Charlie Lehardy

I’ve written a LOT about my job so far so here’s one more post and then I’m done for a while! I just wanted to give some details about what I’ll be doing, what the company does and all that good stuff because it’s actually fairly cool stuff.

The company is Modular Mining Systems and they make systems for mines (open pit and underground, but mostly open pit) that help the mines run more efficiently. There is a LOT of different things that go on, but the primary pieces are all run by radios and GPS units that get installed on the vehicles at a mine (drills, trucks, loaders, dozers, etc…). Those then talk over a wireless network (generally the same as what you’ll use with a laptop to get online) that talks to the central servers.

From there, someone is controlling the day-to-day operations of the mine with the information gathered. Oh yeah, there’s also a control panel inside the vehicle (LCD touch-screen) that gives the operator a way to get instructions from the central server/office. Those instructions can be a simple line of text with what to do, or a GPS powered map of where to drill their next hole and how deep to drill it (with a display that’s continuously updating with the depth that they’ve gone so far and how much further they need to go…).

So pretty much, the software does general control of the operations and makes things more efficient. For instance, if a loader goes down, then the system will route trucks that were going to go there to get filled to other loaders and then also recommend to the central office that they tell a couple trucks to park because they have too many now (generally) and it costs more to run the truck than to pay the people driving it…

It of course does a lot more than that, but I’m trying not to take up the entire page with just this. But it’s pretty cool stuff (to me anyway). What I’ll be doing is supporting the systems, installing new ones and customizing the interfaces and reports that the customers get. No, I generally won’t be welding the systems onto the trucks themselves, but I’ll be loading software and configuring the systems after they get installed (which means going onto the trucks) and then helping out in other ways if I need to (which sometimes means helping with the physical install).

This will also let me travel some more, but only about 25% of the time should be travel, which will be just about perfect. Of course, there will be times I’m on site for a month or more, but that’s just the way it goes. I might get to travel around the world some too so I’ll take that as a trade off for sure

The point is that I’m excited about the job possibility and am really looking forward to getting moving on it. Just have to get through the 3 months of training first…

Well, I said I’d post more and so here I am… I’ll be starting my position as a Project Engineer at Modular Mining Systems on Monday, March 6th. As I indicated in my last post, this really seems like it’s going to work out perfectly. I’ve been working in Phoenix for the past week at Adjoined Consulting and will be here for the rest of this week too. They offered me a position a couple weeks ago but then a week later when I told them I was willing to accept it, they said they couldn’t because they were being purchased by another company (and yes, I believe them. Their hands really are tied…).

Anyway, they REALLY needed a project to be completed by the 1st of March though and so brought me on as a contractor last week (starting 20 February, 2006) and scheduled me to work through the end of this week (3 March, 2006). So, I’m getting the project done that they had to have done and then will be starting at Modular the next Monday. So yeah, works out almost perfectly. And since I’m staying in Tucson, I’ll be saving about $6,000 per year in housing and utilities. So that’ll be very good. Plus I will get to stay near the friends I have and the Churches that I like.

The only bad thing at all is that Adjoined doesn’t get to hire me and will have to look for someone else, but I guess that’s the way it goes. It’s rare that everybody is 100% happy, so I’ll just have to accept that for what it is and not feel like I’m letting them down (which I have a tendency to do).

Good news all around though so yeah. Happy times!

You know, as humans we fuss and complain about our lives and the way things go. Especially of course when stuff doesn’t go just as we wanted it to. But it always seems to work out just fine. It might take longer than we thought it might (or thought we could wait for) but God is always there in the background, working the details to make everything work out just perfectly.

Today, I saw God do that in my life again with my job situation. Thankfully I had put my trust in him already and I’m leaning 100% (well, trying to anyway) on his understanding of what’s going on and ability to make everything work perfectly. And yep, it looks pretty perfect to me right now. I just hope I don’t screw it up!

I can’t give details right now because it’s not all done yet but it’s good news and I’m positive that it’s God’s plan. So that means I know it’s the right one. And THAT I can certainly live with.

So yep, I had my interview with Modular Mining Systems today and it was interesting… There are parts that I’m not sure what to make of, but as a whole, I think the choice is clear. Modular isn’t the company I’m supposed to be working for. This also means that (since I was going between Tucson and Phoenix), that Phoenix IS the place I’m supposed to be in and therefore Adjoined is the company I should be working for. However, there are oddities in that now too, but I’ll talk about that in a bit.

