WhyTheHell?

Usually at the end of a trip to Upstate NY I’m ready to go home. This time it wasn’t like that. I would’ve liked to stay longer. I only took a few days off so it was time to come home. We got there really early Friday morning and slept for a few hours. That day we got 3 geocaches with Colby and he was hooked. We tried to balance caching and other stuff. We’d be home the early part of the day, go caching and be back for dinner. The second day we found 7 caches and the third day we had 3. On the way home we grabbed 2 for a total of 15 on the trip. I have to go pick my work truck up from the shop now so it’s trime to end this. More later.

Woke up at 8 or so after getting in at 2:30 in the morning. We played a little football and I made the rounds visiting everyone. Holden’s doing good and so is everyone else. It’s still summer so the kids aren’t in school and that’s nice. You hate to come up when everyone is gone all day because you’re left with nothing to do. Uncle Clarence is traveling for a month so that sucks but there are still a lot of people here. It’s nice to visit with my brother at the same time. They got here in the morning yesterday.

One good thing about being here is that the days seem to last longer. It helps that I’m not working but other than that the days go slower. It’s definitely a good thing. We don’t have that much time up here so we want the days to last as long as possible. It’ll suck going back to work but that’s life. Better go eat lunch now.

We just arrived a little while ago in NY. It was a long drive but I wasn’t too tired. We didn’t stop once the whole way. We left after I got out of work and Jack is at the vet’s office down the street where they do boarding. That was a surprisingly simple process. Can’t say much about the weather or scenery on the way up because it was so dark. Very few cars on the road, especially coming up I-87. We have all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday here and we plan to leave on Monday. Not sure when though. Better go get some sleep now.

Today was a rough day. It started right from the first call. That call took hours and I couldn’t recover from it. Maybe if I had a quick one I might’ve but no such luck. You get a quick one and the modem’s not passing so the job takes hours. That happened at one call today. Sometimes when customers pick up boxes at the office they don’t activate until we come out. This is a 30 second call, literally. Well.. the two boxes they added made 6 plus HSI and phone. Not enough signal with several splitters in different sections of wonderful drop ceiling. Did I ever say how much I love drop ceilings? Well that’s because I don’t! One direct line to the modem and three new splitters later we were all set. I ended up being behind by two calls (4 left at 6 PM) and I think they called the on call guy out but I’m not sure. I hate to do that to them but that’s what it’s for.

Tomorrow night we’re leaving for Upstate NY. My Brother’s leaving tonight I think and he’ll be up there when we get there. As usual I am really looking forward to the trip but I know it’s not going to be a big welcoming party when we get there. The key is to try not to expect much when you go so you’re not disappointed by relatives living their lives like normal. Life stops for no one. I’d like to think I’d try to make special arrangements if they came here but then again I have no life. I’ve never been the type of person who has their life planned out before them. I do things pretty much spur of the moment or slightly in advance but not way ahead. What am I doing two months from now? Nothing yet! I’ll know in a month and a half. :)

Tonight (this morning) I have an answer to why I’m up. Acid reflux. Before I knew what it was I called it “throat burn” and that’s putting it mildly. It’s not that it’s really severe but it’s persistent. Milk helps, water doesn’t. I got a 30 day prescription for Prilosec (which I think has an OTC version too) and I take one if it gets too bad. I don’t know if it works or if the burning goes away on its own but I’m waiting for either outcome at this point. If it burns this much when I’ve been upright for 18 hours how will it feel when I lay down? Much worse I think. I’m not willing to try it just yet. I’m not tired.

Today at work I felt so helpless. I went in to what they said was 4 jobs and they continued to trickle in. All I see are 3 and when I’m down to 2 it’ll say so. All I kept seeing was the 3, it was haunting me. I had one bad 17.5 hour on call day years ago and I get flashbacks of it when I’m on call. I thought for sure that was going to happen again. I made what was almost a circle around the area we cover. I went east and then south before going west and back north. I ended up with 8, two canceled either at the door or just before I arrived. It wasn’t a lot of work in the end but there’s no way of knowing what will happen when you’re knee deep in it. I’m glad it wasn’t as bad as I feared. I hope they find a way to get calls done without me tomorrow (today.. whatever!).

