The Joys of Working for the state

Failure #2

2009-08-10T16:32:00.003-05:00

Last Monday I interviewed for the Construction Engineer (EAIII) position in the north office. The interview started 10 minutes, because they were interviewing someone else and it ran long. My interview was only 20 minutes. I blanked on one technical question about asphalt, but I think I question all the management question fine. All my answers were short and precise. At the end of the interview they asked if I'd like to add anything, which I didn't feel the need to sell myself. I've been working there for 3.5 years and I've showed them what I can do. I prefer to show than tell, plus I felt I was a shoe-in for the position. I have more experience than most Construction Engineer did when they started and I had the home-court advantage.

Annoyingly I didn't get the job. I lost to another Construction Engineer out of the Emporia office, which I was told was a bigger factor on why she got the job. But from I know, she's a chemical engineer and has only been working in construction for 6 months. It was actually surprising because she started off as a EAIII, which we don't do in Wichita. My boss was brought in to become our new EAIII, but she had to work 1 year as an EAII in the field to get a better understanding of what we do. So my 3.5 years of field work doesn't compare to her 6 months of office work. Though she probably interviewed really well, and being a chemical engineer is quite impressive, since that's one of the hardest engineering majors. It also made some sense hiring her, because Wichita would gain an engineer, instead of my office losing me.

I was fairly disappointed with not getting the job, since it's the 2nd time I've interviewed for it. Originally I didn't want the job, because it'd be more responsibility, a longer commute, and it'd mess up my work out schedule. But after a month of thinking about how the promotion would have changed my life, I got used to the idea and I actually wanted the job. I felt I was ready to be the boss. Now I will just continue to be the overpaid tech. I thinking had I gotten the job I'd be starting in my new position as the boss today, but instead I went out to the concrete plant to write tickets, which is considered to be the least desirable tech job. The metro engineer actually came by on Friday afternoon to talk to me, told me not to be discouraged that I didn't get the job. The talk really didn't help or hurt. I guess I got some face time with the big boss, but that doesn't really matter much when there's little chance for advancement here in Wichita.

Today, the new construction engineer stared work at the north office along with two new techs, one for each office. The new tech for the north office is actually one of my good friends. Apparently he dropped my name quite a few times during the interview. I figured him having a degree in Computer Science would make him more capable than the other 8 applicants. The metro engineer told me that he came off a little cocky, because he that he could pass the FE without a problem, and I believe that he could too. But Metro Engineer said it was a good kind of cocky so it worked out for him.

Project #3:done

2009-07-08T16:13:00.002-05:00

I finished my third project last week, 4 days ahead of schedule. Though I wasn't around for the last day, because I had a wedding to attend. It was just some striping that my helper was able to take care of. Simple stuff, just go out and measure what is put down. The project in general was easy. The contractor knew what they needed to do and often did things without me asking them. They were also very prompt in getting me certifications which is usually the hardest part and can often take months after the project is finished. I personally think the contractor did a job with the overlay, a rather smooth ride. Too bad the approaches are faulted about an inch on both ends, so anyone driving will feel a noticeable bump.

So technically I have 6 months to finish up all the paperwork, because the job is only partially accepted. We have to wait 180 days to make sure the striping remains adequate. Since I have all the certs, I'm going to try to finish as much as possible in the first week. If I was really motivated I could have probably done it all in a day, but my attention span doesn't allow me to keep working. I've been lucky all the project I've been in charge of have been fairly short. I don't think I could stand doing a project that lasts more than 1 construction season.

I do have one unfortunate reason for trying to get this project finaled out as soon as possible. Last week, the person that beat me out for the EAIII (Construction Engineer) position at the north office last year died in a motorcycle accident. So that position is now vacant. I really don't want it because I like it here and recently bought a house near here. Technically you have to apply for promotion so I don't have to apply if I don't want to, but it would look bad if I didn't. My boss knows this and has started slowly training me for the new job. It'll probably be a couple months before I get the promotion. Considering it took them 3 months to fill the position last time it was vacated. I'll admit I'm a little nervous about the position, because I'll actually be in charge of a construction office and the Metro engineer is just down the hall so he can watch over me.

Long Night

2009-05-28T18:42:00.003-05:00

My patch and overlay project on the Seneca, Meridian, and Edwards bridges on WB Kellogg started on Tuesday night. First we have to setup the traffic control which could only be done from 9am to 6am. They had to put up signs, close the inside lanes first, because they had to remove stripe and place temporary tape. This wasn't too bad except that it started to rain at 3AM, so we basically called it a night since they couldn't stripe anymore. This supposedly pushed everything back a whole day, but in retrospect with as slow as the traffic control guys were moving, they needed the extra day.

Wednesday night, they were working like normal and getting ready to switch traffic over to the inside lane, because we'll be working on the outside lanes first. The contractor wanted change the placement of some of the channelizers, basically shortening the work zone. I made sense, but it wasn't on the plans and I didn't want to outright tell him no without looking at the standards to explain my reason, plus I don't really have the authority. So head back to the office, because I still had a couple hours before they switch traffic over.

