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Saturday, September 5th, 2015
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4:14 pm - On Small Aircraft Design
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What have I been doing lately instead of anything productive? (although there is new coolant in the Z and I have fuel hose on order, need to drop the pump and see if it runs, the brake adjuster came in for the Merc so it's back in the shop, I talked to a live person about Jez, work goes all right and my credit score is apparently up to 680, hence the new 1K limit on my CC)
http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/133181-Emergency-Fighter-Program-%28AKA-Rathernotprogramm%29
That's what I've been doing. If you play KSP or have heard of it, this was a fun little exercise to recreate Germany's emergency fighters on a strict time limit. They all mostly fly like a boss despite cheap and cheerful construction because what else do you expect of somebody who goes by "Piloter"?
current mood:  accomplished
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| Wednesday, August 26th, 2015
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8:25 am - Long-delayed update
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I've been out of touch. I freely admit this, via just about every medium. I'm trying to look at the pieces of my life and assemble them in a way I actually want and have evaluated, not something I just do because I always have just done it.
Jeez, since the last update, the puppy has grown up into a perfectly servicable doge (apart from being difficult to potty-train, we've tried everything the Internet has to offer already) who will, once she starts losing the maniacal energy, be a great dog. I still have the BB gun, haven't broken anything else but I did give into the urge for an accurate one and got a Crosman NP, which is fantastic, with a Centerpoint scope, which is shite. The limiting factor on accuracy is my eyes--I can't resolve the size of the marks on the targets with that scope. Makes it hard to sight in! But it's nice to have a backyard to plink away in.
I now own a brand new washer and dryer and paid off my ancient debt, and only have a few hundred bucks left on the loan that I took out to do that. My bank is in Texas, now, and a credit union...not Key in Toledo that has no branches in the three states that surround me. My savings account is growing (slowly, but everything starts somewhere), I have a (small, and getting smaller thanks to the market crap) IRA. The garage holds a Mercedes, at least it will when it gets back from the garage. Rear calipers dragging, brake fluid boiling, loss of all pedal pressure after ~10 minutes of highway driving. I sourced new rear calipers, e-brake shoes (apparently in pieces), new hoses front and back while I'm at it, new ebrake cables to replace the rusted/snapped ones etc etc. The only part of this story worth chuckling over in posterity is the e-brake adjuster, a little piece that sits behind the front cable and splits off into the rear cables. It was basically a solid chunk of rust. It's all of $30 from Pelican parts but it's backordered through Germany with no known restock time even there. No junkyard can find it. I eventually called through to a couple CL ads parting out 190s....short version of this is screwit, I don't park on hills. I knew the cables were basically disintegrated anyway so never used it. Figured it had one good pull left in it and was saving that for the inspection. 3-5 weeks for now, I may have the adjuster from Germany and then I'll hook it up.
The Corolla is no more. The hatchback, not my baby. Death of a thousand paper cuts. Too much work immediately needed, but she went to a good home.
As for Jez...business changes. The tech working on it is no longer with the company. The admin personell that couldn't be arsed to answer my calls or emails are gone as well. I got a call from the new admin folks and I've been in sporadic communication with them. Short version of THAT is that it's not something simple and they're trying to dig into what was done and undone because nobody told them anything. *sigh*
There's a project car in the garage now, the 1976 280Z that has been alluded to previously. Paid it off, got it towed home. Now sitting on stands with the wheels off, a new battery, a new battery tender, fresh oil. This weekend it's time to drop the drip shield, flush the coolant sludge, put an inline filter before the pump, check if the pump gets voltage, drain the tank, take out the plugs, little oil in the bores, turn it by hand, then bump it with the starter a few times. Then restore the plugs and maybe she'll fire up. I "accidentally" tried with the new battery, just to see if the ignition switch was working, and did get a teeny blip from the starter for my teeny blip of the key into start.
I already bought a creeper, electric impact wrench (got off 10-year-frozen lugnuts from a car that probably had high water, not BAD for Hazard Fraught tooling), etc etc, and stopped by a self-service junkyard to scavenge a distributor and module and mount from a 1981 280ZX....also its unobtainable brake master cylinder for a tenth of what they cost online these days! The previous owner had a lot of driveability problems which I'm thinking may have stemmed from the combination of distributor adjustments (points or something like) needed and an external mechanical regulator alternator. Swapping out the electronic dizzy and upgrading to a Monaco alternator ought to solve those, if they're problematic, and fuck fusible links in favor of a modern maxifuse system. But that's afterwards, as well as all the brake work. First I wanna hear the beast roar to life, or at least cringe to hesitation. I'll get specific from there. Teaching me a LOT already. For $1000, a good investment in the basics of auto repair...not just theory. Eventual future plans are probably not the LS3 erod setup I originally looked at, but just a turbo on the L28E. The six is the heart and soul of that car and it would be a shame to change it. Plus 300 horsepower ought to be plenty. Eventually.
Oh yeah, and Z and I are breaking up the band. My decision. We don't work as a couple. We remain the best of friends but I'm trying to transition things such that he's got time to get a license (has his temps, waiting on the Merc to start learning), a job, some income, a place, etc. Next summer...
And now it's back to work. Probably more later.
current mood: Frustrated
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| Friday, September 12th, 2014
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12:37 am
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For the third time, greatly abbreviated further. (The mobile version on iOS is absolute ass.)
Job: still not fired. Expected pitfalls from starting a new career. I can do it. Not liking being gone this much.
Home life: complicated. Juggling priceless eggs in variable gravity (one dork point for no-lookup getting that one).
Personal life: what do I use for time? Rolling back to ksp on the road. Built a clean-sheet single stage to orbit spaceplane yesterday with stock parts. Worked on first launch (second if you count the first failure to put fuel lines in symmetry as a launch). Spent hours refining and wound up with something that works arguably worse. Kind of proud of that, I've still got the Kelly Johnson touch with little green men aerospace.
