My Beacon

Shortly after this picture was taken, we removed this all-glass, 60-pound antique and replaced it with a much lighter plastic model.
It's currently gathering dust in my garage. I'm thinking of mounting it upside down above my front door and using it to light my front patio.
When I turned in the pics to the customer, he said he wanted the old beacon. I told him the rope broke and it shattered on impact. He believed me. Then he saw it sitting in my garage. I gave him a beer and all was forgiven.

Guy Tower

This is the view from about 3/4 up a guy tower off of I-70. You can see some of the cables that hold this 4-foot-wide, 400-foot tall tower up. See the long rope spread all over the ground? See the little red spec messing with it?
Yep, that's me.
The knee to the right is either Brandon's or Mark's. Good times.

Box on Wheels

Nick's Grey Brick

Nick is into rock climbing. I guess that gave him

the experience he needed to climb towers.

He's not bad at it. At least, not as bad as he

is at picking vehicles.

Grinders

This is a cool pic of Mark using a grinder at

"Dead Pidgeon".

A grinder can mean the difference between making

money and not making money.

It can also mean the difference between catching and

NOT catching stuff on fire.

Here, Cody illustrates two things:

1. The importance of good safety glasses

and

2. The importance of keeping a close eye

on your work.

ULTRAS YEEEEEHAAAAA!

This picture represents a lot of things for me. For one, these cabinets are the primary reason I was hired on at USTS. If it hadn't been for these cabinets, I may have missed out on the best job I've ever had. It also means we get a chance to redeem ourselves because the customer may still be mad at us for NOT being electricians. But what these cabinets represent the most for me is...lack of sleep. The following entries document a few experiences of what we went through to get these things deployed. It's tedious, boring, and dangerous if you don't use a tape-wrapped wrench when dealing with batteries that can weld your hand to the side of a metal cabinet.

Bags

I have bags all the time, but they get particularly vivid when doing Ultra swaps.

Sunrise Crew

Isn't it amazing how shitty you can feel after staying up all night?

And no matter how innocent they are, doesn't it piss you off when someone

who got a good night's sleep walks up, looking all fresh and happy?

Cab Nap

The Penske Truck

Drivin' down the road
In my rented truck
Won't run outta gas
And we won't get stuck
Engine's pretty gutless
And there's no cup-holder
But the pretty yellow color
Says our crew is BOLD-ER
Driver's seat is bouncy
It's quite the death-trap
But it comes in pretty handy
When Ted needs a nap

Sunrise Brothers

One of the guys in this picture is smiling. The other isn't. The one who's smiling should know better because his day is just starting and he's going with the one who isn't smiling to the most completely hosed site in the entire market.
The one who isn't smiling knows things happen that aren't part of the plan...especially at the site they are heading to. The one who is smiling is about to find that out for certain.
They're about to enter a world full of sites and sounds, a world where things aren't always what they seem, a world known as...The Twilight Zone.
He won't be smiling at the end of the day, but at least he'll be riding in STYLE.

Space Jockey

When you've been up all night, you tend to do things you wouldn't normally do. In the case of Cody...doing things you WOULD normally do. He found these sweet sunglasses when we were trying to hotwire this skidsteer. I think he looks like a stoned chipmunk.

Telco Fiasco

This is a DSX panel. It carries the T1 signal to and from the site. It's mounted inside the telco cabinet. It's one of the things I have to do in conjunction with the Ultra swap-outs. The thing to the left is the 66 Block. There are a bunch of colored wires going into it. Now, other than knowing what color wires go where, I have no idea what these things do. No clue at all. All I know is that it's stuffed inside a little tiny cabinet that you have to bend over and stuff yourself into just to get to it. It's a little disheartening taking so long to do something so uncomfortable when you haven't the foggiest idea how it all works.

