OffTheHoox.com

After a discussion I was having with a good friend recently, I started wondering and contemplating my new life as a pilot, some more. I have been in the IT industry for over 10 years now. It’s what I do. It’s what I know. It’s become my life. I have acquired this mass of information and skill-sets that are completely worthless outside the industry.

Let’s be honest, pilots, or certainly all the pilots I have met, are completely IT illiterate. They simply don’t need to know how to image PCs, install servers, configure Active Directory schemas, configure WAN topologies, VLANS, hot-wire satellites in a dust storm, amongst other less interesting / more complicated things. So when I become a pilot what am I going to do with all this knowledge? What a pity you can’t sell it on. What a loss.

For Sale: IT Knowledge comprising of 10 years Microsoft experience, international exposure, 55000 user WAN input, 1st, 2nd & 3rd line support. High mileage in management roles (which is a good thing) and still in extremely good nick! Knowledge will be supplied to the highest bidder. The winning bid will also receive some construction knowledge for free if anyone cares about construction knowledge. Or not.

Up until now I have been the “Oh my son/mate/boyfriend/drinking buddy is an IT geek, I’ll ask him”. What do I become then? A has-been, an ex-geek? A NOBODY? Does this mean the midnight panic calls such as, “I have lost this really important life or death thing blah blah frikkin blah” stop? I’m pretty sure people won’t be saying, “Oh let me phone Hoox, he is a pilot, he can retrieve my really important porn or install some equally essential crap” when I am busy with other things, like having a life. Go to PC World with the rest of the population and explain your questionable hard drive contents to that spotty teenage geek behind the counter instead. I have seen quite enough thanks!

Yeah, bye bye IT world!

XXX - Thanks for everything

Love(d) you lots

Hoox!

To continue from where I left off yesterday, contemplating the pros of working from home / bed, my aching body got the better of me.

How can someone be expected to work like this? Working with a laptop on your bed is not all that its cut out to be. Changes had to be made.

I have just spent the last 15 minutes sorting my prison cell out. It’s tiny so it couldn’t take long that that. TV on top of the useless, functionless metal cupboard which freed up my desk to jam in one teeny corner. I had to squash one bag next to the cupboard and put the other one in the shared bathroom.

GOD I CANT WAIT TO GET MY OWN PLACE WITH SPACE THAT I CAN CALL MY OWN!!!!

At least now I am working from something that resembles something that can be worked from. And I get a view out the window too.

That also just so happens to be the round table that everyone drinks at after 6pm.

How many times have you had the opportunity to work from home? You know, sometimes traffic is bad, the weather has set in, you are not feeling too well? The list is endless. So you call your boss and inform the company that you will be working from home.

How much work actually gets done there? Realistically

Our most senior management showed up today and due to a severe lack of office space currently, people had to be shifted around and squeezed onto double-desk arrangements etc. I very kindly offered to “work from my home” which as some of you already know, is equivalent to a cell about 3m x 4m, with my TV on my desk so the only place to work from is my bed. SO effectively I offered to be the nice guy and go back to bed for the day.

Method in madness? I dunno. I will sleep on that and get back to you!

One of the many luxuries that I have come to miss while away in remote spots of the world is junk food. Sad I know! But true none the less.

It’s not the actual food I miss. It’s just there’s nothing like popping down to your local Mickey D or KFC or Nandos and picking up a box of yummy goodness. The goodness I refer to is obviously only the taste and does not refer to the health aspects and does nothing for the waistline. Oh and talk about convenience and 24/7 availability. Just down the road and 5 minute shebang, there you have it. Your junk food high and the enjoyment it offers until you overindulge and feel ill the rest of the day. It’s the abundance of this kind of pleasure that you take for granted while in the land of plenty.

Lately I have been reminded all too regularly of these wonderful pleasures and how I will be able to eat my fill upon my return. 14 days and counting!

(Click for more - NSFW)

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I think not!

This weekend was heading along the same old route all my weekends head along in this place. A few beers under the tree followed by a few bottles of wine on Saturday night. Good stuff.

Sunday morning the usual hangover and crawl out to breakfast. Not so good stuff but food is always worth getting out of bed for. The great thing about Sundays of course is the ability to get back into bed for a snooze after breakfast.

Things then changed soon after going back to sleep. I received a call from one of my work mates saying he needed help setting up a laptop for a newcomer. For sure, no problem, I’m always happy to help a mate out. I walk outside to where they are and to my surprise, wow, a female! The camp just got better.

