For the last three months I have been working the overnight shift on a retail store network equipment refresh project for a global shoe brand. Due to contractual obligations, I am not at liberty to disclose the company name, but what I can say is that they’re kind of a big deal and I’m grateful for being part of this project.
However, working the night shift is hard for us humans. It throws our circadian rhythm so far out of whack that what once was perhaps a pleasant samba groove in 4/4 time becomes an offbeat primal sound more like that of a chimpanzee on meth beating on a metal trash can with a crowbar.
Getting out of the familiar 8 AM to 6 PM daytime rat race schedule and into the 6 PM to 4 AM nocturnal racoon schedule – the wee hours of which, incidentally, are the same as those of the tweakers, serial killers, zombies, vampires, and aging rock stars – is certainly not for everyone. I don’t love it, but it is necessary and mercifully temporary.
Your instincts are that when it gets dark outside, you are supposed to be winding down, not up. By 2:00 AM, you find yourself in an epic mental battle between your mind desperately wanting to sleep and your mind needing to stay wide awake and mentally sharp. You oscillate between these wildly opposite mental states. It’s not easy. It’s an eternal battle between Greek gods Hypnos and Argus Panoptes.
But you find ways to stay awake, like reading a book, listening to upbeat music, or playing a newly discovered online version of Whist, a popular 19th century card game that Dostoevsky mentions in The Brothers Karamazov that I had to Google when I read it. Whist was a predecessor of modern Contract Bridge, which is my dad and stepmom’s favorite card game. Sometimes I find myself doing all of these at once.
I feel oddly guilty about pouring a dram of whiskey at 4:00-AM and getting up at the crack of noon. It feels strange going to sleep for 8-hours and waking up on the same day. And even though I do typically sleep for 8-hours, I still feel tired. But why though? I mean, it’s just a time shift, right? I should feel totally normal, right? Well, not exactly…
In 1972, geologist Michel Siffre, one of the early pioneers of experiments on human circadian rhythms, spent six months in Midnight Cave in southern Texas. Siffre suffered both acute and lasting effects, only partially recovering from the isolation physically, mentally, and emotionally. His internal clock shifted to 48-hours, and he completely lost track of hours, days, weeks, and months. He stayed awake for 36-hours straight and slept for 12-hours at a stretch. His Day 63 inside Midnight Cave was really Day 77 above ground.
Siffre later described the experience as: “A slow slide into madness.” He talked to insects for company. He found comfort in his own voice, but silence always returned, crushing and relentless. After 180 days, Siffre’s team removed him from the cave. To him, only 151 days had passed. 29 days were unaccounted for in his daily diary. Time literally slowed down, stretched out, and slipped away from him.
So, from Siffre’s experiments we can conclude that our circadian rhythm is nothing to trifle with or you just might risk losing your mind a little bit. Duly noted. It’s still May, right?
I have one more week to go. I hope I make it. But if you see me talking to insects, you’ll understand why.
I was recently reflecting on how many jobs that I’ve had over the years and decided to write them all down for posterity, you know, in case anyone was wondering. Also, the electrical trade had its ups and downs and in between the slowdowns, I worked odd jobs. As you’ll see in 1979-1981, I jumped around quite a bit between a bunch of jobs because I was:
Between electrical jobs due to economic slowdowns.
Chasing better paying jobs
I simply got bored with them.
In 1978 I had moved in with my dad in Sacramento after getting released from Fire Camp #7 – Camp William V. Mendenhall, a juvenile detention facility in Lake Hughes, CA. Yes, I was a juvenile delinquent at one point in my life and I absolutely paid my dues for it. It’s a long story. I recently wrote a memoir about my juvenile delinquency and am currently seeking a literary agent – stay tuned. Anyway, after working in the kitchen at Mendenhall, I decided that the culinary arts was going to be my career path and that is how I ended up working as a prep cook in a Japanese restaurant.
