This is Part 3 of a 3-part series. Check out “What I Learned Working for a Rural Wireless ISP: Part 1 - Lessons From The Back 40, The Beginning” and “What I Learned Working for a Rural Wireless ISP: Part 2 - What was it like?” for more! The first two parts (especially part 2) are more technical info and this is more personal anecdotes and funny (and not-so-funny) experiences. Thanks and enjoy!

I’m looking for free or cheap Ubiquiti equipment to explore, please reach out if you have some, I will pay postage

I am available for IT work; if you read this and think “I need this guy”, contact me directly, or through Upwork. I also offer a service called My Genius where I will answer one question per month for you to your satisfaction, including up to one hour of combined research and discussion. Additional questions are an extra fee. You can hire me as a consultant for literally anything.

Trigger Warning: This article contains some potentially sensitive material including a brief anecdote on finding offensive content and graphic depictions of mental illness; be advised.

The Best Equipment - A Brief Overview and Request

Ubiquiti

This was my bread and butter. We had hundreds of Ubiquiti radios. They were just starting to release their “Cloud Management” software, which I never got a chance to use (I’d be interested in hearing about it from pros) and all our radio management was improvised. I was working on putting together an ansible playbook for storing and deploying firmware images, first for the APs and backhaul, and then possibly for customerse but I didn’t get theat far in my tenure.

We primarily used XM hardware, which has 8MiB flash for the OS, 32iB RAM and a 400MHz CPU with Atheros WiFi chips. You can run OpenWRT on them as well, which I did a couple times, but losing the spectrum analyzer sucks. I don’t see the AC AirMax on OpenWRT’s wiki so I’m not sure about that, but the AC AP is supported.

We also used XW hardware which had more RAM and different chipsets, but was essentially very similar.

We were pushing our traffic through two parallel 150Mbps links, one for each half of the network, and also had a link to another site that we could use as a backup if the main went down. You would think that wouldn’t be enough, and you’d be kind of right. We were regualarly maxed out on those links, so when the AirFiber came out, we got one immediately. This was a game-changer. It’s 24GHz, which allows for a much faster data rate and up to 1024 QAM which basically means the amount of data that can be sent per cycle. The bits are arranged as vectors on the carrier wave, it’s wild; there’s a really good primer here. Anyways, this allows for up to 2 Gbps (although I thought it was 1Gbps when it came out, although I could be wrong). We could easily push 850+ MB/s real TCP throughput, and often did. The AirFiber offerings (they have a 5GHz one, too) are baller, and they were designed by ex-Motorola engineers. They use a special modulation/encoding, so they aren’t 802.11-compatible. They are kind of hard to point, but it’s a lot easier because they have fine-tuning hardware instead of, for instance, the single U clamp of a PowerBeam, which are the trickiest.

The APs were a mix of Ubiquiti (primarily) Mikrotik and like 1 Tranzeo. We had one site with sectors which were directional, but most had omnis (antenna types) and would broadcast evenly all around. There were also a handful of customers that had their own PtP radio for the best possible service. The backhaul links were all parabolic dishes, which are super high gain, but also super directional (meaning they pick up signal in a pattern where the middle is the highest gain and the side lobes are lower gain). You could also add these cylindrical guards that reduced side lobes, which is reception on the sides of the primary signal (which you don’t want because it’s noise). Ubiquiti radios mostly have built-in antennas, but the Rocket series had SMA connectors and you could hook it up to any antenna type (parabolic, yagi, omni, sector, etc). Basically you had to point the directional antennas toward the receivers, whether that be customers or another link radio. There’s a section on alignment in the 2nd part.

If we were close and had a good signal, we could use something like a NanoStation or Loco, which has a sectorial radiation pattern. If we were farther away, we’d need to use a PowerBeam or NanoBeam which were integrated products where the feedhorn (the part with the antenna and radio) snaps into the dish. These feedhorns are antennas with a sectorial radiation pattern, relatively tight angle/focus,, that’s pointed at the dish, which the signal reflects off of in order to focus the emissions. There is an insanely good guide to parabolic antennas here and a brief intro to other types here.