Freakshow

It's hard being Jim. I can't make this up, so I'll just tell it like it is. We found Jim at the Seven-Eleven near the shop. While he repeatedly won "Employee of the Month" acolades from the owners, he still wasn't content. He said was interested in climbing towers for a living, so we rescued him from a life of having to sell nudy mags and week-old hot dogs to degenerates. His biggest pet peeve about working at Seven-Eleven was those people who buy scratch-off lottery tickets, then stand at the counter with people waiting behind them, scratching off squares until they get a winner, then slowly picking out more tickets until they've wasted everything they came in with.
Jim has a really cool black lab named Suzy. Suzy's one of the best-behaved dogs I've ever met, but a little neurotic.
On weekends, Jim can usually be found meeting with friends and working on his book detailing the uncanny parallels between Dr. Suess's books and real life.
Jim is the proverbial nonconformist. If the sign says his destination is east, he goes west, just to show he can get there by going that way. He's also fond of Scottish music and wearing men's underwear.

Hoover

Hoover is a dynamo. Put simply, he's the MAN. Put another way, he's a magician...a wizard, if you will. And I have proof.
Ted, Cody, Hoover, and I took a long trip south to tear stuff off of a tower. We arrived at the site and started planning the job right away. Ted and I got out and walked around the base of the tower, looking up at the junk that had to come down. Cody went to a remote corner of the compound to relieve himself. By the time we got back to the truck--about two minutes--Hoover had already unloaded the entire truck and arranged everything in alphabetical order. Magic.
In his spare time, Hoover quietly practices for the coming release of Halo 3. He was a Jedi Master a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. You can hit him multiple times with an energy sword and it dosn't faze him. Then he knicks you with the tip of his sword and you go flying across the map, flailing, dying.
Hoover has entered 5 of the last 6 pancake eating contests put on by the local Lion's Club. He put the competition to shame by eating 512 eight inch pancakes in ten minutes...sans butter and syrup. Again, magic.
I'm lucky to be part of a small circle of Hoover's friends to have been informed that a private conglomerate is grooming him to be the next man on the moon. He's already promised me a really cool rock.
Oh! Don't tell anyone that last thing!

Teacher's Lounge

While his student's wait patiently, Ted spends a few moments in the teachers lounge...collecting his thoughts and planning the next session.
He sure has been in there a long time.

Comtrain Class!

The new guys anxiously await Ted's return. As you can see from the excitement on their faces, they are in the middle of Ted's Comtrain Classroom session. Tomorrow, they'll do the field practical where they very likely will find out what it's like to crap one's pants on a tower.
In order to keep our new employees' attention, as well as keep them from falling asleep in class, we decorated the training room with bright, vibrant colors.
You can just feel the excitement.

Cody

Boasting the company's thickest accent, Cody has globe-trotted quite a bit for USTS, having worked in STL, KC, and LA. He likes to complain constantly, but always has a good point. He owns 47 cars, all in different states of disrepair.
Cody's hobbies include: Smoking cigarettes.

BRAD

Brad came to us from Austria, where they grown them big. Here he is delicately installing internal jumpers in an Ultrasite cabinet.
He's actually standing in this picture. Brad owns the largest personal vehicle in the company. He has twelve daughters and twelve shotguns.
In his free time, Brad builds birdhouses out of endangered species of teak and giant redwood. He also enjoys playing ping-pong and is planning a solo circumnavigation of the earth in a pontoon boat.
Brad sings the national anthem every morning.

Finally

Ted finally came out of the bathroom. Back to work!

Wasted Microwave

This is an emergency microwave panel we were dispatched to install and align with a COW set up in the Soulard region of STL. The COW was used to handle the sudden influx of calls when thousands of drunks flooded into the area to celebrate their "Irish Heritage" over St. Patrick's Day. It was a frigid and fruitless endeavor, however, because there just happened to be ten giant Cathedrals blocking the path. I guess the RF department couldn't see them when they reconnoitered the area from their cozy desks using Google Earth. They even paid someone to set up a crane and launch a giant red balloon to see if it could be seen from this location. All I could see was a drunk guy yelling at me from the street below.

