Friday, May 30, 2008

Vacation Time

15 more minutes until I go on vacation to Japan for two weeks. They finally put me on a project this week. It's a night project, which is normally Sun-Thurs. Because of the holiday, they were only able to work Tue-Thurs, so I had to cram 32 hours in three nights. Once concrete is poured, usually around 2am, there's nothing to do. I was worried that I might get so antsy that I'd use my vacation time to leave at 2am, but I actually managed to keep busy.

Working out in the field for the first time in 7 months, I realized I don't want to be out there. The short week and upcoming definitely has role in me not wanting to work outside. Though I think I would rather sit indoors and do paperwork. They just opened up the Field Engineer Administrator (FEA) position, so a EAIII position should be opening up soon after it's filled, assuming one of our EAIII's gets it and not some outsider. So maybe I can get that indoors only job. Granted I'll actually have to work, but the extra pay will make it worth it. I only have one other EAII to compete with. There was another EAII in El Dorado, but he recently took the EAIII position in Hutchinson. He's actually has 1 year less experience than me, and is already in charge of a office. If don't get the position here in Wichita, I might seriously consider taking one fo the other EAIII jobs around the state.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

jpop

Today there was another meeting in our office. It was a surprisingly long meeting, 4 hours. Not really sure what it was for since a lot of these meetings don't involve any of us except the construction engineer. Since the Metro Engineer was here, I had to find some work to do. I remembered that I still have a ton mindless copying to do. I worked until the meeting start, and put it off for another day. One nice result of the meeting was that my boss baked cookies.

Speaking of food, we're going to have a cookout tomorrow. The specialist that was taking the day off is coming in just for it, much to some our disappointment. At least he will be bringing a side dish of some sort, which is something I need to think about doing. So far this week has been bad for me diet wise. I've eaten out 3 times already and ate several cookies.

My mp3s that need the most work are my Japanese ones, so I've been listening to them to get rid of duplicates. I had forgotten how much I like jpop. My first several years in college, it's basically all I ever listened too. Now I only keep up with a few select artists, and make no effort to discover new ones. I normally read NPR music and Pitchfork for new western bands. But I don't know of one for Japanese music, and I don't have much faith in the oricon charts
.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

pavement marking

Today we had a short class teaching us how to use our new pavement marking database. It's a rather easy program. They had everyone class take turns using the program. We broke it a couple times, which is what they asked us to do. The developer was there taking notes.

Last week, Bitter:Sweet, my favorite band at the moment, released their 2nd album and it is fantastic. It's poppier than the first one, but still excellent. I'm a little disappointed that I still have to wait two more weeks to be able to buy the cd. They released it early on itunes, which I refuse to use because of the DRM. The new Ladytron album came today on itunes, and the physical version will also come out on June 3rd. I'm not a fan of this itunes exclusive early releases. I remember last year, Stars released their latest early on emusic, which is a site I support. This year has been great for me musically. 3/6 of my top favorite bands have released new albums. Portishead being the biggest of them all, first in 11 years. Plus bunch of other bands that I just discovered last year, have stuff like CSS and My Brightest Diamond. And there's been talks of the Brazilian Girls and Camera Obscura working on new albums, and if I'm lucky they'll come out this year. So many great bands, and none of them are coming close to Kansas. Though I'm willing to travel to see Bitter:Sweet again, and Portishead too if they do anymore US shows.

Monday, May 19, 2008

labeling

Today the office is a little emptier. Two more techs were sent to Great Bend. We do have one project resuming next week after Memorial Day, a night patching job. My boss asked if I'd help, and I could, but only for 4 days before I take two weeks for my trip to Japan. The project itself should only last 2-3 weeks. Still haven't heard about any other jobs. My most recent is getting close to its 180 day striping inspection, so it can finally be accepted. I'm actually on the ball with this one, though we're still waiting on the contractor to sign off on 4/6 change orders that's been pending for 4 months.

While I wait for that, I've been filling out the ID3 tags and finding album art for my mp3 collection. Most of the music I've acquire in the past couple years are fine, but my Japanese music from when first online 9 years ago are in bad shape. A lot of them are just singles. Luckily their official sites has the necessary info and art, though the art is thumbnail size. I do enjoy labeling the Japanese stuff, because get to practice my Japanese reading, and I'm pleased with how much I still remember.

Friday, May 09, 2008

Pearls

I do have some work to do, but I'm unmotivated to do it today, so I'll save it for Monday. I've been reading the lately Pearls Before Swine collection, then I'll red the latest Boondocks. Just can't bring myself to start on Galaxy Angel yet. The boss brought some super sweet and dense lemon bars yesterday and today they bought donuts. After a couple months avoiding junk food, they seem to started again. The lemon bars are allowed in my diet since they're homemade, but i failed to resist the Krispy Kreme donut late in the day.

Yesterday, we had a webinar about pedestrian safety and signals in our office. This is more of something for traffic engineering. I'm interested in traffic engineering, but it's not what I do, so it didn't really apply to us. We had some traffic engineers from the City of Wichita attending, so hopefully someone learned something. I, like I do in all lectures, fell asleep. I actually stood through a couple of talk, so I wouldn't pass out.

We got a new technician this week. He transfered from maintenance after 10+ years. He was in a state of limbo for while. He was going to the tech classes but still worked for maintenance. He finally joined us in the back this week. Seems cool, keeps to himself and listens to music like me, so that's good. He also stays past 4pm, so I'm not the only one back here.

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

mp3's

I'm out of good manga read, since I don't really like the Galaxy Angel or Di Gi Charat manga. I love the anime, which came first, but manga just is uninteresting. With my extra time, I've begun/continuing my massive project of labeling and finding album art for all 120 gigs of my mp3s. I'm sure more than 50% is already complete.

I did manage to find some work to do on my project. Learned some new function for the software we use. Discovered that I can dispose of used oil here. Occasionally around 4pm, my boss wanders back here after everybody is gone and starts rearranging stuff, mainly to tidy up since the older guys amass a ton of crap. I've made it a personal goal to clean out of desk every months. I get a lot of packets and books from all the classes I go to, and most are out of date after a year. I feel bad since we use so much paper here.

Friday, May 02, 2008

Reading

I think I'm getting faster at the sudoku and crossword, because I've had more time to read today. Which wasn't bad since I got the new volumes of Dr. Slump, Hikaru no Go, and Prince of Tennis. PoT upset me a little, because I read it so fast and it stopped in the middle of a match with one of favorite characters, Fujii. Bitter:Sweet, my favorite group currently, released a 4 song preview of thie upcoming album, that I've been listening to constantly on their site. I need to stop, so I won't "wear" those songs out before the album hits, but I can't resist, they're just so damn good.

The office was a quieter today, because the older guys that have too much vacation time have started every Friday off. Our Specialist (the former construction engineer) always seems to be busy. He even did some work for my old project that I wasn't even aware of. He always getting calls too, almost whenever he gets up to leave his desk, someone will call him.