Back at the office at around 10pm, I settle down by emptying my pockets and switched from boots to slippers like I usually do. Looking at the standards and doing some calculations, I decide it'll be easier to look at the plans that aren't printed front and back, so I go to my work truck to grab a different set. When tried to get back in the office, the door was locked. I remember purposely locking the door behind when I entered, so I wouldn't have to bother taking my keys out when I leave the office. So I'm locked out of the office, both my phones are on my desk and so are the keys to the office, work truck, and my bike. I'm also still in my slippers. I had no choice to by walk around to find a phone so I can call one of coworkers. The nearest business was McDonalds, half a mile away, but their lobby was closed, and since this wasn't really an emergency, I didn't bother them in the drive-thru. So next I go to the adult video store and they were no help there. So decide to walk to the nearest gas station which was a mile north. Sadly Valero was closed. I was close enough that I decided to walk back to the project. I was able to see the flashing lights of the workers from Kellogg and West. Half a mile later, I reach the truck and it was unmanned. They just the truck there to mark the end of the project. So ended up walking another 2 miles on Kellogg before seeing one of the workers. I probably walked 5-6 miles total by this point. It's now 11:45pm, and I call my coworker, who apparently had just gotten into bed. He unhappily picked me up from the project and let me in the office.

After this fun ordeal, the night went on like normal, except that it kept going. They switch over traffic at 4am, but they still had a lot more work to go. They had to switch over all the temporary side specific sign and place a lot more tape. I didn't leave the project until almost 9am, when I had my helpers come and relieve me. I haven't had a 15 hour work day since my days as an intern.

Tonight, we have to place the concrete safety barriers, a few more signs, and hopefully that's it. Maybe I can get to home around 1am, and maybe fall asleep, which could be hard since I woke up at 4:30pm today. Then tomorrow I'll be back on the day shift doing actual work to the bridges. Depending on how bad these bridges are, I might have to say goodbye to my weekends.

Asobi Seksu part 2

2009-05-11T16:06:00.003-05:00

Last Friday I went to Kansas City so see Asobi Seksu again. This stop wasn't originally announced when I saw them in Denton. I glad it wasn't, because I probably would not have driven down there and gotten lots of nice furniture from Ikea. Asobi Seksu was playing at The Record Bar, a venue that I've never been to. It was really nice. Plenty of seating and decently priced drinks. I look forward to seeing A Camp play there next month. I went a couple of my friends and since The Record Bar website has approximate times of when all the acts start, we completely skipped the first two acts and got their just in time for Asobi Seksu. We stood closer to the bar in the back. I personally didn't want to be close the speakers. They played practically the same playlist except with the addition of Me and Mary which made me happy. I just realized that neither times did they play anything from their first album. The audience in KC was much better than in Denton. Maybe because Denton is close to Dallas and they get all kinds of great bands coming through and KC fans just hungry for someone good. I was disappointed at the lack of encore. There was decent cheering afterward, but they just walked off stage to the side where we could still see them and just ignored our pleas. I was going to buy another shirt, but they were out of all sizes except small, so I just bought Citrus, their 2nd album, since despite being a fan, I have yet to own their first two albums.

Tomorrow in Lawrence, the Sounds will be playing a show. I kind of want to go because they're Swedish and the likelihood of seeing them again is lower than US bands. But it's in the middle of the week and I'm not that big of a fan. Though it could be my last concert for a while. There's 3 concerts that I want to go to in June, but I'm unsure of my ability to attend because of my project starting then. If the project isn't too demanding. I plan on going to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, A Camp, and Metric. I'll actually find a sub a for me so I can go see Metric. I'm not a huge A Camp fan, but it's Nina Persson and probably the closest thing to the Cardigans I can get in the US. Part of me wants the project to be busy so I can make a lot of OT, but other part wants to go to these concerts.

defensive driving

2009-04-29T16:42:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I had the joy of driving to Hutchinson for a defensive driving course. There were a couple classes here in Wichita but I was off in Salina for a Soils field tester class. Even though none of the contents of the defensive driving class was of use to me, since I actually regularly drive that way, I enjoyed the class. I gets me out of the office and I get a discount on my insurance for taking it. When signing for the class, we were required to give our license number, which I wasn't able to do since I had left my wallet at home. Of all the days to do it. I even decided that morning to not bring my lunch and to get some BBQ at a nearby restaurant. I did bring some fruit so I wasn't starving, but it was the first time I've skipped lunch in a long time and amazingly I didn't suffer any headaches. Which means I can cut back on my daily fruit intake.

The class was taught by a state trooper and he's generally entertaining. He was the same guy I had last time. He showed a lot of funny videos last time but yesterday he went straight by the workbook. He streamlined much of the class for KDOT since many of us have gone through this before. We actually used the first 1 hour of class asking him various questions regarding the legality of certain actions. We took a lot of breaks and still finished 2 hours early. This is my last scheduled class for the year. Now I have a whole month to prep for my project, though honestly I don't know what I need to do to prepare.

new project

2009-04-02T16:17:00.003-05:00

Last week the boss gave me a proposal for a new project. Today I found out who it was awarded to and some more details. PCI, which is the contractor that was working on the bridge in Minnesota when it collapsed. My boss told me to be a dick and to bring up Minnesota anytime they're being difficult. The project is a patching, mill and overlay of the three WB Kellogg bridges at Seneca, Meridian, and Edwards. It's supposed to start after Memorial Day and is 40 calendar days. The early start date in late April, but they wanted to wait until after Riverfest. We'll be reducing Kellogg to two lanes starting at the CBD. My last project was a patching, mill and overlay so this isn't anything new, though we will be resetting the bearings on one of the bridges which is something completely new to me.

