Double Trouble

Report from the Field, Wednesday
The school I'm currently working has got some style. In most schools, you'll see signs scattered around that read, “Excel”, “Exceed”, “Succeed”, etc. They don't have those here. Instead, this school's signs just say, “Simplify”.

I didn't think I'd find any interesting rooms in an elementary school, but I guess I was wrong. Today I spent most of my time re-doing the lights in the art room. While the room it's self wasn't that special, the way the tables were organized was rather amusing.

It would seem that the class is divided into a several small groups, each named after a wild animal. The Lions, cheetahs, tigers, elephants, and... zebras. One of these things is not like the other. To make things worse, the zebra table was in the center of the big cats' tables (the elephant table was off to the side). I have to wonder if there is any logic behind which kids sit at each table... I mean do the bad kids get cycled to the prey table? Or perhaps the sickliest ones, or the ones with the weakest spirits are permanently assigned there?

On that note, what of the other tables? Twitchy kids at the cheetah table? Cool kids at the tigers? Lazy boys, and applied girls as the lions? Fat kids at the elephants? One can only hope. If the teacher is not fully utilizing the potential of their table organization system, I will be quite disappointed. One things for sure, though: If I ever end up teaching little kids, I will definitely use an organization system like this. The amount of amusement that could be had a youngins' expense is just too much to pass up.

On a more work-related note, I seem to be getting a little quicker at this retrofitting (or “conversion”, as it's apparently called) stuff. I was able to complete 19 fixtures tonight. I may have only beaten last night's number by one, but I also spent more time doing other tasks. I can certainly see me getting to be pretty good at this crap.

Report from the Field, Thursday
What a joke. There was some admin confusion regarding our storage facility. One way or another, it delayed my crew getting to the school by 3 hours. When we finally got there and opened up the truck, our TL (not the same TL from Texas) realized that there was too much waste material in the back to really access our good materials. Because of this, we had to drive to our dump site and offload all of the crap, costing us another 2 hours.

When we finally were able to unload at the school, some of the project developers decided to show up for an inspection. Between the walkthrough and the safety meeting that followed, my crew and I found ourselves out yet another 1.5 hours.

You'd think that would be enough, but fate apparently would disagree. Shortly after the project developers left, my TL got a call from our manager. It would seem that the TL of the other team decided that it would be a good idea to show up to work, drunk. When the developers peeked in on the other school, they noticed that he reeked of alcohol. Being drunk on the job site is a pretty big no-no, so that TL has been relieved of his position. To fill the void, the fastest worker from my team has been transferred to the other crew. Forsooth.

Once all of the confusion ended, there were only 2 hours left in the work day. My TL lookd at the clock, and said, “Fuck it. We're not installing lights today”. Instead, we just spent the rest of the day prepping the conversion kits for Monday. Why not.

Tales of Yore
Yeah, not today. You already got two days worth of crap here.

Off the Clock
Yay hooray, coming home for the weekend. And what a weekend it will be... I woke up at 3pm on Thursday. I'll be heading home shortly after getting back from work (~4am Friday). As in, I'll be driving to Atlanta. I should get in around 7-8am. At 10pm, there is a concert that I want to go to, and at 8am Saturday, there is a 36hr charity event that I'll be participating in.

I'm not entirely sure when the best time for sleep is going to be. I could sleep when I first get home, but that would put me off-schedule for the 36hr event happening 24 hours later. If I wait until after the show to sleep, I will only be getting 6-7 hours of sleep, in a 67hr span. I can probably do it, but it wont be fun. Oh well... I guess it will make for an interesting challenge. This is your favorite, wire-strippin', bracket-assemblin', soon-to-be-delirious ottah fawks wishing you a good morning, good afternoon, and goodnight.

P.S. If your in the mood for some fun (but incredibly spastic) music, check out Negaren's (Renard) new album, Jack.

On the Road Again

Report from the Field, Tuesday

Well, I'm back on the case. My contribution to the UCSA project has come to a close, so I have been re-assigned to a project in South Carolina. Instead of working for Umbrella Corporation, I am now working for the US government. Well, the department of education, anyhow.

That's right- I'm working in schools. Elementary schools to be precise. While elementary schools aren't quite as exciting as high-dollar medical research facilities, the more relaxed atmosphere is a nice change of pace. No longer do I have to fear that every move might knock over some vial over, and inadvertently cause the zombie apocalypse. No. Th worst case I can think of here, is that some kid chokes on a screw that I leave behind, or something. Unfortunate, but certainly no global catastrophe.

