Saturday want too useful. I assembled one lef of the desk, but there are three more to go. Sunday, I went to church from 8:00 to noon for praise band practice, worship service, followed by teaching a lesson to the youth. The lesson was "slacker's anonymous". I taught them that slacker, as a bad term can also be used to make life better. I introduced myself as an expert slacker and listed computer programming as being the ultimate slacker. I don't want to do work, so I'll have the computer do it for me.

Following teaching the youth about making good use of your slack time, I spent around 6 hours straight of watching TV and playing video games!

So, Monday, I ran the slew of tensions and the last fiber volumes to wrap up the tag end testing. On top of that, I put a temperature sensor in the shed to keep track of the temperature generated by the chiller. The unit from http://www.etherstuff.com/ ET-2 ($250) allows us a four hour history of the temperature in the shed from any computer on the network. Its pretty neat, but pretty pricy too.

The shed nearly gets up to 110°F, but there is a malfunctioning exaust fan, so we'll see if that will continue to be the case once it gets fixed.

Today is pin bearings and getting the tag end report out. The pin bearings are going quick and should be done by mid afternoon. Then I'll round out the day with the report and possibly get to writing the code for the new waterjet panels.

Thursday I wrapped up the ILS anc compression tag-end pieces, which took most of the day. Other than that it was taking care of chiiler details like the remote operation box.

Today was all about finializing the chiller setup, rehooking the chiller back into the disconnect box, filling the chillers (both) with the 50/50 antifreeze mix. I managed to break one tensile bar and I am getting frustrated with these remaining tag end specimen. Well today has been long enough and I dont want to sit here getting my recap detailed anymore.

Well, I found out Tuesday that the person who left didn't run the fiber volume fractions that I asked him to do over two weeks ago. So, now I'm taking up that task.Other than taht, my day went mostly as planned. I stuck to running compressions and came clost to my objective of finishing off the batch. I probably would have made it, but I kept letting myself get pulled off target. Around 4:00 a shipment came in, so I volunteered myself to run the forklift. The end of the story is that I left with one specimen left to go, even though I worked an extra hour off the clock to accomplish that much.

So, today I started by knocking off that last specimen. Then the majority of my day was getting the chiller out in its new home. The morning was all about draining the water out so it would be easier to move and getting the old forklift up and running. It all came together and the battery on the old forklift finished charging by the end of lunch. So the three of us got together and moved the chiller with the forklift. It took some thought and strength, but only about an hour to actually move it. After that I got to settle into a chair and run some tests.

Then I cut the table tops for the desk on the table saw. The cuts came out pretty well, but will need a little sanding to clean them up.

Weekend of food

Wow, I'm really going to test my memory now...

Saturday was all about food.

Wakeup and go to the men's breakfast at church: eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, and biscuits. Presentation was about the Youth Aid Panel, which is an alternate to juvinile court for first offenders.

Get back home and I played PS2 until my inlaws showed up. Sat and chatted for a bit, and then off to Tony's in Ivyland. Great thin crust pizza for lunch. When we got back from lunch, a static shock killed my PS2. Hung out for a bit and they headed out after a little while.

Dinner was back at the church. It was a pot luck dinner followed by Irish dancers. I had quite a variety of stuff including meatloaf, green bean casarole, and much more. The Irish dancers were good, but I ended up front row center and at one point, I thought I was going to be kicked in the face.

Sunday was good. Went to church, took the dog for a long walk, got some new shoes, and worked on the desk. I went and got my mother her Mothers day present (yes, extremely early this year), but to do so, we parked the car in Tyler State Park and hiked into Newtown to do the purchase, stopped by PetsMart and got a spill mat for our dog, and hiked back. In all a 3.2 mile, nearly 2 hour hike.

Sunday night, I sanded down the straight section of the desk, and I was impressed in how well it looked. For dinner, we had some of the pizza left over from Tony's.

Monday was a new shock, as the technician who was leaving decided not to go with his initial statement of Thursday being his last day, but came in early just to fill out his paperwork and get it over with. He still hasnt said where he is going to go. So instead of moving the chiller outside with him as we had planned, I disconnected it just to let it wait. We are running the backup unit, so it doesn't cause any real down time outside of me accidentally causing a system alarm. I had to leave the hydraulics off overnight.

So monday continued with 6 gauged compressions in the morning and waterjetting in the afternoon.

