Chapter 3

I received an email on Monday afternoon about quitting time, showing me the preliminary plans of my new house. These plans were strictly footprint drawings, but they showed everything except furniture. There was even one page devoted to my server room. Actually there was a whole page for each room and then a couple showing the whole house and then one showing the front of the house with the old weathered boards and stone base. Then there were even sketches of the garage and barn too. Wow, Don must have worked all Sunday and today on the plans.

I emailed back saying I was impressed with the fast turn around and I would look at the full drawings when they arrived. I asked Don if he worked for two days straight on the plans or what?

My return email said he was inspired and worked Saturday evening and Sunday morning, then took a break for the races on Sunday afternoon and then picked back up this morning. Most of the plans were just some changes and pieced together rooms from other jobs, but it would give me a good idea of what he had planned. The real work would begin once I felt comfortable with the basic design. I noticed several of the room plans seemed to come from his own home's plans. I told him I would mark up the plans and sent them back as soon as I could. He said he was busy building a house right now and tearing down another one, the old house on my property. He was about halfway thru with the other house and should be done with it before I was ready for this one to be built. We said our goodbyes and I called it a day.

I got a call from a firm in Cincinnati, Ohio that wanted me to design something for them and I said I couldn't come up until Thursday if that was alright. He didn't expect that quick of service, but I assured them I would be up there sometime Thursday and I would call and let them know when I would arrive and when I could possibly make it to their place of business.

I got an emergency call from an IT guy in New Mexico saying that their website just went down. I told him I would try to troubleshoot it from here and to have one of their programmers get on the line with me. Come to find out, the server that held the website was taken down for routine maintenance and someone had forgotten to switch it over to the backup server. Other than that, I was pretty much idle until the Fed Ex guy came in at 10:00am and handed me a long tube from Lang Construction.

I went into the kitchen and moved everything off the table on to the counter and started unrolling the plans. These plans were very professional and I noticed in the title block they were dwg files. I suspected as much. I went over each drawing very carefully. I did change a couple of the plans and had some remarks and questions for Don, but overall the plans were just what I wanted. I called Fed Ex and had them do a pick-up for five this evening and rolled up the plans and stuck them back in the tube. I made a new tracking sheet with my business number on it and got it ready to go back to Don.

Wednesday I had another call, this time from Denver, Colorado wanting me to design a website for a small company. I told them it would be next Monday before I could get up to see them and I figured to spend a day and a half with them to get worked out what they wanted. I asked about server space on their server and they said they were limited right now and could I provide the server. I said yes I could and I made flight reservations for Sunday night. Thursday was flying day and I finally met with the Ohio guys about three. I went over the requirements for their server to handle and they would need a new server for their needs. They wanted a very complex website with ordering and custom pricing online. This would overtax their present system so I suggested a new server and one for backup in case of failure or routine maintenance. I told them they would be money ahead to get the second server for back up and that it could probably serve as a backup for other systems as well. I had to leave out of there for home on Saturday afternoon because of all the work on what they wanted the site to do. I told them it would take a couple of weeks to complete as the complexity was so great. It wasn't really, but they pissed me off having to work Saturday too. Beside I had other work to do too.

Everyone seems to think I have a whole team of people working on their pet project, they don't realize it is just me. I do have a guy that comes in every day when I'm gone to make sure nothing goes haywire, but he only does this part time. I may need to hire a full time helper if I get any more business. Then what do I do in Taylor? I think I will start looking at the universities and maybe ITT Tech and see if I can hire a new kid straight out of school and I can teach him the real world things he needs to learn. Maybe they will even think about moving with me to Taylor. They wouldn't live with me, of course, but maybe somewhere in Taylor or close by.

I'll start thinking about that in the morning. I need some sleep.

The next morning, Sunday, I let my fingers do the walking and I found six schools in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area that had undergraduate Computer Science programs. I sent each school an email letting them know I was looking for a graduate or near graduate for assisting me in my business. I told them I designed and maintained websites all over the US and Canada and that I need some assistance with my maintenance work. I also mentioned that fact that I would be moving to the Austin Area in about six months, more or less, depending upon my relocation time due to a new building being built for my business. The schools were University of Texas, Dallas (UT-Dallas); Southern Methodist University (SMU); Texas Christian University (TCU); University of Texas, Arlington, (UT-Arlington); Texas A&M University, Commerce (TAMU-Commerce); and ITT Technical Institute, Arlington. I figured once I heard back from one of these schools and they had no takers, then I would hunt down around Austin. There are several schools there I could also email. But let's see what happens here first. I went ahead and repacked for my flight to Denver this evening, so that was done. I needed to wash some clothes so that was next on my agenda for today.

Time to go flying again; thank God I had no fear of flying or I would never get any work done, going all over the USA and even into parts of Canada too. I think I will have enough miles that I can get bumped to first class on the trip home.

I had turned my cell phone back on after the flight and was loading my rental when it rang. Another company found out I would be in Denver on Monday and asked if I could visit them too and their branch in Colorado Springs wanted me to come down there too. I called Mike Stevens, my part time assistant and gave him the bad news, but he said it was cool with him as he had a week off coming anyway. I asked that if I got some drawings in a Fed Ex Tube to please set them aside in the living room and I would attend to them when I got home. I did ask again if he wanted to work for me full time and he said he would let me know after this week. That covered this week. What next?

By Monday evening I had heard back from each school with the standard 'we received your email and we will route it to the proper department and you should hear from us soon' spiel. I knew I would probably hear something by Friday, but I wouldn't count on it. This week in Colorado was a real bear. Wow I don't think I worked this hard since I was in the Navy when I was working full time and carrying a full load of online school too. But I had just made up for the cost of my trip plus about fifteen grand more. So it was a profitable week, but a real tiring one. I headed home on Saturday morning sitting in the luxury of first class. Oh that felt good after the week I just had.