Marshall J. Ellis

Someone at work last week asked me what I did before this, and wondered why in the world I was there.

“There,” since I haven’t actually posted a resume or work history here yet, is FedEx Ground, as a lowly package handler. I say “lowly” in part tongue in cheek, and in part with dismay at how some might view it, including, in my experience, within corporate HQ. I have done most of the non-management jobs on the inbound sort other than loading vans, probably the most common task. While it’s all very physical, and that is oddly appealing, it also helps not to be brainless. Having any degree of OCD tendencies doesn’t hurt, either. I work the wee hours, where inbound packages get sorted and sent on their way to final destinations. The schedule is part of the reason I landed there in the first place.

When my full time manager was leaving to change jobs almost a year ago, I was the logical candidate to replace him, to the point of being actively groomed for it. Most of the crew were enthusiastic about my having that position, which was part of why I applied, despite some trepidation, and ultimately not being sure I’d have accepted it if offered. At the time, my wife would not have been willing to change her full time career path, and I assumed the pay would not be sufficient for babysitting, etc. and so forth. That was fine, because it was probably the worst interview experience I have ever had. I understand more about the type of interview questions and the motivation for them, but you might have thought I was applying for head of the terminal – or the entire division – not the sort.

It was not the first offputting interview experience I’ve had since I went on the job market some four years ago. After I left the room at that interview, the HR person who had participated in the process laughed before I was out of earshot. Almost before the door latched. At a previous interview, with an IT consulting/services firm in Boston, the owner expressed amusement that my former business had relied primarily on one client and gone out of business when it was, as I like to say, raining soup; business there for the asking, as much as one could want. Come to think of it, the other person involved in interviewing me for the full time job at FedEx disparaged my business failure as well. So much for building from failure, it being a useful learning experience, or whatever they always tout to make you feel good about it.

The first of not very many interviews I’ve had in all this time was another that left me dismayed. Nobody laughed. Nobody disparaged my business closure with amusement. However, it was for what I thought of as an absurdly easy temp job supporting new software during a rollout period, and a former colleague was a programmer there and had referred me. I didn’t get it. I don’t think it was even close. Not that I said or did anything to blow anyone away, but in that case I wouldn’t expect to have had to. That was on the heels of not getting interviews at all, of course, but my past experience had been that if I could get an interview, I could get hired. Way past, since the last application of it had been fourteen years previous, but hey. This interview and the one for the consulting firm had in common the generalist problem, to some degree. The consulting guy was looking for a focus, a way he could plug me in for a specific type of work – preferably not in an area he already had covered. I had no preference or strong focus or obviously specific background that I could offer him. The temp interview was support and generalist oriented, on some level, but in the end they were putting out feelers for someone who could migrate to programming, and do so in the relevant languages. Specific.

In fairness, I stopped looking to speak of almost as soon as I began. Each failed interview reinforces the “giving up” element of that. The home dynamic is such that I have been the child care parent, rendering a traditional search or placement potentially challenging, and causing even more atrophy than years of working mainly with increasingly obsolete technology did. The part time job is a surprising energy drain – note the wee hours, physicality and non-brainlessness again – and has been almost enough to scrape by in an economy where I could as easily have no income at all. I fell in love with the operational/logistics elements of FedEx, and my camaraderie with and respect for the people there is one of the highest I’ve ever experienced.

Ultimately, the interview failures have been part of why I haven’t looked. I feel as if it’s pointless. Recently I had the opportunity to apply for a part time management position on my shift at FedEx, and there was a straight line between the experience last year and my decision not to, compounded by it being insufficient to improve things enough to make up for the babysitting challenge. It’s closer than you might expect, and suggests that perhaps the full time version of the job pays better than I’d thought. Since my wife is now willing to swap with me, moving to part time if I get something that pays enough and has predictable hours, in theory a part time job at a high enough rate would cover it. Though we’re so far on the edge that I need to more than replace her income (more accurately, replace her income plus my income less what her reduced income would be), it would only take $20 an hour on a 25 hour week for me to do that, if she dropped to a 25 hour week (fewer would be preferable). Considering that if I were working “in my field” a full time job would, or did, pay from 30-something k if on the cheap to 80k or beyond, depending, in theory this should be a non-issue.

