Sometimes my job's pretty cool.

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DarkHand

Senior Member
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As many of you know, I'm a facilities manager for Verizon. I take care of a number of administrative buildings in the IL area and keep them running so the folks inside can do their jobs. I recently picked up a call center in Elgin, a big one with about 950 people. Was told we're hosting an event for the employees; Verizon racing is bringing a few of their cars to the parking lot where they'd be shown off along with all the regular promo and merchandising swag. Kind of last minute, but cool! We sectioned off a chunk of the parking lot and the Penske Racing trailer arrived this morning, but it won't be opened until tomorrow. Was talking with the driver, we've got Ryan Briscoe's cup car, Justin Allagaier's Indy Car, and there's a race at Joliet Speedway this weekend... we've got Helio Castroneves' backup car for the event.

I joked about how I'd like to sneak into that one and drive around in it tomorrow, and he mentioned that Helio might not like that when he's here signing autographs. :eek:

Turns out all three drivers will be here!! (Well not Justin, he was just in a big crash, a backup drive will be here). I've got to work with them and make sure they're able to get around the building and have a backup place inside to sign autographs from if it rains. I think the D90 is going to accidentally follow me to work tomorrow.

It's not an easy job, and the pay isn't the best, but sometimes it's pretty cool :)
 
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i am so sick of verizon corporate. we get a P2P T1 installed... and they charged us $2200 for the routers and never shipped them. no record, no tracking, no nothing. they expect us to pay the install and service fees but where is the completed install and service? TWO MONTHS we have been waiting for those routers and they have charged us for TWO MONTHS of service.

fuck them. we aren't paying one penny :)
 
sweet, too bad i'll never own another verizon phone. no gsm :thumbsdown:

Ya that kind of sucks. Crippled bluetooth functionality is cruddy too.

i am so sick of verizon corporate. we get a P2P T1 installed... and they charged us $2200 for the routers and never shipped them. no record, no tracking, no nothing. they expect us to pay the install and service fees but where is the completed install and service? TWO MONTHS we have been waiting for those routers and they have charged us for TWO MONTHS of service.

fuck them. we aren't paying one penny :)

Good! :) They'll hopefully get it straight when they see the bills aren't getting paid.

Ok now let's get back to the fact that I get to work with Helio Castroneves! ;)
 
yay!

On an unrelated topic, Joliet is where Graybar's main shipping hub is, and I've talked to a few techs at the Elgin Verizon place. They seem to be worth a damn unlike 80% of fort wayne's people.
 
nice..justin seems like a pretty cool kid..too bad he wont be there
 
I almost forgot!

Mario Andretti signed the instructions to my Tamiya CRX model back at the 2005 Chicago Auto Show. I'm going to have to bring it along and have Helio sign it too... Two Indy 500 winner's autographs on the CRX!
 

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Got it! Mario Andretti and Helio Castroneves' signatures on the instructions now. I can feel my kart times going down already. :)

I was wrong about Justin Allagaier, I got it backwards... He's the replacement they got because Will Power got injured. Justin was there; he came down with his parents. :)

I'm kicking myself for not taking the D90... It's not water resistant and I was convinced that it was going to rain all day... I didn't want to tempt myself to get the camera wet just so I could get 'that great shot'. Only problem is that the rain held off for almost the entire event. :(

So I improvised and borrowed the little Kodak Easyshare that the mailroom uses to take ID photos. :)


THE car that Helio won this year's Indy 500 in. It's the backup car for this weekend's race:
 

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Normally the show cars have a cheaper steering wheel attached so people can't mess it up or throw off the driver's settings. Since the backup car needed to be race ready and it was an employees-only event, the $100,000 steering wheel was still attached. I wish I could have gotten a bunch of good macro shots of it with the D90. Also a few shots of the cup car and some blurry shots of the drivers:
 

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Found a shot by one of the pro photographers at the event that caught them with the silly glasses too:
 

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Awesome and good work getting some shots for us.
 
Thats awesome. All my jobs good for is free rides in the Lear Jets and being handed the controls of the Caravans.

When my company goes under you wanna hook me up with a job?:ph34r:
 
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