March of 2026, we will have lived at this spot in Tifton for 20 years.
And I guess it's not irony, but previously we had lived in our double-wide mobile home
for approximately 10 years.
So as a family, unlike my wife's, if you will, because her dad worked for the railroad,
they would move from place to place.
I remember up until I was six years old, my earliest memories of being at a place was at
this old house on a farm because my dad was, he was a farmer.
And then the guy that he was farming for kind of did him dirty.
He made some promises that he didn't keep.
And so my uncle had gotten a job at Delco Rimi, which was the General Motors battery plant division.
And there was one that had been built in Fitzgerald, Georgia.
And very much like the pay that you would receive for working on the railroad or working in the car
manufacturing facilities in like Detroit and those places, it was a good salary.
It was definitely an upgrade from dad being a farmer.
And considering that he had essentially been shafted, he decided with the help, from what I understand,
with the help of my uncle.
I think my uncle had already worked there like a year or two.
And so he helped my dad get on.
And dad worked there from 19, I'm going to say 1976, because 1976 is when we moved off of,
we moved away from that property.
And the funny thing is we, we basically moved about two miles down the road.
It was the same dirt road.
It was the same dirt road, but we moved about two miles down.
And then we lived in an old block house that did not have central heating or central air.
For cooling during the summer, we had these big ass window fans.
And then for warmth during the winter, we had space heaters, big old 100 gallon or 200 gallon.
I don't remember, probably 100 gallon propane tank outside the house.
So in either 82 or 83, my mom and dad took the plunge and they, they bought a double wide
mobile home.
And so we moved into that.
And that's the first time I ever lived in a place of what I would consider comfort, because
I'm quite sure that the house that we were living in when dad was a farmer also did not
have central heating or central air.
I really can't remember that much, but I'm fairly confident that it did not.
And so it was a, it was a tremendous upgrade.
It was a tremendous upgrade.
And of course, that old house became more like storage.
And, and then when my wife and I got married, we, we kind of turned just part of it into quote
an apartment.
And then over the years, we actually moved into more of it.
And we had a, we had a couple of, we had one big window heat pump so we could get heat during
the winter.
And of course we could get cool, cool, uh, cool air during the summer.
And it was kind of like in the living room ish area.
And then eventually we went into another part of the house.
We knocked through a closet and all this other kind of stuff and had to put a small unit in
there.
And that's actually where we were, we're living whenever we had our, our first child, our oldest son.
And when we had our second child, two years later, we moved into a double wide.
And then from 1996 to 2006, and then we moved where we are today.
I'm not entirely sure why all of this came back to me.
I was standing here looking out my office door, thinking back over the 20 years that we've been
here at this place and how, how much it has changed, but at the same time, how much it has
actually stayed the same.
Of course, one of the, one of the biggest changes is the fact that my oldest son, I haven't
actually seen him in the flesh in a decade, basically 10 years.
I've talked to him a couple of times on the phone over, over that decade, but mainly it's
text messages and signal because that's what we use as our family chat.
And then my middle son, three years ago, moved to Seattle, but he does have a tendency to,
to come back for a couple of weeks, whether he's on a working, I say working vacation in
air quotes, like he's here until Monday doing the same thing, or he literally takes a two
or three week vacation because they accrue it.
And then he comes out here and we wind up doing projects.
By the last time he was here, we worked on two projects.
We fixed a problem, an old rotted out two by four bottom plate on the sunroom, one of the
sunroom walls.
And then the following week, we completely replaced the, uh, the boards, the backing, the siding,
if I get the words right, along the back of this place.
Probably talked about it in a previous episode.
I can't remember what I've talked about from episode to episode simply because I do these
hit and miss because when I record something, if there's really nothing to, to talk about
or to record.
So, and again, I'm recording this on my AirPods because I just didn't feel like sitting behind
the microphone and I'm walking around my office.
And so occasionally you may hear the, the air from my, uh, ceiling fan hit me as I'm walking
up under it.
So if it's distracting, I apologize, but I, I don't know.
I just felt like recording something.
Might not be too long, but yeah.
