/diy/ - Do It Yourself

Since /diy/ is kind of the defacto construction/tradie board I figured I'd ask this question here since r/electricians sucks and reddits posting system is gay.

I'm a 2nd year apprentice and am being sent on an out of town job sometime this year where I'll be working and living in another city for 4 days/nights out of the week with a lot of other guys from the shop I work for. I've never been on an out of town job before and my journeyman is kind of telling me what to prepare for but I'd like some advice from other experienced tradies on here. Am already expecting to have to approach one of the apprentices with a proposal to split the cost of a hotel room since its going to be in an oilfield town so lodging and food will be obscenely expensive. Worst/best case scenario is that my j-man or one of the other ones brings his/their RV up there and they charge me a price per night to shit/shower/sleep in their RV. Supposedly getting $100/day perdiem but through some financial trickery that gets tacked onto our hourly/payroll wage and we get taxed on it so the shop doesn't have to get taxed on it.

Also I know that meth+coke heads are a big problem in oilfield towns (as well as prosts), so any advice on dealing with that would be a plus. Last thing I need is to get my tools stolen by a tweaker because I'm the weakest/meekest new guy in town.

>tl;dr: how do I survive for 2 years doing tradeswork in an oilfield boom town as a lil baby 2nd year apprentice

I'm a stupid dumb 2nd year apprentice electrician scum. Recently got into electronic music and found out I have a budding talent for mixing music (I know I'll get some shit for saying that). Bought a shitty little midi controller for $100 and I've been practicing with it and pushing it to its limits

at the same time I've also recently been interested in arduino/small scale hobby electronics, especially being able to buy components for pennies on the dollar (or even salvaging them from shit people throw away) and making new things from them. I have a chinese knockoff arduino "starter kit" coming in the mail tomorrow and I'm wondering where should I start with if I wanted to eventually build my own "dj controller"? I already have a very basic entry level understanding of ohm's law and calculating voltage/current in a circuit, and an extremely baby-level understanding of drawing circuit schematics/diagrams and reading them. No experience whatsoever with programming, though.

>tl;dr: where do I start if I wanted to eventually build a MIDI controller device using arduino, or does this question belong on the arduino thread