Thursday we had a disaster at work.  The guy to whom I was 'assigned' was fork-lifting a 100 lb. welding table onto the top of the maintenance office and broke the fire sprinkler line..

Now sprinkler lines in plants can't be shut off, period, while the plant is running (of course), because of safety.  So he yells to me (I was about 20 ft. away sweeping or whatever in the shop) and I run out and see him knelt of top of the offices holding a pipe spraying a jet of water.  Water was pouring down the office window and coming through the ceiling in at least five places.

 

I thought 'Gee if I only had some plastic film'.  Well luckily we make plastic film :), so I ran and grabbed a roll and covered everything in harm's way ... getting soaked ... visibly :) ... in the process   The maintenance office is two offices, and outer reference material and general paperwork area (which was getting soaked), and my boss' office, which was getting water in on the floor but not through the ceiling.

 

By this time at least six people were working on pipe repair and salvage.  There were guys going every which way doing something.  I noticed that a flow of water from the office was pooling up along the base of a bank of control cabinets for the extruder which sits not 20 feet from the office door.  These are 6 foot tall cabinets crammed full of electricity up to 480 volts ... not a good place for water.

 

I grabbed a bag of spill absorbent we had in the shop, hastily poured a dam to contain the flow, and ran off to find more of that stuff :D.  My search was successful and after the control cabinets were safe I ended up using 3 more full bags in one way or another. 

 

A wet/dry vac got at least 25 gal. of water, and we filled two large garbage cans with shoveled absorb-all.  Maybe 30 gallons total?  Maybe 35?  Who knows, but it was an opportunity for quick thinking and I passed YAY.  Nothing in the office was damaged beyond repair.  Notebooks safe,  File cabinets safe.  I even  salvaged the PC, of course, and took over the job of getting it back up (successful :D).

 

So my co-workers ... and boss of course ... saw me think quickly, act decisively, give up the body when neecessary (the getting soaked part), and work on a pc. 

 

Not such a disaster after all! ;)

 

Ok I'm in at 5am tomorrow.  Triple time pay!  But now I'm starting to know a little and I think they're going to work me for the money lol.  Good Night to all :D.

 My feet are killing me.  As are some other parts lol.  I just thought about this yesterday ... it's been almost 4 yrs since I've had a real job!

 

Oh yeah, that's what all this talk about tools and discipline is all about :).  I got a REAL job.  One where you have to go everyday, at the same time, etc, etc. and like I said above it's been a realllllll long time.

 

I guess I've been lucky ... not having to work much.  But it's time to make this pay off.  It's better pay than I've ever gotten in my life.  It's not an easy job.  It's maintenance in a manufacturing plant.  HUGE machines which make like 95K kilos of plastic film every day.  It's quite mechanical, quite electrical, quite electronic, and quite computerized ... all kinda rolled up together.  I'm proud they consider me qualified, but it is up to me to prove it.

Some things scream out 'I'm a tool.  Use me.'  Even if you don't know exactly what they're good for you know they rock at it.

 

If you pick up your largest hammer to smash a stone then see a large nail waiting to be driven, by all means drive the nail.  The time for concentrated action is when the tools are in your hands, regardless of whether or not you expected them to be there.

 

Tools at hand, trying to dream up something big enough for this puppy to do :D.

I've never felt so disciplined before.  Somehow all of a sudden I've got this plan and it's alllll on paper and the action part is in swing.  Money's coming in and going out and it's looking good. 

 

But  I don't want to think of this as 'good' or I have to think of before as 'bad', and I really don't!

 

Maybe it's because people say this is what to want.  That discipline is good.  What I should have always wanted.  People will say 'it's about time' and 'look at you you've learned something ... finally'.  And I'll defend myself by saying I've known it all along, etc., etc., etc.  Blah, blah, blah huh?  Wish me luck to see now for what it is without adding my bizarre twists and turns :). 

 

Situations exist and effort is spent steering those situations toward some outcome.  This is how things are.  This is discipline.  Neither good nor bad, always there for the taking.

