Today's Keyboard Smash
Jun. 29th, 2021 05:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scrubjayspeaksProgress is being made with the vet for mum's dog. Current mission is to convince her to eat. Anything will do. She's a big dog and didn't have a lot of extra weight on her to start with, so calories are required posthaste.
I finally hit the point of needing to notify my team lead that a job is hurting me. Not, like, my back hurts slightly more than it always does (fuuuuuuuuuck my back hurts lately, though) but an actual repetitive stress injury-in-the-making type situation. Which of course feels a bit like a personal failure. But I tolerate pain more than most of my coworkers, anecdotally, so, uh, it's gonna be a problem when they have to learn this particular job. So better to say something and make sure the Powers That Be take that into account for future runs.
One of the machines near me right now has been, for several weeks, in the process of being outfitted with a robot. I've run the two jobs they're trying to put on it, and yeah, they need to give us a damn robot for those. It's not hard to run it--it's just appallingly inefficient to remove the parts by hand. Also, you can only do it if you're right-handed, which we found out by abusing one of our left-handed operators with it. Anyway! Robot!
So the engineers are over there at all hours--never less than two, sometimes as many as seven, if you count set-up techs and developmental operators--trying to, idk, get it aligned correctly or teach it to mix a proper martini or something. It's been taking ages, so anything is possible at this point. But so today, one of the engineers was sitting in the little crawl space under the molding area of the machine, sticking his head up into the machinery. Normally, you can't look in there like that because there's safety gating to keep it from running if anyone's got their bits crammed in there.
So naturally, today we're circumventing that by just crawling up into the machine. And this might be the first time I've felt like engineers might not be complete maniacs, because YES. You couldn't tell by looking at me, but inside I was like a puppy straining at the end of my leash. I wanted to be doing that. Crawling into the machine, peering up into its guts, all cozy and warm, controller in my hands as I tinker with it. God, I was MADE of want in that moment.
Sometimes, I think I missed my calling. But then, because I'm not quite that fatalistic, I think, well then, fuck it, figure out how to do it now. If you're good enough with the machines, it won't matter if you don't have the degree. All you need is a wrench and some gear witchery and about twenty years of stubborn experience. I can handle that.
Also, I witnessed a coworker eating a yellow bell pepper like an apple in the break room. Just crunching around the circumference of it. So I definitely still think humans, engineer or otherwise, are complete maniacs.
I finally hit the point of needing to notify my team lead that a job is hurting me. Not, like, my back hurts slightly more than it always does (fuuuuuuuuuck my back hurts lately, though) but an actual repetitive stress injury-in-the-making type situation. Which of course feels a bit like a personal failure. But I tolerate pain more than most of my coworkers, anecdotally, so, uh, it's gonna be a problem when they have to learn this particular job. So better to say something and make sure the Powers That Be take that into account for future runs.
One of the machines near me right now has been, for several weeks, in the process of being outfitted with a robot. I've run the two jobs they're trying to put on it, and yeah, they need to give us a damn robot for those. It's not hard to run it--it's just appallingly inefficient to remove the parts by hand. Also, you can only do it if you're right-handed, which we found out by abusing one of our left-handed operators with it. Anyway! Robot!
So the engineers are over there at all hours--never less than two, sometimes as many as seven, if you count set-up techs and developmental operators--trying to, idk, get it aligned correctly or teach it to mix a proper martini or something. It's been taking ages, so anything is possible at this point. But so today, one of the engineers was sitting in the little crawl space under the molding area of the machine, sticking his head up into the machinery. Normally, you can't look in there like that because there's safety gating to keep it from running if anyone's got their bits crammed in there.
So naturally, today we're circumventing that by just crawling up into the machine. And this might be the first time I've felt like engineers might not be complete maniacs, because YES. You couldn't tell by looking at me, but inside I was like a puppy straining at the end of my leash. I wanted to be doing that. Crawling into the machine, peering up into its guts, all cozy and warm, controller in my hands as I tinker with it. God, I was MADE of want in that moment.
Sometimes, I think I missed my calling. But then, because I'm not quite that fatalistic, I think, well then, fuck it, figure out how to do it now. If you're good enough with the machines, it won't matter if you don't have the degree. All you need is a wrench and some gear witchery and about twenty years of stubborn experience. I can handle that.
Also, I witnessed a coworker eating a yellow bell pepper like an apple in the break room. Just crunching around the circumference of it. So I definitely still think humans, engineer or otherwise, are complete maniacs.