But the impetus for this post was not to bemoan my interview failures or talk dollars and cents. The reason I brought up my current employment in the first place was to set the context in which someone asked me last week what I’d done for work before and what in the world I was doing there. Awkward to answer in brief, or even at all. He seemed to believe that it’s raining soup in the realm of IT-related jobs, with many going begging so what am I waiting for.

I didn’t have time to explain the family dynamics that are deeply rooted in how things stand. Or the business history and dynamics. I had minimal time to point out skills atrophy. It sounds great that I ran all IT for a 50-person law firm, including networking, Exchange Server, SQL Server, maintaining and writing software… But the network was NT4, and it took setting myself up to be replaced by another vendor in order to get them to upgrade long after they ought have. Yeah, I knew that was how it was going to go down, so I should have been more prepared, even job hunted sooner and forced the issue from a position of strength. Who knew that I would be a harbinger of economic doom, closing shop and being out of work. Perhaps there are too many excuses. This site was supposed to be about pulling myself back on my feet, out of the funk, out of the skills hole. In addition to discussing the whole issue of job hunting, self-reinvention, and self-promotion.

It made me think. Hey, it led me to post this, clearly the result of some of that thinking. It reminded me what I am supposed to be working on. Though in my stubborn manner, I have issues to tend to before I tend to others – including the skills building – and refusing to move to one until the other is done is my apparently ineffectual idea of incentive. Or self-flagellation, as the case may be.

My inquisitor seemed especially impressed with my having written software, but… VB6 and earlier? Just a tad out of date, even if they remain good products potentially capable of doing useful things, and even if the leap to .NET may not be that bad. And even though I have dabbled slightly in certain other or newer things. Dabbling isn’t coding, and my coding as such was minimal. I was surrounded by people far more prodigal than I was, so it was not the thing I pursued avidly. Perhaps I should have, considering how much I always seemed to enjoy it. But then, I enjoyed the design/UI aspect, and working with people to determine their needs. Not that they ever fully understand their needs until what they asked for explicitly is deployed and not quite what they were expecting… merely what they wanted. I digress. There’s a reason that a lot of the focus in what job searching I did was on project management. Big interest of mine.

So why am I a lowly if somewhat senior package handler? There’s some psychology and odd history and inertia involved. There are the dynamics that make change challenging. There’s even a degree of financial challenge to leveraging up to having less challenge. I would have to land something, for enough pay, with stable, predictable hours, followed by a change of spousal work and/or babysitting to make it happen. There’s fear. Despite my previous mention of no more fear, it’s never completely escapable. Compared to what I have been through, I should have nothing to fear. There’s not really anything worse that can happen to me versus what I’ve encountered in recent years. For that matter, even the ridicule or failure of some interviews should be as bad as that can possibly get. There should be no shame in closing a business that is untenable and/or unwanted. There should be no shame in spending time taking care of the family hands-on more and bringing home the dough less. Going to work tends to be a relief, really. There should be no shame in having an extensive, deep, blows most people away tech background that just happens to need a bit of updating to get fully current. And who is ever fully current anyway, given that we each tend to have some focus or another to the exclusion of other things? That famously happens in programming. I have routinely helped people with or fixed things completely unfamiliar to me.

But seriously… there is unmet demand for jobs in tech? I have some trouble buying that, without investigating firsthand. Is that because they won’t hire anyone who has been out of relevant work more than three months, putting most of us out of the market? Or because some of us aren’t getting any younger and the youngsters everyone prefers to hire aren’t interested in that field of work anymore? I dunno…

Being broke and in some ways behind on technical skills go together unhelpfully. Ideally I’d play with the latest stuff, branch out, do a better job of setting up a network and tools at home, and be able to tout what I’d been learning and doing on my own if an interview called for it. I’ve used Linux more than once to recover files from a dying hard drive or for testing, but I have never run a dedicated Linux machine for long, or networked around it, or learned it in depth. Not that this is anything new. Once on a whim I bought a copy of the ill-fated Corel Linux with WordPerfect, but the only machine I felt free to install it on in my old office was a bit too old or unusual for it to support the hardware. Or maybe it was the software package in question. Don’t remember if that was the machine on which I later installed Red Hat. At least Linux distributions are generally free.