That brings everything up to date. Maybe tomorrow I'll post after work and get back to daily posts... we'll see.

Shockers

Well, this was just the day for surprises. A surprise that just made me scratch my head was a printout of a picture of a football. After a few hours, my co-worker who was in a meeting yesterday for a few hours explained to me what it was. Yesterday's meeting was planning the activities in the lab. Now, we in the lab generally do a good job of coordinating work to make all of our deadlines even when they are difficult. We refer to these extra meetings "defensive huddles" because they end exactly where we started: get the guy with the ball. We already know what to do, but every now and then we stop to be told to do what we already know is needed.

The good surprise was that the waterjet made it through the night without dying (it had a habbit of throwing a fatal error in the software whenever the antivirus decided to perform an update). This will save me some headaches.

The big surprise, for better or worse, is that our technican is leaving. He does the work that nobody really want to do nor has time for. It typically took some time for him to get to it and you needed to stay on top of him to make sure it got done and done exactly, but it definatly freed up hours that I and others just could not afford to lose.

With that on the near horizon, there has been some shifting going around and planning changes. I think that I am going to be sucked into more shop work since I know more about the machinery and been putting extra hours in the shop due to the waterjet. I really want to get back to testing.

So, today was good other than the surprises. I got 18 compression specimen cranked out (6 ungaged, and I gaged 3) in addition to three hours of waterjet work and running the oven.

I'm pondering setting up a work ticket system to better coordinate activites now that we are one person down. I'll have to see about editing my old (and very crude) system (PHP and MySQL based) I built last year for task management.

Just another average day of what can go wrong will. I started with something simple, and it was good. I straightened up the scrap pieces around the waterjet and it looked much better.

Then I decided to run the waterjet, but I must have been rushing myself too much. I put the workpiece on backwards and started cutting. Fortunately I realized the error before I lost too much raw material to restart the part in the right orientation.

On restart, the abrasive feed started acting up again, belching large blasts of abrasive out the top of the hopper. So, pause the cutting and bleed the feed line of air. Then restart. Amazingly, the point at which I stopped the first time was within a couple hundredths of an inch from being wrong. What luck (which didn't last). I setup the next panel that I needed to cut the identical pattern and zeroed the machine in for its next run.

Then I found out that I needed to send some material out to another lab for testing. So, I prepare the documentation, carefully pack the boxes, weigh them and put them on the PM's desk so he could review the paperwork before sending them out. Well, instead of reading the paperwork first, he jumped straight to the boxes and opened and unpacked them. He happily came back to me exclaiming that "hey, we got the leftover material back from the other lab". You can guess how the rest played out, ending with me (voluntarily) repacking the boxes.

When I got back to the waterjet, it turns out that the software decided to do its funny trick of dying, which destroyed my setup work. After several hours of IT work, we are going to see if its stable overnight before I fire it back up again. At least in the mean time, I got to do some strain gauging work to help out the testing efforts. Well, thats the day it been.

People, do a better job of doing your job!

So as the title implies, I was frustrated of people not doing their job correctly. I decided to start my day off slow and break some tensile bars until I was ready for bigger issues. After some of the easy work, I was going to start cutting a panel on the waterjet, but realized that there was no identification number for any of the panels I was going to work on.

So I sent off a message to inform the PM that there were some issues and found something else to tackle. I started gaugeing some compression samples and then got pulled away to instruct the PM how to input panels and tests into the system. Its something that everyone needs a tutorial on, but somehow it seems that I am always the one giving the tutorial. After he got that underway, I went back to the gauging work. Between the tutorial and gauging, my morning blew by.

So, the afternoon just would not go well. I ended up working an extra half hour for the sake of knowing that panel would be cut. The panel markings from the manufacturer didn't match our drawings... or the manufacturer's drawings. It took most of my afternoon to decypher the problem with two other people. So this is my message for the day: do a better job of doing your job! Alright, now thats off my chest.

(private message for self: M4AK04-081M1AB51-081M3GG01T4GG01T1AK04-081T3IM34)

Weekend of eh

Saturday was just a wash. I ended up sleeping most of the afternoon just because I couldn't get myself going. I did get to talk to my sister which yielded the remedy for my sickness: Claritin, Sudafed, Tylenol, and Halls (which reminds me, time for another Halls...)

Sunday was better. Got up feeling better, went to church, finished the meetball stew made the previous saturday. All in all I felt much better. I didn't do any work on the desk project, but I wasn't going to push myself yet.

