Strapped On!

Those Santa Ana's sure are a blowing. The air is clean, the sky is blue, and everything just looks so much brighter today. It is kind of rare to have such windy conditions here, as a matter of fact I saw a hard hat flying away at work today (more like at us) with some guy chasing it and warning people below. Unfortunately heads up is not the proper warning to use in this kind of situation. You will soon see why. Luckily nobody who did choose to look up got smacked with that aforementioned hat, not like we did not try though! Soon enough the guy got his hat back, only after it landed on the ground a few times of course. So I guess the moral of the story here is...If it is windy and someone is yelling heads up, it does not necessarily mean to look up. Unless of course you want to get smacked in the face! Oh and make sure you get those hard hats strapped on properly, you know, just in case.

Good News and Chung's

I got some good news today, I might start shiftwork soon! Which means longer days unfortunately, and sometimes even at night. However It does open up the door for more days off, better pay, and more opportunities for overtime!!! The only thing keeping me from shiftwork now is finding the right shift to go into. Finding the right match is really important here too. So yeah, I cannot wait to start having some time off during the week. There have been a few things I've been putting off that can only be taken care of during the week.

I filled up on gas today, and by gas I mean diesel for my truck. For the first time that I can remember Biodiesel was cheaper than the normal stuff, which is good for my wallet. That made me a little happy!!!

After taking care of what I needed to take care of today, I decided to go for a jog! Nothing too much since I have not done anything in months. But it felt nice, did about two laps around a park. You know, something to get the endurance back up to normal. After the jog I went out for dinner, decided on chinese and went with the teriyaki bowl. Unfortunately I have yet to find a place that can live up to what I got used to back in the northwest. Oh well, one of these days I will fly up there to catch a Mariner's ballgame, go gambling at my old hangout, visit Flint, and most importantly.......get lunch at the bestest teriyaki place in the world!

Sleep has been a commodity!

With all this running around as of late I have been neglecting to sleep as much as I should, or as much as I would like to I should say. This lack of sleep has had me playing catch up sleep wise the last couple of days. So when I got home from work yesterday I decided to take a nap that turned into an all nighter. Kind of nice actually, I woke up full of energy ready to take some new projects!

Pomp and Circumstance

Cracking those books and studying really hard payed off today. Knowing the subject matter cold kind of helped too! I went to Sea World and one of the attractions there was an Anheuser Busch hospitality bar, which served up free samples of beer. For those inclined they offered the visitors a beer class, which I was forced to take advantage of! I graduated with honors!!!! It was a short class about brew, giving you free samples of different types of beers. Best of the day by far was this new Budweiser product called B^E pronounced "B to the E" which means beer plus extra (I think technically considered an energy drink). After a few rides, beer school, and the shamu show, it was lunch time. Unfortunately this place was not designed with food in mind, every place that had food was swamped I waited over an hour in line for food, and all the tables were taken. I got a huge headache, and needless to say the rest of the day sucked. Overall though, it was worth it! Free beer, free Bud keychains, and more free beer. I am not much of a drinker anymore, but I could not pass up this opportunity. I had gone once before at Busch Gardens in VA with Burley the spu electrician, and I enjoyed it then and I enjoyed it now!

Out and About

I am in San Diego for the weekend! Unfortunately I might miss Sean, unless he is still planning on being here this Sunday. Work went well, at least as well as work can go. Oh and the weirdest thing, I am staying at a place near Point Loma which is where we would come in whenever we would pull in to San Diego back in the day. That's it for now, but I will update on the goings on soon!

No More Pre Critical Checkoffs

We were supposed to start-up the plant and be online by tomorrow evening. Before we actually got to fire off the boiler though and make steam, our start up got cancelled. After this quasi start up came the re-realization by yours truly that I am essentially on call, which I already knew since operators are always on call, but for some reason I was kind of in denial. I got back to work to find out that one of the operators has decided to communicate turnover type stuff via e-mail at work. This was not well received by some of the more senior operators, since this guy is just trying to get attention, and is trying to make himself look good by making others look bad. Oh well, he will learn his lesson someday when someone does not cover his back. It is inevitable!