Cars: jez being worked on. Communications hard. R is visitng family that way and will be my area spy and photographer.. I miss my baby. Bug needs an engine rebuild, or at least that seems the sane alternative with a 32-year old mill that needs rings, valve seals, and now a rear main seal. R is picking up the tab and in return can have (be sold for a dollar) my ownership of it. She wants Bug and that's fine with me. Glad the little road roach is sticking around, she was a temporary expedient but has been surprisingly durable and capable and full of potential. Also garage is now full.
Paying off the z a little at a time. $1000 is the new $200. Will be a fun long term project. Should just need a battery to fire up, after fluid stuff. Then belts and etx. Wheels turning will e a lot harder. Hubs all need to be redone, frozen brake drum, every piece of brake hardware is probably trash. Also my cheap harbor freight jack is the perfect diameter to punch a hole in the bottom of the frame rail box section.
Stuff: picked up a BB gun (daisy power line 880 but an old one) for $20. First shot cut a coke bottle in half at about thirty yards.
Always wanted a BB gun since scout camp a billion years ago. It's satisfying to plink things in the large backyard from the deck. (Cinder block + big sheet of plywood as backstop, range safety blah blah). God help me I'm becoming a redneck. Second shot, well, you'll notice the first picture is on a glass tabletop. Ask me how I know it shoots a little low. Pop rocks in glittering piles, nothing left but the frame.
Other stuff: I had a dog give me a smaller dog. Pit/lab pup. Very sweet, very too smart. We are fostering her for a while but she's not our dog, any of us, so until we can find her a GOOD home and not just A home, she stays.
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| Thursday, September 11th, 2014
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2:31 pm
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| Thursday, July 3rd, 2014
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10:22 am - Current status
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It's been WAY too long since I've updated this (as tends to happen), but in my defense there has been a triple-pronged--at least--attack on my free time.
Job-wise...I am out on my own now save for a week of additional running around in Alabama with Jimmie that my boss thought was needed based on a misunderstanding on his part. All is not entirely rosy. There is a learning curve, and one machine that I worked on is being sent back to the shop for a teardown and writeup and additional repair--however, this was also a machine that another engineer worked on after me and apparently was not able to resolve, from a customer who has already done us wrong previously. There's another unit I'm revisiting where there are a couple of cosmetic issues on a warranty repair that even my managers think are bogus, but. When mistakes are brought to my attention I explain the reasons and thought processes leading to the actions I took, and so far that's been it. Considering that all the feedback I get in this job is negative feedback, no news really IS good news. Also I've only been out on my own for less than a month and--while a lot of these instruments can make me feel like a retarded monkey who should go back to fixing windshields--in the end they do get fixed. As has been the case with pretty much every other job, I run into the shit that should be easy but winds up failing in all sorts of entertaining ways. Perfect example--a sulfur analyzer in a graphite plant. One of the cells was reading low voltage, and that's a 10-second screwdriver tweak. They pulled the covers off the unit and dusted it out for me, then turned it on and of course now graphite dust was in the power supply.....BANG. Turned it off again and didn't bother telling me until I found it out a couple of turn-ons later. Ordering next-day AM delivery parts, when they didn't have an AM delivery option available, cost another day. Then I spent most of the day chasing a transformer-powering-up problem that turned out to be because I'd misconnected one connector on the opposite side of the chassis when I took out the cell to assess/clean it. ONE PIN OFF. Their heating issue wasn't due to the heating elements (which I found out AFTER replacing) but a current adjustment that I didn't even know about until I called Jimmie. In my defense, that was the third machine of its type I'd ever worked on and the first in depth beside simple "replace this tube" or "replace the vac pump" style of fixes. Now I feel I know a lot more about them. Or another example in Arkansas where they let a fantastically complicated hybrid instrument--sulfur-style furnace, but for organic analysis--sit for several months between analyses and had a leak they wanted to get solved. Which, with ten thousand o-rings that hold the gas in, and all of which get brittle and can leak if not regularly greased and used...suffice to say I spent a week in a town smaller than Dayton chasing that one. I wound up chasing it through the entire oxygen flow path and out into the robotic loading arm, where unpacking the seal around THAT led to a handful of metal dust and bearings that had no bearings in them. "Oh yeah, they said sometimes it makes a grinding noise." Long story short, it IS possible to get a unit to leak less than 1mmHg in one minute, but it takes a while.
So shit like that makes me feel a little better about shit like this week, where I rebuilt an instrument and now I can't get it to work right. Leaking pneumatic solenoids, replaced the solenoids, replaced the filters, no change, can't get it gas-tight. Figured it was the pneumatic RAIL since the problem didn't follow the location but rather having both of the problem children in, and I could seal either other port with my finger and have it not leak. With the new rail, the standoff screw thread from the old standoff broke off in it...so rather than order a new one, I got approval to go drill it out and epoxy the standoff on. All well and good until, after going to Harbor Freight and back home, the FUCKING EXTRACTOR BROKE OFF IN THE RAIL. So I went back for a refund and something more refractory or pliers that would get the damn thing out...left the bag with the standoff and epoxy and gloves and cardboard mixing platform and little applicator swab on the counter, as one does while a refund is being processed and you're looking for something. When I got back, unable to get the bit out with any of the pliers available, the bag was gone. So no standoff and still a fucked-up rail. So I had to order new parts all over again. And you can't leak check without pneumatic control of the solenoids, and that's all there is left to do.
It's just...crazy stuff like this. In a year, I won't care, in five years I will have forgotten, but from day to day it can really make me question my competence. I haven't been fired yet so that's something.
Other-job-wise, Raine has a decent new job finally courtesy of family friends, temp-to-hire and fulltime with up to 10 hours OT automatically OKed, flexible schedule, twice what she was making before, long-term stable, advancement potential, one of our friends is her team lead, etc etc. That will help with household stability.
