Twenty Years

by on August 3, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I graduated from college in 1999. I studied in computer science with a business secondary, and went straight to work in the industry I had long since chosen to aim for.

Computer technical support. My first full time job was on site at the Mayo Clinic for one of the many companies that contracted out to them. It lasted for three months. You may remember the 2000 scare. All the computers would fail to boot up on January 1, 2000, because their motherboard clocks were designed to only recognize two digit years starting with 84, so 00 was just right out. Many people were hired to work on that, and I was hired on the tail end of that job. As the job came to completion, my company began to downsize. I was laid off in the second round. There were two or three more rounds after that, and then they sold the company. And at the same time, every other computer company was laying off their excess computer techs as well.

It was the worst time to enter the computer industry. The only way to get a computer job in my hometown was to be an 8+ year veteran of IBM, which had been downsizing for years already. Those computer scientists with 4 or 8 year degrees who had designed entire new computer systems for the world banks and such were getting tech support jobs. The rest of us could pound sand.

I got a part time job at Best Buy while trying to find something better. Then one day I sold a computer to a businessman who was starting a new company. He liked how I asked what he wanted, and then got him a computer that would do what he wanted. Two actually. He offered me a job on the spot. I started working on the overnight shift when the hotel was still sticks, lacking even doors on the rooms. First it was my job to keep TVs from walking out. Then it was my job to run the daily audits. And then the owners wanted me to run and report the numbers for them, and many other business related items.

I guess that business secondary turned out to be more important than I thought it would be.

Twenty years later, I am still here. Three owners, three names, more managers than even I can count, and I am the last man standing of those who saw the hotel rise from the field. I’ve bought two homes, multiple vehicles, and built a good life I am happy with all thanks to this job.

This weekend, the longest-running manager we have ever had left for another opportunity.

And my twenty-year watch continues…

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The Republic of Texas

by on August 2, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base woke up from over two centuries of slumber when the Shang dropped Yosemite Yards onto half of America. They did not care about the strike on the District of Columbia. Those were dirty rotten feds. They had done something to deserve it. Most Texans could come up with examples. Plural. It was the Yosemite Strike that brought the base to action. The Shang had killed Americans and Texans they cared about, so they activated every command affiliated with them in any way. If the units did not have the men to fight effectively, they called up full retirees, the descendents of those who had served on the base, or entirely new volunteers. They needed new blood to go to War, and Fort Worth JRB bustled with new activity and life. They reactivated more units than the base could support and sent them out to do battle throughout the stars. Some served under the American flag, others under a Texas flag, and some flew both. The War had come for Fort Worth JRB, and it would change the base forever.

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The Republic of Texas

by on August 1, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base slept for over two centuries after the Second Great Depression. Soldiers, Airmen, and Marines stopped off there on the way to retirement or other jobs. Daily life went on as normal, clerks monitoring ammunition and weapon checks, or bringing in shipments of food for the weekends. Then a rotating assemblage of units would form up to refresh their skills before going back to their normal lives. It was a quiet life, interrupted only by natural disaster relief missions and basic training. More than one administration even entertained the idea of closing the base, but inertia and history kept it open. No one wanted the black mark of closing a base with Fort Worth JRB’s history on their own records. But they did lower some of the units based there into deep maintenance mode, administrative commanders in place with no men or women to command. Even Contact wasn’t enough to do much more than call up a week’s worth of active duty cleaning and training of those units that still had personnel. The aliens were not going to start anything, so Fort Worth JRB returned to its deep sleep once more.

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The Republic of Texas

by on July 31, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The Second Great Depression, and the various wars and conflicts that happened during it, changed the world as we knew it. Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base survived them all to become one of many Republic of Texas reserve bases. Some may say the best of them, though others often disagree. But as the reserves generally do when the wars wind down, Fort Worth JRB settled back into a slower routine. Her people went back to their civilian jobs, assuming their companies had survived the chaos, or started a new life with a new job or vocation. Some went to space when America returned to that final frontier. They went to Mars and beyond in the decades that followed, all while maintaining a link to the military community of Fort Worth JRB. Ready to stand in defense of Texas and America should they be called back to duty again.

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The Republic of Texas

by on July 30, 2020 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Not every battlefield Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base’s units fought on was one they expected to face. The Drug Wars were fairly simple. Kill the drug cartels. Texas gave them targets, and they serviced the targets. The Islamic Jihad’s mass use of human shields was a much more difficult challenge, though Texas had less exposure to that conflict than other States. The Cybernetic Wars were particularly complicated, but the reserve units at the base tended to use less technologically advanced weapons that were far more resistant to Rogue AI hacking attempts. The friendly AIs who would later form the AI Council were quick to help defend their most advanced weapons, such as the Cowboys’ F-35s. And when it came time to make a stand against the Chinese, Texas sent the Cowboys to make sure the lesson took. It is perhaps ironic that they ended up flying with the Chinese during the final assaults against the Singapore Collective. Then they returned home to Fort Worth JRB and began acclimating to the new world they had defended and helped create.

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