Yet more proof that Burning Man has gone completely corporate – these things are for sale. When you build it for a personal toy, that’s one thing, but these folks have crossed the line by selling them to unsuspecting hipsters who think they’re cool by trekking out to the desert to get drunk, naked and sunburned.

(Removing tongue from cheek now)

Ok, there has been more debate over at Frizzen Sparks regarding the separation of the two, and that whole stupid sticker business. He got pissed for the opposite reason than I did, that the schools were teaching evolution as fact in the first place, and not theory. I agree that it should be taught as a theory, just less vehemently than he :)

Anywho, down in the comments for that post, a gent goes on a bit about how nearly all modern laws can find their roots in the Ten Commandments handed down to Moses by God. This is completely true.

However… Read the rest of this entry »