I am actually looking forward to this project, but I hope it won't interfere with a couple concerts that I plan on going to in June. The first is A Camp, which is Nina Persson's side project. A Camp is probably the closest I'll get to seeing the Cardigans live. The second is Metric, one of my favorite groups. They'll be the 3rd Broken Social Scene group I see in concert. I just got Metric's new album on Tuesday and have been enjoying it, though it's no Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? A Camp is in KC, and Metric is Lawrence, and both are on a Friday, so I'll have to be able to take off early on those two days. Though it is a calendar day project so they might work Saturdays and possibly even nights.

Asobi Seksu

2009-03-25T16:21:00.005-05:00

I've pretty busy for the past several days. I just closed on my house last Thursday so I've been moving out of my parents house one truckload at a time. My new house is on the opposite end of town but it's all highway so it's just 22 minutes. I actually don't have whole lot of furniture, but I do have a lot of books, dvds, and games. I bought a sofa set, dining set, and a coffee table in town, and then drove to Dallas to do some shopping at Ikea.

My main reason for going to Dallas was the Asobi Seksu concert in Denton. I was a little wary since tickets were only $8 and you can only get them at the door. I left Wichita at 3:30pm Sunday and arrive in Denton at 8:30pm and checked-in at the Motel 6 which was the first hotel that I saw off the highway. I was starving so I only had Chipotle on my mind. There was no wi-fi, but I still had access to google maps on my phone. Google maps would get in the vicinity, but then I'd have to wonder around lost to finally find Chipotle. The Dallas area breaks g.maps with all it's multiple names for streets. Trying to find the venue was even harder since it wasn't so close to the highway. I had to stop at an auto parts store to get pointed in the right direction. The venue, Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studio, was across the street from a concrete plant and it only had its initials for its sign.

The doors opened at 9pm and I arrived at 9:40 and the placed seemed dead. Only music heard was Gogol Bordello on the stereo system. Half of the place was a bar and next door was the stage. It was an ok size, could maybe pack in 80 people. I generally prefer smaller venues anyways, because you have a better chance of meeting the band. I got a long island, my normal drink and sat down. I finish half my drink before I had to get up because I heard the doorman asking if someone had a green Mazda truck, because their lights were on. I actually have a black Mazda, but I figured it was mine, since I had my dome lights on trying to reading the directions to the venue. I left my drink on the table. When I returned, another group had just sat down at my table, I invited them to stay since there was plenty of space. They ended up being really cool people. In fact one of the was the one that told the doorman about my lights. We talked for a couple hours, and I found out that I had some common Kansas and Tacoma roots with them. We stayed at our table and talked through the first act, The Antlers, which didn't go on until 10:45pm. They were actually pretty decent sounding. I decided to actually watch the 2nd act, Tyvek and one of my new acquaintances joined me for half of it. I did not like Tyvek, they were very loud pink rock. The singer basically yelled into the mic and I couldn't understand anything he said. He basically would have had the same effect if he was using a megaphone, though that could have been the fault of the sound guy and/or equpment. One interesting thing about Tyvek was that their drummer played the whole show standing up.

Asobi Seksu was finally up at 12:40am. They had several issues getting started. One of the first things I noticed about Asobi is how small their lead singer, Yuki Chikudate is. She couldn't have been taller than 4'10". Asobi was even louder than Tyvek, but they were still great. Yuki was a little too quiet on some songs. They alternated between old and new songs. I was little sad that didn't play Me and Mary or Walk on the Moon, but they did do Thursday and ended with Red Sea as expected. The last couple minutes of that song is just the band going crazy, towards the end Yuki gets on the drum and starts rocking out. They walked off the stage and left a guitar on with some loud reverb. I assume we were supposed to applaud during that noise to get them to do an encore, but I don't think there were enough people to make enough noise to be heard. That disappointed me, mainly because their set was only 40 minutes long. The headliner needs to play for at least an hour. Afterward I got them to sign an LP of Hush that I picked up there. I also got an acoustic album that I didn't even know was made, a t-shirt, and a hoodie.

The next day, I drove to 30 minutes away to Frisco, TX to go shopping at Ikea. Google maps didn't fail me this time, though with as huge as Ikea is, it's hard to miss. I had lunch there and I actually enjoyed furniture shopping for once. They had so many cool things there. I was only planning on getting a tv stand, coffee tables, and end tables, but being there, I splurged a little. I picked a bigger dining table with 8 chairs, even though I had just bought a small one a couple days ago, a shoe rack/bench, and a game able with 4 chairs that fit into the corners. All that stuff was able to fit nicely in the back of my truck and I felt the 11 hours of driving was definitely worth it. Though it really didn't feel really long to me, as long as I have music I'm pretty happy.

unmotivated

2009-03-13T15:59:00.007-05:00

I haven't done much except for a couple classes. Not even concrete batching. The project I was working on last summer resumed about 3 weeks ago and I haven't been asked to come back out. Though they are just currently mostly doing dirt work. I always tested the concrete, but they apparently got someone else to do it. So currently have no idea what I will be doing this season. Hasn't been much talk of projects besides the two big ones, I-135 and Kellogg and the I-135 and 47th st interchanges. I'm not the only person left in the office though, there's one other, and I think that's because no on wants him. Same probably could be said about me, but I'd rather be in the office anyways. They did recently give me back my state phone, which is usually lent to maintenance for the winter. Though they only gave me the phone and the hostler, which I never used, no charge or car charger which I gave them. So currently my phone is sitting on my desk dead, not that anyone called me anyways.
Lately I've been extra bored. I always have something that I can do, but I just have no desire to do it.