Um, how, how so many things have changed yet.
So many things have stayed the same.
When we moved here in 2006, I was still working for the city of Tifton.
I went to work for the city of Tifton in September of 1999 because the city, like a lot of other
municipalities, was starting their own broadband cable company because they could not get an
equitable buy-in from the incumbents of the area, your, um, your AT&T and, um, Bell South
and, and those folks.
So in the late nineties, there was a big push by municipalities and county governments to,
in some form or fashion, either do it all on their own or do some type of, uh, public-private
partnership to deploy broadband because it was the thing that was on fire.
The, uh, you know, companies that needed to locate into a certain area, if they were looking
at putting a manufacturing plant or if they were looking at putting in, uh, remote offices
or anything like that.
One of the things that they started looking at was broadband capabilities of the area.
And unfortunately at the time Tifton, Georgia didn't have any and Tifton followed the model
that Thomasville, Caro and Camilla were doing.
Matter of fact, that, that authority, which I think is what it was actually helped.
We were getting our connectivity through them.
They were actually our tech support until a few years in.
And I started out as the network manager and eventually worked my way up to where I was
made the director of the telecommunications department.
That's what they called it telecommunications.
And we had a great team.
We also handled all of the, we kind of pseudo created, uh, um, a managed information system,
uh, division MIS so that we could handle the 200 plus workstations across the 14 buildings
that we had all connected via fiber and the telephone system, which was VoIP and all of
that.
And one of the requirements for me to be a director by the city manager at the time was I had to
live in Tiff County, at least Tiff County.
It'd have to be in the city.
Cause you know, if you live in a city, like in most places, it's essentially double tax.
You get hit with the County tax and you get hit with the city tax, but out in the County,
you just get the County tax.
So I became the director in Oh four, April of Oh four.
And, uh, what was it?
December of Oh five.
I believe my wife, I believe my wife just happened to be perusing real estate listings.
And she found this one that she thought was cute.
And so one day we were, you know, we were still living in Fitzgerald.
I was still driving back and forth, which was a pain in the butt.
70, basically 75 miles a day for five days in a row.
And, uh, so we were over here, I guess on a Saturday or something, I can't remember.
And we found the place and we looked at it and I contacted the real estate company, which
happened to be one of our clients.
And I knew the owner decently well.
And next thing, you know, we got approved and this is the very first house that she and
I have ever owned, whether separately or together, because mobile homes, not considered real estate.
Was it a home?
Hell yeah, it was a home.
We had a lot of good times in that, in that house, but this is the first piece of property
and real estate stick built house that we've ever owned.
And here we are 20 years later, and we've watched the kids grow up here.
Two out of the three of them have gone off and basically relocated to the other side of the country.
One's in San Francisco, as I've mentioned before, and one's in Seattle.
Our daughter has elected to stay here.
And sometimes thinking about this stuff, it does, it does bring a little twinge of sadness with
nostalgia because of all those fun times that because they were rooted in a particular time period.
I will never be able to experience those again.
That's not to say that I can't experience fun things and good things.
I mean, I do.
We do.
And that's not to say that I didn't trip and fall and smash my face in a couple of times
with some of the stupid shit that I did over the last 20 years, usually related to alcohol,
unfortunately.
But, you know, in here today is 808 days of alcohol retirement.
So, you know, there you go.
But I don't I don't know.
It's just I guess I was more positive about the the future and the world back then.
I mean, let's face it, hell, a decade ago, a decade ago, I was at a crossroads because
I had been working for a previous company because I had to part ways in 2012 with the company
that bought the CityNet department from the city, Plant Telecommunications.
2012, I had to part ways with them.
And so roughly six months later, I went back to work for the same company that I was working
for and left to go to work for the city in 1999.
I had worked there from 97 to 99.
And then budgetary constraints.
I don't really understand what it was.
And the owner's a friend of mine, but he was like, you know, I got to I got to make some
changes.
And so he basically gave me six weeks severance and said, good luck.
So a decade ago now, over a decade ago, because that happened in the second week of May, one
week after Lee and I had our 25th wedding anniversary.