Since the Ubiquiti devices run linux, they can be programmed and you can do lots of interesting things with them. There is a persistent area in the memory you can use for cron jobs, etc. There’s a 3-part (1 2 3 guide, and some videos and other links here. There’s a quick start to SSH on UniFi here. The best way to learn, though, is to poke around. Check out what’s in /bin, take a look at the directory tree, read the config file. We still did most of the configuration in the GUI because it was just faster. I plan on making my own guide and possibly video as well, once I get a radio (my precious Rocket 5.8GHz international that I lost; I got the last one listed on eBay). The Rocket M5 radios with firmware 5.5.6 or lower have something called compliance test mode which basically “unlocks” the radio and you can do anything it’s physically capable of, reglations be damned. You could obviously get in trouble with this, but I’m using it for monitoring. The M2 versions also had this, which enabled channel 14, “Ubiquiti removed the “Compliance Test Mode” feature from airOS firmware, particularly in versions after 5.3.3.9634.110726.1142”. Stay out of trouble! Also there’s a guide for how to enable 14 by compiling your own binaries on OpenWRT here, but no report if it works.

There is an in-depth guide to installing massmesh firmware here that’s also a great hardware reference. and covers thing like This involves patching the firmware using sed (honestly) which I have done before. I’ve unbricked radios https://community.ui.com/questions/HOWTO-Unbrick-your-UniFi-AP/b6d2079f-38be-4a91-aea0-7ca5d14c470c, as well. These were probably the most gnarly things I’ve done with Ubiquity radios.

Meanwhile, Ubiquiti hasn’t released much in the way of LR PtP (Point-to-Point) hardware recently. It was just hard to find from the main page, but Ubiquiti has a number of AirMax AC offerings and their prices are still low. Their used equipment commands relatively high prices on eBay but is usually treated as disposable by WISPs, who warranty it and trash it. I heard they don’t support CLI access as much as they used to, but it’s just hearsay - I’d be interested to hear from anyone currently using their AC offerings who could shed some light on it and thrilled if Ubiquiti or a kind stranger would send me some for the price of postage (contact information is on the About page).

Getting Bullets and Rockets

We once had a shipment delayed at customs because it was described as “bullets and rockets”, lol.

Mikrotik

Another embedded vendor is Mikrotik. They have their own OS and their stuff is pretty good. I learned how to use them proficiently during my career. One downside is that these were bare boards and an enclosure had to be made for them. They also (at the time) didn’t have any really high bandwidth offerings, but we had a couple 2.4s when I was there. Their current wireless offerings are pretty impressive and inexpensive, though. The equipment was stable and relatively issue-free and it looks like they don’t even sell bare boards anymore.

Tranzeo

These were proprietary radios, managed with a web interface. The ones we had were square and had a sectorial pattern. They were old, finnicky, didn’t like cold, and were slow, although considering that 1.5Mbps was “high speed internet” when they were made, they did the job. Inside there’s a CPU board attached to an antenna. The 900MHz version is actually a 2.4GHz radio with a transverter (an up and down converter in one unit) to lower the frequency to 900MHz, which could be fun for monitoring lower frequencies if you can only do a spectral analysis in the GHz range.

Best Times

I had a lot of good times working there, overall. Apart from the last month of my employment, after the best coworker ever left, I thoroughly enjoyed the job. Of course, there were some bad times, but even the worst times weren’t that bad…up until the last month. I was living up there to help my Uncle on the family farm. His health was failing, but he refused to go to a home and I don’t blame him. He would rather die on the farm than live in a home and I give him mad respect for that and aspire to the same. So while I was working there, I occasionally had to do farm work or take care of my uncle. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get our wireless internet at the farm. After they sold it, though, I had to move to a new place. There, I got unlimited, unmetered internet access with 24/7 tech support (me), which was kind of a flex for being in the country. It was around 25Mbps down and 10-20Mbps up; pretty good for the time (cable and DSL were under 25Mbps back then).

Climbs

We had to climb things all the time - roofs, silos, feed legs, water towers, and even a jungle gym. I loved climbing; suiting up with the harness was fun and hanging up in the air while working on equipment made me feel badass. Like sure you can fix a router, but can you do it suspended in air, 100’ up, when it’s below zero? I felt like I was made for it, and my upper arm strength improved quite a bit but there were definitely days where I was sore the next day. Thef Fromm Fox Farm was probably the worst - over 100’, the ladder tilted outward at the top, the wood was covered in moss and looked rotted - I think a quick jump would have you going right through. It was also slowly falling apart. Every once in a while they’d talk about taking it down, which would have screwed us pretty hard, but they didn’t. The water towers were the highest at 150’. The views were amazing and being out there in the summer was great. Plus, I got free exercize.