My condolences go out to my operator brethren in the refinery sector who suffered a great loss at that Texas refinery Wednesday. Some of our operators are former refinery operations and it really hits home when something like this happens.

Funnel Cakes, Churros & the Day Off

I went to Magic Mountain earlier today, actually it was pretty much the entire day! I took a day off. I got to hang out with the Curts, an old buddy and former RO like myself. He was actually my partner in crime during my brief stay in the military, so to speak. I had not seen him in such a long time that it was nice to do some catching up. The rides were awesome as expected, we rode all of the rides at least once. Except for the ones that were down for maintenance and I did skip "Superman" since I had heard it was not the greatest, plus I was really beat. Utterly and completely exhausted! I spent tons on food and snacks since I was low on energy and was trying to get some of it back. We had so much fun that I ended up buying one of those snapshots they take in the middle of the ride, it came out awesome! I will try to post it later on tonight.

Interviews

So I figured out today that we really do not have a HR department. We really don't, I swear! I figured it out this morning when they asked me if I wanted to help out with the interviews for new candidates. I was kind of amazed that they would:

1. Think of me as qualified enough to select who gets to work there, and
2. Not have an HR department, I really thought this was cool since essentially the operators and supervisors select who works there not some silly HR person.

I briefly reviewed the candidates resumes to kind of get a feel of what I would ask. We did four interviews for two openings, and well three out of the four were good enough. All of them were former Navy, conventional type. The one guy that was really terrible always had a plan for a plan, he never seemed to take anything on himself, and gave tons of examples where he delegated out all the work and took all the glory. He then showed us all his awards at the end (NAMS, COMS), you know the silly carrots at the end of the stick for the Ted's, he really thought this would impress us and was telling us how we should hire him. Needless to say he was the only guy to be recommended as a no hire for the day. We then got some lunch at a local restaurant, on the supervisor's tab of course for helping out. I got a huge lunch and was completely useless the rest of the day.

Gray Water!

So I started the day with the smell of old dirty stale water. One of our drain pipes clogged up and we had to clean out the drain and the backed up water. It actually went all over the place inside of an electrical room, so bad we had to put a big plastic tarp to cover up a relay board. Grounds = Fire here too. The relay board is like a big ol' switchboard with relays inside instead of breakers. I got to squeegee all of the water out of the room (located on the second floor) cascading it down to the ground level. I was nice enough to rope off the area where the water was falling to keep people from getting a smelly surprise from above!!! I then mopped up with some simple green smelling stuff to get rid of the stink. Nothing like that citrusy smell to eliminate those smelly odors.

Pay per not View

So I ordered fight night earlier in the day on HBO pay per view. I only got to watch the first couple of fights which were extremely good. Heck it was worth the money I payed for the whole event just to watch the first couple of fights! Unfortunately I did not get to watch the main event though, I ended up going to watch "the Ring 2" at the theatre. Which was sort of OK. I can pretty much watch any movie and think it was good so your guy's opinion of it might be a little more critical. It was just not as scary or as suspenseful as I would have hoped it should be. What do you expect out of a sequel right? Well, sure enough it was really slow and apparently someone else at the theatre thought so too, for I was hearing snoring somewhere near me just a few seats away! This somehow made the movie somewhat more enjoyable, it was a little comedic in fact. All was not lost however, I recorded the rest of the fights and will watch them tomorrow, I hope they were good!

