Things to do!

So did anyone get a case of the monday's? Hah! So today was good, I took care of stuff I had been putting off for a couple weeks. BILLS. I hate paying them, it is such a chore. It does feel good to pay them off, at this rate I should be debt free in just a couple months. It has taken almost 18 months to get out of debt thanks in part to all the financial trouble the navy got me into when getting out. But enough of that.

Tomorrow I go take some more boiler operator training classes with the gas company. All this to prepare me for licensing on boiler operator with the state of California, half written and half oral board. It should be easy, most people in this category need the license to operate small boilers used in food processing or medical facilities. So yeah, easy! I think I might ride the motorcycle if the weather holds up!!!

So I think I made an executive decision!

Friday by far was the coolest day at work yet. And please no pro navy comments!!! By the way is that you Flint? J/K all comments are welcome, even pro navy ones! On friday we uncleared some tags (which actually means we removed the red tags and restored the system to normal). The tags were at the switchyard. The swichyard is essentially where we (the power plants) connect to the world sending 69 million jig-a-volts (excuse the back to the future reference) to the rest of the world. The switchyard is where the main breaker is at, remotely controlled from the plant. Well we had to go operate the breaker disconnects, and man oh man was it scary. You could smell/hear/taste all that voltage around you, you have to wear some special suits too that make you inductive. It was like straight from the frankenstein movies, as we were shutting the disconnects energizing each side of the breaker (3 phases per side) the voltage is sooooo high that current was spitting over (i guess this is what arcing under no load is called) it would start arcing over somewhere around like 6 feet or so. The disconnects were setup like a huge knife switch with three contacts and one huge lever to operate all three. Shutting the contacts on the real world side of the breaker caused spitting, which was expected, but shutting the disconnect on our side of the breaker (plant is down everything is off) also caused spitting, which was cool and scary.... That's a lot of voltage from induced charges from other lines, and I hear static charges also power up these de-energized lines.

All this eventually led to me no showing my test for the nuke plant, I think I am happy at the moment. I need to get out of debt and focus on the job I have now before I even think about moving to a different job!

My weekend was great, I had fun.... Things seem to be going well for me both personal and professionally as well, lets see how long before I mess things up. Ha, Just kidding!!!

Grumblecakes and coffee!

I was out of sodas today at work, so instead I just drank a lot of coffee instead. It is weird how close to the stereotypical power plant operator most of the guys at work are. I am surrounded by an older generation, all at or near retirement age. This has got to be good..... I keep telling myself!

As a sign of good faith most contractors on the occasion bring in donuts and drop them of for the operators, I am a sucker for a quick sugar fix nowadays!!!! I wore a pocket protector today, I have a variety of things that I carry in my pocket, and the pockets alone were not cutting it, like a couple of pens, screwdrivers, and a couple of markers. Other things I need to carry include {cotton gloves, electrical gloves, and leather gloves} worn in that order all at once, medium sized crescent wrench, flashlight, multipurpose tool (a.k.a. diggit tool), motorola 2 way radio, and my cell phone. I think that's it. I am thinking of getting an electrician's tool belt to facilitate this, but I would rather just hold of for now.

Boring as Heck!

I had a meeting to go to this morning, really boring stuff! It was an all hands meeting, yeah, apparently we got those too! So it basically ended up being some bitch fest, mostly about how contractors suck, and management saying noted. Something about global accounts and contracts blah-blah legal jargon blah-blah. I stopped paying attention and pretty much texted throughout the whole thing, it is no wonder that I am out of my alotted text messages for this month, woops! They at least provided some breakfast and O.J. for us, kind of like fattening us before the slaughter, or a feel good to tame the natives to keep us quiet. I am thinking of implementing the popcorn thing to shorten up the meetings! I will see how good it works next time!!!!

Big Fat Liar!!!!

Not the movie, but me!!!! I told a little white lie last night, I felt really bad while doing it, but it worked. You see I sort of got "pulled over" and was about to get a ticket, and I kind of let the cop think I was in the military, actually I flat out lied and told him I was a service member. Things that helped corroborate this lie was my brand new short haircut, I always thought I would let it grow out when getting out of the service but never really did. I also have insurance through USAA, this helped too... So anyways I hate lying, and I really feel terrible about it, but I am sure I will get over it!!!

