26K a year for rent? Holy shit, I’m never moving there.
And yes, the state trooper story would be interesting to hear.
The inflation is strong.
Each region or area have a different cost of living
I didn’t have to pay rent from January until July. From Jan - Feb I lived with my grandmother in MS. Feb - July is when I moved to Austin, then I sold stuff I owned or helped my roommate with his business for free rent. I started paying rent in July, after which I was able to survive on my own.
Also, you pay $2300/mo for rent? Fucking hell, that’s what I make in a month! My rent is $300/mo, and were I to live on my own I could get a decent apartment for $900/mo.
There’s really nothing to it. I just did a project where I had to replace scanner units on 54 handheld PCs. It was for the state highway patrol’s IT department, so there were always at least 5-6 troopers in the room. I made friends with a bunch of them and learned all kinds of handy tricks, like how to get military-spec portable SSDs.
Oh, here’s a good tip they told me for how to not get pulled over for speeding.
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Don’t speed.
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Hitting the brakes if you see a trooper, even if you weren’t speeding, makes them think you WERE speeding and they’ll pull you over. They’ll clock you as soon as they see your front end dip and will get you, even if you were only 1 mile over the limit.
Actually brake if you see a trooper. Just dont do it so hard that your car lurches forward. Im actually trying to get out of a ticket right now. Bitch gave me a speeding ticket while my car was leaking gas. you see im trying to get home because Im spreading flammable liquid all over town. The fuck you bout to give me a ticket for? It wasnt even that bad. 45 on a deserted backroad where the limit is 25.
Oh man I’ve been in that same exact situation… well, not the cop part, but the “horrible trail of gas leaking from my car and oh god I need to get home before I blow up shit shit fuck fuck”. Apparently some assnugget drilled holes into my gas tank, and I didn’t notice at the time because my tank was already empty the night before. 9 gallons of gas later, dude across from me goes “uh, I think you’re leaking”. And sure enough, shit’s pourin’ out like mad. I freak, get in my car, drive home, gas spilling EVERYWHERE all the way back… :wasted:
I’ll try to compress the story so as not to derail, but me and my father have a theory of what happened. Ever since this neighbor moved in, gas has been mysteriously vanishing from our tanks. One day, my car empties over night. I get a locking gas cap. A week later, gas is leaking from the fuel filter which had been previously repaired. We think he got pissed and tried to get gas from the fuel filter connection, couldnt get any out after breaking the hose repair, and it broke the filter entirely. So Im driving the store, im pulling in the parking lot and I hear liquid, sure enough its like a water fountain out of the bottom of my car. I didnt notice it when I left the house, but in the time that I left, to the time I got back, I lost a solid 5th of my gas tank on a less than one mile trip.
Cops get hungry when the quota is low im telling you.
Oh, I just realized I never told you guys about what happened to me in Laredo…
First off, Laredo is a big cartel town, so my client has a hard time getting techs out there. Well, I didn’t know that at the time so I went out there for 1.5x my normal daily rate. I thought it was good money for two easy jobs.
That was before I took one wrong right turn and ended up at the Mexican border instead of the day care center I was supposed to be installing a card reader at.
Now, here’s the deal about the border. If you’re in line, you stay in line. The proper procedure, even if you’re there by accident, is to wait in line until you get through, tell the guy you need to turn around, and then they’ll turn you around.
I didn’t know that, and I turned around. Within SECONDS (seriously, they came out of nowhere) I was being chased down by Border Patrol SUVs.
Remember, this is a big cartel town, and I’d just made them think I was a gun runner or horse jockey who was panicking by turning around.
I calmly got out of the car like they asked, explained why I was in Laredo and showed paperwork as to why I was there, and allowed them to search my entire car and personal effects to make sure I wasn’t smuggling guns or drugs. I barely missed a strip search because the dog sniffed me just a little longer than normal (I guess because I have cats).
It was hard enough explaining what I was doing in Texas at the border with I had a Mississippi license and plates, and why I had residue from fingerprinting powder on my car (from where my car had been broken into in November, and I really thought I’d gotten all of it off…). It was even harder explaining to them that the syringes in my field tool kit were full of silver oxide (thermal paste).
I thought my car was a mess after it got broken into, but these guys… man, my car was a mess.
Anyway, they let me go, and I was late for my first job so I had to reschedule for later in the day. The other job went swimmingly, and when I got to the afternoon (and originally first) job, the unit they’d sent me to install was defective, and the people I needed to call to get a replacement were gone for the day. After that I got stuck in traffic for two hours (the flow of which almost took me BACK to the border).
Finally, on the way out of town, there was a border patrol checkpoint. No problem, I’ve been through tons of these. The guy takes my license, looks at me, scans my license, looks at it, looks at me, looks at his computer, back at me, and then asks for a drug dog and tells me to pop my trunk.
“So what were you doing at the border?” he asks.
“Goddammit…” I muttered.
“What was that?”
“Work, sir. I was there for work. Here’s the paperwork, and here are the times I was at each location.”
The dog barked, and I swear to God I felt my asshole clench.
“Okay sir, have a nice day.”
I called my dispatcher the next day and blacklisted Laredo.
Wow. I’d never calculated the lump sum of my rent (I’m in NJ) till I saw your post. Sigh…
Sounds like the Baltimore–Washington Parkway going near Fort Meade. Don’t stop for anything near the 17 mile marker, not for a leak, or a flat or anything.
Restricted off ramp leading to the NSA HQ is that way, if you pull over a unmarked van will pull you over with angry men armed with guns.
Yeah, I had a butthole-clenchingly bad time going to a job interview on National Business Parkway, which is right outside of NSA. GPS led me on a road that was turned into a one-way street, which led me straight to NSA. I popped a U-turn, and within 25 feet of executing said U-turn, I had 3 Chevy Surburbans on me, with rather unhappy armed men inside.
I know that feeling. On the bright side, at least that GPS fuck-up didn’t lead to a shotgun being pointed at you. 
This is true. The armed men had the decency to just rest their firing hand on their holsters, instead of pointing their guns at my face.
You get paid for time on the road? Two hours stuck in traffic sucks, but if you get recompensation then I suppose it’s not so bad.
Typically no, but I often negotiate my rates to compensate for travel time because it’s time that I can’t spend doing other work.
Austin to Laredo, that’s a long distance. Maybe you should negotiate to compensate for time as well as gas and “car devaluation” or what not ($0.32 per mile?). I’m not sure if your customers’d be willing to pay for that, since it’d get expensive from their point of view.
Today I worked out of Corpus Christi, and worked with a guy who was the human form of All-Caps. Dude was in his 40s and seemed so hyper that he seemed like the child of Richard Simmons and Rip Torn.
His reaction to everything was “Nuh uhhhhhh!” “WHOOOOOOAAAAAAA.” or “WOOOOOOOOOW!!!”
Frankly, he was kind of awesome.
So I can now add “getting blown up” to the list of crazy shit that’s happened to me.
I was replacing various peripherals at a retail store today when a surge protector exploded in my face. I’m fine (I reacted pretty damn quickly it seems, dodging the blast by falling backwards as it happened) but my beard still smells like smoke. I’ve also worked for thirty hours straight, but that’s less crazy and more plain stupid.
Oh, check this… the explosion disintegrated the grounding lead on the thing that I was plugging into it:
The idea of what that thing could have done to my face if I was two or three inches closer rattled me pretty good.
Oddly enough, considering it shot crap everywhere, the surge protector itself looked pretty tame…
Jeez Duckie, be careful around your face man.
Donation drive for an old school Jason Vorhees goalie mask affixed with safety goggles?
I’m down for that. He might scare the little children though…