Yesterday I took off early so I can do the final walk thru on the house that I'm having built. I'll be closing on it next Thursday and I plan on moving in on the following Saturday. It shouldn't take me too long to move since I've always lived in the dorms or my parents so I never acquired much furniture. It'll probably take me longer to shop for furniture than to move. This will actually be the first time I've ever lived by myself. I tried to prevent that by trying to convince some of my friends to move in with me, but that kinda fell through. I do have 1 that agreed, but he doesn't graduate until the summer. I am excited to move since this will cut my daily commute time by half. I also just bought a new 52" Bravia and I look forward to enjoying it in my soon to be newly furnished "man-cave".

3 years

2009-02-18T15:53:00.004-06:00

As of last Friday, I've been working for KDOT for 3 years. I really doesn't feel like it at all considering how little I know or do. I probably know a lot more than I think, but it doesn't feel like it. I still don't answer the phone unless I really have to because I'm afraid of them asking some simple question that I don't know the answer to. Last year was pretty slow, but this year seems to have some big project, including the I-135 and Kellogg interchange, which is a $21 million project. I wonder which office will get and who will be in charge of it. Hopefully I'll learn a lot more this year.

I've been somewhat busy lately, not necessarily with actual work, but with classes. Took some surprisingly interesting asphalt and concrete courses. Going to another one this Friday, which will probably not be as interesting to me since it's an internal course and I might be burned out on those topics.

Disappointed

2009-01-23T16:37:00.002-06:00

I recently joined the YMCA, because me friend said he was going to join and I wanted to support. Plus this is the time of the year when I try to get back into shape for Yosakoi. Not that I really need to, but I take it more seriously than the other members who seem to be there to socialize. Nothing wrong with that since it keeps the members coming back. I'm personally not close to any of the members since I only come in the Spring semester and only make 20% of the practices.

Last Tuesday, I hurt my right foot jogging. I prefer to run barefoot because it's lighter and my feet get hot. I think I was landing flat footed or something. I didn't notice any pain immediately. I went to yoga after my run and felt fine, not until after I look my shower did I start limping around. Nothing is swollen and my muscles don't ache so I wonder if I fractured something. I was upset because I was planning on going to Manhattan this weekend for Yosakoi practice, but no point in going up unless I can dance. Then I got an email last night saying that there's no practice this Friday night, so I didn't feel so bad. Then I read on and it said that they changed the schedule from Mon, Wed, Fri to just Mon and Thu, which essentially eliminates almost all the practices I can go to. There's still a couple that I can go to because I have some training classes in Salina, but it's not worth going only 3 time the whole semester. It only takes me one practice to learn a dance if they're teaching it, but it takes me 3-5 practices to learn it from trying to follow along.

2009-01-14T16:31:00.002-06:00

Last week, one of our techs quit, the main batchman. Now we have on less person under 30 years old. He left us to become a county inspector. Not sure if it pays more, but he won't be stuck in the concrete plant which he hated. Now the batchman position was passed onto the back up. Normally it's passed onto the low person on the totem pole, but since it we actually had a back up trained for once, he got it. I wonder how long he'll last there. The last 4 batchmen we've had since I've been here have quit. They all stayed with the goverment though. One went to KDOT in Iola, one to WSU, one to KU, and the last to county public works. The new batchman is currently taking college classes, so he's definitely planning on leaving KDOT in the future.

KDOT has recently started ktoc.net a KS transportation online community. I wonder wonder how many kdot employees outside of Topeka will use it. Feels weird to have a KDOT social network. Hopefully it'll be a somewhat educational way of killing time at work, not that I need help.

Happy Belated New Year

2009-01-06T16:58:00.001-06:00

Work has been extraordinarily slow. I've only done one bit of work in the past two weeks. 2/3 of the office took the last two weeks off. The people in the front office were gone, so we in the back had to take turns answering the phones. I hate answering the phone because I have to concentrate to say Kansas Department of Transportation slowly, which causes me to stutter. I can say it without stuttering with my normal speech, but then they wouldn't understand what I'm saying.

During this break I managed to tag and find album art for most of my music. All that is left are my old video game and anime soundtracks, which I rarely listen to and are horribly labeled. My friends used to make fun of my music preferences saying all I listen to are female singers and Swedish bands. In my boredom, I began tracking all the music I've acquired in the past 3 years to prove them right or wrong. The making of the list was also somewhat influenced by the end of the year top music lists. I'd think of what albums would be on my list, so first I had to identify all those albums. Currently all this data is in an excel spreadsheet, but I'm trying to learn access to better track my listening treads.

For 2008, I acquired 294 albums from 148 unique artists not counting the various artists featured on compilations. 81 of those albums were relased in 2008. Of the 148 artists: 54.1% feature only female vocals, 28.4% feature only male vocals, and 17.6% feature both or are instrumentals. 50% are from the US, 19.9% UK, 6.1% Scandinavia, 5.4% Japan, 4.1% France, 2.7% Canada, 2.7 Australia, and 9.1% from various others including Brazil, Iceland, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Nigeria, and Argentina. From previous years, the amount of female singers have decreased. US and UK artists are increasing while Japan and Canada dropped by half. Eventually I'll go through add genres.