Bennigan's

I don't know what it is about this place but I just seem to have a weakness for Bennigan's, just like butters from south park! I finally went to the one in my area last night. It was all that I had hoped that it would be, it was great, just like I remembered. Although the parking could be better, the little parking structure was quite the challenge for my big ass truck, my suicide knob is probably the most useful accessory I have ever bought for my truck, Thanks Goff for inspiring that purchase! I had been meaning to go for the past year and a half. Friday night I went to watch that new movie Constantine, it was good I want to kind of want to watch it again!!! Hope everyone is having a good weekend!!!!

Messing Around

I measured the pH of coke today, I used someone else's coke from a 2 liter in the fridge!!! I did this to avoid wasting my stash, so I really don't know how old it was, or if it was already flat. It had a pH of 2.69 I was like "dang" carbonic acid is pretty acidic stuff. I will measure a cup of coffee next that I have cooling down so I don't break the pH reader probe.

Coffee Sux

Well not really but at the strength that I make my coffee the pH was at 4.96!

Lack of Updateage!

I have been very busy the past couple of days. I get home and find myself to be completely exhausted. I will try to make time to keep this as up to date as possible. At work we have been on a cleaning frenzy 'cause the executives are coming down to visit the southern California power plants. So the last couple of weeks I have been busy cleaning and cleaning, and just basically I have been taking care of the gruntwork. Moving 50 gallon oil drums takes a lot of Lou power. This is why I have been exhausted and have neglected going to the gym. Today is the day, and I am waiting for them to arrive before I go to their meeting in about an hour. After that they start touring the site. If all goes well they might approve building some new plants here at this site, or at a minimum put some more $$$$ into the site and it is greatly needed. They have been so paranoid that they repainted the lane dividers and the curbs, of course the painters who don't know better repainted with the original scheme and kept the previous owners name on everything vs. putting the actual owners of the site.

Hope a good time was had by all!

Yesterday was a great day, I hope everyone had a happy valentines day as well. I went out drinking late last night and much to my surprise I still had somewhat of a tolerance. I had a moment of weakness, I smoked an actual cigarette, or several, it had been like two years since I last smoked. I rarely drink now as well, I have nothing against it, it just really has not been my thing. Other than that things have been going pretty slow for me

Playing Hookie

I slept in today, I missed an appointment I had today. No bid deal though, It was not mandatory and I really did not feel like going. It would have been a long drive. I played a little guitar today. It was nice to concentrate on something for a change, I have a been having a hard time focusing. Tomorrow it seems like the weather will be nice. I might have to put some miles on my bike, it is so therapeutic sometimes to just ride until you are out of gas finding/losing yourself somewhere you have never been before....Good Times!

My phone is on crack?

My phone thinks it belongs to AT&T, I have t-mobile! Is there a secret merger going on that I don't know about?

I might be going into shiftwork soon to replace the sick guy, this would allow me to make some more $$$ but I am not quite ready as I don't know jack. Tomorrow I go take yet another test for southern california edison for the nuke plant position, the longer they take the happier I will be just where I am at now.

I am looking at purchasing a home in either of these two cities, La Mirada or Seal Beach. I will actually go looking sunday, hopefully the rain will die down a bit!

One more day down

I got confused today waking up thinking today was thursday, and actually went in to work late. I thought I was scheduled to attend a class with the gas company today but it is tomorrow. No one really seemed to notice or care, I like that, not that I would ever take advantage of this freedom, but I like the relaxed attitude.

