Kudos to you for telling it like it is.
You are one of the reasons I keep coming back to this site despite that I have been out of the industry since 2003. I then spent 18 years since then in the commercial construction & commercial property management. My friend since we were 12 years old dropped dead 2 years ago. That event galvanized me to sell my house & move down to Myrtle Beach.
I tried getting back into cable/fiber but the big dog down here is HTC & they are very insular. Spectrum down here was not hiring at the time. Lo & behold I landed a job in local government, part of the reason I got the job was the combination of my years building fiber networks combined with the commercial construction experience.
Enough of my blather, TSBCCC, keep it going brother!