Night Shots

What a day yesterday!!! On my way into work, at the left turn before I'm there, I notice steam coming from under the side of the hood. Hmmm, that normally doesn't happen!!! At that point I looked at the temperature gauge. Yea, it was near to the top of the gauge. Who needs idiot lights when you've got an idiot behind the wheel??? When the light changed and I got moving, it came right down to mid-temperature. I popped the hood when I got there, and all it was doing was shooting a little steam out of the puke tank.
At second break, I took a 32-ounce cup of water out to top off the radiator, see if that did the trick. It took almost all of it, then at the very end it started pouring out of around the water pump. OK, that's probably the trouble spot.
I decided to go to my parent's house after work (if the car makes it that far with no ill effects) and swap the Geo for the Falcon, which is still down there for paint finishing. I made it without incident, and got to visit with my parents and have a little dinner.

It was nice to be driving the Falcon again. It's a nice ride, but it still needs a little this and that. The fuel gauge was a little on the low side, but I figured if it didn't make it home, I could just give AAA a call and have them bring me some gas. Made it most of the way, and about a mile away it started cutting out. I pulled over and called AAA. Fortunately, I had my camera with me to pass the time, experimenting with night photography. Interesting effect!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANNY!!!

Hope you have a great one!!!

(Birthday, that is...)

Rained Out

The weather had been nice recently. The kind of weather that makes me want to take a weekend and go up in the mountains and camp. My dad had been thinking the same sort of thing, too. They haven't had a chance to take the two older grandkids on any camping trips this summer. We decided to meet up a Mallard Falls campground. I was going to head up Friday night when I got home from work. Friday morning the sky looked brooding, and it actually felt like it could rain. The weathermen were all hedging their bets, giving it a slight chance of rain. Mid day, it was clearing, but still with a lot of scattered clouds. Oh well, the boy was looking forward to going, we would head up and and see what happened. Worst comes to worst, we could sleep in the car. Wouldn't be the first time.

On the way to the short drive up the freeway, a few fat drops hit the windshield, but nothing that kept going or went for any length of time. On the freeway, it began coming down fairly constant. By the time we reached the end, it was coming down hard and constant. I turned to him and asked if we should scrub the mission. He concurred. We stopped at the video store and rented "Black Hawk Down" for something to do, I knew he would enjoy that movie, and picked up Chinese.

Last Thursday at work they told me right before the second break that they were taking me off training and putting me in number. That was the longest training period I've ever had!!! I hope I'm really up to the task. But, when I come back from my break, they have a long line order that they need. Typical is 5 to 8 lines. This one was 99 lines!!! I finished it off, one minute before quitting time. Monday I start going in on the third shift, at 9:45. I have a feeling that this shift will suit me well.

Compulsion

This was my first car. As you can see, I cut the roof over the driver and passenger seats. I made it so the cut section could be put back in place for foul weather. It was pretty fun to drive around with the top off. Not so good when it rained, but it only leaked a little, and it doesn't rain that much around here. I had hundreds of other little custom touches, but the roof was the main one, and probably my favorite. This car was a major influence on the purchase of one of my current cars, Mav 2 (scroll down, it's the one at the bottom that isn't completely trashed!!!). I ended up selling Mav 1 for $50 more than my asking price!!!

While I have no plans to cut the top open on this one, these days I'm feeling a compulsion to do this or a similar modification to another car. Must be the warm temperatures we've been having, or the fact that I'm driving around with my camera more these days. I saw a Pontiac 6000 convertible for sale for $950 OBO. That might be a better way to go.

Pretzels

I did it!!! We did it!!! I went and found a recipe for pretzels and we made up a batch.

No, I did not do the depraved style that Granny has been doing of late.


I remember from back when I was about the oldest's age getting the recipe out of National Geographic's World magazine and
making up a batch of these.

I called up my mom and had her pull the recipe, but I could tell it wasn't the same one. The one I'd done had a step where you blanched the uncooked pretzels in a baking soda solution. She confirmed the recipe she was reading was from a cook book.

I did a search and came up with this one, more like what I'd remembered!!!

They are pretty easy to make, but a bit time consuming. The dough gets rather elastic after rising, and doesn't want to make into the long snakes so easy.

