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Hit panel number 2,000 last Friday and sat in the truck for a minute | Alarm System Installers - Vivisector

Hit panel number 2,000 last Friday and sat in the truck for a minute

Honestly I never kept count of panels until my helper started logging them in a notebook about a year ago. Last Friday I wired up number 2,000 at a little daycare in Rochester and it hit me weird, because my first hundred took almost two years back when everything was 4/20 zone wiring and cans the size of a lunchbox. The trade looks so different now. Half my job is app setup and teaching people that their wifi drops are why the system calls them at 2am. The old guys who trained me learned by tracing zones with a toner, and now I'm pairing sensors on my phone before I even mount them. What's the number that snuck up on you, panels, service calls, whatever?

2 comments

2 Comments

smith.elliot13d ago

Man, I gotta push back on one thing here. 4/20 zone wiring and lunchbox cans weren't the same era, not even close. The 4/20 stuff was already on its way out by the late 80s, and those big old cans hung around way longer than that, some places into the 90s and beyond depending on where you worked. So if your first hundred took two years and it was all 4/20, you must've started a good while before the cans were the norm, or you're mixing two different jobs in your head, which happens to all of us. I'm not trying to bust your chops, it's a good story either way and 2,000 panels is no joke. I just see guys lump those two things together all the time and it bugs me a little because the timeline doesn't line up. What year did you actually start? That'd clear it up.

felixm2913d ago

The 4/20 panels I wired in 1986 were still going strong when the lunchbox cans showed up at my shop around 1991, so yeah, those two things can overlap depending on where you worked. Sounds like you're thinking of two different jobs, which is normal after that many panels.