 

Discipline involves taking risks.  Even when the outcome is desired and effort is applied one cannot know the future.  The efforts may fail.  The desire for success (even those modest goals I've set ... land and a mobile home, the '88 16v, John and Jay repaid, T and J in school, etc.) gives rise to the possibility of failure.  And that possibility is ...

 

Ok I was going to say 'too much to face' but I won't ;).  I have just seen how the possibility of failure is at the heart of my stopping when the going gets good :D.  The horror of looking bad, the uncertainty of a future after failure, etc. ... it all is at the heart.

 

Ok 'thing at the heart of my stopping when the going gets good' ... I shall study you.  I suspect you are already dying.

Why is it some people just can't ever live without making some kind of commotion?  I look to guide everything to an even keel.  Any problem can be solved and careful planning can avoid more problems, right? 

Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.  All my life I’ve wanted to be with women because of how they looked.  Sounds shallow but that was pretty much it.  People even wanted me to want girls because of how they looked. 

 

They never said ‘she looks smart she could help a lot with business’ or ‘you guys like to read the same books’ or ‘you both laughed really hard at that joke ... you should talk to her’ ... just that she was pretty.  Hell no one ever even told me how good it is to just have a woman worry with me. 

 

Maybe everybody else knows that but I didn’t.  Such a shock to find out how nice it is :).  Kinda sucks how I found out, but it’s still a good thing to know.  It’s funny.  A month ago I was sure I never worried and knew for sure I didn’t need anyone to share it with.  Now I can worry.  And now that I can, I’ll start worrying about how I’m going to get someone in my life who makes me feel so much better when she worries with me.  It's a good thing to worry about, right?  :D

Arggggggggh!  How come nobody's online when I'm at lunch ???????????????  Anyway I'm hours ahead for my day BC I WENT 2 WORK AT 4AM lol.  Time to sleep soon!

Can you possibly believe the entire top of my computer's case was solid?  The steel part of course ... not the neat-o plastic shell.  Well it was ... so of course the heat coming off my RAM had nowhere to go plus the fan in the water cooler control unit had NO FRESH AIR INLET!  It's true! 

The control unit is in the top 5.25" bay ... about 1cm from the SOLID top ... and it's got a big 100mm fan laying inside the top of its case blowing down over a radiator which carries the circulating water.  I don't EVEN have to tell you that no air can squeeze through a 1cm space!

So I took the neat-o plastic top off (which was crazy hard to take off but I won't get into that) and cut a HUGE hole in the top of the case :).  I also cut a HUGE hole in the front neat-o plastic part (not where u can see it) so the 120mm hard drive fan can get some air to blow, plus I cut out the screen mesh over the water coolers rear exhaust fan (the big one).

OMG it's working so much better.  My RAM still got hot enough to burn you a little if you touched it during this last huge stress test (Prime95's 'Torture Test'), but it's running with no errors with these benchmarks:

CPU speed: 2.5 GHz

Well my friend John has got me mad about overclocking now.  I've learned loads in the past two days ... lots of new abbreviations to throw around at geek parties :).
So, my system CPU is an AMD 3400+, RAM is (1 stick) Ultra 512/400DDR/PC3200 and mobo is Asus A8V Deluxe.  With memory timings = 2.5-5-5-10 , vDIMM = 2.7, Memclock = 1:1, and Bank Interleaving enabled I got my FSB to 250.  With my multiplier at 9.5, vCore = 1.675, and vAGP = 1.5 I'm stable at 2.373/3.060 Ghz (MBM5 speed/PC Diagnose speed) with mem. speed of 125/485 Mhz (CPU-Z/PC Diagnose).  CPU-Z says my Bank Cycle Time (tRC) is 7 and I haven't played with that (hmmmmm ...). 

Well my new phat-ass ride is ready.  Ok, not 100% ready but it's clean and running like a dream.  I've got a tiny bit of front end work to get done and the mirror still isn't on but I should get that Monday.  I found the mirror for only FIFTY DOLLARS!  Isn't that cRaZie ???  Went out driving tonite and felt all up in it :).  Check out the command zone at http://ob1.ath.cx/pg/interior1_3-14-05.jpg and http://ob1.ath.cx/pg/interior2_3-14-05.jpg :) :) :).