KC5SDY

Younger years and school:
I was born in Rockwall, TX in 1972. Grew up in Garland and Sachse. I graduated South Garland High School in 1991. I was the school nerd and the one picked on by everyone. I could go the rest of my life while not remembering anything from High School. 90% of everything that happened centered around being picked on. During my junior year, I joined the US Army Reserve. I went to Basic Training in between my junior and secier years, came back home to graduate, then went to AIT after graduation.

The Army Years:
Like I said earlier, I went to BCT at Ft Dix, NJ during my summer vacation of 1990. I was in Charlie Company, 1/26 Inf.
After graduation, I went to AIT at Ft Eustis, VA during the summer of 1991. I was in Alpha Company, 1/222 AVN. I was training for the MOS of 68D-10, Powertrain Repairer. Sometime around 2000, the MOS's were changed around. My 68D changed to 15D, I believe. The 68 series went medical. I do not know what the 15's were before or what. Anyway, while in the Reserves, I was with Alpha Company, 1/158th AVN in Grand Prairie. As a Powertrain Repairer, I was trained to work on everything from the tail rotor to the main rotor, with the exception of the transmission. Everything else was my domain. I enjoyed it. I was in from 1990-1998.

The technology years:
Sometime late in the 90's I started my IT career on a helpdesk. If you bought an extended warranty on your computer, printer, etc, you called us when you had a problem. It was very high stress and came with a very high call volume. You were expected to be on a new call every 5 minutes. You were expected to quickly troubleshoot the problem, send the user on, or forward your ticket to the warranty department for warranty replacement, then on to the next call. When I would walk into work, there would be 80-100 calls in the queue. When I left, there would often be 80-100 calls in the queue. It was something else.

In late 1999, I found another helpdesk job. This one was expected to be a lot better, and it was. I was starting on a 2nd level helpdesk and hardware was my specialty. Over the years, I would later be in the Email, Hardware, and Graphics queues. I covered all the escalated calls from the 1st level teams, and handled hardware calls from our field agents as they ran their calls. The majority of the time, a field agent would call and need the SKU for a part they needed to order. To this day, of all the part numbers and SKU's I have looked up, I can still remember the most common one. That is the SKU for the maintenance kit for a HP 5si printer. That SKU... 178911. The things we remember.Thanks to bean counters running things, in 2003, we were being cross trained on some of the other 1st level desks. In addition, they were rolling out a paid service that anyone was allowed to call for any kind of support they needed. Primarily, the company I worked for, acted as the outsource point for fortune 500 companies that either did not want to or could not afford their own helpdesk. The smaller accounts went to us anyway. The large accounts had dedicated teams for. If someone off the street wanted to use our services, they could call us, give us their credit card information, and we would help them. I did not agree with this at all. I knew how this company worked. If you were blamed for something, there was no investigation. You were guilty until proven innocent. I made my opinion obvious. I blatently asked my management team would would happen if someone called up and said that their credit card was used for unauthorized things after they called us. I asked if there was any plans for dealing with this or if it would just be assumed that whomever touched the number last stole it. I got the impression that it would be assumed that the last person that touched the number would be the one that stole it. Knowing how this comapny ran, or rather how the department was ran, I knew that they would go through the motions and pretend to investegate but, would untimately walk the tech out the door. I left. From 2004 until later in 2006, I bounced around doing contract break-fix work. One day, I got a phone call from a head-hunter with an opportunity from that very same company I left previously. This time, this opportunity was for Desktop Support. I jumped on that. From late 2006 until the end of 2009, I was supporting everyone at the corporate campus and everyone in the field. I had a wonderful time. It was only me and 1 other person on my team, not including supervisors and managers. I was told the whole time that I was supposed to be brought on full-time from contact but, that never happened. I was not surprised either. The company was cheap and wanted to show how small the IT department was with how few perminant imployees they had. Towards the end of 2009, I was told that my contract was about to expire. I went to the field manager and told him that I was about to be cut and if he had any openings. He made one for me amd from the beginning of 2010 until the 2nd quarter of 2019, I was working in the field. I drove all over the area working on printers, desktops, laptops, servers, routers, switches, you name it, I did it. I enjoyed it. In the end, the manager I had, and I, did not see eye-to-eye on everything. He knew it. I am sure I was his first choice when I was told he needed to cut someone. That is ok. I found a much better job.

From May until July of 2019,  I was unemployed. My 401k and my severance package at least kept the bills paid until I found my new job. I am loving it!

Amateur Radio, Then and Now:
Back in school, myself and a few friends did the CB thing. We all had a radio in our car and usually had one at home too. This went on for quite a while. One day, I grew tired of the language and the way everyone else was acting. One day, I turned the radio off and it was never turned on again. A close friend of mine, suggested I look at Amateur Radio. The only thing I knew of it is that you needed to know Morse Code. I knew nothing else about it. At that time, the Technician class license did not require knowing the code. I studied and got my license. At the end of 1995 is when I took my test. Thanks to the government shutdown at the time, I never got my license until early 1996. KC5SDY was the callsign I was assigned. I have no intention of ever changing it. I will contemplate getting a vanity call but, all in all, I have done a lot with this callsign, I do not want to essentially start over with a new one. So, I stay with it. Sure, I could get a shorter one. Maybe some day. We shall see.

Since getting my license, I did take the 5WPM code test and got my Tech Plus license. Shortly after that, the code requirment was dropped and I subsiquently upgraded to General and then Extra class. This was all within about a years timespan. Later in 1996, I got interested in SKYWARN and got linked up with the Dallas County Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES). I was with them for about 10 years. I moved to Ellis county and found it difficult to check into the nets every month. I ended up dropping out. I probably should have spoken with the coordinators and pled my case to see what could be done. I ended up just not showing up anymore. At the end of the year, I was dropped off the roles for not meeting the check-in requirements. From 2006 until 2018, I kind of did my own thing. I really did nto get involved with any club activities. I was pretty much stagnate. I would talk on the local repeaters frequently. One day, my Ex-wife said that sht though what I was doing on the radio was stupid s**t. From that day on, I made sure I was not on the radio when she was around. When working HF, I made sure that I was working digital modes. Whether it be PSK, or running CW during a contest, she did not know when I was on the radio. I have since been remarried for almost 12 years now. It was not until the last couple years that I have started getting more active on the air. My current wife somewhat enjoys it. She says she wants to get her license. I have recently joined the Ellis County Radio Club and Ellis County Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES). Back when I left Dallas RACES, I never lost my love of storm spotting. I was really able to get back into it with the Ellis County group. The club is the most active club I have ever seen and have loved being a member. As long as I am living in Ellis County, I do not see that changing anytime soon.

When I am on the radio, I am either on DMR, usually on Texas Statewide (3128), working FT8 on HF, or working a leasurly contest that happens to be going on. I am only limied to 100W with my HF radio so, until the solar cycle starts picking back up, I will just stick with the digital modes for now. There are so many different modes to work, you can always find something to do. While I was unemployed, one of the jobs I was interviewing for was for a field job working on some equipment for schools. Since my territory was basically going to be the State of Texas, I knew I would going to need to get into DMR. So, I did. I have enjoyed that as well. It is usually FT8, DMR, or the local repeaters.

That is about it for now.
By all means, drop me a line and ask me anything you would like to know, gripe at me about, suggest, or whatever.
You can find me on Facebook. You can also find what I have been doing lately on HF over on QRZ.

Don't forget to run over to my
CONTACT ME
page and drop me a line.
For now, I will say 73 and I hope to hear you on the air or see you on the waterfall...