Easy Money

So I think today might have been one of the easiest days of my career. You know you're in for a treat when you're foreman says nah you don't need your tools but you might want to grab your ipod and some headphones. This morning for the first time I did something called a load bank. In nutshell you hook the generator up to these massive heaters that you can adjust the wattage on and slowly increase the load until it is at 80% of the generator capacity and hold that for 3 hours. Well basically what that amounts to is hooking up some heaters, sitting in a lawn chair and getting up every so often to turn up the heat lol. On a side note I must say I'm pretty pleased with the diversity of work I been seeing with Mona. During the week I work on fire alarm which is pretty technical and a specialty not every mechanic can say they have training in. And on the weekend I usually do prevent maintainenance which consist of tightening and clean panels, switchgears transformers, disconnects and all that that good stuff. The work can get a little mindless sometimes but the overtime is great and I get to see different equipment set ups in a variety of different buildings from old to new. I think if things keep up I might end up a pretty well rounded journeyman in 3 years.

Practice Makes Perfect

So last week finally came of course some of my favorite work which happens to be running pipe. It's been a couple of months so I was pretty excited to show myself because I consider myself pretty decent when it comes to pipe. Everything started off nice and smooth than for some reason I came across a back to back 90 that I just could not get right. At first I thought maybe I measured wrong and after the second one came up short I started feeling a little pathetic. Than after bending a 90 and having it come up a little short I said OK somethings off. Well after taking a look in my trusty pipe bending text book I realized I was measuring centers the whole time instead of back to back. I had a little duh moment with 90s you always have to measure from the back of the bend and if you measure centers you have to account for the diameter of the pipe. I didn't have a problem with my saddles or offsets so it just goes to show how just a little lack of practice can make something so simple so difficult. I was kind of a good reminder for me though to stay focused and not get to complacent.