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Posted: 2004-01-10 at 20:33
Current mood: creative
Fortunately, I had the camera with me today and was able to get a picture of how cold the air was. I think I would have loved to get a picture of that one low flying jet spewing the contrail, but, I'll live.
Here is what I have:
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Posted: 2004-01-10 at 16:15
It's been cold out there around Buffalo. So cold, in fact, that I saw a jet shortly after takeoff, barely a mile up, producing contrails at such a low altitude.
I have a few pictures of all the condensation from heater exhaust from houses and a few buildings. I'll get those posted shortly.
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Posted: 2003-12-30 at 20:57
Current mood: 
amused
You know how folks have their "Plays With Trucks" or "Runs With Scissors" shirts? This is what I should have on a black sweatshirt:
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Posted: 2003-12-27 at 19:24
I now will watch three of the six second season episodes of Red Dwarf with the GF now. She is looking through a book she found and paid $1 for on Ebay.
Time to watch the episodes now. Eventually I'll have her on here.
Posted: 2003-12-27 at 11:30
Current mood: 
awake
We were blessed in Buffalo with a nice bit of leak lake defect effect snow on Christmas Day making getting around a little hazardous.
That day I was at my GF's sister's house off a street near Genesee and Bailey and the snow was much more voluminous there. Of course, the slugs in the city can't be bothered with paying people 2.5x to get out and plow the streets that day. Yet the NFTA could get their bus stands plowed out. Makes us wonder where the money really is.
I have no new signs at this time, but I will probably make up a few more soon.
The snow around is slowly melting off. Yesterday, I noticed places three miles north of me had very little snow at all! That's the unusual quirk of lake effect snow; one never knows where it's going to fall unless they keep their eyes on the weather radar very closely.
I have a few errands to run, then off to see the GF tonight after she gets out of work. She will most likely have her usual complaints of strange, demanding customers again. I'll eventually bring her into this wacky world to see what happens.
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Posted: 2003-12-25 at 18:38
Well, I spent some time with folks this afternoon. Some of them were playing with their XBOX games and this one off-road four-wheeling simulation. Sorry, folks, there's no way a Hummer can achieve 120+ MPH speeds in real life!
Anyway, I have more signs:
I would never want to walk down a street with this road sign posted:
What I think of school sometimes:
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Posted: 2003-12-24 at 16:39
Current mood: 
bored
Current music: someone is snoring...
I know, I'm a slug, I haven't been here in a while.
Before I get going, it's time to wish folks a merry Christmas, provided they are still hanging on to the person who hasn't posted in a while!
But I do have some silly and not-so-silly signage for everyone. Thank my usage of GhostScript and The GIMP for providing the tools to make these.
Anyway, here we go...
Many years ago, someone I knew wondered about those signs along the road near various nursing homes labeled "Home For Aged." Here's what he wanted to see:
You never know when one of these is needed outside of a public place in the parking lot:
If you are driving down a road and see this road sign, turn around and go back!
This one is a welcome county route sign if you are a fan of winning slot machines:
Have this sign up wherever there are lazy workers or customers:
UPDATE: I made that last sign a little smaller!
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Posted: 2003-06-23 at 18:55
Current mood: 
worried
I thought I have written about everything strange at the factory from smoking barrels to snapping pins on molds.
Well, apparently over the weekend, one of our 500 ton presses broke when its main clamp cylinder, rated at 500 tons, broke away at all four of its mount points. 500+ tons of hydraulic pressure with nowhere to go is definitely going to make something break. My guess is that a device called a limit switch or a hydraulic pressure sensor malfunctioned, causing the hydraulics to overpressure the cylinder, making it separate from its mounts. I am told that it made a loud bang, probably scaring folks in the plant. They probably thought there was an earthquake!
There is a pressure sensor somewhere in the high pressure hydraulic lines which drive the main cylinder. It is about 60 cm in diameter, and uses somewhere around 50 gallons of hydraulic fluid, colored red just like a car's automatic transmission fluid. Same stuff, and they work in about the same way. The sensor is supposed to tell the press's main computer to turn off a control valve which controls hydraulic fluid. Anyone here who has used a hydraulic wood splitter has seen the manually operated control valve which causes the ram to move in and out when the handle is pushed. Here, solenoids move the valve mechanism to cause fluid to flow so a computer has instant control over the line. Getting back to my point, I would say that the sensor failed to register the 500 ton pressure, so the pump, driven by a huge 75 horsepower electric motor, kept pumping in fluid to the cylinder at an ever-increasing pressure until the thing ruptured.
Nothing appeared to break away from anything, meaning there were no injuries or deaths.
The fun now will be to see if management blames us for what happened. Basically, there goes our month's profits in getting that cylinder replaced.
