Accident reports

My current task is look at the accident reports for this 1 mile stretch. We are planning working on a bridge, and we need to determine if there is anything we can do to decrease the amount of accidents. In 5 years, there were 185 accidents on that stretch. Majority were rear-enders and caused by inattentive drivers. Surprisingly, only 5 of the accidents were alcohol related.

I got a new state phone. It's a nice little Nokia flip-phone, which I prefer over that candy bar of the old one. I have it's pretty fancy for a state phone. It has a lot more features than the old one, most I'll never use because it probably costs money.

Security

This week they released a new policy that disallows the use of any IM client other MS office communicator. They are overly concerned about IT security. Which doesn't make sense why we are not allowed to use Firefox or Opera. Can't even install Firefox, the publisher is blocked, but Opera works. I was using that until someone gave me a warning that I should get rid of it along with Google Talk. I uninstalled both, so now I'm using the g-talk embedded in gmail and Firefox portable. Not being able to chat with friends would make work suck and feel extraordinarily long. Although here there's a lot more people here, people that I don't mind talking to.

I didn't do a damn thing today. Both my bosses took the day off. Since it's Friday I get to take off early at 3pm. My 2 hours of driving time is factored into my 40 hours for the week same reason why I can come in late on Monday. My boss said that I can leave even earlier if I wanted, so I will.

Office Check

I got to the office at 1:30pm on Tuesday. Finished the nuke safety at 12:30pm, got lunch and submitted my application for a KDOT ID card. Still didn't get an explanation on what I'm supposed to do, but got more useful information.

Wednesday, my boss's boss finally gave me the instructions for my part of the office check. I'm just checking plans, making sure the numbers are right. Not terribly hard. I worked on that off and on throughout the day. Those CoD breaks, cost me another 30 minutes of work, because I'll sit and talk about the game with my co-workers, and by co-workers I mean my bosses. I'm getting better, not getting last place anymore. There's often 10 people playing every break. This last break, we actually played teams, which I enjoyed more.

Field Trip

Last Thursday, our squad went on a field check. 9 of us piled in a 12 passenger van and drove around Southeast Kansas. We were looking at the finished projects that our squad members worked on. There was 8 from our squad, and one former member who is now in-charge of his own squad. I was supposed to be in his squad, but they didn't have enough work. There was quite a bit of talking at first, which I didn't contribute much to. In-between visiting the projects, I just played FFTA. It was a nice 10 hour trip. I got know other squad members a little better. I usually only converse with the Squad Engineer and Squad Leader.

Friday I finally finished up my right-of-way release. The next task for me is to look over a set of plans for an Office Check. We were going to start it, but we decided to save it for Monday, because a lot of us were leaving early because it's Friday.

Monday, I arrived in the office at 11:10am. I had to take care of some business in Wichita first. My squad leader was busy, so we didn't get started until 11:50am, then we interrupted by lunch at noon. Sadly there was no Call of Duty game up. After lunch, he continued explaining the project to me, and I asked one question, which sidetracked us. Went off on a tangent of a lot of various useful information regarding the design process. My squad is very knowledgeable regarding every aspect of work. I guess I'm just very impressed compared to the people that I met in my office in Wichita. After about 30 minutes on this tangent, it was interrupted by a potty break.
We then decided to go upstairs to greet all the people that I didn't meet last week. That took another hour. This guy can really talk and it's not boring either. Once we returned to his cubicle he concluded the tangent that we were on and decided that we would continue this tomorrow. Except that I won't be in the office tomorrow, because I have a new employee nuclear safety orientation to go to. I'll also need to go get a State ID card after that. I'm debating if I should even come into the office tomorrow.

Day 2

First thing morning I got an assignment. I guess it's simple and a little mundane, but it has taken me the whole day to complete. I have to do a Right of Way release. KDOT buys land for our projects, and some times we buy excess land. I have create a cross-section of the current road and plot one for future development. Any extra is sold to the person making the request. A lot of these plans already have a line for the construction limits, but I have to double check them. Sounds simple enough, except that I have to use Microstation. I know how to use AutoCAD fairly well, but Microstation is a different thing. Looks similar and does the same thing, but it seems less intuitive and user friendly. It's been pissing me off all morning. I'm sure it's a better tool for what they do here, but I could done it in 10 minutes in AutoCAD, even without knowing what I know.

To get more exercise, I've been taking the stairs. Our office is on the 10th floor. I'm winded by the 4th floor, and my legs start cramping by the 6th. Got to go up it down it twice a day, since I go out of lunch. I'm hoping that climbing those stairs will be nothing to me in a couple weeks. I also have a decent walk from the parking space, because I have to park in a free slot. Though tomorrow I'll be picking up my parking permit so I can park a little closer. I'll probably still try to park far away within our lots. Looking around, I found out that my next hotel stay will be within walking distance. Though I heard from our office coordinator in Wichita that it's not that great.

HQ

Last week I went to Great Bend for a 2 day Operations meeting. Basically all the management in KDOT get together to listen to speeches by other KDOT people and some salesmen. The topic were generally entertaining or educational. After the presentations, people got drunk. There was a "happy hour" sponsored by all the district engineers. Following that, we all moved to the hotel lounge where all our drinks were paid for by a very successful and generous asphalt salesman. I think I heard his tab ended up being $1400.

Starting today until Nov 3rd, I'll be working Road Design in headquarters in the capitol. I spent most of morning meeting various people in the squads. Saw a few of my former classmates, though one them was on their own rotation in construction. There's 10 squads with 3-7 people each; 2-3 engineers and 3-4 technicians. I saw 3 guys getting ready to play spades so I joined in as their 4th. We won on the last hand. I heard that some of the squads play Call of Duty at the operations meeting. I luckily got into one of those. I was originally in a different squad, but they changed it up on me when I arrived this morning. I've enjoyed my first day. Look forward to the rest of my rotation. Only bad thing I have to say is that I can't use firefox here. I'll have to look into trying opera tomorrow.

I am currently staying in a Comfort Inn, not my first choice. There's no microwave or mini-fridge in the rooms. There's wireless internet that was good enough to play FFXI for a while, but it died after 1.5 hours. The connection got worse over the night. My connections died one by one, first FFXI, then Google Talk, mIRC, and eventually basic web browsing. AIM was the only thing that survived. I checked this morning and mIRC was back, so hopefully it will last tonight.