It took a while, but it was well worth it!!!

They rock!!!

Driver's Seat

I haven't been able to make a post here in several days. I miss blogging, but I've been rather busy. These are some pictures I took last Saturday while I was out driving around. I just barely took them out of my camera today!!!


The front end on the Storm has been making bad noises again, and I figured it was the half shaft again. The noise would abate when I would have it turned just a little to the left, so that's what I figured it was. I took the shaft out Friday after work, and ran it down to the place I'd gotten it from first thing Saturday. They don't have any in stock, so the rebuilt mine again.


Turns out it was the bearing. I'd just bought it from an online discounter, and had some difficulty getting it. Not like it was a no name part, either, it was an AC Delco. I'll bet I'm going to have an uphill battle getting them to honor the one year warranty.

Anyway, I took most of these pictures while driving around. I am really happy with the way several of them came out.


This was at Wal Mart, I was quite amused that they have a die cast pinto model now.

Choppers

A few times now I've seen this. Two choppers flying together. I always wonder what's up when I see this. They look military. It fills me with a sense of unease.

Rusty!!!

Nothing better than when you find out what a score you've made. On Saturday we went to St. Vincent's thrift store to see if I could find any nice pants for work. I also found a couple nice shirts while I was there. One of them is an all black bowling shirt looking thing with "MixMaster A.C.E." on the back of it. I was thinking perhaps I could replace the "C" with a "Y"... That would be cool!!!

However, the coolest thing was one of the donated cars they had in the parking lot. Practically a carbon copy of mine that I bought a couple years back, only in a LOT worse condition. I don't know about the mechanical, but the body was quite dented and rusted, and the interior was thrashed. Even the steering wheel was taped together!!! Has more miles on it already than what mine has, and they have it priced twice what I paid!!!


Here's what I got, for half the price!!!

One Born Every Minute

....To paraphrase P. T. Barnum!!!

I could not believe this score!!! My firstborn made $100 today. One of the kids at his school wanted four of his hot wheels, told him he'd give him $100 for them!!! We should all be so lucky, huh??? Apparently he found the money. Naomi told him he should give him more than four cars for that, so he ended up selling him several for his money.

A fool and his money... were lucky to get together in the first place!!!

Scrape!!!

I was lounging in my living room the other night, when I heard a car roll by and shortly after, a loud scrape. The car kept going, but there was the definite dragging noise that followed. I turned around and looked out the window to see the car going around the corner, trailing a shower of sparks from underneath. I guess they figured that it wasn't going to get any less damaged if they stopped.

The next day I noticed that there was a large chunk of cement missing from in front of my next door neighbor's house. Gave me an excuse to try out the still shot function on my new camera!!! Wish I could have gotten a shot of the damage to the car!!!

Technology Shopping Spree

I meant to make mention of a recent purchase I made here. Weekend before last, I got a new stereo for the Storm. It's a Clarion, a brand that you don't hear a lot about, but years ago I had a good friend who used to wholesale stereo equipment, and if I remember correctly, he said that Clarion was about the best sound quality of all the manufacturers. Anyway, I needed to replace the unit in the Storm, it was a pull out, and it was prone to getting very staticy when you'd hit bumps or turn the volume knob. It also had a Sony 10-disc changer in the trunk, but had no magazine for the discs. The Clarion I got has MP3 playback capability, so I can get almost that many discs on one disc, if I have a mind to. I put it in the Saturday before I started my new job, and I'm quite pleased with the results.

Over the weekend I saw an ad for something I've been thinking of getting for a while. It's a digital video recorder that records to memory cards instead of tape. They sell for less than $100 these days, and this one was $89.99 with a $20 rebate. Cheap enough for me to buy a 1-gig card to go with it!!! It's pretty small, and the resolution for video isn't real great, only 320 x 240. I asked what their return policy is, and I've got 30 days to bring it back if I don't like it. Its almost
toylike, but still, its pretty cool. I'll shoot some videos with it and edit them and put them on DVD and see how it looks on TV. I have a feeling I already know, pixelated. But still, beats the video recorder that I had before!!!