Now its back to work... Testing, waterjet(ing?) and everything else to do.

Pushing through

Well, still feeling ill. I got up and got some "breakfast" (the remainder of the pistashio pudding from last night). I put on some more Vicks vapo-rub and went back to bed cuz I still wasn't up to snuff. The extra rest really paid off - the warm dog in the bed doesnt hurt either. I got up around 8:15, took some day-quill and off I went!

Still blowing my nose regularly, but not quite as frequent. Getting into work, I felt slightly worse but still ok. I helped prep the last of the DCBs for my coworker and then started measuring moisture travellers. I got through the first batch of travellers that really are not of great importance since theyve been around for years now.

Then I ran some other travellers and they just kept reading higher and I'm not sure why they seem to be behaving like they are, but as we always say in the lab "it is what it is".

I ran the waterjet just to do a pair of straight cuts. Its really a waste of the waterjet's capability to just make a single straight cut, but they are done now and I wont be pestered about it anymore. I couldn't run the panels on the waterjet that just came in because I found out they need to be cycled through the oven first, so that went in just before lunch. I still need to program the cut path for them anyway.

Between jumping around, I made up a batch of synthetic ocean water, started the cut path programming for a different batch of panels, and helped when I could with at temperature tests. Lastly, I got a panel set out and broke the 9 specimen to wrap up the day. It was worth pushing through the nose blowing, but barely.

Most importantly of all, I won the last hand of yesterday's card game and the first two of today's! I came clost to winning the last one too. Seems that drout has ended at least.

Well, quitting time has finally arrived. Its time to get home!

Sickness

Wow, today was a big pain. I was blowing my nose every other minute and the minute that I wasn't one co-worker kept implying that my nose was red from doing too much cocaine. Other than that, I tried to keep myself on pace as usual.

More at-temperature tests and waterjet cutting in the afternoon. Help prepare DCBs in the morning, kicked off a fatigue, and aided in some impact testing.

This is going to be a short post, as I need to blow my nose and I'm going to try Linux tonight. I think that it will be an interesting experience and hopefully break my pay-for-OS habbit.

Working Lunch

Well, another day another post. I'm waiting for my at-temperature test to be ready to run and taking a part out of my lunch to do it. They take so long, I'm willing to eat in front of the test frame just to get something accomplished with these darned tests. It also gives me some time to type... one handed of course with lunch in the other.

Ive already jumped across four tasks on three projects this morning, and to top that off while blowing some dust off a temperature gauge I blew the debris into my coffee cup! What flavor (no I didn't drink it). At least this afternoon I have some easy waterjet work to do, and I can assist with the last specimen of my co-worker's testing. After that, I think I can see what I need to get back on and start doing some electrical work for "my beast" (a piece of testing equipment that I designed that is just staggering in scale and is scary to run due to the potential capabilities it has)

Cards at lunch has really not been treating me well, I am at least three days without winning a hand. We have been playing a game called shanghi gin, and you need to get a combination of cards in your hand to lay down and then work off of any patterns that have already been placed on the table to go out. Two are wild, and out of todays and yesterday's hands I have had two out of six hands (its a three deck pile). Other people have been drawing twos all over the place. One guy had four in one hand today!!

Another fine day in late August

Yes, I know its not August, but thats what today felt like (actually its been like this for weeks). The temperature in my workplace is ~83F, and I got to work with a piece of equipment that was running at 165F!. I sick of the heat. It seems that something is finally being done about it, after all, this is not a country club.

Well, I ran two tests of my own and assisted on three of someone else's. On top of that, I ran 18 specimen on the waterjet. Not a great day, but not a bad day of work. Testing specimen at temperature just eats up too much time, and I wish there was a better way.

The other three tests were impressive to hear, but as with most failures there is before and after. The failure occurs in a split second. Ive had things within inches of my face blow apart (not this time). Its somewhat scary, but I have yet to be hurt. Mostly since I know where to stand to minimize the hazard. The most impressive is when a object about the volume of a shoebox was within inches of my nose, and in an instant split in two and ended up a foot or two away. Well, enough for now.

Warm weekend

Wow, that was some weekend. Great to just be outside. I got to do some gardening out back with my wife and it looks a lot nicer. Still more to do, but its a start. With the gardening, I've procrastinated more on the desk construction. That is the best part of working on something that is just for yourselves, there is no schedule or deadline.

The daylight savings time change has really thrown me for a loop. If house wasn't on tonite, I would probably try to catch up on my lost hour of sleep. On the up side, I got to eat lunch before my stomach started wondering if my throat was cut...

Well, now it's back to work. Jumping from project to project, putting out the fires as I go, little work here and a little work there. It wuld be nice to sit down and attack one consistently, but people keep coming to me with their problems and I need to address them to keep them off my back.

I have a bladder problem...

Well, its not the bladder inside my body, its a device. More on that later.

First, I got to stay in this morning to the late hour of 6:30! (with the dog curled up next to me). Then off to work (and yes this entire paragrahp is dedicated to the fact that the dog was with me, she is that important to mention)

I got to bounce around on a couple different projects as usual, but only one problem arose instead of being blasted with problems everywhere. The waterjet got fixed early in the morning and I got to make sure it is in good order. Now I have a backlog of parts to cut next week.

I started testing the bladder and all was well until it sprung a leak. So a portion of my day was wet-vacing the floor and cleaning up the mess. The solution to the leak is simple and can wait for monday. (and yes, my bladder problem resulted in peeing on the floor)

Between tasks, I cut, sanded, cleaned, and determined the density of some material for someone else to report. Leave a comment if you want to learn how to accurately calculate density (and no it does not involve measuring any dimensions)

Lastly, I cut some steel (1" thick O1 tool steel) on the waterjet. Learned a lesson: never use sharp corners on thick peices on a waterjet. It performs a horrible zig zag on the underside of the part that does not detach the finished piece from the stock material.

Wow, I think thats plenty to daze or intrigue someone who has no idea what I do. (Thats one of the definitions of an engineer btw)

Waterjet woes.

Well another day and I can write.... something....

I wanted to do some machining on the waterjet, but I could not reach the 40ksi on the pressure adjustment knob since it was 'fixed' two days ago by the techs. (back story- slow drip of hot water came from the handle and they added silicone to resolve the problem: drip stopped but lost functionality) So, I put in a call that it was wrong. On his way home one tech came by the office to take a look and now its 'permanantly fixed'! Parts should arrive tomorrow to repair the part that broke and damaged other parts.

So from that end I went and helped a coworker with his testing and things went better for the remainder. I saw some new specimen come in and they are the largest I have ever seen! That is going to be fun to break - and loud.

Well, off to wire up a little device for the church audio system.

Terminology

My life:

• church - United Methodist Church
• home - 1950's era split level

Testing Terminology:

• kip - 1000 pounds force
• psi - pounds per square inch
• DCB - a test that takes enough time to run that it is annoying, but short enough that mandates taht you can't leave it and come back. Also takes a long time to anaylze after the test is complete.
• Cold, Hot, Wet - run test at -20°F to -65°F, run test at 150°F to 175°F, run test after sample has been emersed in water until it saturates or for 2 weeks depending on how people care to define wet in their test plan.

Pseudonyms (and other inside meanings and jokes)

• Diaper - something that has a great common good, sometimes unappreciated, and always something to avoid having to work with or change
• Sandwich - A boss. Like sandwiches, they come in varieties: Good, bad, spicy, ect. Its a good way to cue someone that a boss is coming: that was a spicy sandwich I had for lunch.
• Option 3 - This I learned from a buss driver in Disney World: There are a lot of poor drivers and as a bus driver he warned people standing on the bus to hold onto the randrails in case someone cuts him off. The reasoning was he might need to (Option 1) abrubtply slow down, (Option 2) stop quickly, or in the event that option 1 and option 2 can't suceed, he would need to resort to option #3: Floor It! It now means a dangerous or bold course of action.

Well, thats it for now...

Intro

Well, its time I got to my New Years resolution... from three years ago: keep a daily journal.

Well, journals are boring and not much fun, so I've decided to try a blog.

So, I am going to try to relieve my rants in public. Names and facts have been modified to protect myself!

I am a mechanical test engineer, so for everyone else to read: I break s(tuff) for a living. As fun as that sounds, it deals a lot with paperwork, records, repeating the same task ad nausium for the sake of statistics, and people changing their minds on how to run tests that are in progress.

All in all, I want to know what outside people think of my experiences, especially in this point in my life.

Well, thats it for now. I already have an idea of how future posts will read and that I will need to build a glossary for people to comprehend the specialized language in mechanical testing. Hopefully, this will also serve as a way for people to learn about engineering and all other crazyness.