While on the topic music, I'll list my 10 favorite albums of 2008. My tastes vary a lot from most year end lists since those are dominated by male lead bands. With the except of Santogold, Portishead, and maybe Goldfrapp most probably don't appear an any lists. Beyond the first 3, the list is mostly albms that I remembering listen to the most or ones that stuck out. I haven't taken the time to relisten to them to properly rate them.

1. Bitter:Sweet - Drama
2. Portishead - Third
3. Santogold - Santogold
4. Cansei de Ser Sexy - Donkey
5. Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree
6. Rosey - Luckiest Girl
7. Amanda Palmer - Who Killed Amanda Palmer
8. Brazilian Girls - New York City
9. Stereolab - Chemical Chords
10. Deerhoof - Offend Maggie

xmas lunch

2008-12-16T16:07:00.002-06:00

Today we had our annual xmas lunch. We order BBQ from a nearby place, and workers from maintenance and construction bring their own dishes. Last year we had 2.5 tables full of dessert, mostly brownies. This year people toned it down and we didn't have nearly as much as last year, which is good. Because of the snow, not all of maintenance was present. Half are on night shift, and the day shift people came in waves. This lunch is the one thing that construction and maintenance does together. I think I only know the name of one person in maintenance. They do tend to have a high turnover rate so I saw a lot of new people.

We had a raffle for presents. There were presents stacked and I chose one, which felt like an empty box, and it was mostly empty except for $15 in cash. I'll use it to pitch in for the group gift that we're getting for our boss. She was nice enough to get everyone in construction a tin of popcorn. My tin will be saved until our semi-annual lan party.

The big boss didn't make it to lunch, which I was hoping he would. Either last year or the year before he came and filled up, and was in such a good mood that he gave us the rest of the day off. It made sense too, everyone else was full and sluggish. No work would have been done, even if there had been work to do. The office was mostly empty anyways since people either didn't come in, had to plow snow, or just simply left early.

asphalt conference

2008-12-09T16:25:00.005-06:00

Last week I went to a Asphalt Conference held at KU. It was rather boring. I feel asleep in almost every talk I sat through, and gained very little knowledge. After the introduction, the first talk was given by the Deputy Secretary of Transportation about future funding. It was somewhat depressing. This speech is usually given by the Secretary, but she had other obligations. He mentioned that it's basically the same speech as hers but at half the speed. That's the one thing I really like about the Secretary's speeches was how fast she talked. I didn't even stay for the whole conference. The point of these conferences is to get continuing education credits. They gave us our certificates at the beginning, so the only thing keeping you there was actual interest. I left about 2 hours before the end since I wasn't getting anything out of it, and went back to the hotel to nap, which is what I would have done at the conference anyways. The conference was Thursday afternoon, but there was a social hour at the hotel on Wednesday and Thursday nights so they paid for us to stay both nights. I skipped both nights to hang out with friends in Lawrence

Since it on a Thursday, I decided to take Friday off and spend the whole spend in KC. I basically just hung out with various friends and played Rock Band 2 that weekend. I felt like 2nd vacation.

Tomorrow I have to go to Nuke gauge safety training. We're require to go every two years. I never got a nuke badge from my first training which is used to measure how much radiation you've been exposed to on the job. We use a nuke gauge to determine the density of the dirt and pavements. The training is in Salina, but I'll have to be ready to leave here at 7am even though the class isn't until 9am. It's the 5 of us that was too busy working on the same project to go to an earlier class. I will probably sleep through this one and still ace the test. It's tempting to drive on my own so I won't have to spend 3 hours in a suburban with those guys, but we're supposed to be trying to conserve gas. Well I'm trying to, the project manager almost never shut his truck off.

flex time

2008-11-24T16:24:00.002-06:00

The project is still going on, but they're done with concrete so they don't need me. I get to resume my flex time hours of 8:30-5:00 and get that extra 1-1.5 hours of sleep. I'd really like to have 9-5:30 just so I can avoid the evening traffic, but that's outside our normal hours. People are able to come in at 7am, so maybe if would be ok if I stayed late. Though I would be the only person left, so no one could verify my hours.

I'm back to my old routine of surfing the web and tagging all my mp3s. I'm almost done with the j-pop, so it's a good chance I can finish everything by the end of year, just in time for my annual music backup. Maybe once I finish that I'll read some more. I read all of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, because they had watching stripers for a few in-between concrete pours. Striping is extraordinarily boring and I would take a nap after reading a chapter.

I'm happy to be back in the office, but I am going to miss practicing my Spanish. Like on most project you spend a lot of time with the labors, and when I spoke to one in Spanish, they all knew almost immediately. Many would try to have conversations with me. Most of the conversation were similiar, since they're were a lot of labors. I really should look into taking some advance Spanish classes at WSU, if the state is willing to pay for it.

Paving

2008-10-27T15:20:00.003-05:00

I'll have couple days of little until we start concrete paving the south frontage road. We'll have 3000 ft of pavement, 22 ft wide going from 135th St W to the bridge. There's another 2000 ft east of the bridge but that section is no where near ready. As long as the weather cooperates, I should be busy for a while. Though the temperature lately will cut our pouring time down, since we can't pour when it's under 40 degrees F. And if approaches freezing, the contractor will have to use insulated blankets and heaters for the new pavement.