Living situation, that's a big part of the reason I haven't updated. We have moved our shit into a ~1900-square-foot 1940s house in Houston proper. This is a pretty good neighborhood, it's about 2 miles from the freeways but it's set way far back and is very quiet. We live right on the corner of the neighborhood park and maybe half a mile from a charter school. It's an old place, lots of overhead trees arching over every street, winding and weird. The house is not without plenty of issues--the prior tenants lived here for 12 years and in that time did nothing but trash the place. On the upside, we can and have done some painting and a whole ton of cleaning. It's not permanent but it's about $300-$400 cheaper than a place like this would normally run, our landlord is literally just some dude, and the backyard is legitimately big enough to pasture probably two ponies in comfort. Pictures to follow some time this weekend. The long upgrade treadmill is in full effect. I now am the personal owner of a three-year-old GE french-door fridge that I had to dismantle to fit through the narrow kitchen doors, AND a late-model GE gas stove. Total cost for these two, delivered, $425. I LOVE Craigslist. Z and R have their own bedrooms and as this is only a two-bedroom I have acquired the living room as my Wretched Hive of Scum and Villany. We're still trying to find decent cheap washer/dryer although today's expedition will be to the local Habitat for Humanity store and one of these weeks I'll get a circular saw so I can start building and putting up shelves/cabinets/etc. The work van is actually surprisingly useful for carrying furniture and heavy stuff, although we still don't have a truck in the household and that's unlikely to change. Still have to save to get our Washington stuff down here someday, because that'll also eliminate a monthly bill. I question how much of it we're even going to KEEP at this point beyond the obvious (books, electronics, our one nice couch) and how much we've already supplemented.
Car stuff...got an update from Forged on Jez, rather than keep trying to use all the EDIS crap I elected to just have them put a second VR sensor in the distributor. 7AFE guts, for the stock ECU, in the 4A housing, so it will have accurate timing information anyway. Unfortunately, the way the 7AFE VR sensor works isn't really documented. Net balance has gone from prepaid to invoiceable again....sigh. Got a jack and stands for the Z and all the tuneup stuff, before I willy-nilly drop the tank I may as well just put a pre-pump fuel filter on. Apparently now that I want it, lots of other people want it too and are bugging the crap out of our friend and being generally creepy, so she just wants it gone, towed, etc. I did get the chance to wash it the other day, and there's a lot more of the original paint shine than I thought there'd be. The hood is toast, the roof has some clear-coat chipping, but it's more saveable than Bug. The window and door seals still seal! I found three boxes and binders of receipts for the thing, including the original classified ad the friend's dad saw it from and a copy of the check he gave to the guy. Apparently the motor was rebuilt 20K ago...this intrigues the hell out of me. Also there's been a LOT of work done on it, a lot of things progressively replaced. With the torque wrench I brought back from Michigan, sometime this weekend I'm probably going to go over there and pop it up on jackstands and at least bust the wheels off and see if the tires can be inflated to hold. And if the wheels actually turn or if the bearings are locked up, because these are good things to do/know BEFORE trying to get it towed...long project in progress, but I really do think I can do it justice. Speaking of learning curves. I've always liked the 240/260/280, they were one of those cars that always made my heart speed up a little as a kid. Same with the Buick Rivieras...and I've had my go with those. Also same with any Jag XJS but I really, really, know better. No matter how appealing the idea of a running HO V12 may be, dammit.
Time management is the ongoing challenge right now, fundamentally. My put-things-off juggling just doesn't work any more with the kind of load I'm under. Learning curve. But, as the lyric goes, thank you guys for thinking about me, I'm alive and doing fine.
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| Saturday, May 10th, 2014
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4:19 pm
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One more week of training in Alabama/Georgia with the 40-year guy and I'm out on my own insofar as support is a phone call away from any number of sources. I'm still treadmilling the paperwork but I think I have a handle on this. That's probably the biggest news. Finally doing the job all by my lonesome. I think I'll do fine.
As regards moving, at this point all we're finding is stuff more or less in the ghetto. Rental houses are surprisingly expensive and apparently get snapped up very promptly. That said we've got a possibility lined up just today after evaluating and contacting and either discarding or having discarded numerous others. There IS a backup plan and a fallback plan in place, and we have until the end of June after all. Should be able to work something out.
Car stuff...still no luck with Jez and EDIS. Got a more informative email from the garage. I'm sick of bashing my head into this with them but at least there's no more new payments involved yet. I'll have her back eventually, working properly, when there's space and she won't get jacked / burgled. Boss works in mysterious but long-term-sensible ways. Still have my line on the Z.
Note to self: Living directly behind a Church's Chicken on one of the most dangerous streets in the city in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods is not for this white boy. Also, living on the corner of MLK and a liquor store isn't a great idea either...
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| Wednesday, April 23rd, 2014
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12:47 pm
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Well, I'm back home in Houston. Training complete (hah!) van get (disorganized!) and having driven from Michigan to Texas by way of Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee...it's been interesting. I'm doing OK although paperwork is proving challenging. The work itself is a lot easier than I thought it would be although troubleshooting is still something I'd like to see for a couple more weeks (already happening) before I get dumped into a solo coverage. The ten-year guy had a pretty good opinion of me, so does the two-year guy so far I'm working with here.
Of course now that I've gotten home and unpacked, it's time to move out by the end of May...
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| Tuesday, April 1st, 2014
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9:05 pm
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Leaving on the 4th for Tennessee for a month. Was going to be going home after that and working with the guy out of OK, but now that's turned into another month on the road in Alabama and surrounding states before getting back to Texas. Fwee...I won't pass up the chance for more training but it'd be nice to get back already.
Got the place mostly packed, all that's left is mostly electronics gizmos. That'll happen Thursday night, last minute as OH GOD MY DESKTOP. Sadly it'll be getting its own suitcase, just like it came out here, loosely wrapped with leftover clothes.
