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 |  I travel the country on business, sometimes the world. Come see where I've been. |
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Talk about perks, my job has one of the best ones I can think of! I travel in the course of business, delivering classes for my employer. I am a Senior Training Specialist for Motorola Solutions, and teach classes on a wide variety of subjects centered around 2 way radio communications. I'm qualified to deliver approximately 30 different classes, but about half of those are 'Legacy' classes, and are not in demand anymore. My students are technicians, those who maintain, program, calibrate, and repair large 2-way radio systems. Some of these systems are statewide, and use TCP-IP networking to allow sites to communicate with others. Some are small, traditional type radio sites. The size doesn't matter, in each case the systems must be kept operational at all times, since many of them are Public Safety Systems. So I get to travel, sometimes frequently, 3-4 weeks in a row.... where am I this week? This probably won't have daily entries, but I will make entries when I get to go somewhere, and keep an updated list of coming trips. My schedule changes faster than the weather, so don't be too surprised to see me list an upcoming class, only to remark later on that it is cancelled, or delayed. Delays are fine of course, but a later date might mean that someone else gets to go instead of me,,, Well, here we go with this, let's see where it takes us.  Best Cultural And Regional Honorable Mention |
| Locale: Los Angeles Week of: 11/27/23 This week I was back with LAPD for another Fleetmapping class. I delivered this class to the Port Of LA las year. Duncan Angami, the Senior Communications Engineer with LAPD is the reason I'm here. He sat in that class last year and wanted me out here for LAPD. To me, being asked to deliver a class by a customer is an honor. He surprised me even more as we talked during a break. He said that they had checked out Fleetmapping Engineers (yes, there is a job for people who do nothing but help customer build Fleetmaps), but none of them seemed to satisfy him. He then asked me if I could do this for LAPD. I was floored, but tried not to show it. I explained that while I was an instructor still, I wouldn't have near enough free time to do that. He then said, "You're going to retire in the next year or two, aren't you?" Once again, I was floored at that idea. I know I could do it from home, but it might require monthly trips to LA here. What a thought, going into business for myself as a Fleetmap Engineer. WOW. This week's Fleetmapping class was essentially a repeat of the class two weeks ago. It's a class I love delivering, mainly because there is a lot of interaction between myself and the students. Such was the case this week. Once again there was a lot of discussion between the students and myself, as well as a lot of questions asked. I think the best part for me was when a student asked a question about audio issues on their consoles. I don't deliver the console classes, but still told him my thoughts on what it might be. I then posed that question to the Console Instructors in Google Chat. Guess who's answer was correct? Well, partially correct, because there is another issue (a hardware issue) that could have caused it. Since this has been happening on multiple consoles, I knew that was probably not their root cause. At least now they know of a couple of things that should be checked. Below is my current schedule through January, which has undergone a change this week. The Department of State wants a class delivered in March. It's a mixture of classes, and I seem to be the instructor they ask for. Plus, with this mixture of classes, I'm about the only person who can deliver this. The biggest problem is I'm not qualified on two of the classes. Apparently everyone else is qualified on one, if that many. One of the classes is not in our curriculum, so the course will need to be written. That's why I have all that prep time. Let's just hope it's enough. It's nice to be wanted, but retirement is looming it seems. We'll see what the future holds. 11/20: Work From Home - Thanksgiving week 11/27: Work From Home (my other half has carpal tunnel surgery) 12/11: Work From Home 12/18: Christmas Break 12/25: Christmas Break 1/1/24: Kansas (Thursday/Friday) 1/8: Fort Lauderdale 1/15: Work From Home 1/22: Schaumburg (very tentative) 1/29: Work From Home Well, that's about it for an update, at least for now. Until my next post, be good to those you love, spoil them, and write!  Jim Dorrell |
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