Tomorrow I'll go meet with the builders to finalize the plans for my house. Once I do that, they can start building the house. I still have yet to decide on the color of paint or brick. I think I'll pick some boring safe colors. I'll have to take some time off of work to do it this, so I figure I'll go vote while I'm out. We're actually given up to 2 hours leave to go vote. Depending on how long it takes me, I might not even bother claiming any of that time. This will be my first time voting. I wasn't even registered to vote until I went to a Roots concert, and they were Obama supporters signing people up.

Halloween is coming up and I originally wasn't planning on doing anything, but then a friend invited me to a costume party. Which meant that I'd have to dress up, which is something that I haven't done since elementary school.I was somewhat stressing since it's getting close to Halloween and all the good costumes would be sold out. Plus I didn't want to buy something I'd only wear once. Then it donned on me that I can go as a Shinsengumi member. I already had most of the outfit in my closet. I impulsively bought a Shinsengumi haori when I was Tokyo this summer, and was somewhat regretting it, since I didn't think I'd ever wear it. I have two nice happi that I could wear instead and not look like a fanboy. The only thing I'll need is a tasuki, a white cord that crosses in front and ties in the back, and a long headband. Sadly my hair is slightly too short to all be put into a top knot, so I'll have to make use of some styling gel. I hope I won't have to spend the whole night trying to explain my costume.

Rainy

2008-10-14T15:51:00.003-05:00

It's been raining for the past couple days which has given me a chance to catch up. I've actually been enjoying the project more since I actually have a dedicated task. I'm in charge of the concrete tests and entering the data into the system. It's always been my job, but we've been doing more concrete lately, so it's been keeping me busy. I come in early and the pours usually take 5-6 hours, so it's all I have to do. I get to spend some in the office afterwards and I get to go home after my 8 hours. This current rain is delaying 4 straight days of concrete pours, which isn't good since the contractor was supposed to have the road opened by now.

On these rainy days, the only work that can be done is to watch how well the storms drains that we just installed are working, and if the creek is flooding. I personally never go to check, though I should. I recently started having my house built just 1 mile directly south of the project. I don't think flooding is a problem in that neighborhood, but it'd be nice to check it out beforehand.

Boss's day is on the 16th, so everyone in the office chipped in to buy a gift certificate for the baking supply store that our boss frequents. Today she made some delicious fudge with walnuts, I have no idea what the occasion was. A couple weeks ago she made a cafe mocha cheesecake and some cappuccino brownies for my birthday. They were very delicious. Though the cheesecake wasn't as good as last years. It was also super heavy. I had one piece and it kept me full past lunch, which is unusual for me.

Stars

2008-09-26T15:05:00.004-05:00

Last week I went to a Jenny Lewis concert in the middle of the work week to see if it's plausible for me to do such things in the future. The ride back sucked because it was cold and I didn't bring warmer clothing since I didn't want to be saddled with it during the concert. I no longer have friends in Lawrence to drop my stuff off at. Tonganoxie is the closest which is 15 miles away. I got home at 1:30am, but couldn't fall asleep for another 40 minutes because my body needed to warm up. I'd consider going to another concert during the work, but it'll have to be someone I really really like. Jenny was good, but her second album just was as good as the first one. I also didn't care for your two openers that much, but it did make me appreciate Jenny Lewis that much more.

The project has been keeping my fairly busy. No more sitting in the office until 3pm. Today was the first time that the project was slow enough that I got to stay in the office in a while. To think that I still have another 3 months of this.

Tonight I'm off to Lawrence again to see Stars. They're the 2nd Broken Social Scene group that I'll see in concert, Feist being the first. I'd really like to see my favorite, Metric, but they seem to be avoiding the midwest. This is my last planned concert for the year, though I am considering going to the Hotel Cafe Tour in November, it's on a Sunday and the following Monday is Veteran's day.

I'll spend the night in Tonganoxie then head to Kansas City for the Greater Kansas City Japan Festival to perform Yosakoi. I've only gone to one practice for the semester, but I think I'm still good enough to perform. This will probably be my only performance for the semester, since I don't want to take too much more time off from the project than I already have. I'm losing out on some useful overtime hours.

Meh

2008-09-11T11:48:00.000-05:00

I didn’t get the Construction Engineer position, which kind of sucks because I dislike field work. But I guess it’s ok. It’s a lot more responsibility but it does come with a 10% pay raise. In that position, I don’t think I could take off for two weeks to go Japan, which is something I very much want to do again. And Theoretically I can make more money in my current position because of overtime. I actually made more than the old EAII last year, though I don’t think it’ll happen this year. I also like my current office and boss better.

It makes some sense on why I wasn’t picked. He had some natural advantages. He’s from the North office, so there’ll be no transferring and he has worked with all the techs in that office. Though I’ve worked with all the techs in his office too. He and I start about the same time, so if I were to get the position, I’d be his boss which could be awkward. Not sure if this made a difference, but he’s a Missouri-Rolla graduate, and one of the three interviewers is also from Missouri-Rolla, while the other two were KU.

But now since I know I’m not going anywhere I can focus more on this project. I actually probably wouldn’t hate it as much if I actually felt my presence was necessary. A lot of the time I’m out there with another Tech, and he’s the one that the contractor talks to. I don’t actually do much if I out there during the day, which is why when the opportunity to go work in the asphalt lab came up, I asked to help out. The guy assigned to the lab is taking college classes and has to leave early two days a week. The boss assigned someone who hates the lab to fill in. After he complained to me about I asked the boss if I could go, since I personally prefer lab work to field work. I also want to learn how to do ever part of project, even though it’s very unusual for an engineer to do those things. I talked to my boss and she said she didn’t want to assign me to the lab, because she thought I was going to the EAIII position in the north office. She agreed to let go in the lab one of the days, because she still wants the other Tech to suffer which is fine by me.

