I hope I don't disappoint.
Right out of high school a landed a car mechanics job at our local Sears Service Center. I became their front end specialist with Baer alignment as my specialty. I know why they gave it to me. Try getting under a car that has just come in from a snow storm for a front end alignment or brake job. The slush and salt you get to sit in makes the rest of the day a real joy. After that I fell into TV and Appliance retail sales due to a motorcycle injury. Hehehe...another story.
I worked from a part time deliverer to store manager over a few years. That was about a 60 + hour a week job and life as I knew it. (I had 3 kids during that time. I know because my wife showed me pictures.)
I was lured away from appliance sales when a friend started his own business and wanted to merge his manufacturing/inventory control/wholesale distribution management software with a front end retail function. He hired me to be his consultant to design, help write the code and market to the retail public. We incorporated bar coding and electronic cash drawers. That was 1990.
To supplement revenue we took on local jobs installing and supporting Novell networks. We built and marketed our own line of PC's. I was the first one to use black cases. However, finding a matching tube monitor at the time didn't happen so black cases still took a while to catch on.
We also landed jobs to install Windows 3.1 onto Novell networks so users could have a graphical interface while using their network. That was the first migration away from a text driven menu system for the user.
I went on my own after the business took off and worked locally for different businesses while honing my skills and learning everything I could about Windows networking and the internet. (Pretty much modems and bulletin boards at the time. I never thought the internet would catch on.)
I've been in charge of large corporations (John Deere I was a project manager for their compliance to Y2K software project) and medium size manufacturing shops as well as field technician for a few years. I set up complete networks and security systems and laid out wireless networks for mfg shop floors and other areas.
I've pretty much sunk my teeth into everything except programming. I've written little DOS batch files that were pretty cool at the time. (pre Windows)
Currently I'm the IT Specialist for a local credit union. They used to farm out most of their work but getting timely support was difficult at best so they went looking for a specialist to hire full time and I won the position. They were in the process of moving all of their computers at every branch from XP to Win 7 and were doing one a week in house since the VP of Member services and the VP of Lending were doing all in house requests.
I was doing four a day only because I didn't really have a server room or large enough office in my branch to lay out any more computers than that. I also didn't have any monitors to work with so monitor sharing made it interesting. I've opened two new branches and converted all the analog ATM's to IP based as well as set up wireless conference rooms for the board members monthly meetings, to name a few projects. I've won at Free Cell more ti.....ummm never mind.
I've been there just a year and a half but think I've become part of the family.
All said, this is a great job with a very good group of people. I hope to stay here for a while.
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