1975-1976 – Gopher at Errol Sign Company, North Hollywood, CA. The summer of ‘75 was the first part-time job that I had. My best friend Mark Flaata got me the job, and the pay was a whopping $2.10 per hour – big bucks for a 14-year-old. With In-n-Out just down the street on Lankershim Blvd, this is where much of my money was spent. The owner Errol Biggs was a mustachioed character that drove around in a 1969 Chevy El Camino. He had dirt bikes that he let Mark and I borrow and eventually destroy.
1977 – Part-time machinist apprentice at Jack Drees Grinding, North Hollywood, CA for $3 per hour. Another job that Mark landed for me. Precision grinding for all sorts of military parts. Surface grinders, double-disk grinders, Blanchard grinders. I was pretty good at learning this and was running my own Blanchard grinder within a few months. Not bad for a 16-year-old.
1978 – Part-time prep cook at a Japanese restaurant in Sacramento, CA, $3.25 per hour. Among other duties like chopping, cutting, slicing, julienne, etc., all sorts of foods, this is where I learned how to break down and debone a whole chicken lickety-split.
1979 – Pumping gas at the Union 76 gas station at the corner of Whitsett Ave. and Vanowen Blvd., North Hollywood, CA, $3.50 per hour. My brother Scott got this job for me. For the Vietnam veteran owner George Christie, the gas station was a side hustle as he was a full-time engineer for the Southern Pacific Railroad. I quit after a few months.
1979 – Floyd Floor Mats, North Hollywood, CA, $3.75 per hour. This job consisted of cutting out carpet shapes and sewing on edges and silk-screening logos on floor mats. I didn’t particularly care for this filler job, and it lasted only a couple of months before I left for a better paying gig.
1979 – Part-time machinist apprentice at a machine shop on Hinds St., North Hollywood, CA, $4 per hour. I forgot the name of this company, but this is where I learned to run an analog Bridgeport milling machine. I left this job to go back to Drees grinding for more money.
1979 – Machinist at Jack Drees Grinding, North Hollywood, CA, working the swing shift as assistant foreman for $4.50 per hour at 18-years-old. Mark Flaata was working the same shift at Lockheed, so we would meet when our shifts were over and go off-roading and drink beer and smoke weed and listen to music, sometimes until sunrise.
1980 – Electrician – apprentice, G.G. Electric, North Hollywood, CA. $5 per hour! I got this job through my friend Jerry Podlevsky. I quickly learned the basics of reading blueprints, layout, and wiring. I was pretty good at this too and was a quick study.
1980 – European Motor Connection, North Hollywood, CA, $5 per hour. Low level mechanic and gopher for my brother-in-law, Armand Azran, a French Moroccan national. A shitty filler job. By 1993, Armand began engaging in criminal activity and had to leave the country before Guido and Tony caught up with him. He convinced my sister and mom to go, which was the dumbest thing for them to do. Armand eventually went to prison in Morocco.
1980 – Electrician – apprentice, Sheffield Electric, Reseda, CA, $6 per hour, through Jerry Podlevsky. This company had the notoriety of writing bad checks to its employees, so it was always a race to the bank on Friday.
1981 – Morris Richman Auto Sales, Studio City, CA, $5 per hour. Gopher, car washer, and porter. Another shitty filler job, but at least it was close to where I was living. This was the first time I took a reduction in my hourly wage.
1981-1984 – Electrician – apprentice to journeyman, J. J. Master Electric, Los Angeles, CA, $7 up to $12 per hour. Joe Masterson was the cigar chomping owner of this A-list electrical contractor. Landmark locations like Chasen’s and the Hotel Bel Aire plus various film, TV, radio and sports personalities and old L.A. money families like the Doheny’s and the Keck’s. Meeting and working with Vin Scully was a highlight.
1984-1990 – Electrician – journeyman, White Glove Electric, Santa Monica, CA, $13 up to $20 per hour. This company was started by Woody Miles and Rudy Martinez, two veteran electricians from J. J. Master who recruited me for more money. I left White Glove after a falling out with management. Promotional promises were made but not kept.