Interview

2008-08-29T16:56:00.002-05:00

Today I had my interview for the Construction Engineer position in the north shop. It was a nice laid back interview. They asked me a couple technical questions, but most were about management. I messed up on the technical questions, because I don't know the exact minimum densities required for concrete, asphalt or cement treated based. I told them I was guessing and usually got within 1-2% of the correct answer. I asked my boss a couple days ago on what kind of questions they asked her, but other than that, I did very little to prep for the interview. It's easier for me to just respond to the questions right on the spot. The interview itself felt short. There were three interviewers and each asked me 5-6 questions, but when I walked out, 45 minutes had past. My feeling during this interview was the same as when I first interviewed with the State, but back then I didn't have any competition. This time I have a fellow EAII that started a month before I did. I personally don't care if I don't get the position. I like the office I'm in and what I do, but with the way promotions work here, I have to apply when I get a chance, since I never know when the next opening will be. Though if I really wanted the position, there's 4 other EAIII positions open in the eastern half of the state, the two in Topeka and Olathe aren't too bad of prospects either. I'd prefer to stay in Wichita though, since all family and a lot of friends are here. I have a lot of friends in KC too, but the cost of living is higher. The benefit of Topeka is that it's close to Lawrence which would allow me to go to more concerts.

This Sunday, I'm going to Lawrence to see Ratatat. I'm actually going with 5 of my friends which is surprising to me, since I've never managed to get more than two to come to a concert with me. Especially to see a group that most of have never heard of more than a month ago. Maybe it's because of the holiday weekend. I'm sure none will come with me to see Jenny Lewis or Stars in the upcoming weeks.

Bitter:Sweet

2008-08-15T16:44:00.002-05:00

Been semi-busy working out on the project. Actually had to go out on some days before 3pm. Though I still didn't do much when I went out since there were at least two other inspectors out there. We got the summer intern from the north shop for the last two weeks. Today was his last day. Guess they ran out of projects for him, so they sent him to us. He got to the watch the boring but important part of construction, dirt work. Since they were trying to load in up on OT, he'd come in in the morning with another inspector and leave at the end of the day with me. He was good company, nice to talk to another young "engineer." Talking him kept me awake on those days where we honestly didn't do anything but simply wait for the contractor to go home.

It's now been 4 weeks since I applied for the construction engineer position. I still haven't heard anything except for the initial email saying that they got my application. I emailed our FEA, and he told me that once the closing date passes, District collects all the apps, sends them to the Area. I'm not sure when the closing date is since none of the EAIII positions have closing dates listed. The FEA seems to be still handing his old EAIII responsibilities, so they don't seem to be in a major hurry to fill the vacancy. They waited 3 weeks to list it and it's been open for 5 weeks after that. I wish they would hurry.

This weekend I am heading to Lawton, OK to visit a friend, and then onto Dallas for the Bitter:Sweet concert, my favorite current band. A local dallas band called Shock of Pleasure is opening for them, and listening to some of their stuff, they don't suck. Much better and appropriate opener than the local band that opened for Bitter:Sweet last summer in Chicago. Coincidental I'll be seeing Bitter:Sweet on the 17th which is the same date that I saw them last year. This will be the 1st of 4 concerts I'll go in the next 6 weeks. Luckily the next 3 are all in Lawrence at the Granada, a venue I've never been to.

Japan Trip Part 11

2008-07-28T16:31:00.004-05:00

We woke up for our 8am breakfast. It was just like dinner, very traditional. After breakfast, I decided to get one last soak in the hot springs before we checked out. We gathered in the lobby at 10am, and the Inn took us down to the train station. We still had over an hour before departure, so we did some shopping. The main attraction for just about everyone except me and a couple of others was the Hello Kitty shop with a giant golden Kitty in front of it. I had already bought my Hello Kitty gift in Sapporo, so I had no interest. After about 5 minutes in the shop, I left to explore the rest of the town with Austin and Quixia. We found shop that sold some expensive hand made woodcrafts. I bought a small Hear no, see no, and speak no evil monkey statue, which current sits on my desk at work.

We took the train to Utsunomiya, which is apparently famous for its gyouza. There were at least five gyouza restaurants right by each other in the station. We split into three groups for lunch, since no one restaurant could accomodate us all. I ordered the spicy gyouza with a side of kimchee. From Utsunomiya we took the bullet train to Asakusa, Tokyo. Riding the train made me think of the Chemical Brothers video for Star Guitar. So started playing the song on my zune.

In Asakusa, we went to Kaminari mon. There was just tons of shops, most of it very touristy. I bought a lantern and a Shinsengumi coat. I also bought some tenugui bought they came from shops off the main road. After shopping alone, I finally found the main group. We walked slowly split off as we saw things that interested us, like the arcade for purikura or food. I stuck with Seiji for a while, but after dinner I decided I wanted to head back to the main shopping area to show a Fritzi the out of the way shops that sold tenugui. I was leading Fritzi and Quixia back to the station, when stopped at a Mister Donuts, because Quixia had get something. This stop caused me to get disoriented, or maybe I was already oriented wrong, but I started heading in the opposite direction of the station. After stopping a man for directions we started back and we met up with going to where we came from so we decided to tag along. He was looking for the Golden Kappa statue and the district where they make the realistic looking plastic food. We found the statue but it was fenced off, and we didn't manage to find the plastic food, probably because it was late and most of the stores were closed. We headed back to the station and we still had some time leftover to stop be the tenugui shops. After that, we hopped on a fairly crowded train which we managed to avoid most of the trip, and went back to Minako's house. We packed our things but before we did that I laid out all my goodies and took a picture.

