Employed, by the gods!
Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2009 12:13 am
Yep, you read right. After five years of school, house-husbandry, and freelancing, I am gainfully employed at a local company here in Rochester, MN.
Here's the website if you'd like to take a look: RightWay GPS
The short-form is that we sell cheaper GPS devices that still have loads and loads of features compared to the big players in the market.
What I do is support. Namely, I answer the phones and fix whatever gets sent in. I've also got "servers" in my job description, but I've not yet had a real opportunity to make that particular skill-set shine due to the business having just opened a new warehouse. Our WAN links are not set up fully yet, and this is out of my hands for the time being.
Once said links become fully operational, I intend to unleash everything I've got in the arsenal. There's about a zillion tricks I picked up at DxR and in school that I've had plenty of time since 2003 to research, refine, and hone. There's another zillion tricks I learned in school that I've not yet had the materials to put into Real Life(tm) practice, but that time will come. Slowly, with much research and a proper set of design documents, but they will come. I intend to be Borg-like in this, if a bit friendlier about it.
My AS/400 training in particular has taught me to be methodical...but then again, anything from IBM tends to be methodical.
---
Culturally, this is a huge change for me. Every last one of my previous jobs has been a mixed workforce: gender, age, race, and so on. At my current location, we are all-male and I am one year short of being the oldest employee on staff here at the warehouse. As a further note, and an unprejudiced one, I am the only "pure geek" as well.
I can't say this has lead to outright conflict, as I have gone through great efforts to make my geekery into a friendly, go-to sort of thing in a successful manner. But it's certainly led to the exchange of viewpoints, and it's been quite an interesting and rewarding task integrating those other viewpoints into my technical writing and interactions with my co-workers.
Put into mathematical form:
Former restaurant manager + strongman + 'sculpt' style bodybuilder + relentless tinker(me) == wide and very varied experience and platforms of discussion.
Our strongman, I should add, has scads of experience at managing the logistics of a large warehouse, and I've found him an invaluable source of wisdom and advice when it comes to managing the stock of GPS devices we routinely ship in and out of our current location. Given that I have never once provided support for a purely physical product in a previous tech job, I'm grateful to learn from him.
The interrogative process as applied to customers works in a notably different manner when said customer has a physical thing on hand to which they can refer. I've had to throw out almost every 'black box' explanation I had on hand, and I'm seriously considering manhandling my instructor at school into a long lunch where we discuss this very thing.
Overall, this has been a very instructive and interesting change in my life. Being paid for it is a bonus.
---
Everything else is going pretty well! Mrs. Bug is trooping along, no further intrusions by those pesky cancer cells. She and I are currently focusing on getting the second mortgage knocked out and then getting some grading work done on the land that surrounds the house. We've had some basement seepage problems that, due to us being located on a large hill, would be best fixed with the 'nuclear' option of a backhoe.
I've done a bit of work redirecting our drainage, but there's only so much I can do without hydraulic equipment. Analysis and study have shown us that to do the job right we'd have to get the deck re-done as well as major portion of the driveway, so we are saving up for that. This is the kind of thing where it pays to study it carefully, call in professionals with heavy equipment, give them the plan, and stand the hell back. Expensive, but worth it in the long run.
As a side note, we've apparently lived in Minnesota long enough to have mostly or fully adapted to the climate. Our last trip to mid-state Illinois revealed to us that we could no longer tolerate 105-degree heat-indices when it's 95% humid out. On the other hand, we're good down to -25 Fahrenheit, -40 with some extra bundling and a healthy respect for the wind.
Our cats are, of course, still pretty dumb. We've come to the conclusion that Buster is actually brain-damaged through some event in his youth before Mrs. Bug became his keeper. Rufus is still a feet-loving pervert-cat as well. But since both of them love to come and warm us up in the winter and do a great job of lowering our blood-pressure every day after work, we're pretty sure we're going to keep them around.
My multiplayer gaming has dropped off considerably since becoming employed. Even my beloved City of Heroes has had to take a back seat to a proper sleep-schedule.
However, I've recently picked up an iPod Touch (second generation) as has Mrs. Bug, and these devices have proven to be a real boon. They are essentially very small Macs with full computer functionality, and finding ways to integrate them into our lives has proven a surprising and rewarding task. What I've found most interesting about them is that despite being Macs in all but name, the devices are pretty much platform-neutral. You find stuff for them to do for you and don't worry about the name stamped on the back. The Facebook app has been really handy to have.
---
So that's about it for me here. As a final note, I may very well pick up the threads of Desecration again, for you ToB fans. I found that writing while unemployed was to put it mildly, damn near impossible. I don't think I could be one of those writers that goes off to vacation in the Bahamas and comes back with a full-fledged novel. I need some conflict and stress with which to fuel things. I'm hoping that being employed will give me just enough to get things back on track. I've got about thirty pages of Desecration to add, once I find a good stopping point to cut it at.