Some things may not make the packing cut. Humidifier and cheap Walmart pot, I'm looking at you.
But everything is more or less organized and I should be able to make the deadline no problem. It'll be....interesting. Weekends at another Candlewood Suites, riding bitch with the TN guy the rest of the week, probably 4-5 nights in hotels on the road, and all out of my pocket until the expenses hit. Mostly it'll feel good to spend a day on the roads even if it is in a wallowing bitch of a no-brakes agricultural diesel monstrosity. I've DONE my Michigan winter penance.
Car crap...the Z's still mine whenever I can get down there and acquire it, as well as an offer of local storage while I work on it until it's safely mobile, AKA, right in the crater where it's sat for the past 10 years. I can live with that. Jez is still at Forged, they finally have the proper EDIS module and will be trying to get everything running tomorrow. Short of the ignition module everything apparently acts like it wants to run.
Other life stuff...change of plans, as per Z's LJ. Kat has decided not to come down and rather stay in AZ to move back to HI. This was a hell of thing to drop on her kids by surprise, especially the day before Dom's 10th birthday. Naturally Z is upset.
In other news I clock between 2700 and 4700 steps a day around the shop at work so getting my cardio in after work has somewhat dropped in importance. I need to get back on it but.
The new camera, which I notice I was muttering about in the entry before last, works like a fucking champ. It's almost too good. Grammy and I got to see the butterflies at the Meijer Gardens and I actually wound up stopping shooting because it wasn't a challenge any more. It's like the thing reads my mind. Also, butterflies up close are still pretty creepy looking bugs. They're best enjoyed from a medium distance where you can focus on the pretty.
Didn't wind up taking the good gear to Uncle Wally's place--definitely this October when I'm back for training--but I did get a tripod and help with Grandpa K's office computer. XP being EOLed meant he wanted to do the 7 upgrade, which was an all-day process on a original Athlon 64 3200+ with 4 gigs of RAM....AND his essential-for-business software wouldn't run right on 7, so XP virtual mode = 2 OSes worth of patches and having to run a VM to launch it, then--as the printer wasn't supported right by virtualized XP--print to CutePDF, dump a file on the W7 desktop, then minimize back out from there and print it. "For real this time!" Needless to say he's looking into upgrading to a later version of his software that will run natively and in my COPIOUS free time here I'm trying to put together a formal quote for a modest multi-core new system for him that he can just plug the hard drive into and seamlessly transition over.
I've been pushing hard. I could use a break. Maybe an entire day on the road and getting out of this room will help clear the cobwebs.
current mood:  nauseated
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| Friday, March 21st, 2014
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6:47 pm
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Insert obligatory much lost time comment here. I'm finishing up training. What a roller-coaster ride. On the 4th I leave for Tennesee for a month, then down to working with our guy from Oklahoma for a month which will leave me based out of home. Jez is undergoing slow progress. Bug will have the timing work done early next month...full timing set, rocker arm ($64 for ONE exhaust arm! Even from RA!), finally get somebody else to fix the plug seals I could never get to seal right. If that doesn't kill the noise then it's a bearing and I'll flip a table. Working out moving timetables, catching up with family, being hilariously sick, went to Chicago with R and got a proper fedora (not the modern abomination trilbys) which is quite stylish. Hard to believe I've lived in this hotel room since October. I don't really give a hang about my surrounds, I guess, if I'm not at home.
Speaking of, apparently the new bigger place will be hosting Kat and Dom until August or so when they are going back to Hawaii. This willbe ......interesting, in every Chinese curse sense.....and I won't say there's not other tensions at work and at play but if I don't keep a spark of optimism then I'm pretty much stick-a-fork-in-me dead inside.
Michigan winters suck. I'll be very glad to get back to somewhere warmer. I got my 90 day raise, a fleet card, an airline card, a rental car card, tools, health insurance, a 401K plan that I need to enroll in. I feel like half of a responsible adult, but I want to get back to where I have the option to NOT drive a damn diesel cargo van every day.
Also I have acquired yet another Thinkpad. This makes three--the T42 in car limbo hell at Forged, the T61 that Z was using until his PC finally arrived, and now this little X61 my brother scored at a police auction for $5. I had to put a new battery and SSD into it but it's a hell of a little system. How good, I'll find out, when I live off it for the next month or so...all my worldly goods up here are going to have to be packed away in the van and I'll live out of the christmas-present backpack/carryon and laptop bag. The GOOD news there is that the guy in OK/TX I'll be training with just stopped by the shop to trade his old van for one of the new Mercedes Sprinter vans. So while I'll be riding bitch extensively, it'll be quiet.
And I can catch up on Car Talk.
It's been a hell of a ride, and I'm still more or less on top of it.
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| Sunday, December 29th, 2013
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2:40 pm - In Which the Overlord Becomes Metaphorical Via Rocketry and Lives Through Holidays.
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And here's your mid-holiday update. I am still alive and well. There is a Christmas present for me following me around--was going to be delivered at the end of the day in MI when I was leaving that morning, so I called ahead to get it held at the facility so we could stop by there on the way to the airport. It wasn't at the facility, so I had them redirect it down here to Texas. Well, now it's supposed to arrive in the afternoon of the day I head back for Michigan in the morning. *headdesk* What else? I got threatened with getting fired because I forgot to hand over my keys at the airport until I was starting to board the plane and the driver had already headed back, apparently the CEO has a real thing against company vehicles being parked outside a secured storage area and my manager was not happy. Fortunately, gate agents are sweethearts and the driver was willing to go the hour back to the airport on a early-off Friday to grab my keys from the insecure side. I need to get him something in thanks--I LOVE my job and it's only going to keep getting better as they feed me deliberately broken machines and I get to learn another kind of them after the new year. And then the delicious dessert of actually getting to go out to location!
