Anarchy in The Opposite of Dog

Today was get paid to play Guitar Hero III day.

My buddy DG and I traveled from the Sandbox to the technical center of Opposite of Dog. It's where all of the advanced research and development happens at our Fortune 50 company.

At first we were a bit hesitant because there was no one in the large hallway where the talent/hobby show was going to take place. We hooked up the PS2 to the big flat screen LG television.

As it got closer to the start time, more people showed up and we started to play.

Overall it went pretty well. People are inherently interested and can't help be a bit impressed with the speed and fury of expert. There were a few comments, but it was no big thing.

We had fun, and got to crank up Bulls on Parade, Knights of Cydonia, One, My Name is Jonas, and Anarchy in the UK in the hallowed conservative halls of Opposite of Dog.

If felt good on that level, and the level of getting paid to fuck around.

Doctor Lawryde PhD

Higher degrees are a waste of money. I've learned more working in industry (about 7 years now including internships) than I would have getting my Masters or Doctorate.

Today I found out I found out I'm almost a hydraulics engineer knowing my shit for the second time. We had a 583T that wouldn’t raise its boom. Everything else worked, including lowering the boom. So what the fuck was wrong? I went out with mechanic Dave to try and figure it out. It was low on hydraulic oil so we filled the tank, hoping that was the problem. Unfortunately it wasn’t so I went and got my coveralls on since it was like –8°C out and gently snowing. I started taking some pressure measurements at various places to try and figure out what was going on. Turns out the pump wasn’t stroking up when a boom raise command was given.

It’s never a good thing when your pump doesn’t get full stroke.

I studied the schematic sitting on top of the hydraulic tank as my gloves froze to the steel of the machine. It had been much colder so the machine was even colder than the air. My gloves were wet and wherever I touched the machine they would stick.

I thought it might have been the boom kick-out switch. The kick-out switch makes it so you don’t bend the boom when you have it all the way up. If you didn’t have it, you’d be able to keep running the winch as the boom bent backwards. We took off the guard and the switch was stuck closed.

Problem solved.

Patient will have a full recovery.

Goals For While My Wife and Son are Gone for a Week

Subside on only $25 worth of groceries. Kroger has a 10 for $10 mix and match sale going on so I’m only going to pick up things on the dollar list.

Get some more ink. Tomorrow I’m going in again to hopefully get most of my sleeve done.

Clean my living room carpet. Our carpet in the living room is gross after 2 years of a baby and 3 years of animals running around on it. I’m going to rent a steam cleaner and get it done.

Make it look like I’m a super dedicated worker. I’m going to go into work on Saturday, Sunday and MLKJ Day and do some runs for my cold test. I’ll only have to go in for like an hour and it will make me look good.

Play hockey, hopefully twice. We’ve got a game on Sunday and maybe I’ll try to catch a rat session or DH another day.

Rock some GH3. I’ve moved to expert and it’s pretty fucking hard. I tend to obsess over video games until I’ve beaten them. Now I’ll have some time to put in.

Watch some illegally copied movies. Joox.net and rapidshare are pretty sweet for watching movies that are in the theater. I enjoy being part of the problem.

Clean up the house after my week of sloth and excess prior to them returning, and make sure there is more then $25 of groceries in the fridge.

I was sad and misty when I dropped them of, and I know I will miss them, but I’ve got a lot of shit to do.

Paging Doctor Lawryde

Yesterday I felt genuinely intelligent at work. I’ve kind of had to lay in the weeds and try to learn for the past six months. Most of the time people ask me a question about something I’d say, “I’m not really sure about that. I’ll have to look into it.”

The boom winch on a pipelayer was only operating the in the raise direction, and the hook winch was fine.

Where do you start trying to diagnose the problem?

Take some pressure measurements. Is the brake getting pressure to release? (For safety the brakes are on all the time and you need hydraulic pressure to release them). We had brake pressure. What are the raise and lower loop pressures during both a raise and lower command? Raise was normal as it should since it was working fine. Lower was hitting high pressure cutoff on the lower “A-side” of the counterbalance valve, and was getting absolutely no pressure on the raise “B-side of the counterbalance valve. (A counterbalance valve is a collection of valves in a casting that is on the motor that drives the winch, which allows for a smooth controlled lowering of a load. If you didn’t have it, when you lowered a several ton load it would just overrun the hydraulic system).

That was the big problem, high pressure on A and no pressure on B. This meant that somehow the oil wasn’t getting from the A side of the counterbalance valve through the motor giving up it’s energy and dropping in pressure to some level greater than zero on the B side.

I studied the hydraulic schematic for a while and figured it had to be one of the valves within the counterbalance valve was sticking and not allowing oil to go where it should. We took it apart, and one of the valves was kind of tough to move. It didn’t seem like it shouldn’t have been working, but we put it back together to give it a test.

It worked. It would raise and lower. I was exactly right about what was wrong. That must be what a doctor feels like when they correctly diagnose and treat a disease.

They finally posted the stats for our hockey league online. I have a link on the sidebar, but here they are:

We’re in second place. The first place team, which we’ve beat, is an offensive powerhouse with 48 goals for. We, on the other hand, are a defensive powerhouse with only 17 goals against and 14 penalties. Defense isn’t nice or pretty, old time hockey.

