Kitty love

Shameless pet blogging.

Dare to be Different

Out front I have a lilac bush, that every year, decides to toss out one set of white flowers amongst the purple ones. This year was no exception. It reminds me of people who refuse to follow the norm set by society, in a good way. It dares to be different. I see a lot of that lately. People who refuse to conform to the idiotic rules set by a society that is being overrun by government officials with no working brain cells.

People claim all laws are passed to "make all of our lives better." Oh really! We have a sue happy society who can't support themselves without the government's help. We have citizens who don't know the word NO. They don't understand what working for a living actually means. We have hate crime enhancers that apply only to white people. We have specially funded colleges for everyone, except again, for the white male. And when someone tries to organize a college scholarship for said white males, he is ridiculed and called a racist. No child let behind, that is churning out kids left and right into society that can not even think for themselves, read above a sixth grade level (if that), or do basic math without a calculator. (But can probably text 100 words per minute on their expensive cell phones) Young adults are being told they can not pray to their chosen God during their commencement ceremonies, because it breaks one law or another. (Freedom of speech? Where) Political correctness has gotten completely out of control. (pretty soon you won't be able to call the sky blue, or the grass green) We have law makers more worried about pacifying the minority, then worrying about ways to actually fix a severely broken system.

It is time society, as a whole, gets off their collective butts and starts doing something about this. Remember, even a small voice can be heard, when added to others. Be a rebel. Stand up for yourself. Speak your mind. Don't be afraid of standing out in a crowd. (others may just be waiting for someone like you to start the change)

Be that White Lilac. Dare to be different!

Ithaca Superintendent asks Gov. Snyder to 'convert my school to a prison.'

Ithaca Superintendent asks Gov. Snyder to 'convert my school to a prison.': "Superintendent Nathan Bootz has asked Governor Rick Snyder to “convert my school to a prison.” What questions do you want NBC25 to ask the superintendent?"

I read the letter he sent, and I absolutely loved the wording and logic he used. I wonder if he is interested in moving to Wisconsin. Prisons are getting so many amenities now a days, it is more like a dayem hotel then a place to pay for your crimes. It's sickening.

What's the date?

Last time I checked today was April 16th. Double checks to be sure..... yep, still is. I look outside and I would swear it was late November. It's snowing here. Yes, that 4 letter S word. Mid April and the ground is white. Temperature with windchill is 22. Yes I used the W word also. What the holy heck is Mother Nature thinking. Does she need to go out on a bender or something? Or did she already do that. A few days ago our state was hammered with tornadoes, last night we had sleet. Today it's snow. I would greatly appreciate some of that global warming right about now. I'm chilled to the bone.

pets

Shameless pet blogging :D

Stan and Tucker

Dusty napping

snow pics

Yesterday we got a lot of snow. We went from having nothing on the ground to this.

snow lightening

Helps if you have sounds on.

Thundersnow

Helps if you have sounds on.

Dear Mother Nature

Dear Mother Nature,
I greatly appreciate you listening to me before about wanting a snow day during the week. But once was sufficient, thanks.

sincerely,
Easily Lost

(click to enlarge)

We're between the top two areas. Drifts of over four feet all over the place. It is still snowing here. It's 1:30 p.m. and the plows have not gone down the street yet. I'll upload some pics the kids took of the storm last night and hopefully a video of what is lovingly referred to as "thundersnow" sometime later today. It was a spectacular storm to watch and listen to. Thunder, lightening and snow :D And to think, this is only the third day of spring.

perigee moon

(Life is strange)First the router dies. Now a power outage. I think the gods are trying to tell me something. I just wish I knew what.

weekend

4 day weekend here I come :D

Be careful what you wish for

Remember not that long ago I was asking Mother Nature to just maybe have a storm in the middle of the week to break things up? Well she heard me........ and how!! Check out the forecast for Wednesday. And Friday isn't looking so great either :|

(Click to enlarge)

yo-yo

The boss came up to me Friday when I got to work. He said he had good and bad news. I told him to give me the bad news first. The bad news is several people are on vacation next week so I need you to go to day shift. Ooook then, what's the good news? The good news is you'll go back to nights the following week.

I really think he and I need to discuss what constitutes good and bad news, because I truly believe we are NOT on the same page here.

The only good thing is I have a vacation day coming up mid March, although working the Wednesday night before sort of cuts into it. I'm pretty sure he doesn't remember that yet. He will soon enough.

Keep it between the lines, and see you on the flip side.

First night back

The shift as a whole, went quite fast. Although we ran out of material at 1a.m. (poor planning on their part, once again, but no surprise) The temp they gave me actually knows How to work.(absolutely amazing) And Wants to work. (faints dead away) The first 20 miles of the drive home wasn't bad at all. The last 10 miles.......... Any way, just thought I'd let ya know, I didn't kill myself or anyone else on the way home. Keep it between the lines, and I'll see you on the other side.