What else? Christmas here was pretty low-key, but there's still two trees and a construction-paper fireplace / chimney and hand-embroidered stockings. Compared with last year in the cabin...VAST IMPROVEMENT. Hardware failure month has been and hopefully gone. On a trip out in Bug, the usual rocker arm clatter turned into something that sounded for all the world like a horrible knock or a spun bearing. I tried pulling spark plug wires off by the side of the road but it didn't isolate itself, so that led to cramming three passengers into a single-cab tow truck. Raine had to sit on Z's lap and I had to sit sideways while the guy desperately tried to keep his hand off my thigh while shifting. A modest sum of money, most of a week, and a one and a half mile walk to the garage (my treadmill habits are at least occasionally useful) later, the rocker arms are now firmly secured and the only rattle is (I think) either the timing chain tensioner or the valves. Sigh. Also the camera body is more or less toast--for my and others reference, I bought a used Canon Digital Rebel, the old 300D, a number of years ago to replace the film Rebel. Well, it's now doing this /thing/ where every picture is three-quarters black, like the shutter timing is off. It's not flash synch, it's apparently a known issue with these bodies once they've had a lot of shots run through them. I wouldn't exactly call 2-3K a lot of shots, but it's old, it's been a lot of places. Fixing it is ~$200 from Canon USA. A new used 300D body is ~$75, but I've been getting fed up with the limitations of a digital camera body dating from ten years ago. I found a refurbed 400D body for ~$120 shipped from a major Canadian photo/video store, which considering they still go for $200+ on Amazon and the like, seemed about right. Still vintage 2008 or so, but it's closing the gap. Comes with a battery and charger too, which ain't bad. Usually hardware failure month takes a LOT bigger of a toll but I figure I can offset the costs by getting Chris to sell off my old iPod, dead Triumph, and the 300D body. For a cut, of course, but that's kind of his thing.
The party thing was a pretty good success. First house party, everybody had fun, woo! Right up until 5:30 PM turned into 12:30 AM and one of the gals remembered she had to work next morning. Nice to able to play Cards Against Humanity with people just as warped as us. Talked to Fox about the Z, she says she doesn't even care about the price, she'd GIVE it to me since I'd be happy with it, but she'll bounce the offer off her dad. Amanda's realtor dad is perfectly OK with working with Z and Raine to try and find us somewhere reasonable, a couple preliminary locations were tossed around. Ultimately my predecessor did his job from a point further outside the ring roads than I am, but we're living here under false income pretenses now that I have a real job, I WANT to be closer to civilization, and screw this little podunk town anyway.
It's good to be here, to have some time to unwind, to remind me what I'm working for. That said, it's also going to be good to get back to work again. I said something somewhat offhandedly to Grammy but it's stuck in my brain since then. All these times when subjectively I've felt like I'm slowing down and coasting, looking at it from the outside it's just after one stage of the rocket has expended itself and before the next one roars to life. If I decouple from my intrinsic inertial frame of reference HOLY SHIT I'VE DONE WELL FOR MYSELF. The trajectory's looking damn good for at least orbit, if not a moon shot. How high will it be? Depends on how long the fuel lasts! God knows there's been obstacles, inner and outer, not the least of which I've contributed to set in my own way, but...I've only been out of college for, what, 10 years? (Can never remember if I graduated in 03 or 04.) There were several times I wondered if I'd ever even make it to 30--and how dull and boring I'd be then--but here I am and I daresay I'm even more of a character than ever. A touch more seasoned, a touch less stupid at least some of the time. Maybe not the Saturn 5 roar and fury and bombast of the lower stages of adolescence, but I'm through the thickest part of the atmosphere, through max Q, the buffeting is starting to die away and ahead there's still plenty of dirt but there's a lot more star-shot potential. Here's to keeping the Gs on.
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| Tuesday, November 19th, 2013
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10:10 pm
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I get to go home from the 20th until the 2nd, and spend Thanksgiving weekend at Dad's. Life's pretty good. I'm getting better with the machines, even though it makes my muscles ache and I sometimes think wistfully about napalm, and I'm pretty sure I'm contributing to the global helium so-called 'shortage' (been trying to track down a leak in the helium system since bloody Thursday). I don't even have to worry about how to transport my stuff now that it's been augmented with a garbage bag full of the Great Toft Closet Cleanout, Volume II and a choice selection of garments from the local Goodwill, because since I'm running out to Grand Rapids on weekends Dad is OK with letting me stash my stuff up there on the 13th and retrieve it on the 3rd or thereabouts. This also means for those of you keeping score at home I'll have the Multilith up there for a weekend so as to put the local machines to bloody SHAME. The one thing I can do to surpass anything up there!
What else...got the packet for work insurance today, it qualifies as a "gold" plan by the ACA standards and it's about half of what I'd pay on the open market for similar coverage. That's good. No news on the car, that's not bad but it's a little annoying, I'll call again on Thursday/Fridayish.
The iPhone has now replaced my Triumph for sleeping and noise purposes as well. I'm deliberately trying to phase out the Triumph. Next up I need to find something for the iPhone that'll sync with Calibre, that'll allow me to phase out the iPod. YES that leaves me entirely dependent on a work device, but. I have even found that the stock headphones-with-microphone will fit nicely under my ear protection muffs so I can talk to family and listen to music while in the van and protecting my hearing--YES I checked, NO there's no law against headphones/earbuds in MI or TX--and it's a lot nicer of an alternative than the former, which consisted of my FM transmitter and a whole lot of volume on the van stereo. So all in all it's a device I can use for my purposes and for work purposes, I make virtually no voice calls, nobody personal knows the number, if I want to call out I have Skype set up, we have ~450 minutes which probably are monitored and 4.5 gigs of data which probably isn't. Not that I'm doing anything nefarious with it, but. Me as an Apple convert...mostly it's the responsiveness of the OS (thanks, appropriate specs) and the absolute precision of the touchscreen. I still want to try a Nexus 7 or a Galaxy S Note 3 or whatever the big one is, because I still think a phablet (what a wretched word...) with a SIM card and a bluetooth headset would be just about the perfect e-reader / mobile GPS / informatics device / communicator, but in the meantime it's nice to know that with modern hardware a satisfying convergence is possible. Also Siri is useful.