Some Things Never Change

No matter what goes wrong it is always the operator's fault. Equipment breaks down, well surely it must have been misused "operator error" seems to be a universal term in an industrial setting. I did not mention this the other day because I forgot and well it was really not that big of a deal. Some of you might remember a couple months ago that one of the operators at my plant had a hypoglemic episode so bad that we had to call the authorities to help locate him. I was kind of relieved by this since I did not see him fit to be an operator. Any 12 hour/day job that requires a lot of physical activity is not the safest for a diabetic,. A couple of years ago he actually lost his driver's license due to an episode on his drive home. Well instead of firing him or forcing him to see a specialist they moved him to the warehouse. A normal 9-5 job with a lot less strenuous activity. So a lot of people were hopeful of this solving his problem, but as it turned out it really just transferred the problem. He had an episode in the warehouse where instead of trying to help him warehouse staff essentially did nothing to help the situation. Any operator would never act this way, however they did call up our plant and asked for our help. I went along with another operator and brought some sugary goods to fix him up (I actually got a coke from my stash). We got there pretty quicklike, gave him goodies, found his stuff, made him take insulin shot. So instead of thanking us, what do you think happens? Well when management hears about this they accuse us of covering for him, covering up the problem! And since I am new all the blame is focused at the other operator. I am so friekin' upset about this, management knew about this and chose to do nothing about it. When I first witnessed this I expressed my concern about his well being and safety in this type of a job. Moreover the reason he was transferred to the warehouse was because he had the police helicopters and ground patrols looking for him when he left the site a couple months ago, so everyone knew and did nothing about it! So why is it the operator's fault? Why is it that the people who kept him safe for so long get the blame?

Happy Green Beer Day!

I forgot to wear the green today, did anyone else forget this too or was it just me? I guess people who wear uniforms have an excuse, so where does that leave me? I get to choose what I wear and wore no articles containing the color green! I just seem to have too many things going on in the morning that coordinating what to wear based on which day of the year it is seems beyond my capabilities. I did not get to celebrate properly either, no colored beer was had by the Lou...which is really not that big of a deal since I don't really drink anymore. Instead I just got myself some mineral water in a green bottle, that counts right?

The energy people are predicting a power shortfall again this summer, this should drive up the prices of electricity allowing bigger production bonuses. Good for me I guess? All this depending on how much power we produce of course. Speaking of work I found this, it is a rough map of the power grid west of the Rockies and apparently south of the border too.

I mentioned earlier that there are openings for operators in southern California, anyone interested let me know soon! I can send you the contact info on where to send your resume.

Really Low on Energy!

I was really tired yesterday, I had to drive over to cash my check at the bank. Our silly payroll lady seems to be dragging her feet and has not set up my direct deposit just yet. Oh well, as long as I get the $$$ I really don't care what form it comes in. There are a couple of openings for operators in the southern California area if anyone is interested, keeping in mind cost of living is way high here and the salary is probably not the greatest (non labor union), but whatever, it pays the bills. Anyone interested let me know, deadline is soon! Oh well so that is pretty much what I would have wrote yesterday but I was falling asleep on the road (not really but I was sooo tired), and since I don't smoke anymore I had no quick fix and had to call it a day.

The One Day I Decide To.....

Ok so the one day that I decide to not use the stairs, this most in part to my legs feeling like noodles. My noodles a.k.a. legs proved to be a very poor tool for climbing of course, so the decision to stick to the elevator all day seemed like a great alternative. Sure enough early in the day, soon after wiring myself up with enough caffeine but just before I get a chance to start anything, that darned elevator decides to take a break. After minor troubleshooting we decided to call in the pros and just put signs up informing people to take the stairs (thus avoiding people's desire to stand, hope, and pray that the non-operational lift will miraculously show up). So I print up some signs and decide the most efficient way at accomplishing this task was to climb up all the way to the top and work my way down, so far so good right? As I approach the top of level 6 and 1/2 (top level being 7 and comparative to approximately 10-12 stories on a normal building) I felt a breeze and heard a slight ruffling noise. I turn to see what the source of the noise was, and witness all of my freshly printed signs flying away. So what is the first thing I do? I check to see if anyone else saw this of course, lucky for me I was the only witness!!! So I had to walk all the way down, print some more signs, and climb back up. I worked bottom to top this time just in case.

Another thing that kind of led to all this was the fact that I was exhausted, I was running late and tried to make up for it by flying to work on the motorcycle. I was almost there on time, but traffic was backed up about a mile or two from my destination. I tried splitting lanes for a while but people are morons, yes morons, and block riders from riding this way. So I was late, Tuesday morning meeting nonetheless with the whole site. They normally only last about twenty minutes or so and no useful information is put out, but showing up late is not a good thing. I hide out in the restroom for a few minutes and walked in slowly, and by just pure chance the meeting was letting out. I mingled for a bit, got some coffee and blended right in....as if I had been there the whole time. I am such a slacker.

