Unpected Pay Cuts

It feels like the expenses that we least expect hit us the hardest. I couple of months ago I ended up out of work for about 4 days due to tonsillitis. And let me tell you there's no worst feeling than seeing that check or should I say lack there of the following week. This week I'm sure a lot of people are having a similar experience as I am once again. I happen to be working on a job that starts at 8am which is blog worthy in it's own right. Well this snow has heavy impacted our schedule and I haven't been to work since Thursday. I've been able to make due but over the past few years I've really learned the importance of tightening my belt and having back up plans in case of situations such as these. I hope everyone is safe and maintaining out there.

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.

New Division

Hey folks I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday break, I know I did. But back to the work world. So I think I've been officially been traded from Mona Life Safety large projects to small contracts. I originally was only suppose to be helping the division out for a week but it seems the division likes the way I work so when large contracts requested me back they said I was tied up in a project and sent them another apprentice. I know to the big wigs a "helper's" is a "helper" but I have to admit I was feeling myself just a little bit lol. Anyway small contracts is a different experience because the jobs don't really last too long so it's kind of like getting to see a bunch of mini jobs start from finish. It's cool to get to see the job from the foreman's point of view and be a little more involved in everything. I've actually been seeing my awareness grow and I've been feeling more like a tech as of lately. The downside is I get sent around alot more and pretty much take my tools home with me everyday just in case I end up somewhere different in the morning. I can't complain though as long as I am developing new skills and learning I'm going to appreciate and make the best of every opportunity thrown my way.

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.