[obligatory Portal reference]
Random amusement – note the caption next to title on the 404 error page at Shapeways.com. Well played guys.
This is especially funny to me since, as I mentioned in my last post, I recently ordered a couple more Weighted Companion Cubes. It makes me wonder if they printed a few spares for themselves… or more likely they saw my order and thought “oh look, another Portal fan” since I’m sure I’m not the first person to design & order one from them.
I’m still waiting for those to arrive btw. Apparently the new material is in their Netherlands based office, so my prototypes are on quite a journey. I hope I get the order soon, I want to see if I like the material enough to order more before the 14th in case they discontinue the material.
I’ve also got my 2×4 brick drawn up and waiting to order.
instigation
Shapeways, the on-demand 3D printing service I wish I used more, just got in a slick new material they call alumide. It’s powder based so like most of their materials it should have s slightly grainy texture, and it looks sort of silvery grey because aluminum dust is mixed into the compound. It’s not actually printed metal like their stainless option, but that means it’s gobs cheaper. So I ordered a couple cubes to see the finish and detail for myself.
I’d like to draw up a Lego brick and order samples of each material, just for reference, for when I get other ideas about what I’d like to have printed. I’ve been wanting to do a bit more small model designing but haven’t gotten around to it, but this cool new option sort of re-sparked my mind. Maybe I should finish my turret.
dark signs
Long story short: I may be closer to being jobless than I’d like to admit to myself.
Work hasn’t really picked up as planned after we returned from our two week mandatory unpaid break for the holiday. To keep the company afloat the owner had already cut uniform services for the shop workers, all bonuses, medical insurance, and sick pay. Vacation time was cut in half too (thankfully not axed completely). We’re down to a skeleton crew after laying off basically everyone but department heads, and everyone knows what’s next.
Barring a sudden rush of sales or some random giant order – the only step left before closing the shop completely is to start cutting hours. It sucks because there’s still work in the shop, just not a lot of it, and what there is isn’t making enough money. So it’s a bad situation for everyone and it’s just going to get worse. It will only be a matter of time before irreplaceable people get pissed and walk out, leaving the work flow crippled, and essentially screwing everyone over. So I’ve got that to look forward to.
Worst case scenario is I’ll end up unemployed. My UI will take care of my mortgage and utility bills, but not much else, so that’ll be fun to deal with while hunting for a new job. I’ve already looked around a bit and there aren’t any CAD positions open right now, so I’m not sure what I’d end up doing if it came to that.
I’ve had a pretty decent run for an engineer at this place anyways, historically speaking. The longest I know that anyone in this office has lasted was around 7-10 years, and he got fired for drug problems… the two who preceded and trained me both lasted around 5 years each before getting fed up with the place and went looking for a better paying job (one of them succeeded, the other went back to school); and there have been two or three others since I’ve been here who were only temporary assistants during busy years. I’m a few months shy of my 5 year mark, so it’s no surprise that luck is working against me here. Could just be my time to move on. Or it could be I’m reading too much into it, and everything will turn out fine.
Whatever the case… whatever happens, happens.
goodbye ‘09
So, final day of the decade, time to recap some highlights from this past year. I was going to do a list… but I’d much rather just use this haiku that popped into my head…
Killed my dune buggy.
Battlestar auction was cool.
I bought a damn house!
Cheers to everything up ’til now, and everything to come.
funemployed for Christmas!
Blah blah bad economy so on and so forth… Truth is this time of the year work is always slow. A lot of the customers ordering parts slow down and wait until January to throw their orders our way. For the second year in a row now the owner of the place I work decided to close shop for the final two weeks of December – meaning I’m on my own until the 4th of January. To add to the inconvenience this time, they cut out Holiday pay (last year I got paid for Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Years Eve and New Years day). At least I had two leftover vacations days, and they paid those out on my last check. So two full weeks with no paycheck. Not looking forward to that.
Could be worse though, I could be completely out of a job. And I won’t lie and say I’m not looking forward to two full weeks of sleeping past noon.
fun weekend
So on Friday night both of my toilets refused to flush and I noticed that water was backing up in both showers a bit. I considered this inconvenient because I rather like indoor plumbing, and with the rain and all it kind of made the backup plan unpleasant. I thought maybe the rain itself was to blame for the stoppage but that was just a coincidence.
Saturday morning I called my home warranty company so they would send a plumber to check it out… and a couple hours later I called them again because I hadn’t gotten a call back. I find out that none of their contractors were available; despite it being considered an “emergency” to them they couldn’t get anyone out until monday. So instead I called up the plumbers who snaked the drains at my moms house. They came out in about an hour, snaked the lines, and discovered that it wasn’t just some easy clog we were dealing with like I’d hoped.