Although ads still absolutely enrage me, doubly so when I realize I can't jailbreak it, I can't root it, I can't opt out of being product.
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| Wednesday, November 13th, 2013
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9:23 pm
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A foot of snow overnight is a good reminder of how much I hate snow and cold. The job's still fun. Spent the weekend up at Dad's, hung out with Chris, awesome stuff. Got my dog fix multiple ways. This weekend, will be going up and hanging with Grammy.
KSP is on hold, I've got a couple things I'm trying to write but there's never enough time. AC IV is on its way to me. Goodbye writing time.
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| Saturday, November 2nd, 2013
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1:34 am
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Been rebuilding a trashed CHNS analyzer. As in, tearing EVERYTHING out, scrubbing the chassis, starting from scratch. It's fun. I can't believe LECO's paying me to do this, it's legitimately entertaining enough that I could see doing it as a hobby. I'm impressing people with my skillz and work ethic and results, getting along famously, learning an absolute ton, and contributing to the $10,000 labor estimate and overall $36,000 repair estimate. Yes, that's how badly they've destroyed this machine and its addon.
I'm looking forward to Monday so I can get back to it, which is just decidedly odd. It's like a 3d jigsaw puzzle, except when you're done you have an analytical machine instead of a cardboard monument. Also good practice for wrenching on the probable future Z.
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| Tuesday, October 29th, 2013
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10:11 pm - In Which Trinkets Are Bequeathed and Lairs Are Furnished
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I'm here in St. Joseph as of yesterday. As always my sleep loss before important events is legendary. Saturday night was a RHPS live show and dinner thing, that went from 4 PM to about 4 AM. I slept until 10, spent half the day packing and squawking, crashed at 8ish which was already past time....then woke up at 11 PM utterly unable to sleep. Left for the airport at 4 AM, went to Detroit, went to South Bend, rolled into St. Joseph, went to LECO for a couple hours of paperwork, back to the hotel, and crashed out at 11 PM. This morning....6 AM sharp. Tonight, well, it's 9:50 NOW so.
On the bright side.
I have a room for three months, probably a fair bit longer (hoping to just leave my stuff here over Christmas, do NOT want to fly back for two days and go through all the repack unpack bullshit), and I have my desktop, peripherals, and a pretty good sound system. I have a Dell 630 laptop, a brand new iPhone 4S (car charger, Otterbox), and some running money courtesy of the job. I also have a diesel van that I WILL be driving back to Houston. If the previous owner weren't a heavy smoker that'd be great. I burned up half a can of Febreze on it tonight (down the vents, painted the dash and wheel, headliner, just about every interior surface) so hopefully that'll stop it being the 'every day I'm sufferin'" ride. The training class is all of two people--me and my new coworker who just moved from Nigeria in 2008 to finish college here. He's really nice and we get along well.
The job itself...we got the grand tour of the facility today. To give you some idea of vertical integration scope, their R&D is in-house, their engineering is in-house, their machine shop in which they turn sheet metal into all the raw parts is in-house, their glass shop where they blow all the glass is in-house, their electronics shop where they employ people JUST to build patterned wire harnesses is in-house, their ceramics manufacturey is in-house (well, in Benton Harbor but.) The only things they don't make are solenoids and fasteners, and a couple of their machines which are built by the German location and shipped over. And everything is so fucking perfectly clean and modern it looks like something out of How It's Made. I Am Impress. And I don't say that easily.
The people side of things....my predecessor put in 22 years of service in Houston and is only retiring because he's a first-time father at 55. His entire inventory is on a skid, which I will also inherit, so he's already set me up with the EXACT kinds of spare parts my customers are going to need instead of me having to guess-fail my way to prediction. There's 30 field service engineers for 50 states and they're relatively widely spaced. In Texas/Arkansas/Oklahoma/Louisiana there's one other guy in Tulsa and me in Houston, yet my two-up manager said I'll spend most of my time just two or three hours from my house.
Demographics....everybody's old. (From my lofty vantage point of my 30s...oh god, in 10 years I'm going to come back and smack myself.) More seriously, 40s-60s+ is by far the norm except for a few entry-level folks. Coworker has been going around asking people how long they've been working, and the answer is always "15 years", "25 years", "22 years", or in the case of the guy who's teaching us basic overview and theory until Thursday, "45 years".
Oh, and our per diems are $50 a DAY. My grocery budget is about $50 for a WEEK. This is going to be hard work, no fucking lie, but for the third time in my ten-million-job career I'm happy to be where I am and getting ready to do what I'll be doing. Any job that has me questioning whether I'm smart enough is a damn fine challenge and as I surround myself with really high-caliber people instead of glorified box movers and cable plumbers I think I'll come back to actually USING my brain.
Dad, I'll call you tomorrow after work about potential weekend stuff now that I've got wheels and some idea of schedule.
(ALSO I FORGOT HOW DAMN COLD IT IS HERE AND WINTER HASN'T EVEN HIT. I take solace in knowing that co-worker hasn't ever dealt with snow and the term 'lake effect' is a foreign thing to him. Heh. Heh heh heh. Poor bastard.))
current mood:  exhausted
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| Thursday, October 24th, 2013
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6:18 pm
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Luggage weighs in at 10 pounds. Luggage with computer weighs in at 42 pounds. I'll pull the drive cage and throw some socks and pants and such underneath and around, but I think I can get away with taking my computer to St. Joseph.
What else...the driver is going to be a LECO employee and another new hire will be on the flight from Detroit to South Bend and be driven in, so that should be interesting.
Gonna go out for dinner tonight in Baytown and try to hit up the local Goodwill for cheap clothes / packing material en route.
