Journal entry, June 30th 2011

I can't believe another month has gone by! Only two months left of working in Raleigh. Only two months left to reach my goal of 150 installs. How far away am I from that, you ask? Pretty far. I'm at 79 right now-- but to be fair, and optimistic, I haven't even been working for 2 months yet, and I'm farther than half way there-- so... my chances are good. :) My day started out just fine. I woke up at noon today because I got to bed around 3 o clock last night. Got ready for the day, and headed for the office to pick up my equipment for the day. I'm feeling kinda sickly, so I brought my bottle of dayquil for the long haul today. I've been drinking shots of that all day. Matt wanted to go to Chipotle for lunch. I only ate breakfast an hour ago, but what the heck, I went anyway. I bought Matt lunch because I owe him for helping me out with jobs and such. There goes 15 bucks.. Tax write off!

Matt got a job shortly after and I decided to help him. Problem is, I didn't have a drill. See last night at one of my jobs, Brian, another tech that's been in the business for about four years, decided to use my drill as a hammer to pound in a 3/4 inch door contact magnet. On the last pound, my drill splits into two pieces; the piece where the battery connects too, and the rest of the drill. It is literally held together by two wires. -- We tried taping it up, then we tried glue. Then we tried tape AND glue. Nothing would work, so now I have to borrow my head tech, Corbin's drill. Problem now is that he is in Durham, about a half hour away from where I live, and about an hour away from Matt's job. I have a feeling today I'm going to be using alot of gas.

I drive a half hour and find Corbin in a gas station parking lot talking to some guy that's really high up in the company. I hope I was nice enough to him. Maybe he'll make ME head tech instead of Corbin. I got the drill and headed for Matt's job. I had to pass up a job that was offered to me, by the way. I was heading in the wrong direction and wouldn't be there for at least an hour, so I handed it to Brent. I'm sure he'll like that. I changed my mind half way to Matt's job. Matt's probably already almost done with it anyways, so I head to my favorite hang out spot in Garner instead. It's just a big shopping center with a really awesome McDonalds. This Micky D's features a 44 inch plasma with a fire place and comfy sofa chairs. As long as I buy food there, I can stay as long as I'd like. :) -- As soon as I get to this haven, I get my first job. Lucky for me, it's in Garner! It's a 3k, however, so that balances things out.

My customers name is Bell. She's a retired minister from New York and has a thick Brooklyn accent. I lucked out at her house because the phone jack and the power were right next to each other. This situation RARELY happens. I quickly suggested to put the panel right above that and I'm set! No crawl space runs for me. :) Matt showed up to help me out and we had everything running in a little less than 2 hours. I'm getting better and fishing wire through insulated walls now. I hardly spend any time on that. Got to know Bell pretty well, which is good cause if the customer leaves in a good mood, than that install will most likely NOT cancel.

After that house, Matt and I went back to the awesome McDonalds, bought food, watched CNN and fell asleep for an hour or so. Sometimes, downtime can be quite brutal. Good thing McDonalds has free Wi-fi too. What a great place to kill time.

Matt got a job so we both head out to that one. It's an interracial couple. Coool. The job is for a 5000 touch screen panel. Those are easy. No messing around with phone lines- it's all cellular. I've learned to work pretty quickly with Matt, so everything gets installed and ready to test in less than a half hour. When we send signals to the Vector call center, the only signal they receive is the fire panic. We send the signals again. Only fire goes through. Again we send signals, and again, and again. Only fire goes through. Matt is super frustrated at this point. I just went and chilled with the husband. He was playing Call of Duty Black Opps. I played the game with him and he kicked my trash, but at least I know what I'm doing. I'm not completely inexperienced now. :) After about an hour of video games, Matt decides to switch out the panel and da da da daaaa! Everything works. Stupid broken panels. We finish everything up and get ready to head home.

 Oh wait! I just got a job! So Matt and I head for that job. It's 10:30 at night at this point. The text says 316 Arnd St. ''Arnd' St??? What the F?' I'm sure that's what my gps would've said if it could say anything else besides 'recalculating'. I call the OA. She says, yeah, that's what I got, but I don't see it on google maps either. Here's the reps number. I call the rep. She is a new rep that doesn't sell often. I think they only keep her because she's hot. She has a track record for being sortof... well... dumb. lol. She tells me it's Rand St. It pulls up on the GPS. It's 35 minutes away! I'm not going to get to this job til like 11:10! I haul ass. I get to Rand St, and start looking for the house number. It's not there. there is no 316, but there is a 1316. I call the rep again. She told me it is indeed 316-- but it's Rand ROAD! -- Thanks for that tid bit Megan. I punch it in my gps and guess what?! It's 25 minutes away! ha ha-- I didn't get to this job til about 11:45 lol--

I was expecting a younger couple that stays up late and possibly drunk, but to my surprise, it was another older couple, retired and well into their 60's. At least it was only a 5000. Megan would've scheduled it out, but they were leaving for their vacation for a week in the morning, so it had to be tonight. We did everything, set up all the sensors, ran a 2-way test, sent signals, taught the customers and cleaned up all in about 45 minutes. I don't even remember their names... But the nice lady gave me some candy :) I like candy. It was about 2 o'clock by the time I got home. I used about 30 dollars worth of gas today, but I made 140, so it was worth it.