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Posted: 2003-06-21 at 14:55
Current mood: relieved
A few of my LJ friends know I have acquired a laptop and soon will be ready to have dialup access to it again, so my posts here can become more frequent.
Meanwhile, at work, I have had strange things happen from hydraulic cylinders showering hydraulic fluid on the floor to exploding air hoses to adhesive tabs that just won't stick. Good things include a large number of people in the plant which I have made friends with.
I have to edit a post with my birthday pictures in it, as I have uploaded slightly larger versions of them.
I will be posting more in the next few days, and hopefully quite often after that.
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Posted: 2003-04-25 at 17:14
Current mood: relieved
One of the injection molder computer controllers seems to be cursed with what we call a short int in C or C++ language terminology. The production counter on one went from 32767 and "wrapped around" to -32768. Hmmm... Was I the only one on the shop to know exactly what the problem was?
Well, yesterday, our station had a little help from a very new person. He really couldn't keep up with the last step of assembly, putting the grease on the part. So, today, we had him run the machine, which he could do much better on. We are just so short of people, it seems, that we get those who don't really know all the ins and outs of what we do. Eventually, we are supposed to have that problem corrected as we learn all the jobs we are supposed to.
I had also heard our machines were supposed to run out of Akulon brand material for molding the parts sometime before the end of the shift. That didn't happen. Had we run out, the machines would have been down for at least four hours, as it takes that long for the material to dry, and anything with nylon in it needs to be dried out before it is molded. So, we have these material dryers made by Conair (really!) which blow heated air through the chamber holding the material.
As far as tomorrow goes, I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do yet. At least it's Friday today!
Posted: 2003-04-23 at 17:41
Current mood: mellow
I didn't say anything last night, so I'll try my best to do two days' worth of entries now.
First, yesterday, I was working with the ladies at that one press instead of being their reliever. One of them had turned 40 yesterday, and we all ended up singing Happy Birthday to her. Then the conversation turned a bit strange, prompting me to mention a story I had regarding two women I used to work with several years ago. These two women had more men friends than women, but then there was this one man who seemed to be more of a woman emotionally. That reminds me of how I have heard other men described by their wives or SOs in their lives.
There was a problem with the parts being molded. Good thing we have an inspector handy to inspect the parts to see if they are coming out large. It's a good thing we can get the machine shut down when this happens, but I don't think we acted quickly enough.
And today, they missed me over at that table. I wandered off to the table which was running the tool set normally mounted in the press where the ladies were. They had the tooling switched around! Beware of molding problems, which we had a few at both presses. Some parts were coming out long, which is the reason we have to run each part through a gauge to insure the parts are of the correct length. If they are too long, the assemblers in a factory in Lockport (NY) can't get them to fit in the unit which takes the warm air from the radiator and cold air from outside and mixes them for passenger comfort.
And next week, we get the ISO 9000 audit. This means, if Dilbert is to be believed, everything has to be labeled by "Stupid Label Guy" to show we are documenting our procedures. No, actually, they want to make sure everything we do on the shop floor is based on something written down in documentation and that we are following them. But there is too much of a "dog and pony show" mentality by management to put on the show now to satisfy the auditor. Sheesh.
With one exception, I think I am getting along quite well with all the ladies in the plant. The one exception is one who doesn't get along with most anyone, really.
Posted: 2003-04-21 at 19:30
It was pleasantly warm yesterday on Easter Sunday. That was a good thing as I headed over to the Seneca Niagara Falls Gaming Center mostly for the Easter buffet they had. Normally, I hear of a lot of people at work going there over the weekend to play the slot machines. Well, I admittedly did that, too. I found one called "Ice Penguin" which seemed appropriate as the housemate has all these stuffed penguins around.
After I got back, I saw young girls outside playing in their Easter dresses. I don't think they could have had a better day for it. In fact, I don't think I remember an Easter Sunday this warm in quite some time.
At work today, machines weren't working as we switched over to a centralized vacuum system to load material into the machines. (We affectionately refer to the device as the Comet system.) Our problem is that there is so much piping which the material has to go through that there are times material gets stuck around turns and elbows in the conduit. One can hear the tinging sound of material going through the conduit as the vacuum loaders draw material through. Another problem, I believe, is that there are still some burrs in the recently cut conduit which haven't been scoured smooth by use, and material can get stuck on them. Don't worry about metal geting in the plastic, as there are powerful permanent magnets put in the path of the material below the vacuum loader to sift out iron particles.
As there were still some folks off from work today, there was a shortage of people on the floor. Our shift foreman had to actually run a machine to relieve an operator so he could take breaks. This is allowed under the collective barganing agreement our union has when there is indeed a shortage. I, also, had to function as a relief today for the maximum of four operators at one station. It was strange, in that I never did two of the four operations before in that exact way, but did similar operations with different parts.