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| Wednesday, October 23rd, 2013
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5:33 pm - In Which the Overlord Unsurprisingly "Officially" Acquires Gainful Employment; Has Nothing To Wear.
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Physical / screen confirmed, job get confirmed. I'm going to be flying from Houston to South Bend, Indiana on Monday at eyebleed in the morning and a driver will be there to take me to St. Joseph (~hour away). Will be staying at the Candlewood Suites, which means really nice chair, adequate desk, good TV, kitchenette, wired Internet, 5 miles from LECO, and a few blocks from a Fred Meye....Fred Meijer.
The downside of this is the dress code is business casual. My wardrobe down here consists almost entirely of shit I could wear underneath the Schlumberger coveralls and get filthy without regret, so mostly t-shirts. Looking in the closet right now, I have one long-sleeved button-up, one polo, one short-sleeved button-up, and a buttonup I can steal from Raine because she bought it in men's size. Pants-wise, I have two pairs of cargo pants, two pairs of my convertible nylon 'fishing pants' which I probably can't wear, because button-up shirts and pants with no fly are a little ODD, one pair of jeans, and that's it. Snow-appropriate boots I have, shoes not so much but they'll take the abuse as needed. As for coat, I came down here with my Harley jacket and see no reason not to take that.
I'm not taking my laptop. They'll give me a laptop. I do not ever want to travel with two laptops again, and I don't want to spend up to a year without my computer. Therefore, since I have very scant supplies I'm thinking of packing my computer--disassembled as needed--with clothes in my suitcase and putting the bare essentials (headphones, toothbrush, electronic gizmos, hard drives and whatever else I might need to take out to get under the weight limit) in the backpack. It's profoundly weird to think about how to best fill extra space instead of how to minimize, but the sad fact of my current existance is that I am supremely portable provided there's a Walmart within striking distance. Still going to need gloves/scarf/long underwear etc but given that here as we approach Halloween it's been a sunny 81 all day I don't think I'm going to find a lot of winter wear in Houston.
What else? While I'm gone Z will get his computer and use my desk and monitor. I WANT to be able to take my little speakers rather than getting another three-piece shit set (while I LIKE the Cyber Acoustics, I'm really really tired of them for remote living) but that may have to wait for an audio care package.
Speaking of care packages and the like, Thanksgiving will be spent locally--still need to talk to Dad about spending weekends over that way, figure I can do that once I know what my transportation situation is like, with my bro in his usual den that still leaves possibly the Red Room for occasional habitation, but I'm cool with throwing down an air mattress behind the drum sets and being trampled by the local indoor wildlife--and Christmas will be back here on LECO's dime. After that, breaks every three months.
What else, what else...Saturday a small quantity of the local doll crowd (all adults and all a lot more sane than the Portland group, a blast to hang out with and lots of common non-doll interests) are getting together for BBQ ribs and a live showing of RHPS and general nerd party shenanigans. I and Raine have RSVPed in the affirmative. That'll be fun, I can get there a few hours early and hit Goodwills in the area for some cheap appropriate clothing for work and spend a bit more time with the 280Z looking for problem rust areas and generally giving it more than a two-minute "Gee, this is cool" non-critical inspection. Oh, and photos.
During next week, I may be a little hard to get in touch with, but I'll keep my phone messengers on and all that good stuff. Watch this space for details.
current mood:  cheerful
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| Monday, October 21st, 2013
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5:11 pm
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Drug / booze screen, hearing test, vision test, height/weight/blood pressure, general health exam, all passed. No word back on the X-rays yet but the doc said I was healthy and that the X-rays are mostly to check for previous surgeries. So I'm good. Should be sent in by this Wednesday and I can get going with the next steps to spend the next year in Michigan. Lord.
Things of note: Trying to avoid the damn toll bridge on 8 led me down a road under construction with MASSIVE chuckholes and no pavement and, at the end, a Top Gear Special segment--flooded to boot--separated me from the real road by about a sixteenth of a mile. I tried to carefully drive into it and Bug's nose suddenly got about 30 degrees of down angle (while scraping). NOPE. So I got out and walked around on the visible submerged asphalt humps (thin, thin path) trying to probe the depth of the craters with a ratchet extension and spark plug socket. Some time later, I had a path and was able to get the left-side lawnmower-sized tires on the raised humps and forded through mud with the right side.
That took me back onto the toll bridge. X_X
I've been playing KSP (.22 research update) and Borderlands 2 lately more or less interchangeably. When it comes time to go to the Great Frozen North I might just take my computer--if it's for that long, I'll just buy local clothes anyway, the usual Walmart tee assortment--but we'll see. The idea of existing with the laptop for that long is kind of painful.
Future notes mostly to me about the 280Z:
Pretty much reserved for my investigations when I get back, by agreement of the lady and her dad who gave it to her. Worst part about the initial 'does it run' is going to be dropping the fuel tank, apparently S30s are super prone to rust buildup. But I figure I can drop the tank, clean it out with some muriatic acid, blow out the fuel lines, drop and clean the fuel pump and intake screen, change EVERY fuel filter, and put a cheapie low-pressure job in line between the tank and the pump and that'll take care of the supply side. Everything else is electrical and replace-all-the-fluids stuff. ...Also I have not seen an engine bay that accessible for a long, long time.
A little Kreen in the oil and combustion chambers should help address the ring pack after that much time sitting. The head has valve seals that weren't specced for unleaded gas, so I might have to go additive bottles. IF it'll run at all, even if it's stumbly and rough, that's probably electrical gremlins in the fuel injection and that can be addressed at somewhat greater leisure. Next is, with the rear up, seeing if I can figure out how to drive a manual. Check for gear engagement, driveshaft noise, all that stuff. If that looks good THEN it's time for brake work. Since you can't get the proportioning valves any more I'll try to either refurbish the existing one or get an adjustable for the people who swap in rear discs. Then bleed the brakes and check pads / rotors / drums / shoes / lines and hope like smeg I don't have to replace them. After that, wheel bearing checks, tire checks...(195/70/14, which kind of makes me laugh since Jez was 185/65/14 stock), fix the broken intake ducting with cheap replacement dryer hose or a proper CAI, then make sure vac, coolant and fuel lines are in healthy rubber. Lubricate everything that needs it. Valve clearance adjustment if feasible, then take it to a garage to get somebody who ACTUALLY knows what they're doing to see what I did wrong.