I designed the Sears Tower; I make two grand an hour

I had a productive Monday morning. I got all the testing done I needed to. I thought it would take most of the week, but everything went well and we got it done. On Friday I learned how to put a 47,000-pound bulldozer up on stands. They don’t exactly make jacks of that size. Basically you put wood blocks under the tracks and back up on them. Then you slide stands under the back, lift the front end up with the blade, and then put stands under the front. The tracks are completely off the ground, and you can do steering tests. I have an awesome job. Of all the boring shit I could be doing as a mechanical engineer, I get to put bulldozers up on stands and brake stall the tracks.

Tonight I’m turning in my hockey roster for winter league. I’m happy with the team I put together. It should be a fun season. I don’t expect to win every game, but it’ll be fun.

I played Rat last night with a bunch of really good players. It was a lot of fun. I was blasted when I got home. There were like 30 guys there so I didn’t get all that many shifts over the hour and a half, but I was working hard skating up to their level.

We’re going to make a trip to Madison on Saturday. There isn’t a home football game so we’ll be able to enjoy the downtown campus area on a nice Fall day. We need to make trips back to Madison every so often so we don’t start to think that Peoria is actually a good town to live in. I’m looking forward to eating some good Thai food. It should be a fun day trip.

Plowed in to the Sound

I’ve got all these random things swimming around in my brain.

I’ve got my hockey team pretty much solidified. It’s not going to be as good as I had hoped, but it’s still going to be a solid group of guys. No superstars. After playing well in rat, I feel strong. I want to get stronger and faster and heavier (I’m up to 178 now, 200 is my fighting weight) so I can shut down that little prick Nick. (The kid who won most of the games for us on Orange).

If you’re going to buy a minivan (which we will some time in the future), there are two critical requirements:

1. It has to have a dvd system in it.
2. The back has to be spacious enough so you can fuck comfortably in it.

I can envision my wife and I at a car dealership asking the sales dude to fold all the seats down so we can determine if the back of the minivan is spacious enough for us to fuck.

I need to save money to buy a new hockey bag, and to complete my left arm sleeve. I kind of wanted to incorporate “So it goes”, but I think that would be more appropriate for the central theme or wording for a kick ass chest piece. Maybe, “There is no why”.

I feel satisfied with my job right now. It’s a strange feeling.

I have a mouse, maybe mice, living in my garage. My wife won’t let me kill them. It would need to be catch and release. Maybe I should just leave my cats in the garage one night and let them have at it, let nature run it’s course.

It's Lawryde to you.

I’ve got a few moments here and I finally have some things to say.

I really like my new job, and got some big accolades from my boss after completing my first test report

Lawryde-

This is an excellent letter - well written, concise, action oriented recommendations, and easy to understand. In the attached file, you will see that I do propose a few edits, and I have also inserted some comments and questions that I'd like to discuss (or that you can just answer by email if you prefer). Please make the changes you feel are warranted and send it back, and we will get it published. Nice job.

B*** D***

My wife really deserves most of the credit for my above engineer average writing skills. In college she made sure my writing wasn’t garbage and apparently taught me well.

There is this one dude who keeps calling me by the shortened version of my name. Everyone else calls me by my full name, yet he feels it’s ok to shorten it. I don’t really want to bring it up to him and sound like a dick, but I hate it when my name is shortened. It’s the apostle who’s name starts with A, and I can’t stand how the shortened version sounds. It makes me feel like I’m being called like a little child. It’s not Law or Ryde or Lawy, it’s fucking Lawryde.

I read that the bridge that collapsed in Minnesota was deemed structurally unsafe back in the 90’s. I’m sure it wasn’t fixed because there wasn’t enough tax money to go around. People shouldn’t bitch about taxes. They pay for the roads you drive on, the schools you have, the police and fire protect you enjoy, and many other infrastructure niceties people take for granted. When there isn’t enough money, bridges fall down, crime goes up, shit falls apart. TAXES ARE GOOD. THEY HELP EVERYONE.

Look Mom, I'm a Redneck!

Testing max lift of a pipelayer all day at the Deadman+Lawryde never being out in the sun without sunscreen=Sunburn+Higher Risk of Skin Cancer

I'm not sure that math is all correct, I'm only an Engineer.

Also, Mechanic Dave proved to me why I like mechanics. He asked me why I was wearing long sleeves, was it to cover up tattoos? Yup I told him. No engineers have asked me why the hell I'm wearing long sleeve black Under Armour in the middle of summer. Dave's cool shit. We chatted about tattoos while we were setting up our test.

This job is pretty fucking sweet. (I have the feeling though that I'm going to read this again in like a year and a half and just laugh my ass off.)

Not disenfranchised and disillusioned with the corporate world

Maybe it’s just because everything is new. Perhaps I’m just not jaded yet. It could be that I’m just doing one little thing right now, but I really like this new job.

This place feels much better than the stuffy office I was in. I get to hang out with mechanics, operate heavy machinery, and sit in an office if I want to.

I’m sure it will eventually get old, but it’s got to last for a while.