Pancakes & Pizza

Saturday was cool. My boy's school was having a pancake breakfast fundraiser. Nay and the younger didn't want any, so the older and I walked up for some. They had the local fire department and their truck there, and a live band, I think a trio of the teachers from the school. They played a great version of "Got my Mojo Working, But it Don't Work for You". Nice way to start a weekend.

Later on, a bit after noon, I had an appointment to give blood. They had called me up on Thursday evening, I think, and asked if I could donate. Well, one of my top 5 radio stations, 95.5 KLOS was having their annual blood drive for the last few days. Saturday was the last day, and I was finally able to get in on it. In addition to the cookies and juice, they had a choice of two concerts you could get free general admission passes to see. Journey and Def Leppard or Motley Crue and Aerosmith. Strange pairings, both, I thought. Bad thing, though, they were both events going to be held out in Devore, which is about a million miles from anywhere in my estimation. Oh well, what do you expect for free??? Maybe I'd make it out there, maybe not. Turned out to be a null issue anyway, because they didn't have any passes left when I got there. They were having people fill out envelopes with their pick in case there were any left. I didn't bother, now I wouldn't feel bad for taking a pass when I didn't know if I'd make it or not. Oh, and the other things they were giving out were cool, too. Blood drive T-shirts and coupons for a free Papa John's pizza, which is doubly cool, because I found where there is one of those right near my work!!! Love Papa John's!!! It's the garlic butter dippin' sauce, you know.

That evening we went down to Sammy's place for a little barbecue. That was fun, we played in the yard with the boys until far too late at night. Good times, good times...

The Best Job EVER!!!

Granny made comment, and was quite correct, that I need to update you on the new job. This is the perfect time to do so, being as it is, once again, seven days!!!

I am quite pleased with it!!! This job rocks, I'm so glad I got in!!! Found out yesterday I think it was, that they start with around 2,000 applications, narrow it down to around 250 to interview, and of that they hired five. One of the new hires didn't show up on Monday, so that left just the four of us.
Everything about this job is so different from every job I've had before. The health plan is fully paid for me and my whole family, starting on the very first day. I received my first week's paycheck in the mail today (they pay on the 15th and the end of the month) paying through tomorrow. Every job I've had before payed a week behind, so your first check is always "held" for a week. There are no time clocks, it's all on an honor system. The day you start, you've got one personal day coming, as well as your birthday off with pay if you are fortunate enough to have not had it that year. The Friday between Thanksgiving and the weekend is paid. After six months, I will have two weeks of vacation available.

The supervisor I've been training with was telling us today that everyone they hire is over qualified for the job, but they pay them according to (or better than) the work they are qualified to do. It's a job most anyone could do, but they want people who can do it consistently and well.

The cafeteria there has great food and a great variety, and is quite reasonable. I don't think I've spent over $4.00 per meal there yet. The place is huge and consistently busy. Apparently Monday was the busiest day they've ever had.

While it is quite physical, I still enjoy it quite a bit. I'm used to working 10+ hours a day, with a 10 minute and a 30 minute break, so transitioning from that to a job where you take a 15 minute and a 45 minute break seems like, after the rather long stretch in the morning, I've barely finished one break and another is coming up.

I'm sure there is a lot more that I could say, but I can't think of what more to say at this time. All the other workers there seem quite friendly, I like the commute better... Don't get me started on the employee prices!!!

Poor Sammy and Rafa, though. Things haven't been good there. I'm so glad I got out when I did. Sammy has called me several times complaining about work and how he misses me. Rafa worked a lot before, and now he's having to do a lot of what I used to do there. I hope they find something as good as I did.

The Crew

OK, here it is!!! I got the whole crew together for a South Park pic!!! Thanks a lot, Eyeball, I'm up a half hour later than I'd planned to be on the night before I start my new job because you got us all started on this!!! Cutting, pasting, editing in Paint Shop Pro. Panky, hope you don't mind I made you up like I thought you might have come out. Lilly, I was up late enough doing this, you come up with the adventure and I'll see if I can get that going.... Some other night, though. Haha, looks like I'm fondling Lilly's AK!!!

On the topic of spending a long time doing stuff in Paint Shop Pro, y'all gotta check out the image I put up for my Wallpaper of the Week page!!!

