The Big Project Night - Debriefing

8:45.

Drop dead time for returning the building to production was 10:00, and we would have had a couple more hours to go if the shutdown went all the way to 10:00.

Instead, we returned the building to production at 7:00 and left at 8:45.

Wasn't perfect, some dummies happened and at least one mild crisis, but we blew through them. We found some timing thingys that we changed on the fly (and at 5 AM, when looking at one-lines after many hours, you get as many eyeballs on the plan as possible so you don't end up in meetings.) We hammered it.

I am beat senseless, I've been sleeping since noon (breakfast with Sweetie, I earned and enjoyed steak and eggs ...in a restaurant full of people who still did not have power... I then passed the hell out), that wheely-deal I use instead of crutches was brilliant but hard on the knee. I need a tub full of ice. And whiskey and soda. And a straw.

Tomorrow's autopsy will be just fine. And not to take full credit for this thing, everything nowadays is collaborative, especially in a mission critical power facility, but it has been my show, and I am limping on air.

And thanks for the luck!

Need...sandwich...fnord...

The Big Project Night

Dear readers,

I've been non compos Mentos for a couple weeks, in the furious run-up to a big project at work, my project. I've run some projects, been a foreman, sub-foreman before, but I've been trying to get behind a desk for a few years, and this is a fairly heavy duty project, upgrading and new footprint for the power harness in one of our buildings. I am looking at this as both an audition for that desk, and a feather in my cap for my current position (which is, admittedly, nowadays, mostly admin/planning, but I still must climb around switchgear all too often...)

There have been three prior phases in this whole project over the last 18 months, all smaller, difficult enough as standalone tasks, but tonight is the cap to all 4 phases. Twenty months of planning, the last six months just for tonight (and yes, if you look at that calendar math, this thing has evolved significantly from conception, when after the first phase we realized we had the chance and support to do big things.)

And now, following three furious weeks of construction, and troubled sleep, we do several cutovers tonight under no sleep. I start at 6pm, expect to be done by noon tomorrow, have hopes of being done by 10am, have fears of being done at 2pm, in which case there will be meetings. 

REPRESENTATION OF PALEO'S BRAIN

Wish me luck.

Regular posting to resume this week, with a short post tomorrow informing y'all of my employment status.

TTFN,  

paleo

Sunday Work Soundtrack

Get up and go is non-existent, need some energy.

Absolute damn classic album - NoFX, Ribbed



Probably need caffeine too. And for my f'in foot to work...

A Message To My Sweetie

Sweetie stayed up all night. 2nd night in a row. Doing stuff, yay!, but needs some sleep.

Hey babe:



Love You!!!

I Am Wearing My Heart On My Sleeve - Tuesday Night Music Club

I have a post ruminizing through my little grey cells - Tebow, Uncle Duke, The Importance of Pat Boone In The Development Of The American Blues Scene, a cat or two p'raps. Tomorrow?

Meantime, enjoy!

Or something.

Let's Talk For A Couple Minutes About Fraud

Due to the eagle-blue eyes of my Sweetie, we have narrowly avoided disaster - a credit card was cloned, probably at a local unmanned parking lot, used at a Bed Bath and Beyond in farthest Canada, and probably a Tim Horton's, as I am certain our fraudster wanted to 'blend'.

Sweetie approached me with this situation carefully, knowing that her ears would be punished by my roundly damning humanity, my cries to the universe, yea verily, and that the lord is a rotten bastard, and such. She was not disappointed. Starting with parking lots and wending my may towards goddammit moose, I covered most of the bases, with invective classic and newly wrought. She drank coffee and looked for lawnmowers online, cowering at my rage.

Once my grains were spent, I did run my run-on sentences through a sieve, and came up with something really obvious, perhaps I'm the last man on earth to catch this, if so derp.

Most of us have had to use pay-at-the-pump, pre-pay (or even leave your card with the cashier while filling). Used a card at a retailer where they never check your card, or ID, or where they did not even require a signature below a certain amount. Used a card at an unmanned parking lot. All of this is ripe for abuse and fraud. For unmanned card stations, at convenience stores and grocery store express lanes, criminals have little devices they can attach to the card station to clone your number. If you have to leave your card, say at a bar when running a tab, it takes nothing for someone to copy all your info. I spoke with a cashier at a grocery store once and asked why she did not check my ID. She replied they were instructed not to. The store manager came when I asked to discuss this policy, and gave some bullshit answer about how, by checking cards, they assume some liability in case of fraud. 

I ended up being 'asked' to leave, primarily convinced they just wanted to close their eyes to any potential issues.

I was so, so wrong.

What it is, I'm certain, is that merchants love fraud.
LOVE fraud.
With flowers and hot-n-cold running scotch.

A stolen credit card buys and buys and buys, until the electronic system stops it. The thief doesn't buy ramen, screw that, prime rib, baby! Doesn't buy one towel when a bedroom set will do. 

AND THE RETAILER DOESN'T LOSE A CENT.

This is a love made in heaven. Sunzabitches.

Happy Pulpit Freedom Day! Shall We Have Cake Or Death?

Today is Pulpit Freedom Day, the one day every year when the poor, put-upon, homophobic, gynophobic, semitiphobic, TV network owning, Lear Jet possessing, un-taxed christian majority of the United States leaps free of their shackles, finally letting their voices be heard, the truth of teh Holy Aryan Bearded Dude trumpeting forth, not fluting forth, or clarineting forth, bunch of wussys, TRUMPETS!