Things to replace at earliest opportunity: Headlights, build starter relay, build body light harness relay so they get 11.X instead of 9.X volts and can be seen, exhaust system. ("FLOOR TEMP" is not a light I ever want to see on!). Factory-converted to R-134, but the system would benefit from being checked.
I am confident I can do this because at that point I will have at least one other car as a daily driver. Ideally Jez, if that hasn't come through yet then at least Bug. With some time and some patience and not having to button everything up overnight because it's needed for work tomorrow....
Of course, at any one of these points I could run into something that makes me say "This is too much to deal with and this isn't a good car for me". For all I know I'll discover massive structural rust I couldn't see when I was taking a quick poke at problem areas on a dusty car in fading light.
That said...can we say practice for eventual Stalker construction? I like having a car that I can always do something simple to improve, and the MR2 wouldn't do that and would probably take me away from Jez. I just...felt this weird instant connection with that old Z. I've learned to listen to that sort of thing.
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| Sunday, October 20th, 2013
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12:48 am
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Things I have done today:
Taken a few hundred pictures
Had two snakes crawl on me
Given belly rubs to Eva Braun despite meeting her just a few seconds before
Petted a pet fennec
Fed an axotl
Met new and interesting people
Survived Houston traffic
Discovered a time-capsule-pristine '76 280Z which will be held for my attempts at repair / potential purchase.
Boy has it been busy, but fun. I go in for the piss test Monday morning after getting my own MVR and sending it in on Friday, so obviously the two tickets aren't an issue, nor is my background. I'll pass the piss test (thanks, relatively vice-free...or at least fat/water-soluable vice free...lifestyle) so all that's left is the future physical. Revised start date potentially the 28th.
I figure I was going to pick up a track rat / weekend project ANYWAY, rather than a clapped-out MR2 for a few thousand I could wind up with an easily restorable straight-six instead. If it'll run and has no serious mechanical difficulties....we'll see.
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| Thursday, October 10th, 2013
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5:52 pm
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Offer letter GET (yes, salaried), offer letter signed and returned along with all the credit / background investigation. I figure...if I could be cleared by a company to go out and take multi-millions worth of equipment and tooling to don't-even-wanna-think-about-it oil and gas wells, and to incidentally be trusted to handle explosives and radioactive sources, then I should be good enough for field service.
Start date in the letter is "on or before October 21st", so the wheels will have to be really turning to get that happening. I have my own reasons for hoping I'm here on the 19th (costume party with some local people, chance to get pictures of a tame fox) but ultimately whatever it takes.
While doing automotive research, as I tend to do to fill spare time, I came across some interesting numbers. From smallest to largest:
~$6,000: Cost of a MR2 Spyder.
~$12,000: Cost of a MR2 Spyder with the MWR turbo kit and supporting bits.
~$25,000: Cost of a Toyota GT86...er...Scion FR-S, unmolested.
~$25,000: Cost of a mid-2005 Cadillac XLR with V8 and drop-top and leather everything.
~$30,000: Cost of a GT86 with turbo kit to give it the power to match the handling.
~$35,000: Cost of a needs-paint/wheels/seats/gauges/headlights rolling Brunton Stalker XL with supercharged GM 3800.
~$42,000: Cost of a same-condition Stalker with LS3, autobox (paddles, natch), nice top, power steering, AC/heat.
Don't get me wrong, I look forward to getting MY BABY back..and first thing there is going to be AC repairs, paint repair, and quad throttles after I get the engine run in...but I would like to have a toy available at some future point.
(Realistically, it's gonna be the MR2 in a few years, and the fast Caddy to counteract the aging process. Also in the realism department, the big priority is of course moving closer to Houston proper and the hell out of Cockroach Towers, followed by our middle-class-starter-lifestyle STUFF transshipped from a secure location in Washington State to the new place, followed by getting Bug legalized here in Texas so I can get a proper license. On top of that I might buy a new phone that doesn't fail terribly at every aspect of smart and phone. Because I'm pretty responsible and boring when I have to be.)
Whee, a ray of light!
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| Tuesday, October 8th, 2013
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4:08 pm - In Which the Dread Overlord Phoenixes, Like A Boss.
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Got the call a few minutes ago; an offer letter will be forthcoming.
Pending, of course, passing drug test, background check, and physical. Drugs, no sweat, I'm down to a cuppa a week. Background, well, the only things on record are two speeding tickets in something like 10 years of record, and one even says that it was 55 in a 45 or something suitably innocuous. The physical, well, I'm going to start a daily fitness regimen. I am in worse shape than I was last year when I took the physical for Schlumberger but I can probably come back up to speed in a week or so.
As I said over on Z's facespaceplace, I don't count my horses before they hatch, but this one's DAMN solid. Only concern the guy's boss had was my job-hopping; I told him I'd only ever quit one temp job because a career-track one was recruiting me. (Technically, I guess I bailed on a contracting company but there wasn't work for me and I still stuck it out for...something like four, five months without a project or a prospect out of loyalty. That's a long time for a voluntary furlough.)
Field service here I come, right back where I started from, but it's no longer in the IT industry. When I initially hoped and dreamed of joining, it wasn't an industry, it was an elite technological priesthood, revered and mystical. You tell me that repairing and installing five or six figure machines, companies paying lawyer rates for the callout, ain't back to the glamor that no longer hangs around commoditized PCs and outsourced remote support.
Oh yeah and it's more than I was making before.
current mood:  jubilant
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