First though, the interview. I ALMOST got there late, but it turns out that I was right on time. However, the guy I was supposed to interview with was not there. He was at a lunch meeting with a bunch of other people and had never been informed that I was coming to have an interview. I’m not even sure if he knew who I was at all. But we had the interview anyway (once he got back that is) and it did go pretty well.

However, the job itself is not what I was thinking it was. Modular makes management systems for mines and the primary piece of their sales is hardware they install into the dump trucks, shovels, water trucks, bulldozers, etc, etc… that keeps track of where everything is, what it’s doing and the MOST efficent use of that vehicle. It then allows operators in the main building to assign tasks to each vehicle that are displayed on a touch-screen displayed installed in the vehicle.

The job that I interviewed for consists of two parts. First would be setting everything up for the mine after they purchase it (mostly open-pit mines, but some underground ones too). This includes installing the hardware on the vehicles, setting up the wireless network around the mine (imagine, 802.11b wireless on your laptop in the middle of an open-pit mine… that’s what Modular works off of, kinda cool) and also the servers that run everything.

This of course requires traveling and the official line is that it’s about 25% travel (I’d say it’s more than that from what they said, but I might be wrong). However, the travel is four to six weeks at a time to a mine in some part of the world. Of course, mining towns are not known to be very nice places generally and so that much time in a place like that might not be great for me (considering some of the problems I’ve had in the past).

The other part of the job is doing customizations for the customer and solving any problems they might have while I’m not on-site. That sort of thing would be rather fun I’d think and something I could do well with. But the real problem is that it comes back to the travel. I was expecting something like one week out of the month instead of four to six weeks at a time and so it wasn’t what I was thinking. Anyway, that much travel has not been good for me in the past and so I think it’s just not the job that I should take.

Which leaves Adjoined in Phoenix. So, I called them today to let them know what’s going on and my thoughts and from talking to them, I’m not sure what’s really going on… Apparently they are being purchased by Kanbay, who is a much larger (public) company that does a lot of financial and health-care consulting. I’m not sure what that means for the position I would have had at Adjoined since they may not need somebody any longer (if Kanbay has somebody that does that sort of thing already) or if Adjoined is even allowed to hire anybody right now. Either way, this new um… wrinkle has made things more interesting.

So, Adjoined said they’d call me later tonight (around 7pm my time) with more information and let me know what they’re thinking and hopefully if they even CAN offer me the position still. I never knew that this purchase was a possibility however, so it’s a change for sure. Guess we’ll see where it goes from here!

Anyway, that’s the updates on jobs for now. Thanks for everybody’s prayers and I’ll post more once I find out more.

Well, I’ve been thinking and praying all weekend to decide what to do about jobs. I talked to most of my friends and they helped out a lot too. And really, I think God was fairly clear on what I should do about the jobs. So, I followed that this morning and first checked with the guys here in Tucson to ensure that the position is what I thought it was and that the pay range was what I was wanting and both checked out. So I just called the Phoenix company (Adjoined) and told them that I really need to do this interview in Tucson on Thursday before I made a final decision. Oddly enough, the last two times I called the woman from Adjoined, I got voice-mail. Anyway, now I will just need to have my interview on Thursday and see where that leads me.

I want to thank EVERYBODY for their prayers and help with making this decision and their continued prayers while I figure out what to do next…

Well, the company in Phoenix (Adjoined Consulting) just gave me a job offer and want me to start MONDAY! Of course, this would require moving to Phoenix and I’m still not sure about that… They’re paying me enough and they are giving me some money for relocation assistance too (which is good), so all of that is very nice. And the job itself sounds fairly interesting and fun. I’m just not for sure I want to move to Phoenix.

It’s funny though. I’ve said a few times that a few friends down here seem to really need my help and so I’m not wanting to leave them. But what if they don’t need me here? What if I’m just using that as an excuse to stay in Tucson and not have to deal with change? I don’t know… Change and me have never gotten along very well, but I’ve always done my best and TRIED to change and go with what God wants. But now that I’m faced with a big decision like this, I’m having a hard time making any leeway on it.