Today's topic:

Marriage Equality. The number of states with either full or partial marriage equality is slowly increasing, with a particular bump recently. Christians are running scared, as 100% of the population of each state with marriage equality have turned. Iowa? Rump riot. Minnesota? My divorce has finalized and I have taken off with my brother in law on a happy honeymoon/casino vacation. New Mexico explicitly accepts out-of-state same-sex marriages, and now nothing grows.

On this most underground of holidays, you round white fucks, subsidized by my tax dollars - I happily pay my taxes, when it helps people. Schools, law enforcement, fire departments. A defensive military ( I am not, however, especially hip to foreign entanglement, dronezzzzz, black ops/wetwork.) Hospitals and health care. Feeding, clothing, roofing, and heating people who currently do not have shit - you whacky paranoid religious bozos got yours, so, and I say this with all love, suck on a tailpipe. Self-immolation - its what's for dinner. Martyr your ass - please.

"People, children, we gather here to remind ourselves that teh qweers are coming for YOU! They want to t-u-u-r-r-r-n you, to make you icky! Men of Gaw-awd, do you really want to suck a cock?!? Women, though, lesbianism is NOT in the bible, just make sure to share the video. I, myself, have weld-ded, 8 guage diamondplate to my A-nal, dirty spot, much the same as the early MEN of GAWD were... eatenbylionsintehcoliseum. (Honey, I need the pepto, please!)"

These horrible, sick bastards, fleecing their flock, and robbing the treasury. I don't have anything in particular against faith - I am not a hard atheist, even having a place for a 'prime mover' sort of thing. Do not try to tell me that such PM gives any particular shit about us, nor is the mover necessarily anything we could understand, especially the popular, anthropomorphized Sky Fairy. These immoral jackholes certainly can live on the high hog on their follower's dime if the followers willingly cough it up - people are allowed to be dumb. But on my dime - you spout off about politics, you become a political player, you pay the entry fee, and you twats owe us a fortune.

Catholics are involved as well, even as Ex-Pope Jackboots the Fingerer-Forgiver luxuriates in the Vatican, convinced he's earned his retirement and place in Heaven. But, Catholics have their own martyred lion-poop today, Matt Birk, of the Minnesota Vikings and Baltimore Ravens, who refused to meet with the President and the rest of the Ravens in the traditional White House congratulations to the Super Bowl team. 

Let's ignore the fact that we have greater fish to fry in the country than the winner of a gambling event (unless it is the Packers). But even the Pack has no business taking up the time of the damned leader of the free world, 'specially when the free world is fucked, 'specially when a significant number of the fuck-ers are holding Pulpit Freedom Day.

Catholic Matt Birk had a problem with the leader of the free world allowing that women have the freedom to bodily autonomy, you know, crazy talk, and that Planned Parenthood has been a leader in protecting and enabling aforesaid bodily autonomy, you know, crazy talk. 

Matt Birk was on a Super Bowl team, received a Super Bowl ring, with a murderer, Ray Lewis. Didn't say a thing. Didn't return the ring. Seems if he gets the ring, murder is fine? Matt Birk played on a Vikings team, a good Vikings team, that nearly made a couple of Super Bowls, with a bunch of players implicated in the Love Boat Scandal. Never heard a peep, locally or nationally. Seems if Matt Birk can get close to the Super Bowl with a whole damn bunch o' sinners, hooker-fondling suddenly becomes moral as hell. Or perhaps Birk has taken a role model, Mark Chmura, who refused to meet President Clinton because hummers. That would be Mark Chmura the rapist. Seems rape is cool if you hate Planned Parenthood. 

Dear Pastors/Preachers/Priests of America,

Shut up.

Love, paleo

My Big Break?

News Item:

My foot is pretty hammered, plantar fasciatus and tendonitis. I'll be on crutches for 3 weeks minimum, possibly longer.

• Pros: As much as it sucks, this is a goddam wakeup call. I at least hurt somewhat all the time, but I am starting to suffer far too often. I hope like hell I can take this as the wake-up call needed.
• Cons: Jayzuz H. Bejeebers, I have so much to do, and while I am perfectly capable of wasting time when I have it, forced inactivity makes me insane.

News Item:

Work is allowing me to work with crutches and a kneewalker (coming Monday - PREPARE...JOKES!)

• Pros: Need to work, need the money.
• Need to leave the house every so often - if I start to blog about the merits of Gordon Ramsey, shoot me a lot.
• Cons: We have a very large facility, several buildings, mostly one floor, yeah, but still a big area.
• Crutches suck and hurt, my poor tenderized foot hurts.
• I have to learn to sit patiently and stuff, and rely on my paduan to be my eyeballs. I am nervous by nature, and in a critical power facility, I prefer my eyeballs.

Big News Item:

I am expecting feelers from the BBC any day now.

• Pros: I will be many firsts, the first American Doctor, the first vaguely round Doctor. I'll be the first Doctor since Nine to have a watch jacket. The first Doctor to be wild about curry vindaloo.
• I already have a Tom Baker scarf and a sonic toothbrush.
• Cons: BBC best either put the new series on the BBleepometer or move it to after the watershed - I can be a bit fucking salty.

I certainly like Eleven's universe, River Song, Craig, I liked Pond a lot but LOVED Rory, the TARDIS being alive in a particular form, and I hate to see him go, but it gives me something to strive for, to match and surpass.

Beddy-bye-bye-bye all!