1990-1992 – Electrician – journeyman, Kamashian Electric, Van Nuys, CA, $21 up to $22 per hour. Joe Kamashian was great to work for and very professional. Lots of industrial control system work that I geeked out over, and I was really good at it There was a major slowdown and I got laid off.
1992-1994 – Electrician – journeyman, Shamma Electric, Granada Hills, CA, $22 up to $23 per hour. On December 26, 1994, I was electrocuted and almost killed on the job. It took me seven months to recover. This also set me up for a better career path 5-years later due to the California Vocational Rehabilitation law at the time. Long story.
1995-1998 – Electrician – journeyman, Kamashian Electric, Van Nuys, CA, $24 up to $26 per hour. It was good to work with Joe again. This was my last job working in the electrical trade.
1999 – obtained my Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) certification. This was a major career game changer.
1999-2005 – Systems Engineer for Center Automotive Group, Sherman Oaks, CA. The timing couldn’t be more perfect. The owner David Farguson had decided to update their dealer management system (DMS) from the green screen terminal-based mainframe Reynolds and Reynolds system at BMW, and ADP system at Chrysler/Jeep to a centralized Windows based system called Carman. I was moonlighting for them doing some electrical work on the BMW parts department remodel. They had a meeting where Mr. Farguson announced the decision to move to Carman and asked if anyone knew someone that knew Windows systems. My brother Scott was at that meeting, and he knew that I was taking the MCSE certification courses going to night school and floated my name out. David invited me to a meeting and offered me a salaried position starting at $80K. I was only making about $60K in the trade at the time. You bet your ass that I took the job. I happened to be at the right place at the right time and it changed my life.
2005 – Started my own IT consultancy, Business Technology Services & Management, LLC, Van Nuys, CA. Also certified on an IP based telephony system called Fonality. I had sold and installed a handful of these systems and got a call from the people that I knew at Fonality to help out one of their partners, Cbeyond Communications (a CLEC out of Atlanta), who was opening an office in Gardena, CA. The story was that Cbeyond had hired a cabling contractor to do a temporary cabling job on one of the floors of a building while another contractor was building out the suite a few floors above. The cabling contractor had disappeared, and Cbeyond was left in the lurch with plans to occupy the space within a week. I had been working with a cabling company named Streamline Communications which was owned by Sam Mazzola, one of my instructors for one of my MCSE certification courses. I got Sam and the Cbeyond team to together and Streamline delivered the project in five days! This set me up for something unexpected.
2007-2015 – Landed a major Field Services contract with Cbeyond Communications for the Los Angeles and San Diego markets. After helping Cbeyond with their cabling fiasco, their field services manager John Favors invited me to a meeting and asked if I was interested in doing field services for them as a preferred field services provider (FSP). Even though I was not fully prepared, I said yes because I knew I would figure it out as I went along. At the peak of the contract, I had ten employees in various positions working for my company. Total billing for this contract was $4.24 million over 8-years. After Birch Communications bought them out in 2014, they slowly bled out the FSP’s by bringing the field services in-house. I had to let go of everyone that was working for me.
2015-2018 – Field Nation platform for IT field services. Various tech related field service projects for hospitality, retail, food and beverage, and health care.
2018-2023 – Remote IT Systems and Network Consultant to TransformITive, Inc., Berkeley CA, $80k up to $90k.
2021 – Obtained my Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certification. I had wanted to get this certification for years, and during COVID-19, I buckled down and did it. This certification is difficult – the global pass rate for the exam is under 50%, and the average pass rate is 2.5 attempts.
2023-present – Sr. Network Engineer consultant for a global retail network refresh project for a major shoe brand. Due to contractual restraints, I am not allowed to disclose the finances of this project. All I can say is that it pays well.
Twenty-four jobs in total – wowzah – I never tallied it up before! Setting the odd jobs aside, I mostly worked in two major but vastly different careers: the electrical trade (18-years) and in IT (25-years).
And now I am attempting to be a writer too, so maybe the count is three major careers?
msnarky 