Month: April 2025

Today started by me having to be up at the shop at 6:00 a.m. to meet a customer who’d borrowed tooling from our roll forming machine for a job at a solar farm up in northeast Texas. So John and I put our roll former back together to have it ready to haul out to a job today.

Saul got to work a little after 7:30 and he and I headed out to Jonestown to roll metal panels at a new construction job site.

Unfortunately our timeline was thwarted by a bad accident on 1431. I was trying to find out what had happened by way of social media and when I came up empty, I texted my friend Mike who is a firefighter and he informed me that it was a bad motorcycle accident and the rider wasn’t wearing a helmet.

An hour and a half later, 1431 was reopened and Saul and I headed out the last few miles to get to the site. The site was on the side of a cliff out in the hills between Lago Vista and Jonestone, so navigating the narrow gravel road to get there was a bit of a white-knuckler.

We were 3 hours later than our intended time to start working, but we made fairly quick work of it. We rolled 3,000 linear feet of 24 gauge standing seam roof panels. Just Saul and me. We lugged panels ranging from 11 feet to 17 feet from the back of the roll former to the house’s garage. We both lugged upwards of 3,000 pounds each between the panels and custom trim we fabricated for this customer.

It’s hard work, but it’s good, honest work. It’s not back-breaking labor, but it’s labor. It’s fun work. I get my fair share of desk work, but just the right amount of being on the road and being on site to roll custom-cut standing seam panels that are going on a structure’s roof.

I really, really enjoy this job.

It took Saul and me an hour and a half to run 3,000 feet of steel coil out in the high hills of Central Texas.

Saul and I have our respective language barriers, but we figure it out and we have fun. We talk a lot. His English is a lot better than my Spanish, but I’m really trying. I’m always asking him how to say things, and if I need to convey something technical or in-depth, I use Google Translate on my phone and I don’t show him my phone; I try to say the sentences that I want to tell him in my gringo Spanish.

We pulled out of the job site at around 2:00 p.m. I was starving because I’d already been at work since 6:00 a.m., and I don’t know how many calories I burned hauling metal panels and trim. So I had Saul stop at La Chaparitta (which I now know means “short woman”) so I could buy us lunch. No one spoke English. And maybe it was because I was experiencing a significant caloric deficit, but those were the best damn tacos I’ve ever had.

I learned that Saul is from Chignahuapan, which is a town in the state of Puebla in southeast Mexico. There are mountains and natural hot springs in Chignahuapan. My friend is the oldest of six children. Two sisters, then a brother, then two other sisters. He has three daughters, ages 5, 13, and 21.

Many years ago my friend Michele turned me on to the concept of “making a fair pitcher of lemonade.” I’ve always thought of that of upholding integrity in hard work. That’s what I do now. Today I did more work, had more fun, learned more, laughed more, delivered value, and made more money than I can remember doing in a really long time.

Saul and I went to work this morning to load up for a Monday morning PBR panel delivery to a customer’s home for a new metal roof installation.

It was tricky because we had a stack of panels that were 25′ long and our flatbed trailer is 25′ long, so we had to get creative in loading the tele so it wouldn’t damage the metal roof panels as Saul was backing it onto the trailer. Saul used the telescope and fork to lift the front of the machine and push it back onto the trailer while simultanously backing the tele up. It took a few shots, but we got it.

I think tomorrow we’ll have to move the tele to the front of the trailer and the trim and shorter panels to the back of the trailer because physics. Thankfully we don’t have far to go to drop this load off.

We vented 84 sticks of 24 gauge metallic copper Z flashing for a customer this morning. This was my first time seeing the perforator in action.

I think this metal stuff is cool.

“That thinking’ll kill ya. Just do the thing.”

I don’t remember the context. But she said that on the phone a few minutes ago.

Early in the Fall we kind of decided we’d rip out the deck and have a concrete patio poured. We’d wait until the weather cooled off and we’d slowly start disassembling the deck. Late Fall came. Winter came. Steve and Joanne came down for Christmas and we’d recruited them to help take apart the deck.

Taking apart the deck never happened. And we had quite a few rotted and broken boards. We left the deck in ill repair for a lot of months. We had coolers and pots strategically placed about the deck to cover the holes and bad boards to prevent anyone from having a brush with gravity.

It’s starting to get hot and realistically we’re not going to take down the deck this time of year. So I decided we’d invest a little in some new 2×6’s and we’d fix the deck.

Quick and easy.

A few boards turned into 10 boards. Removing those 10 boards exposed joists that were rotted, so I removed a lot more boards than planned and replaced the rotted joists.

What started out as a quick Friday evening and Saturday morning chore turned into an all weekend job. Elise helped me pull old boards and remove rusted screws (Deckmate screws are horrible. They’re cheap alloy steel with a painted coating that easily scratches, exposes the metal, and causes rust and corrosion. This time I went with 2.5″ GRK multipurpose screws). She also fastened most of the boards on section we repaired and, while I went to lunch with some old high school friends, she took everything off of the deck and pressure washed it.

With the deck now all spacious, safe, and clean, we all hung out on it last night while I grilled chicken and we had a long-overdue dinner outside.

I’ve been at my job for almost 90 days. There have been two times where it would’ve been convenient to instant message my boss to ask a question. One of those times I got up, walked to his office, and asked my question. The second time, today, I found the answer myself.

I don’t miss Slack, Teams, Google Chat (and ICQ, Skype, HipChat, and which other instant messenger tools I’ve used in the past) one iota. I get it though. Instant messengers are pretty much required, especially in remote office environments. I’ve used them for the past 20 years. Maybe that’s why I don’t miss them.

Somewhere in my first week on the job I asked my boss if we used Teams in the office. He said, “F*ck no! And if you try to get me to use Teams I’ll kick your ass.”

And that’s when I liked my boss that much more.

Yesterday the leadership team of an “AI-powered engineering intelligence platform” concerned themselves with preparations for laying off the majority of its staff. My good friend was part of that layoff today.

Yesterday I sent 12 tons of steel coil to my customer down the highway. Then I went back to my office and sold $10,000 worth of metal roofing supplies. Then I got on the telehandler and loaded 1600 pounds of flat sheet metal on a customer’s truck.

I was more productive and profitable yesterday than I can remember being at any recent tech job.

I don’t know how to articulate any kind of theme I’m shooting for here. I know I’ve pigeonholed myself into roles where technology, software, and money were the priority.

It’s a shift in personal priorities. That’s the easy part. Finding something that aligns with your priorities and harnesses your skills and interests can be the tricky part. What I’ve learned about myself in recent times that technology and software aren’t as exciting or important to me as they once were. I thought it was the role I was in software sales. I still enjoy sales and customer service, but I enjoy it more in metal than I do in SaaS.