The First Day

Here was something good that happened while I was out of work. I don't remember if I've ever been there for my firstborn's first day of school.




That was on Tuesday. We all walked up to school for the festivities.



Good to see friends who you've not seen all summer!!!


Same classroom, but with a different number. What's up with that???

The Hat, Part Two

The hat sells the sandwich. That it does!!!

For a little celebratory lunch, we went to The Hat today. I think I may have mentioned The Hat before, but if you're not familiar, it's a chain of restaurants that make some GREAT pastrami sandwiches!!!

More pastrami than can fit on the roll!!!



This was the small fries, and there were about this much still in the bottom of the bag!!! They give you plenty for your money!!!

ÃÝË Comes to South Park

And, here's what I'd look like on South Park!!! Cool how I was able to put my sofa in the background!!!

Seven Day Theory

Westside, Outlawz, Makaveli the Don, Solo, Killuminati, The 7 Days...

The seven days... Seven days ago I made my grand escape. Seven days before that, I implored you to mark it down. That was the day that I realized what I had to do. Today, seven and fourteen days later, I went on my first interview and they made me an offer!!! I start on Monday. It would have been more perfect if it were a week from today, but oh well. The pay is good, I'll be making more than $200 more per week, and the benefits are the best I've ever had!!! The field isn't exactly where I've been or even where I've been looking, but hey, nothing I can't handle. I tell you, I feel that this can be nothing but the hand of God.

In six days, however, is the ten year anniversary of a most tragic event. Be sure to commemorate it in an appropriate way.

Not to complain (or rub it in, Lilly, I'm sure your new career is on its way shortly... at least I hope so), but I had rather been hoping for a little more time before I found a job. I never got a chance to draw a day's unemployment insurance, and I never got to do any of the hundreds of things I was thinking I could do on my off time. And who knew, being unemployed is actually quite a lot of work in itself!!! I have several posts that I have wanted to do, but have hardly found a moment to even read what everyone else has posted and comment.

Today I also finally made it down to my old place of employment. Here is the slightly interesting "more to the story" that Naomi referred to in her comment to my "No Escape" post: A week ago when I was let go, the owner gave me two handwritten checks for my last two weeks of pay. Since I had been putting in LOTS of overtime, they were both pretty healthy. However, they didn't have a check for my vacation pay that I was still owed. When I got home, my wife noticed that neither of them were signed!!! My mother told me on the phone that evening that banks can call a business and verify that the checks are "OK" to cash and process them that way. The next day I tried, but my bank would not accept them. I called into work and tried to talk to the owner. He was unavailable, so I spoke to the plant manager. He tells me that on Saturday he is going to be close to where I live most of the afternoon, so he'll call me around noon and we will arrange a meeting for him to sign the checks. I kept busy most of the day, but was near the phone. He never called, and around 5:30 I call him. He tells me that something had come up, and it involves me. They had looked for some file I had done on my computer, and a bunch of them had been deleted. He said that the log showed that they had been deleted while I was still there. Him and the owner were deciding what to do about this, and were not going to sign my checks until they did. OK, whatever. I told him that the only files I had deleted were some pictures, but he wasn't hearing it. He told me I should think about it, and they would be in touch with me. OK, I'll do that. And I did. What I came up with was either scummy or sinister, depending on which way things went down. Either the guy who does all of the computer work there deleted the missing files and manipulated the log file to make it look like I had deleted them, just to make me look bad, or he had done so under instruction from the higher-ups in order to achieve a means to deprive me of some of my final pay. The unsigned checks and the fact that two days later there are missing files discovered seemed to support the latter hypotheses. Sounds like a case for the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement. I went down there Monday early on and got my case filed. Down deep I had a feeling that whatever had happened to the files, they would somehow manage to recover them without much difficulty. Guess what happened???

I don't know if the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement contacted them or not, but they had all of my checks for me today. Clearly they were in violation, and according to the guy who helped me start the process there, they may have to pay me for every day between when I was let go and when they did finally pay up. I'm not going to go in there making demands. I'll let the Enforcers deal with that.