One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer!!!!

~~~~> Thats just the kind of mood I'm in..... And it so happens to be the song I am listening to at the moment

I have a weird little update on one of my co-workers, the guy who suffers from hypoglycemia. Now the following is based on secondhand information and has not been verified by yours truly, so I guess that is my attempt at a disclaimer. Apparently this guy had one of his episodes during the night shift monday morning, this whole thing started with the guy walking off site. This was promptly noted by the rent-a-cops who called all the control rooms (3 separate control rooms @ two plants each....so 6 plants total) informing the control room operators that an operator walked off site looking quite upset. So this commenced a combined effort between several authorities including site rent-a-cops, real cops, plant personnel, and helicopters, yeah helicopters. Apparently after several hours of unsuccessful searching by this combined task force he finally responded to communications on his two way radio, which did not help in the search effort since he was too disconcerted to provide any pertinent information, but provided hope in finding him alive. Very rarely do you hear about the cops doing something positive, and they do, providing ground coverage and chopper coverage in many cases like this. So how does this all end, well I would have assumed that the chopper would have found him, even though it was night time, most of the choppers here in the Los Angeles area come standard with night vision infrared technology to catch all of the hoodlums at night. But no, in fact it was another operator who got him to reply via radio whenever he spotted a flashing light. So a mag lite, and a motorola end up saving the day, or night, whatever, you get the point. Somehow I think an executive decision will be forced here preventing this kind of thing from happening again. I am hopeful that a resolution will finally come to this situation!!!!

So I took a well deserved little break!

It would have been ronnie's birthday today, I know this because mine was yesterday!!!! A year older a year wiser, or so goes the saying. I spent yesterday morning touring a very old power plant site, it was really cool, I was there for like 6 hours taking a crap ton of pics, and the only thing keeping me from staying there was my thirst, and the batteries on my camera were drained. This site had underground tunnels that led to transformer yards, it was really dark and creepy at some points, and some of the tunnels were completely pitch black. With the only lighting provided by my camera's flash and a failing mag lite, the light getting darker and darker before my eyes. I was at times wishing that I still smoked in hopes that I would have had a lighter for backup in case the flash light went out. One of the tunnels was nicely lit and painted to look wet, with russian speak painted on the tunnels, I think it said something about reactor that way, some hollywood prop thing for the show alias I think. Her pink boots were set up in an office, I did not waste any time on taking pics of this. They had all the trailers for the stars there as I walked around with my hard hat and goggles doing a "safety inspection" of the site!!! One of the worker teds from the plant there was washing his car with some high quality H2O, straight from the 300K gallon distilled water tanks. No water spots from this wash. I was also in the control room that was surprisingly new looking, with controls for breakers that would turn off power to certain communities!!!

Did someone say rig LA for reduced electrical! Hah, just eskidding mang!!! So close, so tempting, but no go!!!! I posted a couple of the better pics on my photoblog, link to the right.

Why am I like this?

Today I went to work to find out there was a slot open for a seminar held by the Southern California Gas company, I was asked if I wanted to go and I was like sure, why not volunteer myself for this learning opportunity. So I went, I actually had to pretty much go back home, you see the gas company has their HQ in Downey, it's kind of on the other side of the railroad tracks from where I live, except crossing into the good side of town. They hold training seminars and demonstrate the versatility of the fuel, this one was intended for operators and owners of boiler plants you know people in my career (power plant operator). I am still having a hard time calling a boiler a boiler, it's a steam generator for pete's sake not a boiler!!!! So most of the training went fairly smooth, boring as heck, but smooth. Nothing too difficult to grasp for a Nuke! The whole time I was there I felt like I was at a propaganda rally held by the gas company though. Everything they said was true, no lies, just that the way the training was setup seemed a little Amazon.com 'ish learning why natural gas is supposedly the best fuel ever. I payed attention the whole time there and I learned a few things that I did not know. I am both excited and scared, heck, I am even hesitant at learning this old technology, I am working with equipment so old that its not even funny. On Saturday I am going to visit a sister plant in Redondo Beach, pretty historical I hear, the first generator on the west coast was built there providing DC power, yes DC, to the Los Angeles residents back in the days when Edison ruled and not Tesla. One of the plants I will tour is a plant no longer running which still brings in the bucks by serving as setting to many movies including the Terminator movies, and most notably on the movie "The One" with Jet Li, the industrial looking pics are at the plant. I am really excited about taking some pictures, hell those of you out there that remember photogate might empathize with me as far as why I am excited about this. But yeah, before I ramble much longer I think I must call it a night! Oh yeah there is also a big mural at the plant by this famous guy (warning site contains some flash) Wyval. Keep an eye out on for a story on the news about ENRON, they talk about california plants shutting down due to shifty ENRON dealings and then they show my plant....

Sleep is a precious commodity!

So I ran around today playing catch up. I figured out I hate gas stations, yep, I hate them. It just takes too darn long to fill up. Especially when someone is using the same pump on the other side, somehow it seems like it is a sort of positive displacement pump with a constant volumetric flow rate shared between each side. I don't know, whatever, some other day I will really look into the operation of a typical gas pump. It seems and bothers me that it slows down when someone is using the same pump on the other side??? So when I was done some NICE guy in a big old SUV decided he would block me in by backing up as close to me as humanly possible, thanks buddy! Luckily I had a nice turning radius which allowed me to perform a 69 point maneuver and squealy burn my way out just to show him how grateful I was for his generosity. Limited slip squealy burnouts are the coolest!!!!

$-)

I got my first paycheck today, it is nice to be making some real money for a change! I wanted to buy myself something nice to celebrate, but nah, I don't need anything at the moment.