Parking

I can't explain how good it feels to arrive to a job that has free parking. During the beginning of my apprenticeship I worked mostly in Virginia and Rockville, MD where most of the time the parking was free so I didn't realize how lucky I was at the time. Since I've transferred and a little bit before that I've been working mainly and DC and parking has basically become another bill. I used to carpool to cut the cost but as of recently I've been moving around too much to set something up. Over the past month I'd say I've spent about 200 on parking. Even the metro can be costly because it's still 5 dollars to park along with the fair so in may case I'd still break even. But hey those are the detriments of working in the city. My advice to anyone working in DC is to find a meeting place and carpool if possible, and get to a job early to do a little driving around to find the best garage nearby. In the meantime I'll just suck it up and get tough.

A Craftsman is only as good as his tools

When I first came into the trade I have to have had the worst tools ever. I came to the job with a huge bulky pouch and a set of green commercial electrician tool kit, I guess the green basically summed it up. Well needless to say those tools were quickly a thing of the past and I wish I would have saved my money and brought the quality ones the first time. The extra money you may spend on most of your tools really goes a long way. I couldn't even cut MC with my first set of side cutters. I think I'm starting to develop a pretty decent tool bag now that I'm a little more knowledgeable. It seems like everytime I think I have just about everything I'll use regularly as an electrician I'm sent to a job where everything I have is basically irrelevant. One journeyman used to make fun of me because my screw drivers weren't big enough, now I'm doing fire alarm and my journeyman mess with me because my screw drivers are too big. I hope the new set of first years don't make the same mistake I did and spend the extra bucks on the right tools because I sure wish I did.

Not just pipe and wire

So lately in school and on the job I've been seeing the more technical side of the electrical trade. At Mona I've been a part of the life safety division which is basically fire alarm. Now fire alarm systems deal with a lot of control and have to be programmed which is usually done by 3rd party companies. Well to my surprise Mona actually have their own techs who are part of the local 26. These are guys who have seen the construction side of things and tenant side of things just like any other mechanic. It was kind of inspiring to me to see that there are more options out there for me.

At school we have been getting into dealing a lot with frequency, bandwidth, capacitors, inductors, and just about everything comprises a circuit. Now if you look at any circuit board such as motherboard from your laptop you will find all of these components plus more. The fact that I'm starting to understand the functions of these little things that used to be foreign to me makes me really start considering more possibilities for the future. I can probably be content dealing with construction for a while because I do enjoy working with my hands, but it I also have a very technical mind and think I could enjoy designing some systems. Who knows where the future will take me but its nice to know that I have one.

Rough Day in the Office

So lately at Mona things have been a little frustrating for me in the fire alarm (life safety) division. The foreman I was working with went to a new contractor so I've been bouncing around for the pass the month or so. Well being an apprentice seems to make the new people I come across doubt my ability. Now granted being only a year deep in the trade there is a world of things I will learn and a ton of space to improve, but at the same time there's only one way to learn and this isn't rocket science. The real thing that has been bothering me the most is that when I'm working with a journeyman and there's an issue completely our task in a timely manner instead of stating the reason I've pretty much been thrown under the bus by statements like "well you know Mike's only a 2nd year apprentice". That statement right there just burns me up but I digress.

So yesterday I was was feeling pretty vindicated because I had to organize some material and wasn't a part of the same team I was working with before and the same task we all were working together on the previous day took a little more than twice the time without me. I felt like I dealt a little smack to the face of the whole "well you know Mike's only a 2nd year apprentice" bs.

Well today I was feeling pretty good moving at a good pace demoing and rewiring some duct detectors. One of the journeymen happen to come across one he believed to be inaccessible because of the location. We always mess with eachother so I talked a little trash on how I would make it happen and show him how its done all that good stuff. So I flew through the one I was working on so I could get a shot at this detector and possible bring some credit to my name instead of just being known as the "help". Well it was in a pretty tough location but after moving the 2' by 2' tile while the fixture still attached I managed to get most of the work done as far as the wiring and just had to remove the detector. At this point I just had enough space for my arms but I needed to get my upper body in the ceiling as well and the fixture was getting caught ont he grid preventing the tile from moving any further. So I decided to take the cover off to make a little more room. That still wasn't enough so I noticed the screws holding up the fixture were already loose so I just took them out let the fixture hang and this gave me the space I needed. Well I managed to get the detector out and I was feeling like the man. So I began to put the fixture back and while doing so I was thinking about all the trash I was going to talk to the journeyman and just as im putting the last screw up for the plate bam the plate nicks the wire and causes a big arc than the light goes out. Boy did that suck I felt like doodoo. Luckily it was the emergency circuit we just had to cut the feed wirenut a new piece of wire down to the fixture and everything was all good but it was definitely a humbling experience.

Big Move

This week I have finally moved out of Baltimore and about 35 miles south which is a lot closer to DC and Virginia. I've been traveling on average 100 miles a day for about a year now and I'm extremely excited that I will be cutting that in half. Being an electrician we travel to a lot of different job site locations to the point it becomes second nature so I know this week I am going to feel spoiled.

Experience

Well this week I have been learning a valuable lesson. I'd have to admit doing fire alarm can be pretty boring sometimes especially as an apprentice since we're not always delegated the most complex tasks. But the past few days I've been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to have my own long pipe runs. It's just some 3/4 pipe which it feels like I've ran thousands of times before, but I've usually been making bends and assisting in the thought process but never actually just my own run start to finish. These few days have made me realize that the little things that come with experience are sometimes the hardest. It felt like I wasted lots of times just having to run back and forth to forget some material that I probably should have thought about before hand. Another thing I had to work on was my soft touch. One of my runs was on a wall with slight angle changes neck to a plumbers pipe. So I felt it would only be craftman like to match all the kicks in the plumbers pipe and have everything match up perfect with the wall. Let me tell you this took quite the soft touch and mines needed a lot of work. At the end of the day I've been accomplishing everything and my journeyman thinks my pipe work looks pretty good, so I'm happy to be gaining experience and I definitely notice my own improvement.

The pain of not studying

I know I'm going to get a good lecturing for this one but here I go. So yesterday was the usually bi-weekly class session which of course comes with the usual test. I'll admit that I don't have the best studying habits but I'm a pretty quick learner and I usually go through the lessons and make sure I understand everything before it's testing time. Well this time around I kept pushing back studying til it was the last weekend before the test, but I also happen to be going to NY to visit my family at that weekend so I figured I just bring my books along and study in my downtime. Well I did glance at the books second and than once again pushed studying back figuring that I was pretty comfortable so Monday would be enough time to touch up on my weak spots, which probably would of worked if I didn't leave my books in NY at my mother's house along with the covenanted lesson packet :-|. The test ended up being extremely nerve racking for me just because I had recall stuff I learned 2 weeks ago. I ended up with a mediocre grade which was disappointing but I definitely learned a lesson. Procrastination is never a good thing.