Last but not least. On our way back from the lunch run, (someone else drove and I went to help carry the food) we pulled up at a red light and a minivan full of young men pulled up. They were smoking it up, I kind of gave them a thumbs up but stayed quite. The other operator I was with made a derogatory comment, I was glad I did not say anything. So yeah....That's it for now!

Hectic but Good!

Today by far was one of the busiest days that I think I have ever had. I woke up early to have the interior of my truck detailed. I am lucky enough to know someone that knows someone that does this for a living. Someone with all the equipment and the know how. I am really impressed at how clean my truck looked! I am so happy to have a clean looking, clean smelling car now. I then ran to get the truck washed at that touchless place I mentioned earlier, the results were OK, but I should not expect much as I should be cleaning it more often. You know....To keep the dirt from getting too acquainted with my truck!!! I then got to take a little break at the park, got to take a nice little rest from all the preoccupations life in the ghetto presents! After that we then met up with Mike and his girlfriend for dinner, Mike is an old friend that I normally gambled with back in the day, I had not seen him in years and was in town for spring break, so it was nice to play catch up. He looked well and seems a lot happier now. It was a little awkward at first, but nothing like a little alcohol to break the ice. His new girlfriend seems nice too, and apparently they have been together for a while. I wish them all the best. Well that was pretty much it for today, oh yeah, I gave them a box of chocolates from a local candy store. I hope they like them.

One more day....

One day closer to payday. That is pretty much the kind of mood I am in. Good news....I did find myself a touchless car wash here in southern California, for some reason they are very rare in this state. Tomorrow I will get my truck washed and detailed, it is long overdue for a little TLC! Hopefully tomorrow I will have something interesting to talk about.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention/ask, did anyone else go see Robots the movie Friday night? You know, for the preview of Star Wars????

What in the heck do people think!

Part of the reason that I decided to stay where I am currently at was the relaxed environment that I so longed for at a previous job. However, one of the things that is still fairly formal involve things that can kill you. Safety is job one! I even have a sticker on my hard hat with a green cross, glow in the dark as a matter of fact. It stands for safety. As I was going on the lunch run today, as I normally do....(part of this relaxed atmosphere allows for the operators to leave the site at times), yeah I am still not used to this one. As I was leaving jumping into my big ass truck someone started honking their horn, just seconds later someone jumps out from in front of my truck. WTF! Some head honcho contractor guy was taking a siesta on a chair set up directly in front of my truck (our parking is right next to where their trailers are set up)! He was under my line of sight, therefore I had no way of knowing he was there. Now, even though My truck is uber loud, especially at startup, and I normally let it run for a while before taking off....Thus I doubt anything serious would have happened. Still, I was a little upset that someone had to intervene to keep something bad from happening. WTF was this moron thinking, no matter how great the weather has been, this kind of negligence has no explanation. Alright I am done venting....

I learned a little about the power grids west of the Rockies, the main parts of the power grid are 500KV lines. These lines are used to transfer some serious power long distances... This was how California was able to get power during the so called "power crisis". I have yet to get my hands on an official map of the grid, if there is such a thing. The major distribution and generation occurs at 220KV, these are the voltages at our switchyard and how we tap in to the power grid. Some of the smaller substations are at 66KV. Alrighty then, enough about work right?

There are several motorcycle riders at work, the only other rider my age rides a Harley. He is afraid to be seen in public riding behind a Honda though, so as for now my gang membership stands at one. Me! I don't discriminate, all makes and models are welcome.

Progress Report!

I had to see my "boss" today so he could see my progress as far as checkoffs go. You know the things that track my progress as far as learning stuff on the plant. Well I have been slacking a bit, but it is all just a formality anyway I really am learning stuff. I swear!!!! Oh yeah, my boss recommended I get more checkoffs. I basically said "Noted". I decided to do a little bit of reading on Transformers, apparently there is more than just two ways to connect the windings, some of the other ways include "T" and "zig zag", there are some more but I am still learning.

I am glad to see that the goff is blogging now. I'll add a link tomorrow off to the right.

More Catch up!