As we are allowed to have radios with speakers, we occasionally get the "radio wars" going on. The table I was relieving on had to listen to the local hip-hop station while the neighboring table had one of the local oldies stations on. My only problem with the hip-hop format is that the rotation is so heavy that I hear the same thing about 2 1/2 hours later! I said to the young woman who brought in the radio, "Talk about heavy rotation!" She chuckled at that; all of them were glad I didn't mind it on. One woman is a bit older than I am and is already a grandmother, so she's one hip grandma, I guess!
To me, I guess, it felt like production was a bit slow today, but a lot of that is from all the downtime from materials problems.
In case anyone I know in our work group reads this, I don't want to lose the brass bar! We'll never know when we'll need it again!
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Posted: 2003-04-19 at 11:05
Current mood: quiet
I changed my userpic after all these months! Isn't that thrilling?
So today's one of those nice days out, because of that, what am I doing inside at a computer? I'll probably be stepping out and going somewhere interesting Real Soon Now, as Dave Barry says.
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Posted: 2003-04-18 at 17:49
Current mood: relieved
I have been so busy with other things that I haven't had a chance to say what I've wanted to here.
First, I want to say that a co-worker of mine shares the same 7-digit phone number in my area code as a good friend of mine who is on my friends list. When the co-worker gave me her number, I had to look at the number again as I thought I was seeing things. I figure that there's a one in ten million chance of that event occurring, so if something like that can happen, anything is possible! And right now, I need that kind of luck to make things work out for me.
So, back to the work-related things going on today. We had a machine run out of "mold-in" foam yesterday. The foam finally came in today by 8:30 this morning so we could get started on molding our quota of parts. I have not performed the operation on this part before for an entire shift, so it took me a little while to get used to the pace the press actually runs. And even then, the press operator was running a little on the slow side so I could stay caught up.
Our QA inspector took this past week off, so we had the third shift inspector stay 4 hours after that shift was over and the second shift inspector come in 4 hours early. Our inspector came in to say hi to us, as I believe she had to pick up an Avon order which she placed with someone else in the shop. Now I should add a word about our group's second shift inspector. She had come over from Russia about five years ago and has that incredibly industrious attitude which her body language communicates to me. Well, besides the fact that she is quite attractive. I remember when we had our initial training, we were all supposed to name something we were proud of. She mentioned the fact that her decision to come to the U.S. to live was something she was most proud of.
And, no, I still don't believe we're getting the whole truth from the media as to exactly what's going on in Iraq. I still am wondering about the infighting in remote places which is most likely going on. I'm still thinking about the exact number of civilians killed when ordnance like laser-guided bombs failed to guide themselves to the correct target.
I'll try to be updating a little more often over the next few days... I have a new userpic I want to post, too.
Posted: 2003-04-09 at 17:29
Current mood: 
contemplative
Procedures were changed around a bit at work. Even though I figured how to keep up with a fast press, I still have extra steps to do today than I did yesterday. Yesterday, our little team was able to make a quota rate and sustain it by 1/4 part per hour throughout the shift.
There was also some internecine warfare (is that really too harsh of a phrase to use?) in one of the work teams. One woman just doesn't get along with another one in there, and the two are not supposed to be working together. So the louder of the two headed over to the team where the other one was located, trying to help out. The plant foreman had to get involved. And it got to the point that a third woman wanted me to join that team. I think we can snag her Friday as two of our four people will not be in. One has a medical appointment and the other is using a floating holiday.
Maybe spring is coming! Temperatures should be returning to the 60s by the weekend and holding throughout the early part of next week. Then again, it's so difficult to accurately predict the weather on the windward side of the Great Lakes anyway. That's what keeps this area so challenging.
Posted: 2003-04-07 at 19:40
Current mood: curious
I, on three different occasions, decided to make some social observations at the Walden Galleria. I took a look at couples walking around in the mall and wanted to estimate how many were holding each other's hands. I found very few.
While this is not scientific, certain things I noticed that were in common with the ones I saw were:
Posted: 2003-04-07 at 19:31
Current mood: snowy
I felt like a laboratory rat in a bizarre industrial engineering experiment at work, as did the rest of us in the work group. But I was the only one who was bounced all over the place doing different things, about 5 in all during the shift. At least I have done all the things before, in that I was helping everyone stay caught up with their work.
The experiment was intended to see what kind of output we could generate on a line. It required us to cheat a bit and use extra people, hence my bouncing around all over the place. One of us in the group cannot "bounce" as she is 7.5 months pregnant. We'd be very angry if she were made to do so.
Then it started to snow about halfway through the shift. And I have this funny feeling municipalities put away most of the snow removal equipment for the year. So I'm trying not to slip and slide out there when I walk around.
Posted: 2003-04-03 at 19:05
Current mood: 
anxious
THe network died yesterday where I was before I got to post! So I never did! So...