Anyway, my primary computer is a single core 3.2 GHz, built just as my economy was crashing as a precursor to the overall economy crashing, out of parts accumulated over the course of more than a year. It has Vista Ultimate. Yeah, I know, though haven’t had much to complain about. My secondary machine was a 1 GHz with Windows 2000. I say “was” because after about ten years I put it aside when the primary hard drive failed. I have not troubleshot it extensively, or tried, for instance, to replace the drive, because that costs money and the rest of the machine is old. I’d still like some of the files off of it, but more than that, I’d like the original drive, as was, with the installed base of software and utilities, as well as documents and data. I was unable to port the several years of e-mail to the Vista machine, and that would have left a gap anyway. For a long time, I continued to use that as my primary, while I surfed the web and played music on the new machine. And used it for backing up data, which helped save me from total loss. I did recently recover a nearly as old machine, a 1.7 GHz with XP Pro and way too little hard drive space, and that is now my secondary. It has some software the newer one lacks. It’s slow and lacks RAM, however, as does my wife’s computer, a 2.4 GHz with XP, which the kids also use. The kids have a P133 with Windows 95, beneficial as it will run the Magic School Bus CDs, but they’ve stopped using it and those, for the most part. There’s too much online. They need something better. She needs better or an upgrade. They both need something they’re not sharing. I need to do more to catch back up with where things are these days, not that it’s changed so much, and to learn new or solidify old things. I also have a room full of junk. Not all junk, but old computer carcasses and parts, mostly too “legacy” to be very useful. Unless you’re talking about DOS games, old software like Magic School Bus, taking someone who lacks my depth back in time to see some of what they missed, or if it ever came down to some computer being better than no computer. Mostly they take up space and present a disposal and “stuff management” problem. Even so, I see one of my items to do in getting back into the tech groove as going through all that. Test the hardware, see what machines work or can be made to work, see what data might need retention, see what might find a home elsewhere, etc.

In the meantime, my brother will be out for one of his twice a year visits, and is bringing me Still More Parts. But not old ones! I should be able to start resolving the computer needs, and again, get back into the groove somewhat. Assuming I ever truly left it. I find I geek out when I am looking at a problem with someone else’s computer, latching on tenaciously and feeling good about myself in a way that slinging package in the wee hours doesn’t quite match.

This post, disjointed though it may be, gets to the heart of the topic of this site. Rebooting myself. Getting skills restored and extended. Figuring out where I am going with that and what else it takes to get there. It’s not necessarily as simple as building and fixing computers, which is generally simple enough. At least for me. It’s picking up the networking skills, some newfangled coding skills, more OS knowledge. If I could go back in time, I might have pursued my fascination with project management avidly enough to have gotten somewhere with it. How do you go from being an unemployed, atrophied geek whose brush with management ended in perceived failure, to getting that kind of position and being a champ at it?

Based on some of my ill-fated interviewing for jobs I didn’t land, the above is a start. Do everything I can to learn and keep up. And if I find it doesn’t interest me so much after all? That might call for a cold reboot. A total reinvention.

Interesting domain name story that reminds me of my experience way back in 1997. Some of us had started XTreme Computing, and from the time we started talking about a web site to the time we went for hosting and a domain name, a matter of a few months, someone else grabbed the obvious xtremecomputing.com. That had the benefit of being a precise match of company name, while having the demerit of being lengthy. The former outweighed the latter, in my opinion, though my advice when starting from the domain name is go as short and memorable as possible. Or spellable, really, which is an element of memorable. We ended up with xtremecomp.com, which worked out but was not the same. It was not until later I thought of xtremeware.com, as an afterthought for software branding.

On Sunday the 3rd I turned 50, same day my mother turned 76. The age doesn’t bother me in the least, oddly enough. I’m not depressed about it or anything, nor was I at 49. Perhaps my worst was turning 29, in the face of 30 coming at me. At 40 it was there, but less so. Now? Shrug.