This project's got a few other perks, too. For one, it's hourly. This puts a hard cap on my earning's for the week, but also allows me to relax a little. It's quite nice to not be in a constant rush. My pace can be more along the lines of this, instead of this (caution: ridiculous)- not slow, but not heart attack hectic. I can actually take my time to do the job right, while staying safe, too. Not that I did anything differently before, it's just that I don't get financially penalized for it now.

The other nice thing is that this project is actually a retrofit instead of a straight relamp. We are converting the majority of the schools' straight 3 lamp fixtures into reflected 2 lamp ones. It's a lot easier to stay focused on the job when you have a more complicated task to do. To convert the fixtures, I have to pull out the old lamps, replace the ballast and tombstone (the little end caps that hold the lamps in place) brackets, add in the reflector, and install a new set of lamps. It's still a pretty straight-forward operation, but at least I get to use a couple tools, and handle a wider variety of materials.

I am also rather pleased that, as it turns out, I am pretty good at this retrofit business. Today was my first day doing it, and yet I still managed to place 3^rd on my 4 man crew. Nothing amazing, but not last- and I'm the only new guy. I expect that I'll get noticeably faster as time goes by, and my team leader is already happy my work. Not too shabby. :)

Yet another plus is the close proximity to home. Since the drive from the job site to Atlanta is only 3 or so hours, the office is allowing everyone to go home on the weekends. I am absolutely stoked about this. No matter how obnoxious the job may get in the future, knowing that I only have to deal with it on weekdays will do wonders for it's tolerability. To make the deal even sweeter, the office is holding on to the rooms while we're gone, so we can leave our crap in SC. We also have the option to stay, but I don't really see why anyone would.

In addition to that other stuff, I also got lucky with my crew and lodging assignments. I'll be working with what seems to be a solid bunch of guys- one of which whom was part of my UCSA group. We're staying in a classy extended stay, which appears to be a retrofit residence in. The rooms are spacious, and even go so far as to have a fireplace. There aren't really any store near by (just a 24 hour gas station and a WaHo), but it's still a nice enough place.

So yeah, this job looks like a winner. This may lead to my updates being less... colorful, but that's a trade off I'm willing to make. I'm looking forward to coming home feeling accomplished, instead of cheated, and I'm looking forward to actually being able to come -home-.

Tales of Yore

Some fun stuff happened during my last week/weekend in Texas, but my extreme fatigue and later laziness led to me never reporting them. For the sake of said events getting chronicled, I intend to slip piece them into my current and future posts, bit by bit. Who knows, perhaps my less-than-pristine memory will make stories more interesting that they ought to be...

First off, a quick word on the Great One-Day Strike. In the end, very little ending up coming from this. The Monday after our little stand off, my crew and I all received a phone call from our division manager. He raged at us in an extreme, and most unprofessional, manner- seemingly oblivious to the finer points surrounding our situation. We later received an email apologizing for said phone call, and also informing us that an angry letter was being place on our permanent records.

The letter puts an unfairly negative twist on the events, and is outright incorrect in some points. For what I hear, our permanent records, and contents thereof, don't really mean anything. Despite that, I still intend to talk to that manager about the letter, and see if he can at least adjust it to be true. No matter how important a document may be, if it's a judgment of my character, I prefer it to be accurate.

Other than that, though, nothing really happened. TL never asked us to do that work again, and never brought up that night in later discussions. Nobody was fired. Nobody was even asked to do their jobs differently. A pretty lame ending if you ask me, but I suppose I'm glad that I'm still employed.

Off the Clock

Keeping this journal up-to-date is a surprisingly hard challenge. When I get home from a long day of work, writing is usually not terribly high on my list of things I want to do. If I put it off 'till the morning, I usually end up forgoing the update for the sake of sleeping in. Before long, I have several day's worth of updates to write. The task becomes more daunting, and my drive to work on it is further lessened. When I finally get to my days off, the thought of catching up on all of my missed days seems extremely unappealing.

The ultimate solution is to just not be a lazy-ass in the first place, but procrastination is just in my nature. I'm hoping that working this job, and writing this journal will help to lessen my affliction, as that very same procrastination is part of the reason I was eating it in college. If I ever want to get back into school, I'm going to have to change my way of looking at things.... Anyways, this is your favorite, lazy-ass, back-in-gear ottah fawks wishing you a good morning, good afternoon, and good night.