Roughly 3ish hours south of El Paso - a little SW of Marfa. And yeah, it's pretty dry overall, though this is monsoon season - The second evening last year, there was a thunder/hail storm which seriously screwed up the roads between the ranch house and the site.
-Formerly Stabulator
The temp gig that just ended was, by far, the most money I've ever made for the least effort I've ever expended. It'll be hard to top that.
I will probably never find career fulfillment after living the dream at SRT. What can I say? I peaked early. Nothing I'll ever do will ever feel important again. I've accepted that. The best I can hope for is to make enough money for a JNC collection at a job with very little consequence or stress.
I'm feeling pretty Zen today, considering I'm technically unemployed now. Maybe it's exhausted delirium. Either way, I'm gonna run with it.
Tell 'em Hi at The Ole Crystal, Josh... Wish you weren't 9 hours away.Alpine is magic.
I've been meaning to do an update in this thread and I can't remember exactly where I left off. I was working for a subcontractor at one of the three nuclear plants in Ontario, Darlington. Its about 3 hours from where I live so I'd go to work during the week, stay down there and then come back home on the weekends. I was doing 4, 10hr days each week and every weekend was a long weekend. The contract was supposed to be 2-6 months so my wife was okay with me leaving her and our then 6-week-old foster baby at home. The 2-6 month gig turned into 17 months of being on the road. The money was pretty good and people kept telling me that I'd eventually get the chance to transfer to Bruce Power (the plant that's than an hour away from me) so I kept working and trying to get transferred. Towards the end of that gig things were getting rough, I was on a crappy afternoon/evening shift (5:30pm to 3:30am) and my wife was struggling at home with an 18 month old. Work started finishing up at Darlington for the contractor and they kept the people they wanted to keep and gave the rest of us lay-offs. I knew it was going to happen but I thought I had a bit more time at that site before they let me go. That was around the middle of October of last year. Honestly I found it really hard not to take the lay-off personally because it wasn't like they let everyone go. They kept some and cut others. That layoff ended up being a good thing though.
It took less than 3 days for me to find another job with a pretty big private electrical contractor that was building a new grocery store about 25 minutes from home. Compared to the 3 hour commute I'd had before this was pretty much perfect. I took a bit of a pay cut but the trade off was that I was home every night and I could now help out with taking care of our son. I worked on that jobsite until after Christmas when I had to go to trade-school for my first of 3 blocks of in-class training. I think its pretty much standard no matter where you do your apprenticeship that you have mandatory schooling. I did my school during January and February which meant I was out of the freezing cold and in a nice warm classroom. I was also able to qualify for employment insurance so I was basically getting paid to do my schooling. I finished up school at the end of February and the contractor I'd been doing the grocery store job for had more work for me. I was happy that they had work for me and thought that everything would be okay.
I worked for them for exactly 2 weeks before they rather unceremoniously laid me off. There was one week of work left at the grocery store job and then I went to a new jobsite for a week. I'm not sure if the foreman there just didn't like me or if it had something to do with them having to pay me more since I'd progressed from 2nd to 3rd term apprentice, but they let me go and replaced with a local 2nd term apprentice. This was just before the government started shutting parts of the economy down. I then spent the next 3 and a half months sitting at home doing daddy-daycare, My wife took a part time job (since we needed the money and we both didn't need to be at home to take care of junior and I was still able to qualify for employment insurance). That 3 month stint was some of the most demoralizing time I've ever been through. There were very few job openings because of COVID and I wasn't even getting interviews for the ones that I'd applied to. The bright side was that I was able to spend a ton of real quality time with C to make up for the 17 months that I'd missed out on.
Around the middle of June, I got a call from the union representing the power plant electricians. They had an opening for several apprentices with our provincial electrical utility company, Hydro One. I said yes, I was very interested in taking the position and I started training with Hydro One at the end of June. This past week was my first full week of work out on site with them and I'm super happy. I don't think I've been this happy for a long long long time. I could make a bit more money at the nuclear plant but the work there is 'unstable' meaning you might only have a job for 2 months or it could be 2 years. There's no way of really knowing which subcontractors are going to get the good long-term contracts with the nuclear plants. The big advantage to Hydro One is that they've got work essentially in perpetuity. The guys on my crew have all been there 10, 15 or 20 years without a layoff which would NEVER happen in the nuclear world. As long as our population keeps growing, the electrical infrastructure will need expanding, updating and refurbishing which is what Hydro One does. I'm still able to commute home every night although its an hour and a half each way. So yeah, not working at a nuclear plant anymore, I'm about half way through my apprenticeship and I am really happy.
That's awesome!
As people staying at home more, we still need power that's for sure.
Good news, shakes. Best wishes.
Good personal news. I don't recall if I posted it here, but I was laid off back in March due to COVID and the place I worked being taken over by a bunch of idiots.
Anyway, I did get a huge severance package since I worked there for 12 years and I also cashed in my 401K because I was going to fund the latest version of my 3D printer (which is practically ready to sell now).
Meanwhile, one of my old managers, along with a lot of others moved to another company doing a very similar thing. Their headquarters is in New Zealand, but they're trying to break into the US market recently and I am basically going to be designing their helpdesk knowledge base and training for new employees. It's also possible if things turn really south here, maybe I could move to New Zealand
That's a hell of thing.
Where in NZ are they based?
Auckland...and of course that would be after the pandemic before I could even think of moving
Ah right, well be warned, Auckland is quite spread out over an area by NZ standards, and has the highest property valueOriginally Posted by MR2 Fan
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