Back around this way for a minute
Hey. I'm back but only for a few minutes.
So things haven't slowed down at work at all. I think that really they've picked up. I have new roles and reponsibilities, but I haven't yet gotten rid of the old ones. So says my boss that I need to pass them off to someone else. I sure would if I had the time...
I won't bore you with all of the details of what have been going on at work. What I will say though is that I am afriad that sometime I may end up reminding my new boss that he needs to try and remember what it was like being a little pee-on like me. He's been my supervisor now for about 3 or 4 weeks and I don't mean any disrespect to him, but it's almost like we've lost him into the management matrix. And it is for that reason that I occasionally am overtaken by fear. Why? Because I don't like to play in the political BS. I don't like to always give the answers that everyone else likes to hear. I am my own person and I am not afraid of that. What I am afraid of though is becoming a corporate zombie. Well, I guess I'm not afraid of that either because if push came to shove I really would quit and go to work for Subway. So while I have that aspect of business sucking, the other end of things is looking a little better.
On the side, I have had a rather failed attempt at a small town gig. About a year ago our computer guy in town supposedly made a bunch of money selling a script of his to some movie producer so he left town. Unfortunate for him, people weren't all that sad to see him go. However, he was the computer guy. He had a shop up on Main Street. I don't know how much he charged, but in talking to people lately they weren't really all that pleased.
So to fill the void I decided that I'd go public. I made some flyers and a website and launched Custom Computer Works. My goal is to promote local business. I do that by trying to provide a needed service to the small town without charging the big city price. I call that "how to get repeat customers"...and it's working. For about 2 years I have had a deal worked out with my neighbor across the street where I work on his computers and he mows my lawn. It's a pretty good gig.
After I went public back in the late summer of '05 I only got 2 calls. One was a call from the real estate appraiser in town. She was moving offices and needed someone to come and move all of her network equipment over to her new office and then get it hooked back up. It only took me an hour so I charged her $40; 1/2 of what the phone company would have charged.
My 2nd customer was a lady who was having a problem I couldn't fix. Her phone service had not yet been hooked up so there was nothing I could do. I ended up giving her the visit on the house since I didn't really fix anything for her.
Well, as of late we decided to run a 3 week ad in the local paper getting the word out about my services. Up till then, I only had some flyers hanging at the library because it was free. Running the ad paid off. My first call was from an elderly woman who has had almost every ailment that you could think of, and who had even been declaired clinically dead once, who is still alive. She's funny though. I got a kick out of working with her. She had me over to fix her email. She apparently had McLeod service before and was being switched over to PeoplePC. I felt bad about charging an old lady so I let her just pay me $10 even though I spent 2 hours with her over 2 nights.
Tonight I head out of town just a little ways to visit some folks who are having some printer and antivirus problems. I am a little encouraged though because the lady that I talked to about this said that her and several other people were unhappy with the service that they got from their previous tech dudes and so they had been looking pretty hard for a good replacement. She promised me that if things went well that I would not only have repeat calls, but also a good number of references. I hope she was right. It would be great to be able to get a good customer base under my belt.
So right now I am typing this while I wait for her printer software to finish downloading.
I hope to be back sooner next time.
So things haven't slowed down at work at all. I think that really they've picked up. I have new roles and reponsibilities, but I haven't yet gotten rid of the old ones. So says my boss that I need to pass them off to someone else. I sure would if I had the time...
I won't bore you with all of the details of what have been going on at work. What I will say though is that I am afriad that sometime I may end up reminding my new boss that he needs to try and remember what it was like being a little pee-on like me. He's been my supervisor now for about 3 or 4 weeks and I don't mean any disrespect to him, but it's almost like we've lost him into the management matrix. And it is for that reason that I occasionally am overtaken by fear. Why? Because I don't like to play in the political BS. I don't like to always give the answers that everyone else likes to hear. I am my own person and I am not afraid of that. What I am afraid of though is becoming a corporate zombie. Well, I guess I'm not afraid of that either because if push came to shove I really would quit and go to work for Subway. So while I have that aspect of business sucking, the other end of things is looking a little better.
On the side, I have had a rather failed attempt at a small town gig. About a year ago our computer guy in town supposedly made a bunch of money selling a script of his to some movie producer so he left town. Unfortunate for him, people weren't all that sad to see him go. However, he was the computer guy. He had a shop up on Main Street. I don't know how much he charged, but in talking to people lately they weren't really all that pleased.
So to fill the void I decided that I'd go public. I made some flyers and a website and launched Custom Computer Works. My goal is to promote local business. I do that by trying to provide a needed service to the small town without charging the big city price. I call that "how to get repeat customers"...and it's working. For about 2 years I have had a deal worked out with my neighbor across the street where I work on his computers and he mows my lawn. It's a pretty good gig.
After I went public back in the late summer of '05 I only got 2 calls. One was a call from the real estate appraiser in town. She was moving offices and needed someone to come and move all of her network equipment over to her new office and then get it hooked back up. It only took me an hour so I charged her $40; 1/2 of what the phone company would have charged.
My 2nd customer was a lady who was having a problem I couldn't fix. Her phone service had not yet been hooked up so there was nothing I could do. I ended up giving her the visit on the house since I didn't really fix anything for her.
Well, as of late we decided to run a 3 week ad in the local paper getting the word out about my services. Up till then, I only had some flyers hanging at the library because it was free. Running the ad paid off. My first call was from an elderly woman who has had almost every ailment that you could think of, and who had even been declaired clinically dead once, who is still alive. She's funny though. I got a kick out of working with her. She had me over to fix her email. She apparently had McLeod service before and was being switched over to PeoplePC. I felt bad about charging an old lady so I let her just pay me $10 even though I spent 2 hours with her over 2 nights.
Tonight I head out of town just a little ways to visit some folks who are having some printer and antivirus problems. I am a little encouraged though because the lady that I talked to about this said that her and several other people were unhappy with the service that they got from their previous tech dudes and so they had been looking pretty hard for a good replacement. She promised me that if things went well that I would not only have repeat calls, but also a good number of references. I hope she was right. It would be great to be able to get a good customer base under my belt.
So right now I am typing this while I wait for her printer software to finish downloading.
I hope to be back sooner next time.
posted by The Raging Paradoxidation at
16:36
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