Anyway, while going through the process of setting her up on the network we got chatting (which turned into an afternoon full of beer and wine) and this is where things turned a little spooky. If you recall a few months ago I was talking about my ultimate plans for my life? I will recap ever so quickly:

• Quit my job
• Move back to South Africa
• Get my Commercial Pilots License
• Fly in Botswana for a year or so accumulating necessary hours to get a good job
• Fly for an organization that does medivac support or medical supplies in and around Africa
• Start my own aviation company doing the same and more

Right, so now I have quit, I am moving back to South Africa in 2 weeks and I have signed up for my commercial license. Now this is when {Insert Name}, the new medic in the camp, shows up. She is such a nice person and extremely generous. Her sister is involved with one of the top air charter companies in Botswana and she said she can put in a good word for me. She is also a medic and has extensive medivac and medical supply experience with an international company in South Africa. She can put me in touch with necessary people to get in the door there too should I desire! She has even invited me to go to Namibia and Botswana with her sometime over the coming months / year and introduce me to her family and people in both places in the industry that besides being really kewl people, will also be extremely beneficial to know later.

How kewl is that? Certainly in this industry it’s all about who you know well above what you know.

You see, the universe does listen! So be careful what you tell it!

“The physical universe applauds action, not thought!”

Viva my new life!

Breath in. Breath out. Breath in. Breath out. No, I still want to kill someone!

Last night was a big switchover on my network. It meant bringing everything down for a couple of hours, talking to the States having them configure stuff from their end and bring everything up again. It is a big deal that has taken a lot of planning and consideration. I got a little side-tracked so I finished marginally later than expected. No big drama however, I got it working and that’s the most important thing.

After coming in very early this morning to finish off the setup, I then explained to everyone the impact of all the changes and please to have patience as there was only one of me to try and set everything and everyone up. That’s where it goes tits up…

Suddenly everyone feels that their shit is the most important thing on the planet. “I can’t get on the internet…” so I set them up and what’s the first thing they go to check? FOOTBALL! “I can’t print…” so I set them up and what the first thing they print? NOTHING! They just wanted to be ABLE to.

All of this going on and without airconditioning since it died 3 days ago but no one cares enough about that to get it repaired but yet everyone is demanding shit on the network.

I am tired after minimal sleep, I have a headache, I’m sweating like a sweaty bastard and have had a complete sense of humour failure! So I just declared to everyone, “F*ck you all, I’m going to my room, I will come back when the aircon is fixed”

C U Next Tuesday!

So now I’m in my room. I am feeling much cooler, my headache is going away and I’m about to have a snooze.

ZZZzzzzzz

I have no idea why but I woke up with this song stuck in my head. Fortunately it’s not too irritating a song but what does puzzle me is “where the hell did it come from?”. I’m not talking about who sang it or anything, I wanna know what or who stuck it in my head!!!

I haven’t heard it for AGES so I cant understand why it’s here now and doing my head in. Maybe I’m just going nuts!

If anyone could shed some light on some deeper meaning I would be most grateful.In the meantime I will just keep whistling and humming it and pissing my colleagues off.

Original

EuroTrip Version! VERY KEWL!

Not a bad tune though!

~~ All images from DeviantArt.com

I am aiming to become a hired gun.

I started with the company as a contractor in a “home office” which is what they call the big city, main hub offices. I then became a company employee before joining the world of project job sites. I soon became part of the group known as “{Insert Company Name} Marines” which means you have basically made yourself available (whether or not you are aware of it) to go wherever, whenever and for however long as is required by the company. This is an unofficial title mind you.

I have now since progressed beyond that by handing in my resignation. I’m no longer a Marine but I have all intension of coming back from time to time to help out where they need cover support. Not only here but on all sorts of projects around the world as and when they require but more importantly, as and when I am available to do so.

The benefits are endless. I get to fly for my Commercial Pilots License for 8 weeks and then go and work for 2 weeks which will subsidize my training. I still get to travel quite a bit to build my frequent flyer mileage and still see the world. It’s good money without the commitment of having to be somewhere on a full time job. The company benefits as well since they can have me, an experienced employee that knows their systems, has all admin rights, knows the job setups and can put up with a lot of crap, and all of this on standby for as and when they need me. Within reason. I become their company IT Mercenary. The hired gun laptop!

This can work well with a good symbiosis and is being advertised to business groups within the company around the world.

I am looking forward to this.

Creative Marketing!

Life is, from time to time, described as a game of chess. Most of the time we are merely the pawns in the greater game. Sometimes you increase your rank through life but only on your little chess board. If you look any higher than that, then you will see that in the bigger picture you are simply a pawn again.

You can see this as a bad thing and sulk that you are never good enough or you can see it as a great thing that you always have something higher to strive for. You can also just settle for the board you are playing on, get comfortable and take care of the others that surround you.

If you do intend to climb onto the bigger boards through life, do it with dignity. Play nicely. Be careful with the other pawns in life as they are just as important to your success as you can be to theirs. You also never know when one of these pawns meets you one day as your rook or your bishop or maybe even your king. How things progress from there will be based on how situations have been handled in the past.

Some days you are the pigeon. Others days you are the statue!

When all is said and done though, just remember, this game of chess, this game of life, is yours to do with as you please. Try play it in a way that you can help others have a little fun and enjoyment too!

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