January 7, 2011
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battleship welder one was glitchy again for the first half of the shift, then, curiously enough, it ran great after lunch, so I started working in 'eye of the tiger' mode (welder 2, I can sleep walk thru; welder one, almost; welder 3, forget about it). I've always been real close to beating the welder (about 15 seconds to whip 11 parts onto the fixture, make sure all lights are green, run back past the light curtain line, and hit the button. it's tough, but near the end of the shift I was 'in the zone', beating Mr. Roboto at his own game. rate is 300 parts welded per shift. I made 282 (not bad, considering the pre-lunch ghost in the machine bull-squattage). I've beat my personal daily rate everyday this week, yet do ya think I can get any kind of "atta boy" from a higher up. HELL no! my boss only shows up to ask "why is your machine down?", then I don't see him for the rest of the day. Andrew (the guy that busts ass on #3) even mentions the fact that he goes over rate, and gets no love. total opposite of the day shift (it's like night and day...k, bad pun). they were very encouraging. no wonder there's so many grumpy peeps on this shift. anyway. 48 hours down, 24 to go. I didn't get a pay check this week, being that I had Christmas/new year week off, and the temp service doesn't believe in paid holidays (they don't even believe in night shift premium, benefits, nothin'!...good gawd, all they seem to be good at is getting your feet in the doorway of Satan's lair puppy mill smoke factory robot stalag, and losing your paycheck
). I guess I'll have to cash my Christmas check from mom and pops to cover this week. speaking of which, and I hate to admit this, but yesterday, I couldn't find my wallet. I looked everywhere (it's a routine that I go thru with my glasses, and other stuff as well, from time to time). oh well, I got time to look again, after I take the stuff out of the washer and through it in the dryer. guess what fell out of the pile while transferring said clothes? yep, a soggy wallet
. my first thought is mom and pops Christmas check
(yeah, stupid me has been carrying it around, with intentions of stopping off to the bank before or after work, but seemed to never get around to it). luckily, there was a lot of paper in my wallet (proof of insurances from years gone by, receipts, junk). I peeled all the paper stuff apart, throwing away the vast majority of useless outdated crap, and laying the wet check in a place where it could dry out. I empty everything else out of the wallet as well and dry it with the load I just threw in...I figured I'd pull out a leather raisin, but it dried nicely. I put all my cards, license, important stuff back in, along with the check, and all is well. it could have been a tragic situation, had that check not survived, or if I had a gob of dollar bills in it at the time (which is a rarity anyway). I got lucky!the above paragraph was written on 1/07 before work, below is after work (6:00am 1/08).
a 10 hour work day seems to whip by after 4 12'ers in a row. maybe we'll get lucky tomorrow and get to leave at 5am again
. my welder was down for the night, so I got to work in the quiet corner in the back doing some sort of slide bracket assembly. it was a cool change of pace! I hope they throw me over there tomorrow as well. 58 hours down, 12 (maybe 10) to go, then I get me a day off to drink a beer and watch the LIONS lose
. currently, it's snowin' like a mofo out. my truck handles so much better in this stuff with new leaf spring brackets. it makes a huge difference!! ya know, it just dawned on me, that maybe my truck went into the ditch because my leaf spring bracket was already broken. I've been assuming that the accident itself (or the tow out of the ditch) was the cause of the breakage. I guess I'll never know for sure. no matter...sleep. I need sleep. g'nite.
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