The Trailer Park

There was a trailer park near a butcher/meat processing place that was trying to get service for years. Eventually we found a hail Mary shot from one of our new APs and managed to get upwards of 60Mbps bidirectional, IIRC. Most people had a 6Mbps link and didn’t utilize the whole thing all the time, obviously, so this was enough for quite a few people. We had to put up a tower section to reach it, though. We had the tower in the ground and were trying to straighten it out to be completely vertical when the concrete truck rolled in and the concrete truck waits for no one. They poured in the concrete and it wasn’t level yet. I tried pushing it, even climbing it and rocking on it and it wouldn’t budge. Finally, I grabbed a rope, attached it and wrapped it around a tree and pulled; IT WORKED!. Then, we took a look and there was a power pole in the background and they were at different angles - did I fuck something up? I checked again. The electric pole was the crooked one. I put my name in the concrete and we called it a day – wait, we kept working for another couple hours, actually, lol. I was really proud of my part of our work in getting service to this trailer park, which reminded me of Trailer Park Boys quite a bit.

The AirFiber 24GHz was a game-changer for us. I talked a little bit about it earlier but this was a fun install. I remember hoisting it, mounting it, tuning it, and testing it, getting 850+Mbps. I was impressed. When I got the traffic monitoring set up later, I would see about 500-600Mbps down during peak times. It’s kind of trippy watching the QAM monitoring thingies in the web interface.

The Best Coworker Ever

Then, one day, someone came into the office. I heard him talk and thought to myself “I hope he doesn’t look as good as he sounds or this is going to be hard” because I was always taught “don’t shit where you eat” and I know boundaries and what’s acceptable for work. He was, though. It wasn’t an issue, but I fell in love. The entire time he worked there, I never got tired of spending time with him. I looked forward to seeing him and working with him every day. He seemed cool and was relatively chill. I asked him once if he ever wanted to hang out outside of work and he declined :-/ Nothing I can do but accept the loss, right? Well, I don’t even know if he swings this way, but I still kick myself for not pursuing it more because I loved him more than anyone else I’ve met and I was 33 at the time. He eventually left for another job, but after that things got bad at work, for reasons I don’t understand to this day. I know he probably doesn’t feel the same way about me and he eventually got married; I tried to congratulate him, but he seemed offended by my attempt at friendship. I’ve got to be honest, it really hurt, but that happens in life sometimes and I know I have to accept it. All I really wanted to say was: “That was one of the best times of my life because of you. Thank you and best wishes in your life; I’ll always remember you and if you ever want to reach out, great, if not, also great ;-)”

Crazy Installs

People would do anything to get internet out there, or to get high-speed internet, or unlimited internet. We didn’t have data caps and offered higher speeds than anything ele available. Satellite lag was atrocious and they had data caps - one customer reported spending $600/month for his satellite internet, or $7200 a year. Cellular had data caps. DSL was unavailble, as was cable and dial-up was excruciatingly slow. The federal government has some incentives to get high speed internet in rural areas, but we didn’t want the bureaucracy. Oh, I almost forgot: there was one exception - for some reason, they had trenched fiber along one of the highways and those people could get 100+Mbps fiber while their neighbors suffered with 0.0001296% of the speed. These are some of the crazy things people have done to get internet. For a few of these we only allowed it because they did all the work and they signed a waiver saying the speed could not be guaranteed and we would not service their equipment.

The Tower

One guy spend ~$6,000 to have a stand-alone 60’ Rhone tower installed in his yard, complete with guy wires. He had a crazy long shot, but we did a path loss analysis and figured that a 60’ tower would get him there, and it did.

No LoS

One of the customers had a satellite dish mount with a 10’ pipe in it that I think was secured with cables. In any case, from the roof, you couldn’t see anything but trees. There was no LoS and definitely no open Fresnel zone. But it would pull 10-15Mbps down and ~1Mbps up. It was super unreliable, though, and they called all the time. Sometimes techs would make bad installs and we were left to service them. Some connections really weren’t stable enough. By the time I started, we were doing all the Site Surveys with real radios to guarantee a good connection or we wouldn’t do it. It wasn’t worth the headache and having an angry customer. Still, some people would take anything, thus the disclaimer.