A common problem with old sewer lines is tree roots: they grow down and force their way into the clay pipes at the joints, which were only sealed with tar to begin with, then once inside they kind of go nuts. Over time they plug up the big pipes and waste water can’t get through. If maintained it’s not a big deal, but when left to sit for extended periods of time it becomes more of an issue. Mine, of course, was a pretty big issue.
The plumbers came back Sunday morning with their handy dandy backhoe and made quick work of my lawn. Fifteen feet of pipe replaced – updated to PVC – and a couple of sizable roots sawed off to discourage further arboreal attacks. It only took them around three hours and I was out there the whole time getting in the way. The little inspection camera was kinda slick. All in all $1.5k well spent, even though I’d rather not have had to in the first place…
They joys of owning a home, right?
so very busy
Wednesday:
left work early, got my keys, sorted and piled up the junk in back yard, bought and installed new light bulbs, and bombed the house for bugs overnight (used 8 canisters).
Thursday:
worked all day, began cleaning around 6, decided to replace both toilets and the sink in the master bathroom instead of moving in first.
Friday:
drove all over town to several different Lowes & Home Depot stores to buy the new toilets and vanity set, picked up some paint samples, cleaned more, removed both toilets, removed the plastic sliding shutters on the closets, replaced the toilet in the main bathroom, returned the second toilet due to a cracked tank, cleared out all the rooms for the carpet cleaner coming in the morning.
Saturday:
got the carpets shampooed, removed all nails and screws from the walls, plastered nail and screw holes in walls, bought paint, repaired damage to bedroom and bathroom walls, laid new linoleum tiles in master bathroom, got my cable and internet installed, stain treated the carpet in the master bedroom, painted master bathroom until 1am, forgot it was Halloween.
Sunday:
installed new toilet and vanity w/ sink in master bathroom, had carpet in master bedroom shampooed again, removed all the junk from backyard and garage (which filled about a 10 yard bin), removed the old shelving and panels in the garage, trimmed the tree in the front yard.
Monday:
worked all day, masked and painted the master bedroom until midnight, forgot to eat diner.
woohoo!
After a solid week of stalling everything finally cleared and I picked up my keys yesterday! So exciting! Can’t believe I just bought a house… now I get to move again. Yay. But first I have to clean it out and do a bit of fixerupin. Being a short sale, the seller really doesn’t give a damn how the place looks because all the money is going directly to the bank. So that means as they pack up their stuff, any junk they didn’t want to keep gets left behind. The bank sent them in there to clean it out before I moved in, but that just meant tossing it all into the trashcans until they ran out of room, then just pile it up in the garage. So that’s nice. Plus the back yard was a bit of a mess, rotting particle boards resting against the fences acting as cockroach incubators… so all that’s got to go.
Yesterday was a lot of sorting junk into piles out back, testing light fixtures and bulbs, and walking around grinning while thinking “this place is MINE!” Before I left last night I set off about a dozen bug bombs and left the house sealed to take care of the resident critters inside – still need to get a big bucket of kills-every-goddamn-thing to spray the yard. My mom is in there today with a gallon of bleach to tackle the first wave of cleaning, and I’m taking tomorrow off work to clean more, repair nail holes and such, and possibly paint some walls. Saturday morning I’m getting the carpets shampooed and having my cable installed that afternoon, then I can start moving things in.
should have seen this from a mile away
So here I am at work, sore from the move-a-thon yesterday, when I get this text from my Realtor: “Just funded!!! Recording tomorrow!!! Praise God“. Finally some good news! I guess they decided not to take me up on the urine sample I offered. So I ask if that means I’ll get my keys Tuesday or Wednesday, to which she responds “Tomorrow or late tonight“. Awesome, right?
/sigh
Yeah, I know. I shouldn’t have bought it either. What can I say, I was tired, and I wanted to believe. Just four and a half hours later I get a new email from her – “Looks like we will not be recording tomorrow as planned…” Turns out the close date, the same problem that screwed me up last Monday, is back for more. I guess they didn’t know how optimistic they were being when they picked the 23rd for the extention, and not knowing the full extent of their duncery I agreed that five days was certainly reasonable. “What happens if it takes longer” I even asked. “Don’t worry, it’ll be before Friday anyways.” Ha! And of course no one thought about the evaporating deadline as it whizzed past, it would have been far too easy to send an updated extension with the report waiver getting signed.
Shoot me. Shoot me now.