Yesterday at work was quite busy! I felt like Lucy in the candy factory, but I would have burned my mouth by stuffing it with hot plastic parts! I don't want to burn myself again!
The reason for the busy day was that the press's "cycle time" between shots was a bit fast, about four seconds. I have all this trimming to do of plastic parts between shots, and if the cycle time is quite short, the result is an exercise for the reader. But such haste seemed to give us a fair number of parts yesterday. Fortunately, before we did our end-of-shift catchup shutdown, our friendly process controller put the four seconds back on the cycle time. That's where I determined my estimate of being four seconds too short.
After work, I went out to eat at a restaurant where I received a free meal last week because the manager had to swipe half my table to seat six very hungry men from the Boston area. I got into an "ice-breaking" conversation with the waitress because I saw on her note pad the phrase "Support the troops, not the war." I told her how I came to form my anti-war sentiment. I had been calling El Presidente the "poster child for the stupid and industrious." Over the past few days, I guess I was wrong. Maybe he's more of the poster child for the stupid and lazy. Meaning if he didn't have a rich daddy, he'd be living in a stinking hot trailer in some Texas trailer park guzzling his booze. I mentioned other observations about civilian casualties and what I fear could happen with a prolonged occupation. She was happy that someone else out there shared her opinion. I also mentioned how, as a veteran, I had some problems with the War College-indoctrinated mentality of "close with the enemy" as though it was World War II. This war could easily turn into something resembling Vietnam if the soldiers aren't paying attention. With a teaching degree, she, too, is "displaced" into a Catholic school and a restaurant in order to find enough money to live on. And I fear things will get worse for education in the State of New York over the next several months.
On to somewhat happier things...
Today at work, the machine was running at its normal speed for about five hours. Some of the parts were coming out a bit burned, though. For this particular application, some browning of the nylon isn't a problem. The car's driver or passenger doesn't look at these parts! Then the press decided to lose a few bolts securing the carriage. Remember my previous post about the shuttle and the carriage. While the press was down, the burning nylon was caused by a defective thermocouple, causing the temperature controller to think the injector nozzle temperature was cooler than it was. My first guess that there was a problem should have bee the fact that the injector was puffing smoke like a chain smoker sucking down his Marlboros. I mentioned the smokin' injector to our process controller who directed the thermocouple repair.
Also, we received the somewhat happy news about the missing spring was not caused by our shift. Another shift processed the part and shipped it to the customer without a spring.
When the machine goes down, we have so many parts to finish work on that we are doing what we can at our pace to get everything caught up. We were finished at the right time to allow the recently repaired machine to be restarted.
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Posted: 2003-04-01 at 20:18
Current mood: burnt
Well, first of all at work, the press was running, but it was found they were running with the wrong material in the press. Both were the aforementioned "PA66-MF40" type resin, the nylon 6-6/40% mineral fill type, but it was DuPont's "Minlon" brand resin rather than DSM Engineering's Akulon brand resin. There are different fillers used in resin and it caused the parts to not shrink as much when they cooled. We had parts which were too large. Not good for this application. The customer was not happy. One difference between the two resins is that Akulon is a bit darker. That's probably from a different mineral content compared to Minlon using a lighter color of mineral. Many parts in cars are made with a nylon-glass-mineral mixture because the nylon resists heat and the fibers give the molded product incredible strength, but still be able to be machined if necessary, like metal. When the parts are warm, it's sure easier to trim the flash because the nylon gets soft without deforming.
While running that resin in the press, I ended up handling a hot part wrong and burned my left wrist on a freshly molded door valve paddle. Parts come out of the tooling at temperatures of about 180 degrees F, which is the return temperature of the chilled water pumped throught the tooling. I did the correct thing and reported it to the appropriate people and received first aid. I have this little red mark on my wrist still. Nothing horribly serious, it appears.
It took a few hours before the Akulon resin was located in Lockport and was run by truck to our warehouse and everything was ready to go. I was able to run the press for 45 minutes before we had a "team meeting" with the management consultant the company retains. That ran late, but we do get paid for the extra time spent at work. There is no overtime for it, because our work week is 37.5 hours long.
Posted: 2003-03-28 at 19:35
I think that "engineer" who I referred to as beiing overimpressed with her own importance decided that some of our people are too close to each other for final parts inspections. They are supposed to be farther away than they are. There are times I'd like to see if these people who seemed to dispose of all their common sense when they picked up their ticket punch college diploma. It seems to smack of entitlement, sometimes.
There was so much confusion regarding parts at times that I was just glad the shift ended when it did.
And to think it was warm enough out today that folks dusted off their Harleys and decided to go on a ride and enjoy the weather. One guy I work with wanted to get his bike out and ride it in to work today, the only day in March he would have been able to do so. We think there will be snow showers by Monday.
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