Pointed at an Electrical Box

This one was interesting. It was a pole mount, in the yard, about 4’ off the ground. In front of it was a 2’x2’ wood panel with an electrical box mounted to it and it was pointed literally directly at it but it worked without issue. I can’t even explain this one.

The Tree Sling

This guy was an engineer and would call every few months with a new idea. Eventually we said if he wants to try something, we’ll give him the radio and let him try, but he has to do the install, point it, and do the service. He agreed and made probably the craziest mount out of all of these. He took a 10’ pole, somehow installed metal circular wheels in the tree that the pole went through that kept it centered. You would hoist up the pole, with the radio on it, and the pole stuck out above the tree line. It was pointed with two guy wires that moved it right to left and it worked.

I Don’t Like Heights

One of the guys that was there before me didn’t like heights and would regularly do shitty installs from the ground when the roof had a preat view, or apparently ask the customers to climb the roof for him. Wild.

600’ Home Run

This guy had a house buried deep in the woods, but he had LoS from the end of his driveway, 600’ away. We used some sort of non-standard hardware that would go I think up to a mile on two pairs. This VDSL modem can do up to 320Mbps over a single copper pair up to 10,000 ft. Absolutely nuts. The problem was how to power the radio and the equipment. I honestly don’t even remember how we did it. This was the first site I went to, when I met the owner and the RF guru in a field.

Worst Times

In An Attic

This was more than one time, but it always sucked. I also did the CPE installs, so after the survey we’d install the equipment. We typically used satellite dish mounts, although sometimes we’d put a tripod with a 10ft pole on the roof, sometimes in the yard, occasionally there would be something special. The roof installs had a special protocol to deal with preventing water ingress because obviously any time you’re making a hole in the roof, there’s a possibility for that. Then you’d have to run the cable into the house and near their router or PC. This occasionally involved snaking a cable through the attic in the summer. The heat was unbearable, it was usually upwards of 100 and humid. These were never fun.

You Want Me To Carry What?

If you’re going to do a survey or install on the roof, you need a way to get up there. For the 2-story buildings we had (IIRC) a 40’ (32’?) extension ladder. I think the ‘standard’ one was 24’, which also required training to handle. This thing was a beast. Imagine carrying something 2-3x your height. Sometimes we’d have two people, but sometimes you’d have to carry it yourself. These weigh around 80 lbs. Even getting it off the roof was a chore, then you’d have to lift one end and walk toward the middle, carefully finding the center of gravity and lifting it onto your shoulder, then bringing it to the house. They were too heavy to just push up there, so you’d have to go to one and and slowly “walk it up” toward the other end, making sure not to lose balance, and tilt it carefully toward the house, resting it on the side of the house and then extending it. Bringing it down carefully was also tricky.

The Dead Secratary

We had a really nice secratary who was always a smiling face in the office. She was like the “office mom” and very well-liked. One day she didn’t come in and we found out she had died due to an issue with her medication. She was pretty young and this was a huge bummer.

100 ft up 40 below (has: attachment, cold)

We would regulary work during the winter in all weather. A lot of times you’d go up, work for 30-60 minutes, and then have to climb back down to warm up in the van for a bit, then go back out. You had to be able to protect your hands, but still handle things like screws and “little bits”. Any metal objects quickly sapped the warmth from your hands and could become a hazard. I usually wore a pair of thin gloves with another pair of thicker, fingerless gloves. One day I didn’t have the thin gloves and thought I could “get by”. I was climbing down an aluminum ladder when the cover of the fingers flapped open. I couldn’t stop to close it and continued. Bad mistake. By the time I got to the bottom, the contact with the bitterly cold aluminum had almost given me frostbite. I had to quickly warm my hands (using cold water) but I think some of the skin peeled due to the cold. We would have to climb silos in weather down to below zero, often -40 wind chill. This was also never fun. The cold was so severe and the wind never stopped at 60-100’ in the air. I would regularly get what I called beardsicles - little icicles on my mustache from the condensation from my nose. One time I took a picture of myself and I had a frozen tear in one of my eyes it was that cold. One day I was up in the air for over 2 hours troubleshooting a radio. There was such a thing as too cold, but it was like one or two days, ever.