Chin Whiskers

Pretty much everyone in our company has facial hair of some kind. 90% of us seem to have chin whiskers in particular. We didn't plan it, it just happened that way. Here is Justin. I feel that his chin whiskers are the most impressive of the bunch. Justin also has a mohawk, but he always wears a hat, so it's pretty much a moot point.
Justin has been a bit of a surprise. Before coming to work for USTS, he worked at an office supply wholesaler in South Korea. He was fired for several reasons. For one, he had a North Korean girlfriend, which is a big no-no. Another, more serious reason is that he was caught in the warehouse after hours, running an illegal stuffed animal export ring back in the leather recliner section. Since his return to the 'States and subsequent hiring at USTS, we have had nothing but exemplory performance from him.
Justin's love of stuffed animals is only eclipsed by one thing: Butyl. He also enjoys collecting Canadian postage stamps, used combs, and Taco Bell sauce packets. He fashions jewelry out of all of these items.
We appreciate Justin's hard work and, as a reward, have named him "Employee of Last Week," an honor previously bestowed on only one other individual. I forget who it was because he doesn't work here anymore.

The Crane

This is Chris's crane. We use it to work on structures we can't climb. Imagine tying a basket to the end of a 150' long fishing pole, then climbing in and being lifted high in the air on a windy day.
In truth, the basket weighs about 400 lbs and the crane weighs a lot more. See the outriggers at the four corners? They keep the whole thing from falling over...so far.
The most fun experience with a crane I can remember was working on a flagpole on a cold and windy day. When we got to the top, experiencing 30 mph wind gusts, it was a challenge to coordinate the sway of the crane with the sway of the pole on which we worked. I almost puked several times, but we got the job done. I remember calling down to the operator and asking him if he was confortable with the wind gusts, kind of hoping he'd elect not to risk the danger that day. His reply was "It ain't windy down here!" What a turd.

The Author

That's me on the roof of a fruit market in St. Louis. I'm basking in the glory of another job well done. I'm kind of a specialist at our company; doing jobs no one else knows how to do. Of course it's really easy work, but I don't tell them that. I could probably teach everyone how to do what I know how to do in about five minutes. But then what good would I be? I usually sit at my desk, waiting for something to happen, then pawn it off on someone else so I can keep sitting at my desk, making myself look busy. I had a near mental break-down recently, which is why I went on vacation. I told everyone I was going to build a bunch of chairs, but instead I sat in my living room eating ice cream and watching kids television the whole time. I went outside once during the whole week, but only so I could get something out of the car that I needed really bad. Otherwise, I generally worked on losing my tan and getting my eyes used to the dark. My motivation is back now, having wasted a perfectly good vacation on cookies and cream.
My current plan is to not go insane. If I can get that down, I will move on to trying to get someone else to go insane. I've got my eye on Brandon. He deserves to know how it feels to be unbalanced for once.
Hobbies? Besides not going insane, I like to build things out of wood. I also like to shoot things and play Halo with my buds. I hate playing against little kids who have nothing better to do than Halo 24 hours a day. Punks. My greatest passions are photography and writing. I don't know which I like best, which is probably why this format works so well.
I hope you all enjoy what I'm doing here. It's the last step in my therapy...p.s. Kyle is the man.

THE LOG

The log is our way of recording the most masterful mistakes made by our employees. None are exempt, including managers. As you can see, my name is hard to miss. I admit to having made the most POTENTIALLY expensive mistake in our company's history by leaving the lid off of a packed Nokia cabinet just before a thunderstorm filled it with water.
Some people have signed it numerous times. Bill, an ex-employee, signed it twice for the same screw-ups made within two weeks of each other.
It's fun to rib each other about the reasons for signing. Unfortunately, most of the guys who sign it no longer work for us and we haven't had a reason to have someone sign it recently. I guess we'll have to lower the bar so we can get some fresh ink on it.

Chad's Bunk

Most days, we'll arrive at the normal time and Chad will be there to greet us with "I've been here since 2am!" We're not sure what to do with this information, other than suggest a good therapist or over-the-counter sleep aid. Recently, Chad awoke at his house--in his bed--and decided to come in to work in the middle of the night. On the way, he stopped at a 24-hour Wal Mart and purchased this cot on which to sleep at that shop. Our question was, if he's tired enough to sleep at the shop, why not stay home? Still haven't gotten a good answer from him on that yet.