Oh, the guy who does all the computer work there (and who has managed to torpedo the other two competent CNC operators that have briefly worked there and is widely believed to be the true reason I was let go) asks Sammy today if he thinks I would have come down there and scratched the windshield of his car!!! Pffft. I don't think enough of him to waste the time going down there, much less to do something like that.

There you are, most of the rest of the story. Happy ending for me!!!

Good Friends

My demise at my job has caused emotions in a couple of my fellow co-workers that are beyond what I have felt for myself. Fate brought us together as co-workers, and I feel fortunate to have them as friends. These are good guys, I'm going to miss seeing these guys on a near daily basis. Sammy has called me up the last couple of evenings, I honestly think he is taking this much worse than I am. You can just hear it in his voice. When I land someplace else, he wants me to try and get him in there, too. Actually, the day the ax fell, right as I walked in the door the phone started ringing. I was thinking to myself, "No, not now, GO AWAY", but Naomi answered it as I was walking in. She tried to get them to call back, because she knows how I am when I get off the freeway and walk in the door, not wanting to do a thing but get out of my work clothes and relax for a while, but they were insistent. She hands me the phone and says "It's Sammy and his dad" (who is a phenomenal thermoforming GURU). First person I talk to is his dad, who wants to know what happened. I think he had a feeling. He was one of the guys called into the office. He expressed his sense of loss at having me gone, and told me that I could drop his name (which is renowned in the world of thermoforming) anytime I like and he would have nothing but good to say about me. After that I talked to Sammy for quite a while. As I said, he was quite broken up over it.

Tonight I saw my other close friend at work, Rafa, come online, so I messaged him. We talked for a while, Sammy had already told him what had happened. He seemed rather distraught over it, too. I told him what happened and what has happened since (which is another post altogether). He is worried about the future there, and I can't blame him at all. I think he's going to have a bad feeling about working there now.

I don't know how to describe it. My heart overflows with love for these guys, they are good guys and the kind you like to have in your corner, where I know they both firmly are. The things they have all communicated to me in the last couple of days truly fills me with an indescribable gratitude.

In answer to your query, Granny, yea Sammy took the cut, but I think he is strongly considering jumping ship too. If he goes, I can't imagine his father or brother staying on much longer. That would be kind of cool, an Asian family loyalty kind of thing. They all have expressed through their words and actions that we are family. I don't see much of a future for the company if that happens. I didn't wish any ill to them when they let me go, but since then I have become a little more ambivalent. Once again, a post for another day. My intention with this post is to express my love to my good friends from my last job.

Before I signed off with Rafa, he told me, "DONT FORGET 512"

Yeah. DONT FORGET 512.

I love you guys.

No Escape???

This is one of the keyboards at my work. Does that mean there is no escape???

7 days. One week to the day. For anyone who wondered about my previous post 'Mark it Down', that was the day I decided that I was done with working there. I was updating my resume and getting it out there, hopefully to find a place much closer to home so I don't have a 52 mile commute every day, to find a place that would pay me a salary commensurate with what a CNC programmer, set up man and operator should be paid. Last time I had a raise, gas was less than half what it is these days, and I was doing nowhere near the skill level of work that I'm doing these days. I have thought of getting out for a while, but the longer you have actual CNC experience, the more marketable you are. That was the main reason I'd not gotten off my ass and started this sooner. The company I've been working for is a joke. They are fiscally mismanaged. Getting the necessary raw materials has been a problem for some time now, and recently things have gotten worse. Events of that day that I marked down brought things into a much sharper focus and clarified my course of action.

The last few weeks since before I took my vacation things have been rather busy in the tooling department. Last week I ended up doing almost 51 hours in four days. This week it was 49.5 hours in four days. Around mid day they started calling some of us higher ups into the office, one at a time. A bit after Sammy got out of his being called in, he told me that they gave him a pay cut. $50 a week. Much later in the afternoon, at 5:00 after everyone else on the first shift had left for the day, I got my page. No one but the owner in the conference room. He tells me that things aren't looking good for the company's finances and hates to do it, but he has to let me go. Gave me my two checks. I wasn't much surprised. I gathered up my stuff (it's amazing how much you can accumulate in six years) and shook the dust of my feet off against them. 7 days, that's how many licks it took to get to the center of that damned tootsie pop.

Good riddance. Who says there's no escape???