Page 49 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

to worry about losing any discs.”
Field techs also work in unpredictable, often rough conditions—not your typical computer environment. In 2013, IT switched them over to the tougher Panasonic Rough CF-53 laptop. “We used to have technicians come in almost every day with broken screens, broken keyboards, wa- ter damage, broken hard drives—multiple issues,” says Diaz, “because their environment is not like an office. They’re out there in the rain and heat and dust. They’re climbing up on tractors to plug into the machine’s computer. Their environment is just not appropriate for a regular office computer.” Today, they’ve graduated to the Dell Rugged Lat- itude 5414 and started migrating technicians over whenever a new system is required.
Smartphones are also IT’s responsibility—and all the attending issues, including cell service out in the boonies. Travis Hetrick, San Leandro tractor field tech (2005–17), knew all about being strand- ed in a remote location without Wi-Fi or cell ser- vice. As a resident tech working at LeHigh’s Cu- pertino quarry, he had to deal with that a lot, even though the quarry was less than ten miles from the Silicon Valley. “We had some very high-profile machines out there. One was a field follow unit; the other was the sixth production machine. Both were Cat 6015Bs, which are giant excavators—like a 5110 on steroids.” Ironically, the field follow was doing great. It was the production machine that kept Hetrick working overtime. “I had Caterpillar engineers trying to call me all the time, so I needed to be able to answer their calls and send pictures and other information back and forth,” says Het- rick. “We had a real tight area of cell service out there and Ken [McEntire] and Gil [Ortiz] helped us out with that. They gave us Verizon; they gave us AT&T; they tried Sprint. Then they tried to fig- ure out a rectifier-booster to help with the cover- age. They tried everything they could think of to get us the resources we needed.”
Ashley Harden/San Leandro field service tech
TESTING, TESTING, ONE, TWO, THREE.
Using a laptop computer outside in the sun can be frustrating. The glare makes it all but impossible to read the screen. A lot of the field techs are outside all day, working in the bright sunlight. San Leandro field tech Ashley Harden brought that problem to
IT, which resulted in a special glare-proof screen
for all technicians’ laptops. “They use me as their guinea pig to see if something will actually work out in the field. I do the testing and give them the pros and cons so they can adjust. I also give them ideas on what the field guys need like apps or different computer features, and what functions we like and ones that we don’t need.” Harden is one of the go-to guys IT uses to test out different ideas, software, and technologies before they roll out anything new.
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