Learning more about us

[Peelz]

oooh broke into a church and stole all their TP to go TP'ing.  Was like a truckload. friends Dad, was a Ranking member there. he HATED his Dad and was finally moving out. it was brilliant.

same guy, helped him steal 3 boxes of frozen Quarter Pounders from the McDonalds freezer the day he quit. we cooked em for our graduation party. fed whole class plus-like 100 people

crime is fun. 

[Hefe]

yea... tons of shoplifting too 

[Krandall]

Why did you decide to do the work you are doing now?

[Peelz]

Why did you decide to do the work you are doing now?

It chose me really. naturally good at fixing tons of little electronic stuff. Or jerryriggin things to get things done. Worked with folks who cared, and who believed in and relied on me. 

[Hefe]

I first had an interest in computers in 1982, my dad bought me a commodore Vic20, turned out I was good with it.. learned BASIC pretty well.. wrote some small programs, etc....

lost interest for a while (Drugs, foster care, life... marriage.. jobs...)

I was working as a Satellite dish installer, and wanted to branch out on my own.
my buddy Ken wanted to "Computer Repair", so I rented this store in 2000 for my Dish business (I knew I could pay the rent)
the deal for him was .. no rent, just spilt the profits with me 50/50
answer my phones while I'm out installing Dishes
and he can run his computer store... easy peasy

well... he was just ok at it... and a bit lazy
after a year or so of not making much money, he decided to move on..
his cousin Nick needed work, so I convinced him to move here and help out
Nick was MUCH better with computers... (Super introverted)
no good at sales, or dealing with customers, but good with computers

Nick eventually had to move on, the Satellite stuff dwindled away
in 2007, Starla needed a place to cut hair, so I shrunk my store, Let Nick go, and moved Starla in
the rest is history

[Krandall]

Why did you decide to do the work you are doing now?

Similar to heferlumps, I was always into computers. I remember when I was 8 and our summer baby sitter's son (who was big into computers) gave us his old 3.1 windows machine because he had upgraded. I got to play around with it. I remember when I finally found BASIC and how to get in there. And then when my mom brought home her first laptop for work.. I don't recall the year. I think it was probably 94? was a ton of fun messing around with it.
I worked for our high school during the year doing PC repairs. It was mainly a Macintosh shop due to grants schools got from the state for apple products. So I worked on those (the old colored imacs) and then we had a few PC's to work on as well. Loved doing that. Worked during the summers too cleaning all the computers out making sure everything worked.
I went to college for an associates degree in networking and that went well. I ended up landing a full-time job at the place I did my internship. they did wireless internet which was interesting. Works similar to your household wireless router, just higher power antennas. All our stuff was on top of radio towers or water towers. I got to do office phone call troubleshooting, home installs, and tower climbs. That was a blast!!
Fast forward 2 years and getting burnt out with my old boss. He was kind of bi-polar. A family friend of mine told me a job had opened on her team and would be able to get me an interview doing information security.. 11 years later O__O

[Hefe]

friend of mine, works for local wireless company, just got his cert for 1000' tower climbing !!
effff that

[Peelz]

Why did you decide to do the work you are doing now?

It chose me really. naturally good at fixing tons of little electronic stuff. Or jerryriggin things to get things done. Worked with folks who cared, and who believed in and relied on me. 

guess Ill expound a bit how I got here.. Lost my job, wal mart logistics. which I "Enjoyed" was pretty depressed, we were expecting our first kid... went through a few jobs in between.... depressing spring/summer 2003. After my son was born, Friend got me a job working for his dad. THought Id do well. but the guys all working there, drugged out, drunks. No cares. My iq easily double any of them. but he let me go seasonal.....

waltzed into this place. took the tour. it was air conditioned, working on high speed printers... hired on the spot. came in, kicked ass. but they put me on nights, that was a tough time for me. The supervisor got busted smoking pot in the parking lot. They left me in charge after a couple months. I was like you sure....? during that time, we doubled our number of Kodak printers. And terminated our 24hr contract of xerox equipment. so we had 6 machines that when they died.... they DIED lose the whole night. enter Peels. LOL got to where I could yank those things apart in minutes. jerry rig em back together long enough until the tech could work on them. they were absolute crap. then they bought continuous machines, with NO contract. I found out later, only because I was here and would fix them. that was the years I worked SOOO much.  LOL

2006, we bought a kodak Nexpress. mega high tech Digital color printer the size of a bus.  Sent me to New York for training. They tried to build a "photobook" business. Just like shutterfly. I'd come in every morning and print a bunch. that would be waiting in a queue from people online the night before. their idea was a bit early. and they did not pursue it. Shutterfly now runs up by you, Rando, and consider working there lol it was during those years My raptor buddies were beneficial. that machine was SLLLLOW. and took forever to warm up. Did the most goofing off then lol

Eventually got rid of that machine, SOOOO expensive to operate. In 2010 they bought the Xerox iteration of that platform, i was in programming at the time..  Its way more suited to our lower quality higher volume stuff. I had assumed when we got it, I would go to training, theres a ton of maintenance and repairs you need to know to stay running. But the boss of graphic arts and programming took himself, selfishly. while he was gone, I made a 50$ bet id still end up running it. 2 weeks after he came back, he could not figure out how to pull variable sheets from different  drawers. think book, then book cover.... i came over, figured it out. won my bet.   Day 3, during our HUGE company merger, I had to tear apart a color unit, completely untrained. been here ever since.  Shutterfly has 24 of these "IGen" machines.

we have a bunch of high speed presses. and 3 new roll fed color digital presses(we were the first to get them) and they ferk up all the time. SO along with my regular work, i re do their work... still at it.   

[Krandall]

Way cool, peelio! Yeah, I got to do a walk-through at our print facility when we still owned it. Securian did all of its own printing of it's insurance packets and what not.. fkn HUGE printers like you said. bus sized sht. feel like it's similar to farm machinery. Don't get your hand sucked in or you'll lose it

[Hefe]

back in school I was in printing class (tech center)...
the big printer grabbed the sleeve of my flannel (yea... late 80's... everyone wore flannel)
sleeve vanished... ripped clean off...
luckily my arm did not follow
we had a big safety meeting after that

[Peelz]

we have a new UBER high speed folder here. its like 12000 pages a minute or some $hit.

one of the peeps workin on that...hand caught between two rollers as it fired up.. didnt lose it, but the pressure of the two metal rolllers. OH MAN.

no candy crushing for that lady any time soon.

[Hefe]

candy crushing... dick!

[Krandall]

What could you give a 40-minute presentation on with absolutely no preparation?

[Hefe]

gun safety, Cpanel, most anything Hardware related on computers...

[Peelz]

Xerox, Kodak, and Heidelberg production grade digital printers, utilizing and maintaining them..  direct mail practices. I can feel the excitement..... 

its ok, you can go back to sleep now.



also, Soccer.

grab your popcorn boys, I know you're both DYING to hear what I have to say on the subject.

probably give a lecture on Sunglasses too lol

man, I am one REAL exciting mofo.





<eyes roll completely back into head>