Dayshift

I'm back temporarily back on the day shift. Came in this afternoon and asked the boss where he needed me. He put me on a bridge repair project that requires me to be in the office by 5am. I start tomorrow, and hopefully I can get some of that overtime that I've been wanting. I'll be working on this project for 2 week, then I'll be put back on nights to work on a striping job. I'd rather work nights anyways. I enjoyed going to bed and getting up whenever I wanted. Now I have to be in bed by 9pm and up by 4am.

Mileage

I finally get my truck back today. I decided to be a good person and clean out the inside of the Taurus, since it was filled with sand. There was a storm last week and I left the windows down, which is bad thing at a concrete plant, where there's piles of sand everywhere. We have to log our mileage. The sheet they gives breaks it up by days, which is how I record it, but everyone else just does it weekly. We usually turn in our sheets at the end or the beginning of week. Since I finally got my truck back I had to record the mileage for the other guy. He put 563 miles on my truck in one week. My truck also records the engine time, and he put over 50 hours on it, which doubled it. The truck only had 1483 at the beginning of the week. He put a third of the mileage in one week, which took me 2 months to do. I personally have probably only put 1000 miles on it. All kinds of people drive it during the day shift.

Today is the last day of concrete patching. They would have finished it last week if it didn't rain. They spent all of last week doing the ramp for a major interchange. I enjoyed that, because they had to close the ramps and I got to walk all round on them. Wichita is a horribly flat place, so the land these ramps are on are some of the highest elevations in the city. I like standing on them and watching the traffic below me, occasionally waving back at the public.

Grinding

The contractor just cut patches, but didn't pull them. My job for most of the night was to mark patches and write station numbers. Finding the stations should have been easy, because I was in the car, which normally has a DMI (distance measuring instrument). For some reason, it was taken out of this car. Finding the stations still wasn't too difficult, because some had stakes to mark them. But was a pain getting in and out of the car every 500 feet, especially on an incline.

We got an email yesterday from the Governor. It said that we're all getting a cost of living raise this month, and to thank us for our hard work, this July 3rd will be a state holiday. Since I don't work on Fridays, I should be getting a 5 day weekend.

Got a little more information regarding the laptops. One of the guys in office bought one. It's done in a silent auction. He said there's been 3 auctions in the past 5 years. He bought his for $160, but bid $200 on another one and didn't get it. He said $250 would be a safe bid.

No Truck

Got another email from my boss telling me to continue to drive the Taurus, while this other guy gets to drive my truck. His truck is in the shop, so they give him my truck so two people can be displaced instead of just one. The car sucks too, because the whoever drove it last smoked, so it stinks in there. There's two Taurus's so I'll try the other one and hope it doesn't stink. Normally I wouldn't mind letting someone else drive my truck, but I've developed an unfortunate dislike for this person. They call him Supercop, because he used to be a police officer. He's not in a position of power, but he wants to be, and tries to take charge whenever possible. My other co-workers are always complaining about him. It was funny listening to the Black Guy tell him off. He tried to tell him what to do, but the Black Guy responded, "you're not my boss", and if he wanted something done go through his boss.

Last Friday, we had a retirement party for one of our ET Seniors. This man worked for 38 years at KDOT. I've never really got to talk to him, but he seemed nice. He's one of the few people here that I haven't heard anything bad about. He is the third ET to leave this office since I've been here, though we've gained two engineers counting myself. With this Senior retiring, there will be an opening for his position. Which means there will be more ass-kissing and showing off from now on. Sadly people aren't promoted based on merit, just who they know and how well they brown-nose. This explains why the most competent person in this office is still just a regular ET.

Tonight will be a slow night. There will be no concrete, so I'll be out on the road the whole time. It's going to be extraordinarily boring. The contractor says they'll be done with patching this week. I don't believe it, I think they still have 5-6 more working days.

I did managed to learn something useful at the orientation. KDOT buys new laptops every three years and they sell off their old ones within the organization. They didn't have any further details beyond that, but hopefully in the next couple years, I can finally get that laptop that I never needed, but thought it would be fun to have.