The Dog Bite

Once I got bitten by a dog. I was supposed to climb a silo that someone had put stairs and a top deck in. I showed up and saw someone who didn’t immediately acknowledeg me; no big deal, I start heading to the silo, when all of a sudden this dog shows up and bites me. I had to go to the hospital and the dog had to be quaratnied. Later the people said that was a no-go area for the dog, which would have been nice to know before I got there.

The Drunk

One of the techs one day “was in subway yelling and throwing things”. It turned out he was a closet drunk, hiding his liquor and sneaking sips during the day. This guy was climbing roofs drunk. Obviously a huge liability. He covered it by: always having a bottle of hand sanitizer as an excuse for the alcohol smell if it was ever noticed and drinking tomato juice, which effectively covers the smell of alcohol on your breath in most cases, if that little tidbit ever comes in handy. Don’t drink or use drugs on the job

The BitTorrent Traffic

This was a common ailment. People would start calling in with random performance issues and we would have to track down the cause. Sometimes it was a link radio that was getting stepped on (i.e. interference) or that had switched channels to something dirty because of DFS (radios are required to switch channels due to radar and sometimes switch to a bad channel; this is an FCC thing). Sometimes, though, it was BitTorrent traffic. Now, I’m in inveterate file sharer…for my linux ISOs. I eventually got a Seed Box, which is a game-changer. My ISOs download in <5 minutes. It’s unmetered gigabit. Not everyone has one of these, though and sometimes they’d be runnig BitTorrent from home. We had a very hands-off policy on people’s internet usage, and would only ever investigate because of performance issues. For whatever reason thousands to millions of BitTorrent UDP connections would trash the links, even if the net bandwidth was low. Since I didn’t want to tell people not to do it, I found a solution. Encapsulating the traffic in a TCP VPN successfully mitigated the issue, and then we could also say we had no knowledge of their doings, so this is what we suggested. Get a TCP VPN

The Virus From Russia (where the fuck is this BitTorrent traffic coming from this lady is 80)

One day, however, we kept getting BT traffic and tracked it down to a customer connection. This lady was 80 years old and while I learned not to make assumptions, after talking to her it became obvious she wasn’t running the PirateBay from her home connection. We came to her house to help track down the issue and a malware scan found a virus that was acting as a VPN and funneling BT traffic through her connection.

Riehle Shitty

This marked the beginning of the end for me. After the best coworker ever left the next day I came into work and the AP we were working on the day before was down. I went out there and it was trashed. The UPS was unplugged, the network cables were unplugged, everything was unplugged. Then, I climbed and it was even worse. Someone had vandalized the AP, and it was someone who knew what they were doing. I’m thoroughly convinced whoever did this worked in the wireless industry, likely for years, because some of the things that were done were the absolute worst to fix. For example, one of the boxes was opened up, the female jack cut off, then the wire was pulled out and then they put the cover back on over it so you had to re-open the box on top of it. Any random person would have not climbed, in my mind, and if they did, they would have yanked and cut wires randomly, not done things like open the box and cut the wire short. I got to work immediatle, despite my severe mental funk from losing who I had begun thinking of as a good friend. After a couple feverish hours, it was back online. Myself and my coworker had been building out this site and it was like a physical manifestation of our destroyed budding relationship as people. I called the owner to check in and he just gruffly says did you take any pictures? “No, I was busy fixing it.” He seemed upset. I told him what happened. I’m not sure why he was so insistent on pictures, especially before I mentioned that I thought it was intentional. Then another AP went down and I tracked it down to malicious traffic. Once I dealt with this, the owner was out at the site and gave me this smug look like he had something to do with it. I will probably never know what happened, but it was the beginning of the end.