Of course, that’s probably mostly due to the fact that they called me TODAY and want me to start MONDAY (which I told them just can’t happen. Wednesday or Thursday is the ABSOLUTE soonest). But still, this is a big change and I’ve said for a long time that I’ll never move to Phoenix (well, probably more like that I really do NOT WANT to move to Phoenix). However, God sometimes seems to take statements like that and have us do exactly what we’ve said we didn’t want to do and makes us learn about Him and grow with the experience.

Anyway, regardless, the job offer is there and I can’t ignore it. So, here I am, wondering what to do and praying that God will give me the answers I’m looking for. Maybe the first thing I should do is get myself moving and ready to attack the day like I normally would (like eat food!) and then go from there. Give this day some normality and then we’ll see what happens. Yeah, that sounds like an idea. In the mean-time, prayer would be great.

Thanks!

So I had my interview up in Phoenix yesterday (Monday the 6th) and things seemed to go well. I’ve not heard back from them yet as to if they’re going to offer me the job and what they’ll offer for pay, but that’s not terribly unexpected. If I were the superstitious type, I’d say that I was doomed from the start since I broke a shoelace getting ready But I’m not so I wouldn’t. Pretty much, it’s in God’s hands (as always).

I do have another interview on Thursday, February 16 with Modular Mining Systems and I’m looking forward to that one. The job would basically be tech-support for their customers and I’d mostly stay here in Tucson, but I would get to travel some too (25 to 35% travel). And some of that travel would include overseas (Chilie, Australia primarilarly), so that’d be a lot of fun. Of course, since the travel is fairly minimal (or is supposed to be), then I’d get to stay around the Church’s I like and the friends I’m just now getting to know better. Anyway, as I keep saying, it’s in God’s hands. I just wish I knew what he wanted. But a good friend corrected me on that. His comment was that if we knew the plan, we’d most likely be bored the whole time and impatient waiting for what we already know is coming. So I guess it’s better this way.

Ok, rant time. I did a quick two-hour job for a company a few weeks ago. Everything went fine, but I figured out pretty quickly that they really didn’t know what they were doing (I was a contractor for a contractor for the client, if you follow and the contractor for the client is who I’m complaining about, NOT the client). Anyway, I was done with it, got paid last week and everything was fine. Then on Sunday (yes, Super Bowl Sunday… YAY Steelers!) they called me wanting to see if I could head back to the client’s place and fix a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device I’d installed. I asked what the problem was and how long it’d take to do it and also mentioned that because of the interview I mentioned previously, I would not be able to get to it until at LEAST 14:00 (24 hour time rocks!). They said ok, and that they’d call me back later to tell me if I needed to go or not and updated information and to confirm a time.

Well, they never called and in the mean-time I had someone else call wanting computer help, so I told him I could do that at 14:00 or 14:25. I had my interview, went to In-N-Out Burger and then drove home. At 13:45, I get a call from the contractors for the client saying that I’m confirmed to go to the client’s site at 16:00 and do the job. I explained that I’ve got other things planned now and that they had never called me about it until now (VERY late notice obviously) but that I could probably squeeze it in.

I head over to my friend’s house (got there right at 14:15) and started work on his computer and realized it wasn’t going to be a quick-fix but did the best I could in the time I had. Anyway, at 15:23, I’m about to leave to head to the client’s site (I was about 45 minutes away, so I was going to be late already, but the contractor for the client said that’d be ok if I was since they screwed up so much and were imposing on me) when the contractor called me asking where I was. Well, as it turns out, when she said 16:00, she meant 16:00 HER time (she’s in Atlanta), not 16:00 my time. Which meant she wanted me there at 14:00 which was the absolute SOONEST I had said I could be there. This also meant that she originally told me the time 15 minutes before I was supposed to be there. And of course, the way she sounded when she told me was like “Of COURSE I meant my time and you should have know that… This is a BIG mess-up on your part.”
Anyway, I was nice to them and dropped EVERYTHING and drove down to the client’s site as quickly as possible and got the job done. That will be the last job I’ll do for them for sure though. I mean, the first job was a bit of a hassle anyway because they didn’t have full information available for me and such, but this one was a disaster and it was ALL their fault.

So yeah, it was a great day yesterday. I mostly spent my whole time driving around (was only in the interview for an hour), but I did help that friend with his computer and did bail the client out of some problems they were having. So I guess that was good. Makes me wonder how the contractor managed to get the contract in the first place though…