Having kids made it wonderfully fun! They are so adorable. My six year old gave her mother specific, detailed instructions what to get me. This was an unexpected thing, since the plan was not to bother, given, you know, finances, and that the adults don’t care that much. No ulterior motives at all… Pens, including colored pens, and a new ream of paper. Because I “could never find a pen” because she had borrowed all of mine, and because they had used most of my paper. Mom did a great job shopping, and added a mug to hold the pens like a bouquet. I put them on a very high shelf to deter borrowing.

I made my own cake, because I am the cook, and I’ve modified in my head the cake recipe enough that Mom might not manage it by following the original on paper. I made the frosting and finally managed to perfect it. That’s one of Mom’s specialties, but I’ve had practice now. The trick is not to follow any recipe, just to know what goes into it and how it should come out and what will take it in that direction based on how it looks and feels along the way. Made one layer and cupcakes, by request. I applied frosting. The rest of the crew decorated. Very Jackson Pollock, but cool.

That I am not feeling down doesn’t mean I have no regrets or wishes that things might be different, or headed upward faster. Yet… things have been moving so quickly it got ahead of this rebooting blog and personal landing site. I restarted writing in earnest under my blog alias, and intend to keep at it, though there was a blow to the prospects for generating side income from it, and started exploring a book idea, probably best done under a pen name.

I “reopened” Welcome to Help, which I’d never taken down, just hung a virtual closed sign on. It still needs updating. Possibly even a complete rethink, since I have broader possibilities the name and domain might work for than simply computer-related support services. That had been my overlapping, me-only successor business to XTreme Computing. For minimal, not actually generating work and revenue values of business. Which is a whole other post, looking at the marketing and the resistance and factors, business, economic and personal, involved in the whole thing and whether it can work. Hey, anything is something, at this point. Since I am daycare, I continue to have the caveat, but I accept it now, of working around when I can get out of the house to do work, lack of space to work in or a place to have customers come personally. It’s just that saying “I am not doing this anymore” is less conducive to attracting any work at all than is “hey look, I am available for this type of work.”

Part of the impetus was freebie work on a dead laptop, which proved to need the hard drive replaced, but from which I was able to recover files first. Part of it was work on my own computers, albeit not completed yet. The thing is, how can I reject doing something that’s so much fun?

Yes, fun!

Seriously.

It’s not worth rejecting it because I can’t get enough of it, or am not as readily available as I’d like, or can’t charge as much as I’d like, or even because I lack the self-confidence to charge what I should. It’s not worth rejecting because to my perception my skills are old and decrepit. Especially since I can still run circles around most people, the parts I do bst haven’t changed, and I am almost intuitive about it. If you can lay proverbial hands on the machine and diagnose it, well… if you ask me, current knowledge and skills help too, but that puts me ahead of people with no depth – which may be the source of the “intuition” – or experience, but a fistful of freshly minted certifications for which they crammed and paid dearly. But I digress.

If nothing else, any bits of work I can do help counter my lack of currency, in both senses, are a good thing. It also gives me something current and relevant besides a part-time job to put on my resume, at the risk of being seen as one of those people who “freelances” to look like they’re not truly unemployed. Then again, I more or less gave up looking so long ago, and seem to be so drawn to self-employment, if not proper entrepreneurialism, I may as well tout myself as being in business. The odd thing is that the name of the business isn’t really more than a domain name and something that sounded good. There’s no DBA or bank account in that name. It’s just me.

All in all, I am feeling more ambitious and positive. Part of this is medical. I had such bad experiences with beta blockers for my blood pressure, I went off of them, then recently back on, but different ones. It’s like night and day. Taking the beta blocker for a week was enough to send me into a fit of depression like flipping a switch. And mood aside, it makes me unable to think straight, remember things, and downright saps most of my ambition. I’d known that, told my doctor that years ago, then somehow got on a beta blocker without paying attention to it being one. Stupid.

I’m like a whole different person! Especially before the doctor saw the need to increase the doses at my last visit, but that’s more a matter of questionable physical than mental reaction.