My birthday was uneventful and I guess that’s a good thing. I woke up, ate breakfast, played on the computer and with Alex then went to work. Came home, played some more and slept. You can pretty much describe each day just like that. I got a few text messages from friends and calls from family so that was nice. I sent Chris a text message but he’s at Yellowstone National Park at the moment and I’m not sure what cell coverage is out there. I’m really looking forward to the trip to upstate NY more than anything. Not looking forward to all that driving but it’ll be nice to get away for a while.

The reason for the suject is that I’ll be waking up at 6 AM and at present it’s around 11:30 PM. I guess 6 hours of sleep will have to do. I’m working early tomorrow (7 or 7:30) and I’m on call the two days after that. I hate on call but I’m hopeful that it’ll go well. We’ll see. Time for bed!

In a few days (Thursday) I’ll be 29. It won’t be a big deal, I’ll be working. A week later we’re going to Upstate NY and I’d rather use my time off for that. My Brother’s going up there at the same time so it will be a big family gathering (as big as they get in this family). My Mom’s not coming but that’s okay. She went up with us in April and it’s never easy to get her to go somewhere with us. I’d rather not haggle with her. She’s a little more picky about when we leave and come back so we won’t miss that. I like to spend as much of the weekend as possible there if I’m driving 4 hours one way. If it were up to my Mom we’d drive up Saturday afternoon and leave Sunday night. We’re leaving home Thursday night and coming back on Monday. The relatives might be busy on Friday and that’s okay because we’re perfectly capable of finding stuff to do up there. We don’t exect them to take time off work. Back to that title I have up there.. my brithday.

I haven’t had a true milestone birthday since 21. This year will be the same as 22 through 28. It’s next year that I’ll be hitting a round number. If I sit and think about it, 30 is freaking old. I haven’t accomplished anything professionally. Will I ever? I don’t know. I’m not working some minimum wage restaurant job but I’m no big money earner either. I’m happy with what I do but I need to find my career path. At this point it feels like IT will be it. From this job to IT in this company and then IT at another one. Start doing IT at a bigger company and work my way up to a management position there. I would even be interested in customer relations of some sort since I do like customer contact. It might be hard to climb a corporate ladder since I’m no good at brown nosing. I imagine you have to do a bit of it to get anywhere fast. I am respectful and hard working, let’s hope that counts for something.

Lately I feel like my body is falling apart. This is not normal for me. I can think back and remember a few injuries in the past but they were so few and far between that I can remember them. I deal with pain in my back, wrists and now my knees. Both of them. I don’t know what could be causing this. All I do is work so that must be it. It’s not constant severe pain but frequent and moderate. I guess if I’m sitting still I feel nothing but if I move a certain way any of the above mentioned parts will hurt. I walked up a steep driveway on Friday and both of my knees hurt so bad I can’t quite explain it. It can’t be arthritis, can it? I hope not. I’ll end this now. Until next time..

I just added a few pics I took on the 3rd of this month. They can be found in the “Image Galleries” tab on the front page. It’s just a little gallery of 9 pics but they’re very cute (as are all pics of my girl). :)

We did hear back from the doctor’s office eventually and got a message. Medical information being as protected as it is, she simply said “Call us back and schedule some more appointments.” We did call back and she’s going for the first appointment on 8/12 at 9:30 AM. It’s in Springfield so I’m pretty sure I can’t go with her unless work says I can come in a little late. Knowing these office visits from when we had Alex, you don’t just walk in and get seen. You wait. We’ll see if I’m able to go. We didn’t make the appointment until a week before and I forgot to ask when I went into the office on Tuesday. I’ve been up since 5 with stomach issues and I’m still having them, better end this here. Until next time..