And so I was at that crossroads where I was like, what in the hell am I going to do?
And, you know, that's how I wound up forming my IT company.
And it's a it's been a learning experience.
It's been a good experience.
It's been a scary experience.
And there is something to be said for that, that comfort of stability of working for another
company where you can take days off, hopefully, if it's a good company where you get personal
time off, vacation, sick days, that kind of stuff versus being an owner and a single the
single person in your company.
But at the same time, I have been fortunate enough, whether it's just by happenstance or
the universe decided to peel off a little bit of itself and pop it, pop it on my shoulder
as a guardian angel to keep me on the straight and narrow and help me make better choices.
I don't know.
You know, I call myself an atheist and that's because I'm I'm an anti theist.
I don't believe in a biblical version of a deity, but that's not to say that I don't I don't
believe that the universe is sentient.
But who knows?
I mean, I'm 55 now barreling toward 56 in January.
And I guess you just stop and and look back at, OK, are these the things that I need to
is that the hill I need to die on?
You know, and I don't think it is.
I don't I don't care anymore.
I really don't.
I mean, whatever makes you feel good, whatever helps you get up in the morning, I'm fine with
that.
Just don't hurt people.
Don't try to infringe on their rights and that kind of thing.
Just because you may not want to do a certain thing doesn't mean you should make it your life's
mission to stop other people from doing that thing.
It's none of your damn business, right?
But yeah, I stand in here just looking out the door.
Looking to the right row of trees that I really hated to get rid of, but they became such a
the Bradford pear trees.
They're beautiful when they bloom.
Beautiful white.
I loved having them there because it was extra shade and all of that.
But the little berries are just a nuisance and all of the grass around it is very much like
popcorn trees.
These trees sucked up all the damn moisture.
So around them, you essentially didn't have any grass.
They've been gone two years.
I think in September it'll be two years because my friend Ben came over on a Friday and a Saturday
and my son Tyler was here on vacation and we cut like 20-something trees down.
We cut all these here and then there was some over on the other side of the property.
And the grass looks great now.
It really opened up that side of the yard, but I still kind of miss those trees.
And of course, part of that missing of those trees, unfortunately, would be the nights I'd
be out here in my office until 11 or 12 o'clock drinking, shooting the shit with some friends
in Discord, talking to them in the voice channels.
And then I would need to pee, and so I would go out, you know, when it's midnight, it might
be calm.
There's nothing stirring.
There's no road noise or anything.
You get behind a tree and you take a leak and then off in the distance you hear,
Yeah, we have owls here.
Matter of fact, my daughter has seen one over the last week.
It has decided to come perch on some of the trees in the backyard.
So, and she tells us it's massive.
It is a huge owl to the point that she's a little scared because of our one remaining cat,
Josie, is so slender.
And she's afraid the owl might decide that, well, Josie looks like a squirrel and I, you
know, squirrels are tasty stacks.
So, I don't know, man, it's 2025, my dad died in 2013, my mom passed in 2019.
I have no communication with any of my family through my mom's side or my dad's side, none.
Haven't spoken to any of them since about a couple months after my mom passed.
So, yeah, it's just us.
It's just, it's just me and Lee and the kids.
And when Tyler decides to visit and his older brother, Devin, who hasn't come, has not come
back since December of 2015.
We put him on a plane January 4th, 2015 for him to relocate to San Francisco.
He came back December of 2015, flew back out, I forget what day, in January of 2016.
And that was the last time that he and I or any of us other than Tyler, Tyler's flown down
and visited with him and they, he's flown up and visited with Tyler, but I've been in a
room with him.
I've had a video call, like I said, and maybe on the phone, but it's mainly in chat.
So, no, it's like I have, I have friends.
I have one friend now, Ben, that I see usually on average once a week.
Definitely once every two weeks because he comes to my house, to this office slash studio
because of, we've got, I've got it set up as, you know, a podcast studio and also runs
radio station, radio tiff.com.
My other friend, Sam, I see him on Discord because, well, he lives in Kentucky and neither
one of us have the, have the time to, you know, drive up or drive down.