Goodbye Days - Hello Nights

Here we go again. A sense of deja vu falls over me as the boss approaches and waves me aside. "Would you be willing to go on nights for the rest of the week?" (where have I heard this before.....)
"What hours and which days?" 4:30p.m. to 3 a.m. Wednesday-Friday.
So not only have I been pulled from the 3 new machines I just started running in December, to go back to my old department for the last 10 days, now I am headed back to nights to try and clean up the scheduling fiasco and get the orders finished for them. Let's hope the State Patrol is on the other side of the state this week, because last time I did a day to night swap without an adjustment period I saw 8 lanes instead of 4 on the drive home.

Mondays

I agree 100%

Storms

I took Monday off due to the crappy storm we got late Sunday. Ten inches of the frozen white crap, and high winds made travel hazardous. Now the weatherman has the audacity to say we might be getting another one this Sunday. W T F is with this, can't we get one in the middle of the week just to break things up?

Weather

COLD

not worthy

Dear ignorant Dallas fan,

Please accept this beautiful Green Bay weather as a token of appreciation for saying the Packers were not worthy to play in your stadium. May the ice and cold continue through at least Monday :D

Sincerely,
A Wisconsin resident

Made it

Well I made it through. The order is on it's way to the customer and I have had a couple of days to regain some sanity. According to some online friends I chat with I was "anti-social, cranky and threatening their appendages" (funny that almost sounds normal to me :P ) Anyhow, I can only hope we don't have another order like that for a while. Small orders are great, these huge ones, while nice knowing it creates job security, are very hard on this old body.

It's Basic Math - Update

At 9a.m. the Boss had a meeting with us about what hours we need to work to get the order completed on time. The schedule decided on was as follows:

Monday 10th - 10 hours
Tuesday 11th - 10 hours
Wednesday 12th - 10 hours
Thursday 13th - 10 hours
Friday 14th - 12 hours
Saturday 15th - 8 hours
Sunday 16th - OFF
Monday 17th - 12 hours
Tuesday 18th - 12 hours
Wednesday 19th - 12 hours
Thursday 20th - 12 hours

At 11 a.m. the meltblown blew something loose and ripped a hole out the back of the machine. No clue how long it will be to get it fixed. The previous schedule is now on hold. (sighssssssssssssssssss)

It's Basic Math

Have you ever given your Boss an OH CHIT moment? Well I had that opportunity today. And it all revolves around basic mathematics. Now, you need to know I am a machine operator, and he is Suppose to be the Boss. Today we were going over the Dusenberry (rewinder, paper machine) schedule. We have a hugeeeeeee order, 140,000 square meters, of material due out on Friday, 21st of January. We are scheduled to start running it on Monday the 17th. Just 4 days before. The truck needs to be loaded Friday, so that is not considered a production day.
The meltblown machine is scheduled to start producing the material on the 10th of January, it then has to cure roughly 72 hours, depending on the heat/humidity in the building. Then we cut it down to smaller rolls. So we won't have access to it until at the earliest, Friday the 14th.

Well I told the Boss today, there was no way, in that overheated southern region, we were going to be able to run 140k square meters of material in 4 days. He was like why not? I told him to grab his handy dandy calculator and figure out how long it took us to run the last order that was only 17k. It took just over 8 hours.

So, figure roughly 17k in an 8 hour shift.
140,000 / 17000 = 8.25 days (This is where his jaw dropped and he said, "brb.... oh how do you feel about working weekends?")
My normal days off are Fri-Sun. I work four 10 hour days.

Ummm ok, we now have doubled the time they had set aside to run this material. When you take into consideration 3 hours set up time, employee breaks and 64 hours straight running time, we need almost 70 hours to get this order out.We get the material Friday, even if we run said material for 8 hours Friday, Mon, Tues, Weds, and Thursday, we will NOT be done for the following Friday. NO CHIT . I kid you not, do the math.
5x8=40 (30 hours short)

So maybe we need to work 12 hour shifts, again do the math,
12x5= 60 (10 hours short, and already working one of my days off)

The only true, workable solution, is to work six 12 hour days, regardless of what they want, in order to get the order out on time. 2 of my 3 days off, 12 hours all the way through. Now, I won't lie, I love overtime pay, that is not my complaint here.

My complaint is Why The Friggin Heck did I need to tell them this??!!!

quote

If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to you and yours.

May it bring peace and prosperity to all.

Quote of the day

From "The Premature Burial"

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

Edgar Allan Poe