What we already know...

My dad sent me this today...

For those of us associated with the auto industry this is something we
know in our hearts. If you have friends that are not involved with
the automotive market then please send this on...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7YBjjLKLd0

Elephants

This sums up how my week is going so far.

We're standing here and one of our guys says, "Hey! Look! There's something going on over at the GM plant across the street. There's cops everywhere!"

We all rush to the windows, and sure enough, there's cop cars and a line of people? walking up the road. We surmise that GM had announced some layoffs this morning for early ’09 and Orion’s one of the effected plants, so they must be picketing.

We stand for a bit more...and look...and I'm like, "Um guys. Those aren't people. Those are elephants."

"What? Are you smoking something?"

I replied, "Um yeah. They're elephants."

We look...sure enough. They're elephants.

The circus is at the Palace, which is very near to my office. Apparently, elephants have to come in on train, not by semi, and the nearest train depot is the GM plant...so they must have dropped the elephants at the plant and are walking them to the Palace.

You want to bring all productivity to a screeching halt in an office? Walk some elephants up the road.

Owies Update

Wow...three blog posts in one day! I need to work 70 hours a week more often, maybe I'll post more then! Or not.

Anyhoo.

This week, I was given the all clear to take the bandage off and stop wrapping up my hand like a mummy! I have to continue keeping it clean, and have begun putting Vitamin E on it to minimize scarring, which the doctors say there should be very little of. I only have to put a band-aid on it when I'm going to be in a situation that is particularly dirty, other than that, they want me to keep it open as much as possible.

Pardon the somewhat grossness of the following links!

This was the injury about an hour after it happened.

This was the injury yesterday.

So, needless to say, we've come a long way in just over 2 weeks.


The good news is, that as a result of this little mishap, there will be much more guarding put around the conveyor itself to prevent someone else from getting hurt, which makes things a bit easier for me to deal with. I guess you could say that I was taking the tryout and debug of the system to a bit of an extreme.

:)

One more day...

It's been a very long week, and Sophia and I feel about the same right now...

Owies...

Yes, I still have fingers...they're just hiding.

I will spare you the details, but I had a small run-in with a conveyor that has resulted in almost a week off of work, and that nifty little wrap job seen above.

There are no broken bones, and nothing will need to be grafted, but I will have to contend with quite the little (ha! little...ha!) friction burn for the next little bit. According to the doctor, everything is progressing nicely, and I was cleared to go back to work this Monday. With any luck, I'll be able to ditch the gauze and the wrapping on Friday.

In my brief respite, I have learned a few things, primarily that you never really realize how much you use your other hand, until you CAN'T USE YOUR OTHER HAND.

It would have been nice for the staff of the clinic to inform me that I needed to take a whiz quiz (to insure I wasn't intoxicated on the job at the time of injury), before they splinted me and wrapped me up like a mummy. Really. How was I supposed to manage THAT?

The nurse (who also did my x-rays) was very sympathetic. She looked at me and said, "I'm so sorry sweetie. You've had quite the day." Damn near in tears I looked at her and said, "I have gotten my hand bitten by a conveyor. You guys gave me a tetanus shot. I have been wrapped up and x-rayed. I have cramps. And now...now you want me to pee in a cup? Can I just go home?"

As a public service announcement, and this is key, do not assume that just because you are standing in front of the pharmacist, with a hand wrapped up beyond recognition, and have handed them a prescription for Darvocet, that they will have the foresight to give you a non-childproof cap.

Of course, in your fog of pain, you will not realize this until you get home, and by then it is too late. Try as you might, that bugger isn't going to budge. What will result, in a stroke of genius, is that you brace the damn pill bottle against the splint, and place it upside down on the counter, and push down and twist, without dropping the bottle. There will be much cursing, but eventually you will get it open, and by golly, without sending any pills flying.

Ladies, this next part applies to only us, as the boys will never understand. Bras. This is usually a two handed procedure, to put on, and take off. After I was dropped off at my house last Tuesday, I wanted nothing more than to change into my jammies and just sleep. I stopped short when I realized that I could not twist and bend the way I needed to in order to take off my bra. I tried, somewhat half-assed, but gave up at the first twinge of pain in my elbow from trying to contort myself. Lord knows I didn't need anything else injured at that point! I dealt with being poked in the boob by an underwire for the rest of the afternoon and evening.

Joe came up that night to take care of me, and brought me pizza from Dolly's, and also dumped the Motrin 600, Darvocet, and antibiodic into a freezer jam container, because I knew that I could get into that easily. Pizza was not as easily consumed, as I managed to flip it upside down on to the carpet. It was good to curl up with him and just stop moving. He also assisted in the bra situation.

*sigh*

Joe left me sleeping the next morning, and I woke up with a very painful reminder of the previous day's events. It became very clear, very quickly, that cooking was not going to be easy, or quick. You need two hands to cut things, so fruit was out, unless I was chomping into it. Takes two hands to steady a bowl to either crack eggs into, or pour cereal and milk into, so that was out.

*taps nails on counter*

This was not going to be easy. I needed food to take with the antibiodics and the pain meds, so not eating wasn't an option. I finally got myself into some cut up watermelon I had in the fridge, but not before dropping a piece on my bed, which currently has my white sheets on it.

