It was a Thursday, and I know how I and just about everyone I know thinks about Thursdays. So Happy It’s Thursday doesn’t even BEGIN to cover it… I pulled a repair order for a recurring customer to replace an LCD in a laptop and in the work order it stated that the unit had been dropped. As I said it was an organization that I had done repair work for previously and I got along really well with the IT guy on site, so I thought I would give him a little grief about dropping a laptop. I left the Geek Cave and went to pick up my parts for the day’s service calls and went downtown to the Sandra Day O’Connor Federal Courthouse. Let me tell you, going through security with miscellaneous computer components AND a rather full toolbag is an experience… Anyway, up to level two to the US Marshalls Service.; In the IT office I find the afore mentioned laptop and the US Marshall that the laptop was assigned to along with the IT guy. I asked them about the unit being dropped and the Marshall said that it had in fact actually been thrown. I stopped what I was doing, turned to the Marshall and said that I had to hear the story behind this. Well, evidently, he had apprehended someone that decided that he no longer wanted to be in custody and decided that he was going to run. The Marshall then decided to chuck the laptop at him. At least he was able to get the guy. At that point I completed the LCD replacement with a smile on my face.

A call came in one morning regarding setting up TCP/IP on a Compaq Alpha machine running VMS. As I was one of the two designated network guys there and the only one with any VMS experience it fell to me. I recommended to the client that she call around and see if there was anyone else in the Tucson area that could handle it as my VMS experience was a bit dated. About an hour or two later, she called back and away I went to the Calypso Microwave Observatory on Kitt Peak, evidently they wanted TCP/IP enabled so that the could telnet into the machine and then jump on their mainframe from there so they could remotely target the telescope from anywhere on the planet. I went in and asked for all the reference manuals they could find and went out with manuals in hand for a smoke break. I read the appropriate sections of the manuals and went back in and got to work. At the end of the day TCP/IP was enabled and they could telnet into the unit just like they wanted.

As a config technician there, I always like to pick my own orders and if I had my way they would have hair on them, and usually alot of it. For those not familiar with the term ‘hair on it’, it means that is was a very difficult order to configure. One of the people above my bench would always like to dump difficult express orders on me after the cutoff point for express orders to hit the bench. I always took them and generally they shipped the same day. One of the people on the bench across from me would frequently say ‘There goes Bill, charging in where angels fear to tread.’ Yeah, I went by Bill at the time but have since gone to prefer Will instead as it’s what my grampa Wiggans used to call me and every once in a while someone would call me Will and I decided I liked it more.

Later, I went to depot repair, which at the time was commonly referred to as Area 51 as we had all the good toys and really didn’t care for visitors. While there, I got my first experience with laptop repair. I was given a laptop that I was initially told was non working and told to disassemble it and see how it was put together. After I got it apart and spread all oveer my bench I was told it was in fact a working unit and if it wasn’t so again I was fired. It went back together and worked fine. I also did a bit of CRT monitor repair there and took alot of voltage as a result. That could in fact explain a great deal.

From Depot repair, I went back to the config floor and then moved to Tucson and back.