The Misadventures of a Traveling Computer Repairman

General Discussion
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Finished up my first ever team project for IT yesterday. was part of a 170 person move for Safeway Corporate who apparently has a fuck-load of offices in the area. Day 1 was disconnect/reconnect and documentation, only had to bag and tag monitors, cpu’s, docking stations and any other peripheral they might have left out on their desk (despite being told not to)… Had a team leader busting my balls so hard over neat cable management and properly setting shit up at the temp desks… only to come back on day 2 as one of the people doing post-move support to see that just about every single desk that i had spent so long making neat and using cable management etc. had been completely disorganized by the worker the second they sat down.

also as a note my jaw nearly hit the floor while i was sitting around at lunch on the first day talking to my team leader and another person, I started to talk about some of my previous positions and the types of batch scripts we were using… the team leader told me he didn’t know how to do it. wut? actually it was like 50% of the team that didn’t know dick about scripting, making me start to realize just how valuable my knowledge is.

Post-move support is like the greatest day of work ever, i show up on site at 8am and go sit down in a room to wait while employees trickle in to fix any problems… got paid a hundred bucks to sit on my ass most of the time and swap out a single monitor, single patch cable, single phone headset and 1 mouse error (peripheral usb hub had stopped working).

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Post-move support days are great, although I miss having a tablet for them because I can look like I’m doing something on a tablet (when I’m really reading a book) but actually reading a physical book makes me look lazy and I’ll start to get “why are we paying him?” Looks.

Best advice for always looking important: Use a clipboard. You always look important holding a clipboard.

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They say you can walk anywhere in NASA as long as you have a badge, a clipboard, and a hard hat.

I checked out the awesome custom modified Blackhawk at NASA Ames by doing this. I could probably get to the hanger for the Google planes if I wanted.

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So lately I’ve been doing 3-5 work orders a day. Been pretty fucking exhausted. Pretty cut and dry work, but it’s been keeping the bills paid.

I did have a good moment yesterday. I was working at another elementary school and a little boy ran up to me and said “Hey mister! Why are you wearing an eye patch?”

“You know how your mom always tells you to not run with scissors?”

“Uh huh…”

“Well I did it anyway.”

Another cute kid moment took place today as I was doing some maintenance on a grocery store register. An adorable little Asian girl ran up to me and excitedly said “HEY!!!” I laughed and returned her greeting, and she ran back to her mom and said “Momma! I talked to the pirate man!”

Kids do have their moments sometimes.

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From that second story, it sounds like kids calling you a pirate doesnt bother you as much anymore?

I remember that first story awhile ago with the elementary school, you didnt seem very pleased with that title lol.

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It still makes me very self-conscious, but I’ve learned to diffuse the sting a bit. When I have to go to a school, I make a bet with the staff I’m training to see how long it takes for the pirate questions to come out. If I’m actively waiting for it and making it an amusing situation, it’s a lot more tolerable.

It also didn’t hurt that the little girl was absolutely precious. She was so excited to talk to me, and she bounced back to her mom and was just overjoyed that it happened. What can I say? It was infectious.

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Is it okay to call you Snake?

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Dont you mean Big Boss? Thats the one with the eyepatch. Unless you want to get technical and say you were referring to Punished Snake.

Also im in college for Computer Maintenance and Networking right now. Currently in a class for Computer Repair and Diagnostics. In a year or so I will probably have stories to contribute to this thread. Right now Im only 4-5 weeks into classes.

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A lot of people actually call me Big Boss. The only reason why I don’t go by it now is because I can’t trademark it.

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Today I got a phone call while on-site from someone telling me I had to go visit a department store I serviced to get the configuration pages for a printer that I installed. Walk in, print two pages, and then walk out. Simple.

What actually happened was that I got cornered by some asshole employee in the back office who accused me of being a hacker and stealing sensitive store information. Right, like I’m going to steal information using the IP address off of a fucking printer. Said asshole wouldn’t let me leave until he made a copy of my driver’s license and got my contractor ID from my client.

Part of me actually wondered for a moment if he wasn’t profiling me because of the eye patch.

To make matters worse, it was raining buckets by the time I got out of the store, making this the second Friday in a row where I’ve closed a work week by being rained on.

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Maybe it’s because I been playing so much GTA lately, but I woulda treated that motherfucker like I was that one Bus Driver in Cleveland. Shoryuken to the chin canceled into a command grab out the damn door.

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[sarcasm]There’s plenty of proprietary technology and information pertaining of national interest in a department store secretly stashed in printers.[/sarcasm]

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pictures of his butt in the queue…

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Metal printer : Solid Butt.

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Duck? DUCK??? DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!

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http://theworstpageintheuniverse.com/images/irate_kick1.jpg

Duckie you should sport this shirt. LOL

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I found the shirt, but damn… it’s sold out in M and L.

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Earlier today I was trying to find an address where I was supposed to meet someone to service their laptop. They lived on a rural road in the Hill Country, which is basically a part of Texas populated by several farms and ranches.

Needless to say, GPS and Google Maps both proved useless, meaning I spent around two hours wandering around when my GPS wasn’t leading me into federally-reserved land or private property (which had a surprising lack of signage).

This happened two times. The first time I was met by a friendly rancher (who looked a lot like Uncle Jesse from the Dukes of Hazzard) who helped me turn around and get back to the main road.

The second time I was met by a man in a red truck. I didn’t get to see him very well. What I did see though, was his double-barreled shotgun. The man told me very clearly to “get the fuck off” his land.

Now, I’m very proud to say that I didn’t piss myself. I remained perfectly calm, cracking a joke (“I’m sorry sir, is it the eye patch?” which was met by the click of a hammer) as I calmly got back in my car and left.

I drove twenty miles in silence to the nearest town (where I finally had decent phone coverage) and spoke with one of my contacts in dispatch, who told me I was officially having a worse day than hers. Over the course of a few more hours I eventually got sent back home with pay.

Oh and yes, this WAS the same client from the [very first post](The Misadventures of a Traveling Computer Repairman

Yes, I’ve told my dispatchers that I’m never servicing calls for that client again.

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This is how you should have handled it: