The Weekly Recap

This will be a pretty short recap because from my perspective it was a pretty uneventful week at LaCroy.  I'm sure I would have lots to talk about if I could get stories and gossip from everybody, but alas--I cannot.

It was a busy week for me--I do know that.  Stuff just kept on coming in.  Things kept happening.  Ben was gone Wednesday, so I had to add driving to my regular tasks that day.  I worked overtime on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and it hardly even put a dent in the stuff I had piled up to do.  Not so much in the way of raw materials--It was mostly standards, oddball things, and shipping stuff.

There seems to be a lot of errors these days.  Most are on paperwork.  I caught one box that had been pulled off the shelf for delivery to somebody that wasn't even the right box.  Another time I caught the part number wrong on a PO going out.  Another time I caught (and this one was much bigger) a complete duplication of the paperwork on one of the 7 items I was shipping out to Brenner in Pennsylvania.  In other words, there were two cert packs for one product but none at all for another.  If I'm catching that many errors in just my day-to-day operations, I have to wonder how many things are not getting caught.

Mike will be gone next week--taking his first full week off in at least two years.  It's going to be way crazy next week without his coordination skills.  I predict confusion, chaos, and meltdown... in that order.

Speaking of meltdown:  I was witness to a meltdown that Harry had with Scott near my area.  From what I gathered, Harry was venting bigtime about him having to work weekends--like it was getting to be a regular and assumed thing every week.  Phil was brought into the fray and things calmed down to a point where I couldn't hear was was being said any longer.


Gone:  Tuesday morning it occurred to me that the new office guy (working in the Phil/Pinto office) hadn't been there either day. After asking around a bit I found out he left for a job at Boeing. Friday was his last day, so he should have actually been on last weeks recap.  Easy come, easy go.

New Arrivals: Nobody new this week.  It's looking like our recent crop of grunt labor hires may be some pretty good guys.  Time will tell.

Broken Equipment:  There still seems to be no desire for anyone to fix the green forklift yet.  There it sits--unused.  It seems that every time somebody was using the regular Daewoo forklift for emptying chip barrels this week, that's when a delivery truck would show up.  One day it happened twice in 30 minutes.  I don't think there is anything new broken.  Yet.

Bucket Art!

How many people can say they have created art at work?  Some people do it for a living and might create art using cutting and welding, but 'can art'? I have no idea who would want can art of any kind, let alone create it to begin with.  I'm sure if they did it would probably be with small food or beverage cans.

At LaCroy, we use 5-gallon steel buckets!

One of my favorite things at work was crushing empty 5-gallon MEK cans.  I perfected it to the point that I would rarely get anything other than a perfectly flat smash.  Using three 4x4's across the top of the can, all it takes is the right amount of weight at the right speed to do the perfect crumple.  We used the multiple-thousand-pound stacks of stainless steel coils to provide the pancake weight.  Something about that *crunch* sound they make when I drop the weight--I love it.

As you can see, the can on the left has been reduced significantly over its original size.  One might say that it's a "special travel size" container of MEK.  The reason we do it in the first place?  The story I got was simply this:  An empty MEK can is treated as a potential hazardous waste item and Tacoma Metals doesn't want it.  Smashed, it's simply sheet metal scrap and goes in the bin with the rest of the scrap steel.

Then there's the sculpted 5-gallon buckets.

When I was in the back of the shop a few years ago running the Bruderer press all day long, we were running the arms and channels for Sonicare.  The channels were a product that contained a few sharp edges, and they came down a long chute at 325 per minute.  There was a 5-gallon bucket there waiting to receive them, and as they came down the chute they were hitting the far side of the bucket a few inches down from the top of the rim.  We were constantly rotating the bucket all day so they hit pretty much all the way around the can at one time or another.  The result?  The slow, steady forming of metal that resulted in the "melted" metal can you see here.  Doesn't it look like a soft-serve ice cream?  (you can click any of the pictures to see them full size.)  These are cool and unique:

Obviously, the difference between the two styles of can art is the passage of time.  The one at the top is instant.  5 minutes to set everything up, and WHAM--Instant can art.  The style in the bottom pictures show slowly-evolving art over a long period of time--I'd say a good 6 months or so for each can.

While both styles are different, the finished result is the same: Bucket art!

The Weekly Recap

It's been a pretty uneventful week around there this week.  One thing that was funny though.  I think it was Monday or Tuesday--at about 6:15 TJ was wondering where Mafu was.  TJ sent B.M.O.C out to check his truck, and sure enough--he was sound asleep.  First time that's happened in the morning.  Usually it's lunch when he falls asleep and someone has to go out and wake him up.

I was headed to Walmart one day after work so TJ gave me some cash to pick him up a little space heater like mine for the cold winter months.  It won't be long before he gets a chance to use it I'm sure.  It will be one of those Monday mornings when he opens the place up and it's 50° inside.

Ben was out half of Wednesday and all of Thursday because of his kid going to the hospital.  At one point Thursday morning Bzzz went inside and got authorization to roust me from my workload (which was pretty high at that point) to send me to the propane place.  They're down to the big yellow forklift and it ran out of gas while somebody was emptying chip barrels.  Anyway, everybody determined that all our tanks were empty so I was recruited.  It turns out that two of the three they said were empty were, in fact, full.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  No, don't bother checking to see if they are empty, just take everybody's word for it, right?  I thought a couple of them seemed pretty heavy, but the gauges showed empty so I figured somebody must have known more about it than I did.  Ha.  (Knocks on head) "Hello... McFly..."

I have to wonder about Derek's job.  What the hell is he supposed to get paid for I wonder?  Because he sits in the office in plain sight, we can see that all he does is surf the internet ALL DAY LONG.  I don't really get it.  He's probably getting paid handsomely too.  I do find it funny when I watch him type on the keyboard.  He types with his left index finger and his right middle finger.  That's it.  Reminds me of my dad when he's typing except Derek uses both hands.

Gone: Nobody is left this week?  Wow.

New Arrivals:  Phil came walking by me with a new guy on Monday morning at the usual 7:30 time for a new guy.  I think he's working as being trained on Strippit.  Apparently he's smart enough and is able to learn things so they didn't leave him in deburr.

That same day I noticed a new guy in CNC all day.  I'm not sure when he showed up.  He rolled his tool box in at 2:20 so I guess he's staying.

Broken equipment:  Same as last week.  Nothing new broke down that I'm aware of.  If it did I didn't hear about it.

The Thrifty One

You know how Dale is.  He has trouble spending money.  If he has to spend money it eats at him.  He will even place his health on hold for the sake of pinching a penny.

Recently, Bzzz has been after Bernie to buy a camera for the shop.  Because there is no longer a "shop camera" (meaning the oft-used Bruce L personal camera) there is no way for Bzzz to take pictures of press setups and things.  Bernie does have a little point and shoot in his office, but there is no interface cable that fits it (it's not a standard mini-USB), and therefore no way to get the pictures off the camera without cable or card reader.  Bernie said he would be fine with buying a camera, but he has no idea what to buy.  I can't say I blame him--there are too many to choose from.

Today, Dale came strolling in and put this camera on Bzzz's desk.  I got quite a kick out of it.  It was basically brand new, but it was a toy--almost literally.  It felt as if it was an empty plastic shell--virtually no weight to it.  It uses one AAA battery, had no internal storage, no flash, and basically no features of any kind.  This website calls it a "perfect camera for kids..."  I did a lot of digging around the web after I got home and could find hardly anything on it.  I guess it's something he "had laying around" for a while or something.

The USB cable did connect to the computer and the computer would recognize there was something connected to it, but it had no idea what it was.  Without a CD (which was not to be found) would not recognize it.  And really--would you want to install some sort of weird software so your computer could talk to your toy camera?  I wouldn't.

Here are a few shots to chuckle over:



Good ol' Dale.  However limited his actual results are, his intentions are pure gold.  Gotta love him.

Bzzz needs to figure out what he wants for a shop camera and have Bernie BUY one.

More Goofin'

So, the Bzzz was out of the office a couple days and Friday and this vicious sight gag sprang into work.  TJ put a smaller empty box upside down inside of this one so the actual contract review "pileup" only really extended into it about 2 inches or so (his contract review stack is usually only about what's visible on top).

Bzzz finally came in yesterday mid-morning, and apparently the joke wasn't all that well received, as he threw it across the room or something to that effect.  Well, we liked it anyway...

The Weekly Recap

I'll start off the weekly recap by making one correction:  The new guy I thought was gone last week was not. He was on one of those prearranged time-offs that people have been known to place on the table when they are hired.  He has been back all week and hasn't missed a day.

It's kind of weird that we now have four guys that speak, uh, whatever it is they speak.  Vietnamese, Cambodian--I don't know.  There is one guy named Tran that inhabits the little room where Don Brewer used to sit, two guys in CNC, and good ol' Ai in deburr.  It's weird to have them strolling by me on the way back in from break, just rambling on a mile-a-minute.  It's funny how LaCroy goes in waves.  For a while there we heard Spanish flowing all over.  Now it's Southeast Asian.

Dale was out Wednesday and Thursday getting his other eye cataract surgery.  He showed up yesterday with no glasses on, complaining about the new eye feeling a little "gravelly" still.  I'm pretty sure he was supposed to stay out until Monday, but as everyone knows Dale is driven by money in a bad way (both on the job and off) so I guess he couldn't bear missing another day whether he was ready or not.  Now he used readers to see up close.  But, as he said, "I sure see black blacks now!"

There has been a LOT of weekend activity going since the Strippit came back online.  Now I hear through the grapevine that there is talk of them buying a 20-station model to supplement the current 12-station model they have now.  What a cacophony that will be!  I overheard something about another CNC yesterday too--one that will handle long (4-foot plus) titanium parts.  I wonder who they're going to get to install these machines?  There is nobody here (from what I can tell) that is qualified to do a "ground up" installation any longer.

I bought myself a little Canon A560 point & shoot this week on Craigy's List for a measly $40.  It's a teeny camera so maybe I can sneak more interesting stuff--movies included.

Gone:  As far as I know, nobody left this week.  I'm not sure where everybody is hiding though... It doesn't really reflect the influx of bodies we've had recently.  Maybe they're on another shift or hiding in the toilet stalls.

New Arrivals:  A new guy showed up Monday mid-morning.  I could tell by the way Phil was guiding him around that he wasn't a grunt laborer.  He was also better groomed than most that come in.  Apparently Big Jim and young Wink Martindale both know him, so I guess he's knows something about something.  Usually I think Phil feels like he made a conquest or important discovery when he hires someone that knows (or is known) within the industry.  I guess this is no exception because he is now sitting in the Pinto office with Phil--At the very desk that Joe sat at not long ago!

We also got a new guy Tuesday afternoon.  I think he went to CNC, but I'm not sure.  I haven't found him yet.

Thursday afternoon (whatever happened to the 7am start times for for new hires on their first day?) Phil came by with a new guy in tow.  I could tell he was a grunt laborer from the earring/tattoo/ultra short hair he was sporting.  You know--the look of labor.  I'm sure he smokes too.

Broken Equipment:  The green forklift is out of commission.  There is something wrong with the hydraulics that is allowing the forks to leak down and lower on their own.  That puts us down to one forklift which is not good.  I think we should put the battery and a fuel tank on Ol' Yeller.  That forklift sounds like a racer, and it does good burnouts too.  Of course, it's not for everybody... Mostly due to the lack of brakes.  I like it though.

Goofin'

You know how I am--goofy things just come to me.  This one was so easy I couldn't not do it.  It didn't stick around very long though...

You can see it a little larger by clicking on it.

The Weekly Recap

BMOC* has been using "assumed position" tactics on a few of us.  He walked up to me at my desk a few different times on Thursday assuming I was going to go back and run the Bruderer again.  The first couple times he asked me if I was ready to go back there I said no.  About the third time I said something like, "I have too much to do up here. I think you're going to have to find somebody else."  He looked plainly annoyed.  Apparently he mentioned it to somebody and before long Joe the shear guy was back there running it again.  He has been using these tactics on Ben a lot too.  I see him walk up to Ben, say something while pointing around, and swagger off somewhere else.  It happens often.  Yesterday while I was over in Ben's area packing a box to ship UPS I asked him, "Hey, the times when BMOC* stops here and talks to you, is he telling you to do stuff or what?  He said, "Yeah, most of the time."  I told him that, to my knowledge, he was not anyone's supervisor, and he was assuming he could hand out instructions to people.  You know how Ben is--very quiet and nice to everyone.  I told him, "All you have to do is, one of these times he tells you to do something, just say, 'Don't take this the wrong way, but I need to get that from Bruce or TJ' or something similar.  Ben said he didn't know that.  "I thought he was a supervisor," Ben said.  I told him he apparently has Gary's old job description.  He's the tooling setup guy--not a supervisor.  We have a chain of command in a company for a reason:  So everybody is on the same page and the right thing is being done by the right person at the right time.  Anyway, I don't want to get anyone in trouble.  If anything, I'm helping BMOC* stay out of trouble by trying to squelch a bit of his assumed authority.

Gone:  The new guy in deburr.  I think he worked there a total of 3 days--I'm not sure.  I know he was 14 minutes late for his first full day so I knew it was just a matter of time.  It kinda makes you wonder what kind of job a person is looking for.  A job that's not a job?

New Arrivals:  As I mentioned before, young Wink Martindale back.  One of these days maybe I'll learn his name.

Broken Equipment:  Believe it or not, the Strippit lives!  Yesterday it was making it's sweet, rhythmic music all day long.  It was probably putting a smile on most everyone's face.  It's been down for almost a month and a half I think!
The leaky urinal got "fixed".  The valve still leaks but it's leaking straight down the front into the urinal instead of into the floor so they'll probably leave it even though they ordered and received two valve repair kits.

It's been pretty much 'business as usual' there this week.  Now that the Strippit is moving again we can whittle away at that backlog of 50+ jobs (I think) that are waiting to be ran.  That means they will be running plenty of overtime in that, brakeform, and deburr while they play catch-up.

I don't know why I still pay attention--maybe it's because my desk is right there--but I guess it's safe to say that Luis The Incredible Hulk will never come in on time in the morning.  One day he came in at 6:42!


*Brook

Hanging out with Herr Bruderer!

I guess we're a little shorthanded these days. New people keep coming in, but not enough to fill all the right areas. Consequently, I got tapped to hang out with Herr Bruderer.

I haven't done anything with the Bruderer for years. I was both hesitant and interested at the same time. Not that I had a choice...

It's kind of a blast from the past running the Bruderer press. I don't remember how many hours, days, weeks, or months I ran it but it was a lot. 2 years? 3 years? I know millions of parts went through it under the watchful eye of Bruce and myself. I realized today after running it for most of the day that it's amazing how fast the boredom comes flooding back after all this time. It was different back then though--the parts we ran back then came out of the press WAY faster than today's parts do. At the running speed the press is set at for this tool (160 strokes per minute) you can actually see the body of the press actually moving up and down. I don't recall ever seeing it visibly move back in the old days. I'm sure it probably did, but it ran a lot faster so maybe I just didn't notice.

It still has the old "High Setpoint Exceeded on INPUT 2 RIGHT REAR" alarm going off regularly, and really--I wouldn't expect it to be any different (meaning fixed) from back when I used to run it. After all--a new sensor costs money! Having a press operator reset the a alarm a hundred times an hour--hey, that's free.

I snuck a couple videos for old times' sake:

The Weekly Recap

As usual, there was a lot of the same this week.  The same attitudes, and the same people doing and saying the same things.  Our week was made a little more unusual though by the fact that Dale was out for three days.  I guess he went in for cataract surgery.  That meant that PO's were made by Mike or whoever was able to make them.  TJ was out one day for health reasons, and true to form, the Zzzzz went into is usual persona.  When he walked by me one time after coming out of the office he uttered the following line.  I immediately typed it into my iPod so I would get it exact:

"What a zoo... Dale's out and nobody can buy a tool that I need that's stopping the job." [pauses] "I don't get it." [pauses again]

Well, he apparently cried long or often enough because he did get whatever tool it was he needed.  He stopped next to me when he uttered that line--obviously trolling for a response.  It didn't work though.  I didn't even look up.

I guess I should stop calling Brook 'The Big Unit' and start calling him 'Big Man On Campus'.  He is working the system pretty well.  He probably thinks he has worked himself right into being a supervisor of some kind because that's how he is acting.  He is seldom in one place for longer than 5 or 10 minutes.  He walks all over the shop telling people things, asking people things, and doing little things.

I hope Dale is in good shape when he comes in on Monday.  He is one of my favorite characters at work.  Always dependable, knows his stuff, and an all around great guy.

I don't know what's eating Scott, but he's been really on edge for a few weeks now.  You seldom ever see him in a good mood.  Like I told Sue last night, maybe they told him they were selling the company... Maybe he's just feeling the wrath of our lack of Strippit press.

Gone: Nobody left this week that I know of.

New Arrivals: I think we have a returning CNC guy.  I'm not sure if he's going to start Monday or what, but I saw him unloading his toolbox down at the other big shop door a couple days ago.  It's that tall, happy guy that looks like a young Wink Martindale.  Did I say that Dave Cogburn came back a few weeks ago?

Broken Equipment: Strippit update:  Remember I said that I sent the computer to New York red/overnight the other day?  I heard Brook the BMOC tell Bernie yesterday that he called them and they were "going to start on it first thing Monday" or something similar.  Bernie looked at him in disbelief.  "What did we send it Red/overnight to em for?"  I bet that pissed him off.  BMOC just shrugged.

The bathroom update: Ha, what update?  The urinal is still broken and will likely be for some time.  I heard someone say that Derek said that it wasn't going to get fixed until they paid a repairman $75 an hour to do it.