Here's the website if you'd like to take a look: RightWay GPS
The short-form is that we sell cheaper GPS devices that still have loads and loads of features compared to the big players in the market.
What I do is support. Namely, I answer the phones and fix whatever gets sent in. I've also got "servers" in my job description, but I've not yet had a real opportunity to make that particular skill-set shine due to the business having just opened a new warehouse. Our WAN links are not set up fully yet, and this is out of my hands for the time being.
Once said links become fully operational, I intend to unleash everything I've got in the arsenal. There's about a zillion tricks I picked up at DxR and in school that I've had plenty of time since 2003 to research, refine, and hone. There's another zillion tricks I learned in school that I've not yet had the materials to put into Real Life(tm) practice, but that time will come. Slowly, with much research and a proper set of design documents, but they will come. I intend to be Borg-like in this, if a bit friendlier about it.
My AS/400 training in particular has taught me to be methodical...but then again, anything from IBM tends to be methodical.---
Culturally, this is a huge change for me. Every last one of my previous jobs has been a mixed workforce: gender, age, race, and so on. At my current location, we are all-male and I am one year short of being the oldest employee on staff here at the warehouse. As a further note, and an unprejudiced one, I am the only "pure geek" as well.
I can't say this has lead to outright conflict, as I have gone through great efforts to make my geekery into a friendly, go-to sort of thing in a successful manner. But it's certainly led to the exchange of viewpoints, and it's been quite an interesting and rewarding task integrating those other viewpoints into my technical writing and interactions with my co-workers.
Put into mathematical form:
Former restaurant manager + strongman + 'sculpt' style bodybuilder + relentless tinker(me) == wide and very varied experience and platforms of discussion.
Our strongman, I should add, has scads of experience at managing the logistics of a large warehouse, and I've found him an invaluable source of wisdom and advice when it comes to managing the stock of GPS devices we routinely ship in and out of our current location. Given that I have never once provided support for a purely physical product in a previous tech job, I'm grateful to learn from him.
The interrogative process as applied to customers works in a notably different manner when said customer has a physical thing on hand to which they can refer. I've had to throw out almost every 'black box' explanation I had on hand, and I'm seriously considering manhandling my instructor at school into a long lunch where we discuss this very thing.
Overall, this has been a very instructive and interesting change in my life. Being paid for it is a bonus.
---
Everything else is going pretty well! Mrs. Bug is trooping along, no further intrusions by those pesky cancer cells. She and I are currently focusing on getting the second mortgage knocked out and then getting some grading work done on the land that surrounds the house. We've had some basement seepage problems that, due to us being located on a large hill, would be best fixed with the 'nuclear' option of a backhoe.
I've done a bit of work redirecting our drainage, but there's only so much I can do without hydraulic equipment. Analysis and study have shown us that to do the job right we'd have to get the deck re-done as well as major portion of the driveway, so we are saving up for that. This is the kind of thing where it pays to study it carefully, call in professionals with heavy equipment, give them the plan, and stand the hell back. Expensive, but worth it in the long run.
As a side note, we've apparently lived in Minnesota long enough to have mostly or fully adapted to the climate. Our last trip to mid-state Illinois revealed to us that we could no longer tolerate 105-degree heat-indices when it's 95% humid out. On the other hand, we're good down to -25 Fahrenheit, -40 with some extra bundling and a healthy respect for the wind.
Our cats are, of course, still pretty dumb. We've come to the conclusion that Buster is actually brain-damaged through some event in his youth before Mrs. Bug became his keeper. Rufus is still a feet-loving pervert-cat as well. But since both of them love to come and warm us up in the winter and do a great job of lowering our blood-pressure every day after work, we're pretty sure we're going to keep them around.
My multiplayer gaming has dropped off considerably since becoming employed. Even my beloved City of Heroes has had to take a back seat to a proper sleep-schedule.
However, I've recently picked up an iPod Touch (second generation) as has Mrs. Bug, and these devices have proven to be a real boon. They are essentially very small Macs with full computer functionality, and finding ways to integrate them into our lives has proven a surprising and rewarding task. What I've found most interesting about them is that despite being Macs in all but name, the devices are pretty much platform-neutral. You find stuff for them to do for you and don't worry about the name stamped on the back. The Facebook app has been really handy to have.
---
So that's about it for me here. As a final note, I may very well pick up the threads of Desecration again, for you ToB fans. I found that writing while unemployed was to put it mildly, damn near impossible. I don't think I could be one of those writers that goes off to vacation in the Bahamas and comes back with a full-fledged novel. I need some conflict and stress with which to fuel things. I'm hoping that being employed will give me just enough to get things back on track. I've got about thirty pages of Desecration to add, once I find a good stopping point to cut it at.