The End

My Coworker Leaves

So this kind of started a month before. One day the owner pulls me into the office and says, verbatim, “Would you be especially heartbroken if X got fired?”. He said it in a really menacing tone and I was like fired? You mean, like let go not like terminated with extreme prejudice, right? I was confused. I explained that I thought he did good work and enjoyed working with him, but ultimately it was his business and his decision. I did (and this is one of the only things I really regret in life) tell him I would be heartbroken if I never talked to him again. This became one of those “wish I never said that” things as it seemed that what was once a pretty close working relationship turned into something confusing, and later worse. One day a couple years later I texted him and the next day he was in the hallway of my college, flanked by 3 burly guys, and walked past without even making eye contact. Another time he showed up in my Welding class and said “It’s been a while” then stood in the doorway and shook his head. I was so confused. By this time, my depression (and a sleep disorder I was yet unaware of) had rendered me a walking zombie and in both cases I didn’t respond, not out of malice, but out of exhaustion.

Years later he got married and I sent him a congratulation letter…well, actually I delivered it in person, hoping to catch up with him and maybe buy him and his family a pizza and some beer. His wife happened to come home and I had a pleasant interaction with her. She explained that he would be home later, and was friendly and not at all hostile. I went to wait for a bit and suddenly an unknown number called. It was someone claiming to be my coworker, but sounding entirely different. When I asked who it really was, he said “None of your business” and told me “If I was there you would have had a gun in your face.”. I was really confused again, because my interaction with his wife was pleasant and cordial and I had no idea who this was or how he got my number. He started ranting about how his family was the most important thing (to which I said, “well, obviously, yeah, I’m only trying to be friendly”, thinking it was ok because, after all, he had shown up for me before). Then the police contacted me and told me he “had heard I threatened the owner and threatened to kill myself”, both of which were untrue. I gave up and went home.

Later I had texted him and asked how he managed - how do you get by without ever talking to someone you care about? I had honestly thought we were close and regarded him as a friend. “I never cared about you in the first place.” That was the last I heard from him and I got the message and it hurt but gave me closure. What a terrible and sad end to what, to me, was one of the best experiences in my life, with someone I (and I never told him this, got handsy, or in any way did anything inappropriate at work) loved more than anyone in the world, no joke or exagerration. He was literally my favorite person out of anyone I’d met in my life and according to him, didn’t and never cared about me. Harsh.

The Owner Turns

The night after my coworker left, I was at home, alone. For some reason I was having very high anxiety. Suddenly, around midnight, I could hear the sound of what sounded like either his or the owner’s truck (they sounded the same) outside my apartment. The last thing he’d said to me was “Text me sometime.”. I wasn’t sure what to do, and I sent a single message: “sometime” - get it, it’s a pun. Suddenly there was a gunshot, then another from a distance, and the truck pulled off quickly. I was shocked and confused. I was worried (for whatever reason, my overactive brain came to this conclusion) that he had been shot or something. The owner’s prior discussion with me came to mind - fired - did he mean, like fired?

The last year and a half was awful for me, and working with him was honestly the best part of my life at that time. I had lost: my partner of 7 years, the duplex that was my retirement investment, my uncle, the farm and all the animals, I had no friends except “bar friends”, and now I was worried that this person who I loved and cared about was dead (he wasn’t, but I didn’t know this; keep in mind I have some mental disorders and rely on other people to keep me grounded). I came into work and the owner was on a tirade. Riehle Shitty happened that day. At the end of the day, I asked “What happened to X?” the owner shouted at me He’s DONE, he’s GONE!!!. This, obviously, did not make me feel any better or more comforted. I broke, in a way that I have never recovered from, even 8 years later. I started having breakdowns and crying at work, although I kept coming in, like an abused wife, because I didn’t know what else to do and this was the last piece of stability in my life. The owner, who I had been ride-or-die with for 3 years, never once asked “How are you doing?” or “What’s going on with you?”. In my mind, it was because he knew - because he caused it. I started to suspect he had actually vandalize Riehle himself.

One day, while I was unspooling cable for an AP, he came back from his truck, his face flushed red (had he been using?) and yelled, at the top of his lungs DO YOUR FUCKING JOB!! at me. Obviously, the workplace had become hostile, even abusive. I’d never had an issue with him before and was super confused about why he had suddenly turned on me and was treating me so poorly. Was he homophobic and noticed my attraction? Was he jealous? Did he think we were ‘doing stuff’? I never got answers to these questions because…