So I decided to give my truck an oil change today. This of course did not go as smoothly as I had planned. When I got home from work I immediately decided to drain out the old oil. So far so good, I noticed the drain plug washer was damaged and needed a new one. I also could not get the old oil filter out, but since the filter is humongous the normal wrenches do not work and not even the Lou himself could remove the filter. Oh and did I mention I had no fresh oil to add when finished. So after a visit to the local discount auto parts store I was finally ready to finish the job. Let me tell you, it is really difficult to ride with 3 gallons of oil strapped onto your back.

Work went well today as well, people seemed genuinely concerned about my well being since I had to take the day off yesterday. Yeah, it's finally nice to have a job I can be proud of.

Called in Sick!

Did not really call in sick per say but I did not go to work. I woke up really tired and stuff, and did not really feel like going to work. So I decided to use one of my personal days off, I kind of felt guilty but that is really what they are there for. To take care of personal business, and well I think sleep counts as "personal business" right? Seriously though I have been falling behind on stuff, and today I should be caught up by the end of the day. Oh yeah Based on the Dexter's Review of "Be Cool" I decided to go watch it Sunday night, I was really impressed.

First time for everything right?

Today was the first time I rode with a passenger on the bike. I was up for the challenge and things turned out ok. No injuries to report!!! It had been such a long time since I had ridden with all the rain and such. But it's just like riding a bicycle once you get it you never lose it.

Touchy Feely

Today was a weird one, we had behavioral safety training at work. It was odd, some "professional" came down to try and improve our safety standings by getting all touchy feely with us and making us get into groups so we could get all touchy feely with each other. I don't really see how this could possibly help in an industrial type environment but hey, whatever, I played along. We did somewhat of a personality chart except it was about resolve in a situation, I got denial, I guess I don't acknowledge problems. After that they brought us lunch. Apparently this company seems to take care of it's own.

After work I went to go buy some work boots, this is another expense covered by the company once a year. They actually bring out a boot mobile truck from Red Wing shoes to us, and we get our boots at the parking lot. Unfortunately they don't carry Lou sized shoes, and I had to go to the actual store on the way home. I splurged, I got really expensive shoes (they only cover up to 150$) the rest is payed by us. So I got these and some high tech insoles. Apparently you bake them for a couple of minutes and you immediately use them and stand in your boots for a few minutes to mold them, I just had to get them.

I don't really have any plans for tonight yet, I will just have to see how things pan out. I kind of like not planning things out anyway. Hope everyone has a good weekend.

F#@k Nuclear Power.......

So the one true mnemonic that really meant something to me payed off. I have been going to some training with the gas company, and one of the sample questions asked was about a generator with a set frequency and number of poles and we had to figure out speed of the machine. No one knew how to figure it out, even the instructor. The equation is easy, it is a simple linear function (F=NP/120) where f is frequency in Hz, N is speed of the machine in RPM, and 120 is a conversion factor to relate RPM to hertz with respect to the number of poles in a machine. Soooo everyone kind of had seen this equation but could not reproduce it, once I learned it I never forgot it. It was my BE instructor I think that said a great way to memorize this was to remember the mnemonic " Fuck Nuclear Power over 120 times " it took me a while to truly appreciate the significance of this, and trust me I did, and so did many other of my fellow nukes. I told everyone how to remember this simple equation, I don't think they will remember, but at least I made them laugh for a bit!

"I Believe" button

I really hate it when people ask silly questions when they don't understand something. Instead of just accepting the fact that they might need to review something later on people stubbornly insist on understanding something right then and there by asking some of the most inane questions I have ever heard. That has pretty much been how my day has gone. Learning about simple stuff, and wondering why some people seem to have a hard time learning new things. For example....as we are learning about the importance of pH control with the instructor giving a pretty wide span of the "good" region and people always too willing to add their two cents explaining why their spec for their plant was right for everyone else. I think to myself, "different metals different alloys" people come on just friggin' let go man. Well that's my two cents for now, and tomorrow will be my last day of training. Most of the training has been review, and I felt kind of like I did not belong there at first, but they gave everyone a free book to help us pass the licensing exams. I look forward to reading it.