S.N.A.F.U.

Someone screwed up, plain and simple. I got up early, as did the other guys, to attend a company meeting at 7:30 am. As soon as I reached the top of the on-ramp, I knew I was in TROUBLE. Having gotten a quarter-mile down the highway, I realized that putting the vehicle in "park" was easier than keeping my foot planted on the brake pedal. I assumed there was an accident, but that was confirmed when the flatbed tow truck that was dispatched to remove the affected vehicles stopped next to me, lights flashing. It sat, parked next to me, for ten minutes without moving. The cars in front of it couldn't even move out of the way. As I sat in the highway-turned-parking lot on this cool morning, I noticed that the rising sun was illuminating the clouds in a unique way and took this picture. Note the water tower in the center of the photo. It's about a half-mile away. By the time I made it to the water tower, it was 7:15. By the time I made it to Mexico road to find a faster way to work, it was 7:35. Having staved off the call of nature for the past 45 minutes, I decided to go around everyone who was waiting to get onto Mexico and head back home. In almost an hour, I'd only made it 2 miles from the house. Of course, having gotten onto the highway near where the accident occurred, Ted had almost made it to work. Amazing what a difference living 1 mile farther down the highway can make. I turned on the local news, waiting for a traffic report. Of course, they don't report anything this far west, so I have no idea when I can safely leave for work again. I think the worst is over (the traffic AND my trips to the restroom), so I'll try it again.

Tower Photography

One cool thing about working outside is witnessing so many exciting things to photograph. This was taken on a bitter cold day last winter when Chad, Brandon, and I removed three microwave dishes off of a Verizon tower south of St. Louis. This was a little 6' or 8' dish. The 10', 600 lb. grandaddy was at the top. We used a crane to remove it. It may have been the smoothest operation I've witnessed yet...until it got to the ground and almost crushed me.
Photo-documenting our work lives has brought me much joy. Since we can't do our job without a camera, our ability to document every moment is constrained only by the size of our cameras' memory capabilities.

Brandon

The ship might not completely sink, but it'd be listing pretty badly without Brandon aboard to keep things running smoothly. This quiet, unassuming fellow is another reason we all like our jobs so much.
Brandon's primary duty is to make me look good. He does this very well.
Another thing Brandon does very well is scare the living crap out of Mark. I guess everyone does that pretty well...Mark scares pretty easily.
Brandon's stellar resume is what made our decision to hire him a no-brainer. If you can cook all the food at Outback, you can be my wingman anytime. Brandon is fond of interrupting me while in the middle of actually using my brain. Every time I blow up at him, he laughs. I hate him sometimes.
In addition to scaring Mark half to death ten times a day and interrupting me even more, Brandon enjoys spending time with his lovely wife, helping with his dad's ever-expanding brick patio, and collecting "NO TRESPASSING" signs. By next August, he should have enough to side his entire house.
Brandon started playing golf last year. He has managed to severely piss me off by playing as well as any of us. I guess we should be happy, but the rest of us have worked for years to get as good as he already is. Bastard.

Skid Mark

Mark is a member of our elite "core". He was also IN the "Corps" for a few years. Although he is only four feet tall, Mark looks like a tattoo'd bad boy who could probably rip your arms off and beat you to death with them.
Mark's hobbies include video games, playing with his nephew, and driving slow in the left lane.
He was recently engaged to the sweetest girl in the universe. She is a massage therapist with magic fingers. He's a lucky guy.
Mark's claim to fame came late last year when he was sent out to climb a tower in a remote area of the market. When he returned, he had coarse brown hairs all over him and had a stong musky odor about him. He said he couldn't explain the hair or the odor, but got some good photos of the tower on which he had worked.
When we downloaded the pics, we discovered, with horror, that it was actually an 8' Sasquatch that he had climbed. I was so upset that he didn't know the difference between a tower and a Sasquatch that I deleted the photos and sent him out on his own time to complete the line repair he should have done in the first place. Some people will never learn.
Mark's favorite beverage is straight gin, warmed up in the microwave with a cigar garnish. He usually wears a long feather boa to work, unless it's extremely windy out. He alters his facial hair on a daily basis just to keep us on our toes. He has many body piercings, some of which can get you arrested in seven states. Mark's favorite come-back is "Ssshhh" and his favorite color is neon green.