I Got Fired

One day, I was working on another person’s computer, unrelated to and outside of work. In the process I found what I will only describe as some really sick shit. I got on the internet when I was 12, in 1994, I grew up on erotic fiction that would make my adult self blush and rotten.com. I will never be able to unsee what I saw, after about two out of thousands of pictures, I shut ‘er down. It wasn’t mine, but possession is 9/10 of the law and I really didn’t want anything to do with anything or anyone related to anything involving anything even remotely involved with what I had seen. I also felt obligated to try to do something. I ended up dropping it off anonymously at an organization of Bikers Against Child Abuse. When I went to the bar afterward, the bartender inexplicably and coyly asked “What did you just do?”, as if she already knew. I told her I was doing the laundry, which I was. Then, she says, cryptically, as if she knows I’ve done something, “No good deed goes unpunished.”. WTF

The next day, I went into work as usual, as I was still trying to “work through my issues” and considered myself a die-hard employee. The second I walked in, the owner simply and without explanation says You’re Fired.”, as if he was trump. What happened next, I still don’t believe, but experienced. He left the office while I cleaned out my cubicle. At home, I had two manilla envelopes with all my passwords in them. About an hour later, he shows up, obviously holding a manilla envelope and looking smug. When I got home, there was only one envelope. I still don’t believe this, but have no alternative to that he broke into my apartment and took it, that he was monitoring my work phone and found out what I had done, and that he is somehow the opposite of against child abuse. I recalled him once bragging that the police had come to him, “looking for a pedo on the network” and he denied them access without due cause or a warrant, which I had, at the time, chalked up to simply business practice. I’ll let the reader draw their own conclusions, as I am done trying to figure out what happened and trying to move on with my life.

I Get Angry

I was trying my best to move on with my life after losing literally everything I cared about except my family, who lived in another city. I started drinking heavily - up to a liter a day, every day - and quickly deteriorated. One of the other odd things that started happening was the rumour mill. I started hearing a mixture of untrue rumours, and retellings of things that happened at work that only the owner knew about. I have an almost photographic record and I am certain, beyond a doubt, that the owner was spreading rumours about me in order to damage my reputation and he was that kind of guy. I wouldn’t want to be on his bad side, but now I was.

One day I went to the office to attempt to talk with him and ask him politely to stop spreading rumours about me around town and please just let me live what’s left of my life in peace. It quickly turned into an argument and I ended up yelling FUCK OFF! at him, because, well, I wanted him to leave me alone and stop spreading rumours (I’m 99% sure it was someone from the office due to the content of the rumours). I started to head back to my car, attempting to voluntarily leave because I really didn’t want an argument and it had turned into one. He knew people on the force, so when he had the RF guru call the police, they were there before I could even leave the lot. They took me to jail for yelling, which I honestly didn’t even know was a crime. Eventually I would be sentenced to 10 days for disorderly conduct, which I gladly served.

The Only Apology I Regret

Years later, and suddenly, while I was having breakfast with my mom, I started having a mental health episode. I felt like I was being compelled and out of the blue, called the owner and said I was sorry for yelling at him, more out of obligation than anything. His response was “I think you really got screwed by obamacare” as if he had nothing to do with it. He’s one of these “rural Republicans”, if you know what I’m talking about. What happened next, I will never understand. About 30 minutes later I was having coffee with my mom and according to her, I suddenly got up and ran out of the apartment. According to my neighbors, I returned about 90 minutes later, yelling and wailing. I had never wailed before in my life. I didn’t realize it’s a whole different thing than crying loud. Imagine if you took more anger than you’ve ever felt, mixed it with more grief than you knew was even physically possible, and mashed ‘em up together. That’s wailing. I never, ever, ever, in my life want to feel what I felt that day again. They came and tackled me and threw me in the back of a paddy wagon, then transferred me to an ambulance, where they administered ketamine. Because of this, and the dissociative episode, I’m still to this day not sure what actually happened, but I am personally of the opinion that after I left the apartment, I experienced an extreme traumatic event and dissociated, then, because of the later k-hole, I was unable to determine what was part of my real experience and what was part of the hallucination.