Clarice came up that night to help me out with things like the garbage and cleaning up the kitchen a bit. She also took me to Kroger to buy some food that was a bit more accessible, yet that wasn't going to cause me to gain 50 lbs before this was all over. When we got home, she sliced up a cucumber for me and stuck it in the fridge. (God I love that woman.)

Sherri stopped by with a basket of goodies from her, Melissa, and Stacey. Little chocolates, these divine little snack cakes from Papa Joe's, two cookbooks, a food and wine magazine, and the DVD of Princess Bride. It's good to have girlfriends. :)


By Friday, I was determined to make eggs for breakfast. I needed real food. I'd had leftover pizza, canned ravioli, the entire cucumber Reesey had cut up, one of the little snack cakes, and pretty much whatever I could get my hand on that I could open.

I placed the bowl on my counter, removed two eggs from the carton and set about trying to figure out how I was going to do this. I do not doubt the purpose of the stupid splint they had me in, but good god, could that thing get any more in the way? I braced the bowl against the splint, and kinda sorta successfully cracked the two eggs into the bowl.

Triumph!

Now to scramble them. I did an okay job, and managed to only get egg on the counter and not the rest of me. I will not lie when I tell you that it was the best scrambled eggs and toast I've tasted in a long time.

As I was cleaning up the mess, I had made, I grabbed for my canister of Clorox wipes from under the counter. Anyone who has ever used this wonderful product, knows that getting them to stay in the little holder in the cap is damn near impossible, a similar situation with baby wipes, and good luck getting them off the roll.

I tried and I tried to get these little buggers out, and when I finally grasped one, with the canister between my knees, I now was fighting to rip one off. I only needed one, maybe two, and here I was, suddenly waving around a string of about 47 of them, and flinging Clorox wipe juice about my kitchen.

Finally, FINALLY!, I get two of them to come off. I then spend the next minute and half jamming the other 45 back into the canister, slamming the lid shut, throwing it under my kitchen sink, and slamming the cabinet door.

*sigh*

It's been a long couple of days. I have to say, I knew I was going to be okay when I was sitting in the exam room at the clinic, checking out the wound on my hand, and thought, "You know...I could get some really awesome shots of my blood vessels and veins right now if I had a macro lens."

As of Monday, I have been de-splinted, so I have more mobility, and can type with two hands again! I've also graduated to using one piece of gauze under all the wrapping, and not two. I've worked out the bra scenario successfully, without losing an eye, and tonight I managed to wash and condition my hair using both hands (even though it hurt like an SOB to do so).

So progress is being made.


While I do hurt, I am annoyed, and I feel like a bit of a dumbass, I also know that I am very lucky that this isn't worse. To doc says that everything is on track, and I should have little to no scarring.

My coworkers have been absolutely fabulous about all this, and have been extremely supportive and caring. Now that they know that I'm going to be okay, I'm starting to take a bit of razzing on the whole situation.

Yesterday, I was informed, and assured, that my next project will not have any conveyors, so all my appendages should be safe, but that they're going to keep an eye on me...just in case.

Things That Make Things Move

I have one of those fabulous careers where no one really understands what it is that you do every day.

"And what is it that you do at work?"

"I'm an engineer."

"Oh, what kind? Mechanical? Electrical?"

"Well, electrical, kinda. I'm a controls engineer."

"Oh that's nice. What does that mean?"

And then, usually what results, is a long dissertation, given by me, to whomever is asking, about what it is that I do, in language that most normal people don't understand.


After 11 years in my industry, I have finally come up with an answer that usually appeases everyone.


I make things that make things move. More specifically, I make the things that build cars and trucks, move.

Not the robots, the robot guys do that, but everything else, and by everything else, I mean conveyors, clamps, welders, metal presses, turntables, and just about everything else in an assembly plant that moves any amount of distance, for any amount of time.

I don't actually build the tooling I work on, that's the mechanical guys' job. They design the tool to fit a process, say building up the doors of a vehicle, and they set up a sequence of operations, and that's where we come in.

It starts with the hardware end of things, the stuff you can actually touch: control panels that most commonly contain a processor with inputs and outputs, relays, fuses, circuit breakers, terminals, and a ton of wire. There are smaller panels that serve different purposes, and a slew of cables and cords that connect it all together. On top of all of this, you have air systems for valves that move cylinders back and forth; water systems to keep the welders cool; hydraulic systems to move the real heavy stuff that air isn't powerful enough to; and safety systems to keep the morons out of harm's way. All of this has to be sized and investigated to make sure that you have enough juice, air, water, or oil to do what you need to, and that it will stop when it's supposed to.

Once that's established, the software comes in. (Note that I say established, because as I have come to learn, nothing is ever really finished. There are always changes that get made, in various stages of the game, and just when you think you're done...you're really not.)

The software is quite literally the brains of the operation. Using the sequence that the mechanical guys set out, we go about putting the steps in, one by one. When it gets dumped into the processor, after a few trials and errors (and sometimes dumb luck), when you hit the go button, everything functions the way it's supposed to, when it's supposed to, all just a series of 1's and 0's that turn signals on and off.

Put those two elements together, add a whole lot of time, frustration, and very long days in an environment that is always noisy, usually pretty dirty, located in states and cities in some of the strangest locations...and poof!

Before I got into this business, vehicles just showed up at the dealerships on carriers from assembly plants. I had absolutely no idea what it took to build a car from sheet metal till it rolled off the end of the line, how many people it took, how many moving parts are involved, and just what happens when any of those things stop working. There are days when I wish it was still that way. :)