4 months ago

Orientation was yesterday and it was fairly useless. This information could have been more useful when I first started. It was general welcome to KDOT thing. Most of the people there where Equipment Operators (EO) (maintenance), the people who actually work. There were 2 Engineering Technicians (ET), and 3 Engineering Associates (EA). If they talked about anything specific it was targeted to the ETs or EOs. Only good that came from it was the overtime.

Tonight I get to drive one of the cars instead of my truck. One of the ETs is driving it just in case he needs to move a message board. I don't think it's right since, there's two other trucks on the job with a hitch. The ET driving it is quite the kiss-ass, and probably wanted my truck because it's new. Oh well, it's only for one night, and I'm not the type of person to derive self-worth from what I drive.

I finally beat Final Fantasy I, the other night. I've been neglecting my other GBA games for sudoku on Brain Age. I'm getting close to completing all the puzzle, so I'm trying to slow down a little. Good old work allowing me to play the games and read the books that I would do at home if I didn't play FFXI so much

Orientation

I will finally get my new employee orientation this Wednesday, only 4 months late. It's done during the regular working hours, so I have the option of taking one of my work nights off. I think I'll just work, and just get a little less sleep, and start work a little later. I figure this orientation is one of the few chances for me to get some overtime this summer.

I'll be going to this orientation with our new engineer. I finally got to see her last Friday, since they didn't get done their work until after 6pm. She wasn't what I was hoping, but exactly what the black guy said we'd get. I was mainly just hoping for someone young like me. Instead we got someone probably in her 50's, she has long grey hair, tall, and a little heavy. She looks like the no nonsense type, that would good for managing. Though she seems like she would frown on how I use my freetime. Hopefully if she's been working for the state a long, she would understand how much freetime we have, and isn't too strict. Though this is only speculation, and I've been almost always wrong when I assume things about the state. Logic be damned.

The office is oddly empty today. Normally on Sundays we come in at 4pm to get our full 8 hours, but it's 5:20pm and only me and the project manager are here. Though by coming in at 4pm, we ruined the cleaners' plan to wax our floors. Now they have to come in next Saturday to do them.

Tonight will finally be my first night alone in the batch plant. It was supposed to be last week, but the black guy decided that he wanted to stay on nights for another week, since they didn't need concrete on the day project yet.

More work

Since I'll be in charge of batching, I have the added responsibility of taking moisture reading on the sand and rock. Last Friday proved our point of not working on that day. There were two accidents, one including 7 cars. People just don't know how to slow down in a construction. I was told by the end of the night cars were driving through the area at 20 mph, because traffic was so backed up.

Last night was a bad night for the contractor. We put Calcium chloride in the concrete so it sets faster. Well the calcium truck sprung a leak, and instead of stopping where it was, it kept driving back to the plant. So left a nice trail of calcium chloride on for th road for 4 miles. This attracted the highway patrol, who called our maintenance supervisor. Eventually for some reason HAZMAT was called out. In the end KDOT maintenance cleaned it up, and the contractor will be getting a nice big bill from us.

Northbound

No concrete today. I get the joy of marking patching on the northbound side. It stormed last night, so only poured 13 yards of concrete vs the normal 60 yards. We quit early and I was going home by 12:30am. And since we're not pouring today, it's seems like a wasted week.

We're now one person short. He has been suspended with pay. He apparently ran into a Type 3 barrier the night before in his personal vehicles. This person also doesn't not have a valid driver's license and yet he's been driving a state vehicle this whole time. This is the same person that got hit by a drunk on the job a few weeks back. He made a big fuss because he wasn't allowed to drive his truck after the accident. He was eventually allowed to drive again after two days of bitching. Amazingly how he could do such a thing without a driver's license. Luckily this person isn't from our office, he's helping from the north office. He should be fired or reassigned, he doesn't meet the minimum requirements for the job. I wonder how much of a difference I can make once I'm in charge.