The first thing I remember is coming to in a hospital, handcuffed to a bed, yelling “Why don’t you fucking kill me you pussy?” and trying to escape. I will tell you part of what I remember from the dissociative episode: I found out that I had a son, who I never knew about, but he did, then, because I had apologized, and “a real man would never apologize”, he murdered him. My son’s dying wish was to be with me forever, so his soul was transferred to my body and it literally felt like, for a month afterward, I had another soul (his soul) living inside me. I also thought that I was Jesus, the Beast, and the President of the United States, and worked for the CIA. I was raging around town, kicking in windows, and convinced that I could kill anyone without consequence because everyone in the world, including the children, were now satanists. It was the literal Apocalypse. There was a group of Italians in my head, using me as a ventriloquist dummy, and saying “He’s right, burn the world! We’re sorry, we’re so sorry, we didn’t know, please kill us, we don’t want to live anymore.” The next thing I remember after the hospital was getting an X-Ray because it felt like my foot was broken, and then being transferred to the appropriately named MHEC, the county pysch ward, filled with people peeing on themselves, where you can’t figure out who’s supposed to be caring for you and you have to ask for food. I was “chaptered” for 3 days because of my mental condition (a “Chapter 51 hold”). At this time in my life I was smoking crack and heroin, but I was completely sober when the incident occurred.

Nothing like this has happened to me before or since in my life, and I hope never will. I doubt I will ever be able to explain what occurred, but as you can imagine, I have no interest in talking to or having anything to with the owner, my former employer. While my behavior was unacceptable, and shouting never solves anything, I think the response was disproportionate to the event and he has never, to this day, even acknowledged his completely inappropriate behavior or apologized for the way he treated me while I was working there. I am now drug-free (4 months) and doing the slow work with “professionals” to hopefully address my sleep disorder so I can resume full-time work. As of now, I sleep 12-16 hours a day and I’m sore and exhausted every waking hour of the day because of sleep deprivation, as I almost never get into N3 or REM sleep modes for any length of time due to “central apnea”. I actually feel worse than I did when I was using drugs to self-medicate, but I’m continuing with it as, to the best of my understanding, it’s part of the healing process.

An Epilogue

These were some of the best years of my life, between working on the farm and this unique experience. I found new loves (farming, wireless, and a guy I’ll never forget) that I carry with me to this day. I learned more about wireless and networking than I had in my entire life up until then (I worked there from 30-33) and I got a chance that I took and met, to prove myself in the field (sometimes literally). I had, at one point, hoped to some day inherit the network, and end up at least friends with my coworker. These things did not come to pass, in this timeline at least. I feel a real split in my life before and after 2017 that I have yet to resolve. One of an optimistic, forward-thinking young man out to prove himself in the world and one of the shell of him, existing as some sort of remnant of what could have been and wasn’t, that was never able to find another place or person that fit him, to this day. I’m now living in Sheboygan, WI and looking for new opportunities, new hopes, and maybe a new boyfriend (or even girlfriend or wife - I would love to spend the next 20 years raising kids).

I’m looking for traditional work, but I’m also trying to work for myself with new business and creative ventures. I started writing again, both posts like this, and fiction with The Plateuaus: Real Fantasy Football. I realized I’m most likely a furry, fwiw, but I try not to be weird about it (I think it’s fun, not my identity, but have no issue with those who differ). I also realized there’s some really dark shadows in this world, but instead of running from them, I’m attempting to shine a light in the dark corners, find any survivors, and lead them out into the light.

My business ventures are offering IT Support, starting at as low as $30/mo for me to be on call for you and fix up to one issue or have one consultation per month (the special rate requires e-mailing me to set up a discount, standard rate is $50/mo). I’m also offering services as a resident genius. I’m a bit of a savant, technically a genius (but not condescending), and love helping people. With My Genius, you can have your own genius on-call and ask me to help you answer or solve any question or problem you have, up to 1 issue per month (more on-demand). If I can’t resolve it to your satisfaction, it doesn’t count and you can ask again. If you are dissatisfied with the service, you can request a refund. Think of it like this: you have a problem or a question, or you’d just like someone to talk to or draw you a picture (using DALL-E, my art skills are pretty poor but I have mad respect for traditional artists, who I regard as modern-day wizards). “Hrm, that’s a hard one, hold on, let me call my genius. If I’m available (you can call any time, day or night, I keep strange hours), I’ll answer, if not I’ll respond within 24 hours. I may use AI assistance, but always check for accuracy. It’s $20 a month, but if you mention this article, I’ll do it for 10 for the first month/year. I may need to increase prices or cancel service if it gets too time-consuming, so try me now.