Hard financial times

Seems these days everywhere you turn people are talking about the hard times, the lack of jobs and the rush to move to better job markets. I am sure with all the people that are working in the tech industry with just a degree and mid level skills there is some problem to discuss. With provable experience, however, there should be no end of work for the computer tech. With hard times falling on businesses there is less and less new installation and more need to support legacy systems. Those of us that have been in the industry for more than just a few years are seeing service and support jobs open up all over. People are trying to keep all their old systems running longer and for the experienced tech that is gold.

I have started leaving my phone off when I need an actual day off. With the backlog of work that happens rarely. It seems that these times are separating those with real skills from those with just a piece of paper saying they had a class. I am not knocking a degree. As a matter of fact I think that the right degree is a shining example of your motivation and skill. That is why I am an alumni of Western Governer’s University where real certifiable skills are the benchmark for your grade.

Getting ready for the big training session

I thought this would be a good start to the blog. Here you might just get a flavor of what my day is like now. I have been for the last five years working as the System Administrator for a hotel group in Arkansas. I know I could make three times more money living anywhere else but I don’t want to give up the beautiful quiet life here in the Ozark Mountains and the cost of living is pretty good. Anyway, back to the day I am having. We have a training seminar coming up the 10th-12th of December on a piece of software we use here at the hotels. After doing this job longer than our newest sales rep has been alive I am drawing diagrams today of how many tables we can get in each office to see where we will set up.  A long time ago I though this sort of job would involve large technical conundrums and spending my day with a soldering gun and motherboard. (Yes I am from the Unix/Linux world and an era when a hacker was someone who took stuff apart to see how it worked instead of a malicious vandal.) Along with all this I think yesterday’s “emergency” calls let you know a lot about my day. At the restaurant in one of our hotels they use a POS with a touch screen. My emergency call was from the manager telling me that he just found out that for “several days” the touch screen had not been working and the computer in the wait station just had a blank screen. It was a busy Sunday brunch so I rushed to the site and promptly plugged the touch screen back in and turned the computer on in the wait station. Yes that was all that was wrong. They had moved the POS computer to plug in a lamp and pulled out the usb connection for the screen and the waitress’ hadn’t realized that a computer works much better if you turn it on first. Well enough rand for today I have to go measure for tables.