Walt and Chad, who worked with me at CityNet and then Plant, I have not seen them in the
flesh since, meh, end of July, beginning of August of 2012.
I've spoken to them on occasion, more so Walt than Chad.
If I had to guess, I'd say probably the last time I spoke to Chad was, I don't know, 2019-ish,
somewhere in there.
I know that, that he and Walt both left the company.
I have, I have spoken to Walt on the phone several times since then.
We actually texted a couple of days ago.
He, he hit me up early one morning, I think Saturday morning to talk about, uh, oh, we really
appreciated the Tifton Talks newsletter.
And if I could put those bold headlines back in, that'd be great.
And, you know, and I'm not saying that this is, this is part of the male loneliness epidemic,
because I think that, I think that routinely affects younger people.
But I suppose someone in their mid-50s could also suffer from it.
I don't know.
Just talking out loud here.
I think that's probably about all I got to say.
See how shitty this winds up sounding again.
I swear, man, there's nothing beats a PR-40 or an SMB, uh, uh, SM-7B or, yeah, SM-7B.
I still prefer my PR-40, though.
It's the first major microphone that I got when I started podcasting in 2011.
Spent, spent a lot of money.
Spent a lot of money.
And, man, the technology has, has advanced and changed so much.
I mean, using analog mixers and having to figure out and fight with the whole mix minus thing.
And then Rode came out with the Rodecaster Pro, which solved a lot of those problems.
And then a couple of years ago, they came out with the Rodecaster Pro 2, which just amped everything up to the nines.
I'm curious to see what their next generation of this thing is going to be.
Is it going to be the Rodecaster Pro 3?
And, I mean, what is it going to do?
I mean, they have a product line for video, uh, video switcher.
For all I know, hell, they may decide to, for $2,000, combine both of them because their video switcher is expensive.
It's like $1,200 or something.
The mixer is about $6 or $7.
But a lot has changed.
A lot of technology has changed.
And we started out, we started out with two-way radio cell phones made by Southern Link.
Actually, they weren't made by Southern Link.
They were made by Motorola, but it ran on the Southern Link network.
That's what we used at the city.
And I eventually got us away from that and got us onto, at the time, it was Alltel cellular phones.
And then we eventually got BlackBerrys and, and then, you know, and the iPhone came out and then the Android phones came out and a lot has changed.
Computers have changed.
Just all the technologies have changed.
I'm feeling old, I think.
Anyway, I guess that's going to do, do it for me for this little deal.
Maybe this, again, sounds all right.
I'll see what I can do to sweeten it up and post and tighten it up a little bit.
But let me know your thoughts.
You know, how do you, are you, are you a Gen X or an older Gen X or?
Because that's what I am.
I was born in 70.
So I'm an older Gen X or the only Gen X is older than me or anybody that was born 1965 to 1969, basically.
So I'm up there in that older section.
And do you have friends or do you feel like you're in one of those scenarios of, hey, this is the, the, the, the male loneliness epidemic.
And look, it doesn't even have to be, you don't have to be a dude.
I mean, women Gen Xers, you know, how are y'all feeling?
And how do you feel about the future?
You look back on the last 30 years.
What do you think about the next 30 years?
Are we even going to get another 30 years?
My dad died when he was in his early 70s.
That's kind of my target.
That's if I can pass, get past, I think 72 ish or something like that.
Then I'm, I'm essentially just living on borrowed time.
That's my mentality.
I don't know.
That's probably not healthy.
Anyway, let me, let me just, before I keep rambling, let me know your thoughts.
You can email me Don, that's D-O-N at callmedonovan.com.
If you want me to hear your wonderful voice, you can leave me a voicemail.
You can go to callmedonovan.com slash voicemail.
That is callmedonovan.com slash voicemail.
You'll need a microphone on your computer or you can go there on your phone.
It works great on a phone.
So email is Don at callmedonovan.com.
Voicemail is callmedonovan.com slash voicemail.
Until next time, you take care of yourself, you take care of your family and your loved ones,
and we'll talk again.
Bye.
This has been a production of Tifton Media Works.
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