Some of that probably has nothing to do with drugs, either. I seem to be feeling my age, walking around sore all the time. Not just my back. Sleep seems to help, which is hard, between the kids and the hours at the part time job. I can get away with, say, six hours regularly, but not with four. Still, this got worse after starting the new combination and doses of hypertension meds, making me suspicious. Hey, the more I can make elsewhere, the less I have to rely on a brutally physical job that leaves me sore, even if other factors conspire to make the soreness worse.

What I really need to do is make all I can without leaving the house and with the ability to field interruptions. That sounds a lot like writing, more than anything. We’ll see.

As for the topic of this blog, rebooting my life, it hasn’t run away from me entirely. I still need and wonder how to catch up technologically. Some of that is about the money, too, being able to buy more current “toys” so I have had experience with what others are using and might want supported. It’s a catch-22. More on that sometime, now and then…

Update:

Forgot I’d already posted about the business! Oh well.

Despite high hopes for the business idea that became Welcome to Help, not so much a DBA as a site name to associate with my providing support services personally, it didn’t take off and for various reasons I was discouraged and fell out of doing tech work at all.

I never took that site down, but didn’t expect to use it for the original purpose again. Had some ideas, like setting up a more generalized directory of service people, perhaps ones very small or home-based, or ones specializing in serving home-based businesses, freelancers or work at home folks. Never pursued that.

In short, I’m back. And the “test” part is that this is a test of posting using BlogDesk.

Not trying to go all gangbusters. Not unencumbered by family obligations. Not able to provide every service someone out there might possibly want. But available, giving it another try, maybe a better one, perhaps helped by lower expectations. The support services business is not what it once was, after all, exacerbated by the economy not being what it once was.

So. I’ll update this place, if not all at once, maybe even post here regularly, maybe get all social media on you. I’ll call it “my current job” on LinkedIn, which I never did even when it theoretically was. If I get a job or two a month and it helps me out, great. If I do better, woohoo! I still have to work around childcare and a part time job. The latter doesn’t impinge much on availability for services like this. The former does. I won’t be doing support as an emergency go to client site service. I just can’t. Not ordinarily. I’ve been signed up with OnForce for a long time, but have done no work through them since 2008. Part of the reason why is the need to see when a work request is timed, then plan child care, then accept it, by which time someone more flexible already has. That’s when the work is close enough, pays enough for the nature and distance involved (usually it does, not trying to sound down on anyone here), and is within my ability to do.

I don’t have a business office, storefront, or place in my residence that lends itself to having people bring their computers to me. It can even be tricky to make the space to work on machines at home, though with this new focus, I’ll be rearranging with an eye to that. With the price of gas, I may need to shrink my previously posted availability map. Though that still seems reasonable to me, at a quick review.

Will that change?

We’ll see. We’ve talked of how to make more room in this place, and one would be for me to do my computer work, this and otherwise, largely in a separate space. That could easily get expensive, and for now we’re lucky if I’m talking non-zero revenue here. I plan to put revenue mainly into business and things that help get me back on track such that it’s more viable. I’d not consider it necessary to have a storefront, or very much space. It would be easier if it were very close, even walking distance. One way or another I’d need internet access. It would need room enough so kids could hang there while I worked. We’ll see. There’s enough competition around, including someone I’d recommend, I’d hesitate to jump right into a serious storefront operation, and I have no interest in selling computers or parts.

What do I have in mind, then? I seem to be exceptional at cleaning up malware, and pretty good at speeding up systems and maintaining old machines in the face of entropy. In this economy, even as low as costs can be for new systems, there has to be a certain demand for keeping things going, as long as it’s reasonable. With no traditional overhead, I can be more reasonable than otherwise. I love helping people figure out how to use what they have… the learning aspect. Thus my attempts in the past to tie in the concept of digital coaching. I enjoy setting things up and helping people get comfortable with what they have.

It’ll shake out in those directions, presumably. Worst case, it’s a low risk way of putting myself out here and maybe making something I would not otherwise make. Even if all of it goes back into getting myself back up to date on technology.