Texas needing a lot of help??

[HPMadness]

I hear that Texas is in dire need for locators right now. I just may have to take up the opportunity to go down there and help ya'll out. Any good advise for down there?

[Benzie and Beyond]

not from there, never located there. my co-workers say phone prints are really bad, and many peds are buried. good luck

[big boots mcghee]

ATT's phone prints are bad, very bad. You won't find worse prints anywhere else. Plus, in areas where ATT is the main phone provider nearly all of the pedestals, splices, etc are buried, and finding access points is very time consuming.

When you get there you'll be lucky to get a single day where you're running low profile tickets to get your feet wet. After that it's nothing but late tickets, project tickets, and full routes. If you think you're going to be running uber-easy tickets to help them bring their volume down, think again.

When you meet your temporary supervisor they'll talk a good game about being hard working and available to help you, but I have yet to have one live up to it. In fact, one supervisor I worked for had two work phones and found it funny that he never answered either.

If you go down there, bring a positive attitude and know that you'll only be there a couple weeks, will make tons of bank, and will have the ability to leave that awful state when you're done.

Also, if you're new to out of state help, make sure you document any extra incentive money the company promises you and how they're supposed to pay it out. They like to say you're getting "X" amount of extra money per day as travel bonus but then they don't tell you it's only for days when you're actually running tickets, not the days spent driving down there. Make sure to document all of your hours worked and follow up with whoever enters them into the system to make sure you get paid correctly. They screw that stuff up A TON!

Oh, and the majority of the houses out there have 6 ft tall wooden fences, so even a single address ticket often turns into a multple address ticket if only because of all the access points needed to locate things properly.

[RD_Wrangler]

ATT's phone prints are bad, very bad. You won't find worse prints anywhere else.

<-- I used to believe this to be the case as well. It isn't. Until you've seen Qwest Cimage or OSP prints...you don't know what bad prints ARE.

[big boots mcghee]

<-- I used to believe this to be the case as well. It isn't. Until you've seen Qwest Cimage or OSP prints...you don't know what bad prints ARE.

That actually scares me very much that there are worse prints than those for ATT in Texas.

[The Big-E]

I don't know... Vipers Verizon is pretty darn bad...

[sprayandpray]

Our updated Oncor Electric prints are called Ami and accessed thru the internet. We have back-up prints called SQM 9 because they make you squirm when you use them ) that are updated about once a year. The SQM's also have a lot of blank spaces where the facilities have never been added.( the reason for squirming).

This being said , the Ami prints have not worked for 5 weeks ! Kind of shows you the importance placed on updated prints by USIC.

[locate Queen]

Wow ! If thas True Why hasent anyone called me ...... The stakes are High Thats SOOOOO True .... I came from OKC area ... Running over 30 Tkts a day .... doing 3 ways in a heavy High Profile area ..... Damage Ratios no less than 1 - 10,000 .... why is it In Texas Its who Ya Know Buddie system ... to get In with a Master contract is beyond Me ... Im Feeling So Sick Right Now .... Justice Needs to Be served to the Locate Queen .... Have Great day !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mke]

Hey RD, I used to work for the company that had the Qwest contract. I know exactly what your talking about. I remember going round and round with the Sup about the accuracy of the prints. He's telling me that these are the newest "up to date" prints, and that everything except the stuff that has been installed in the past month was on them. You know how laughable that is.

I told him the prints were just as accurate and up to date as the old Micro Fisch we used to use, and thats when he confiscated my Eye Loop and Micro Fisch maps...... go figure.

Mke

[FreedMan]

Micro Fisch, lol, sometimes I still miss those things ------ NOT!

[FiosKing]

I don't know... Vipers Verizon is pretty darn bad...

haha pretty worthless they are...

[locate Queen]

In my opinion whenever you go to another area you may as well be prepared to just get out of the Truck & track everything down Visually B/C the stinking Prints have alwasys been JUST a Guide !!!!!!!

Watch yourself You may be out of a Job with Just one Mistake !

[Enjoythefall]

You know, I don't mind Vipers. Sometimes it can be a little fractured between map squares, but overall it is pretty accurate around here. At least they've got keyboard shortcuts for zooming in and out. If you've ever had to use windstream, you have to click a small button at the top of the page every time you want to do that. They only problem with vipers, is sometimes random map squares will go blank, or a wirecenter will stop bringing back any results for a query. Really, I enjoy our local cable prints. No fancy utility info tool, but if you know how to read you're set. They're basically just DWG files.