The Hands And The Eyes, Part II

As I mentioned in a previous Blog Post, I had the opportunity to learn how to weld. After that project was done, we had some leftover materials and in the interest of refining the skills I had learned, I thought it would be a good idea to create something that I had a need for. After a little thought (and some wandering around the house, looking at the things I had), it occurred to me that I needed a better solution for my entertainment center.

I have a fair amount of electronic stuff devoted to this (TV, Receiver, DVD player, PlayStation , Media Center PC, etc) and the TV stand I had simply wasn't designed for all of the things I had. In fact, I had a number of components that were not even hooked up. It wasn't tall enough or wide enough to accommodate everything. So, I had identified a need. Now I needed to figure out what I wanted to do about it.

The Hands And The Eyes, Part I

Back in August, I was let go from my job. It wasn't a complete surprise but I certainly would have preferred to have been the one to say "This isn't working out" when I had something else lined up. I knew it wasn't a good fit for me and apparently, they thought the same thing. They just beat me to the punch. It is what it is and given the state of the economy, finding another source of income is/was a challenge (to say the least). Fortunately, my Dad has a Machine Shop that he runs out of a large building on his property and he had just been awarded a fairly sizable contract and as such, he needed some help. He was willing to pay me a fair wage if I were willing to help him out.

Of course, I agreed. I needed the money and the idea of learning something new was very attractive. I.T. hasn't exactly been very good to me over the last couple of years and frankly, the idea of completely changing careers was rather appealing. And I love working with my hands. There is something very cool about taking a pile of raw materials and turning it into a finished product (e.g. Look what I did!)

When It Rains, It Pours

So about two weeks ago, we have a conference call at my job. The owner starts talking about how things are really getting tight because of a contract we've won but have yet to receive any money from ( $350 million). She's saying that until this money is actually released, we are going to have to do some "belt-tightening"; pay-cuts, furlough's, temporary part-time/on-call work, etc. I'm thinking, this is gonna be tough but with my position as the only IT support guy in the largest production facility (4 servers and close to 40 workstations) in the company, I'm in no danger of anything too drastic.

Right?

Wrong.