A few days ago I went to a customer’s house who knew about my blog. How that came to be is an interesting but very short story. First of all, I knew this customer. He had the same issue not long ago and it came back. It was a problem on the whole street. He tells me he’s having breakfast at a local restaurant and two cable guys were there at the same time. Must be nice to stop at a restaurant for breakfast while working. Lunch is tough enough, back to my story. Somehow the topic of me came up (was at his house shortly before this) and the guys mentioned that I had a blog and the company didn’t like it too much. While there may be a few workers or immediate supervisors who don’t care for it, the “company” (HR person) has no issues with it. That must’ve been what they meant. I don’t write nearly as many inflammatory remarks in here as I used to. I guess things have been going better lately.

Well.. what the hell.. let’s get a little inflammatory. A topic just came to me that I’d like to rant about. Yesterday at my second call I realized a very very long underground cable was full of water and far too thin. Being the good tech that I am, I had the underground thicker cable on me. That meant that I had to run the new line. It was very tough to pull through the angled conduit leaving the street-side pole but I was determined and got it done. It took 3 hours. Just 15 minutes in (at 10 AM) I sent a message to our Dispatch (all I’ll say is the letter “A”) telling her that I was going to be running way behind and might need help. At this point she should try to find help for the rest of my AM calls and if she couldn’t she’d at least call them for me. This way they’d know I was late and be less irate when I got there. You may be able to guess how this turned out, keep reading.

At just before 1 PM I get to my third call realizing none of my calls had been reassigned and at least this customer did not receive a call. I fixed it and moved on. From then on I learned that the other AM wasn’t notified either. They were upset but I overcame it, fixed their problems and moved on. As I’m stressing out with 3 calls left at 2:30 and no lunch I realize they added another! The freaking nerve! Don’t take calls off when I really need it but they add more late! That sealed my fate and if it weren’t for some easy calls at the end I would’ve been working all night. I know when it all works out I’m not supposed to be upset but they didn’t know it would! What if I got another tough call? They already demonstrated that they would not remove work so they really didn’t care how poorly it ended for me. It is our job to do everything reasonable to fix the issue at the call. I take this to heart and it can sometimes take a while. I don’t blow calls off. Period. Other techs do because it’s easier but easier is not the way to go. It will always end up coming back to bite you in the ass.

Speaking of that, I have more to get off my chest. I went to a customer’s house on Friday where he had just gotten internet and it was really unreliable. Kept disconnecting. Now this was in the town I live and I know our internet is really reliable so something was up at his house. He had another tech from my office there earlier the same day! (checked signals and left after just a few minutes) He told the tech what was going on and one other important nugget: He had tried to get digital cable a couple of years ago and canceled due to poor digital reception. The line had been the same one all along. Looking at his house it was maybe an 80 foot line with no obstructions. I could spend 30+ mins troubleshooting and then replace the line or just replace it first. I did that and left him my number. It went out soon after the last guy left so if my solution didn’t work I knew I’d get a call. Haven’t heard from him. It sounds corny but I truly take ownership. If I don’t who will? Lead tech’s on vacation and others are unreachable. Why should I make the guy call back into the 800 number? Half of my customers have my number but I rarely get calls. Why is this? Because I fix their problem and they don’t need to call! I’m done typing for one night..

In this post is a screenshot of the radar for this area on my phone. It is a pretty bad storm and in our rural town lightning does a lot of damage. Because of this we have the computer unplugged and even the router and cable modem. I’m on my full strength EDGE data (180K or so, tower up on the mountain across the street). Using the phone tonight is a necessity. We also have the TV unplugged so we watched a DVD on the little bedroom one. We watched Perfect Stranger with Halle Berry and Bruce Willis. It was a pretty good suspense movie with a strange twist at the end. Who could’ve guessed the killer? No one. Time for bed.