Ted Burgundy

This is Ted. Ted is our Safety and Training Coordinator (we made that position up just to make him feel important). Here he is in all his grandeur, supervising one of our latest Comtrain classes. Comtrain is a good time...that's why Ted's in charge.
Ted used to have this really cool Ford Lightning. I described it to others as his "Hot Rod Truck". Since he knocked his girlfriend up, though, he had to trade the Lightning in on a really sweet 4-door Dodge Ram in the BIG HORN edition. We're all happy for his girlfriend because, when the baby comes, SHE will be the one driving the BIG HORN and he'll be stuck driving her Ranger.
In his spare time, Ted likes to work on the house he purchased with his girlfriend from a close friend/client of ours. After moving in, we discovered that there was a half-way house less than a block from their front door. Don't tell his girlfriend.
In addition to working on the house, Ted likes to torment his girlfriend's idiot dog, buy new release DVD's from Best Buy every Tuesday on the way home, and see how long he can let his grass grow before someone complains. He is also fond of sleeping...anywhere, anytime. When he's had a few too many, Ted is the happiest person in the room. When we've both had a few too many, we like to decorate his sleeping girlfriend with lots of pretty--and permanent--colorful markers, then take pictures of her while she sleeps.
Ted finally disclosed the name of their soon-to-be-born son: Chaz Francisco Chaffin. His initials will be "CFC," so the ozone layer better watch out.

Mark & Brandon Cool Off at the Lake

The three of us stopped off at a site to replace LNA's before heading down to Springfield. Since the first site was at the Lake of the Ozarks and it was 187 degrees outside, Mark and Brandon suggested we take a dip in the lake to cool off before continuing to Springfield.
Jumping in the muddy, snapping turtle-infested water didn't appeal to me, but I promised I would refrain from driving off in the truck if they wanted to do it.
There was a guy sitting at the picnic table on the dock, just behind that gas pump, that said he didn't have a problem with them jumping in. I remember standing there, taking this photo, sweating my ass off on the asphalt boat ramp while the guys cooled off country style. But when they got out, they had leeches all over their bodies!!!
Just kidding, all they got on them was water...cool, dirty, stinky water. I kind of wished I'd jumped in with them, but after I took this pic, I rifled through their wallets and came out pretty well in the deal. I also had the ac running in the truck, which was much cooler than the sewage they were swimming in.

Our Fearless Leader

This is Chad. He is the heart and soul of our operation. When not frequenting Hawaiian-themed parties, he can be found behind his desk, working diligently for the greater good...or sacked out on his cot in the back room.
Chad is married to his wife. Her name used to be Amy, now she is just "Chad's Wife". Chad is a polygomist. His other wife is USTS, not always in that order. Chad drives a big purple truck that is very loud and manly. He likes to say everything at least twice in quick succession, just to make sure his point gets across.
In the rare moments that Chad is not working at the office or at home, he can be found at one of the many local golf courses (playing only 9 holes, no time for 18), at one of the many hole-in-the-wall pubs with his wife's friends, or sitting alone in his basement, playing Halo with his buddies online.
Chad and his wife purchased their first home recently. They have a very nice lawn. Since Chad has been storing his riding lawn mower in my garage for 1.5 years, I think it's time he came and got it.
Always the optimist, Chad's signature phrase is "It'll be alright"...especially when it won't. We all like working for Chad. He's the reason we're all here. If it weren't for Chad, I'd probably be working for less money and more hassle, and so would everyone else. Thanks, Chad.