Japan Trip Part 10

2008-07-11T16:36:00.006-05:00

We left Minako's house at 6am to catch the train to Shinjuku, which is the busiest station in the world. From Shinjuku we hopped on a train to Nikko. It was a two hour ride, and most of us slept on it. I slept through the first half, but managed to stay awake for the rest to enjoy the scenery. Once we arrived the inn were staying at sent two vans to pick us up. We dropped off our bags since our rooms weren't ready, and we headed out to tour the shrines. Nikko is a relatively quite town, known for its hot springs and the location of the tomb of the Tokugawa shogun.

We walked from the inn to shrine. It was a huge area. The day we went, several schools were there for field trips. I walked a little slower and walked with a group of senior citizens with a tour guide. I did that for a while until I fell far enough behind. We had lunch at shop in the shrine. Most of our day was spent walking around. Sadly halfway through the trip, the battery died on my camera, and I left my charger back in Yokohama.We returned to the inn around 3-4pm. After getting our rooms, I relaxed for a bit, then headed up to the 6th floor to the hotspring bath. Seiji and the supporters were already up there soaking in the outdoor hot tub. There was a beautiful view and the cool mountain air left good in the hot bath. After the bath, the inn provided us with yukata. When I returned to the room, Austin was napping and Micah was gone, so I got bored and went for a walk around town. I felt awesome walking around in the yukata and vest. Only thing that would have been better is if I had a sword. It was very quiet, and none of the stores seemed to be open besides the conbini.

After returning from the walk it was time for dinner. It was a very fancy japanese dinner. It was much better looking than it tasted. I prefer okinawan cooking over japanese. After dinner, a group of us, all of us old enough to drink, went to the conbini for some liquor. It was like a miniature liquor store. They had a decent selection, though the majority was sake. We all went back to Seiji's room to hang out, drink, and look at some of the pictures that people took throughout the trip. I'm not sure about anybody else, but I got to the happy stage of drunk. After a couple hours we all went back to our rooms for bed.

Japan Trip Part 9

2008-07-10T16:32:00.004-05:00

We woke up around 8:00am and Minako's family was kind enough to make us breakfast. Our first stop on the way to Tokyo was Shibuya. We split into three group. The guys went to the games, manga, and music store, some of the girls went clothes shopping and I have no clue where the third group went. I looked around the manga section, but didn't want to buy anything, that's too much stuff to carry around and I don't want to just buy one volume of a series. I did buy one used Sakura Taisen game for DS, and four ued music cds; Bonnie Pink, two brilliant green, and Lucky Soul. I was happy to find Lucky Soul, since they're a British band, and the Japanese version of their album has two bonus tracks, but it doesn't have the secret track. We ate lunch at Yoshinoya and had some delicious beef bowls. Sadly there was no room for all of us to eat together, so I ate upstairs by myself.

After lunch, we met up and walked to the Meiji Shrine.
On the way we walked to through a massive bicycle and motorcycle parking area. We was a slightly interesting to me. There wasn't enough actual motorcycle, just a lot of big scooters. Along walk way there were some homeless people's houses too.

The Meiji Shrine was kind of interesting, I'm not really fan of shrines. I did buy some lucky charms though. The shrine is right next to Harajuku which was our next stop.

The main attraction was the "underground", which is basically a street with a ton of clothing stores of varying styles. Walking through, one of the owners stopped me and brought me into his urban clothing store. It's not my style but I had time to kill. The prices were ridiculous, and I was definitely wasn't going to buy urban clothing in Japan. I explained to him that I was hoping I could find a great Engrish shirt. He showed me a couple of shirts, but they all had proper English. In fact, Harajuku disappointed me, because I could find any Engrish shirts. I only found little store, that wasn't even in the underground, that had cool shirts. Being a Tuesday afternoon, we didn't see many of the Harajuku girls or street performers.

After Harajuku, we hopped on the train to end to the main destination of all the men, Akihabara. We went straight into the giant Yodobashi store across from the subway station. I went straight to the 6th floor which has all the games, music, and most importantly toys. There was so many things that I wanted to buy, but I knew I couldn't fit them into my luggage. Coincidently, they sold luggage on that floor. I ended up buying a 1/60 YF-19, which has been something I've wanted for the past 10 years. I also bought a Pinky:St figure of Sakura Shinguji. After spending about an hour in Yodobashi, I finally got out to explore some of the smaller shops. I found one shop with a smaller, YF-19 at the price and it was still transformable. The shop also had a ton of gatchapon figures. I wish I had more time to walk around, but I spent too much time in Yodobashi. Dr. John latched onto me in Yodobashi so I wasn't completely free to roam. After buying some gatchapon, John was getting hungry so we went to a Kaiten sushi place.

Earlier that week in Akihabara, a mad man killed several people. So there was onlookers, and media everywhere. I didn't really notice them at first, but walking back after dinner, I noticed. We all met up at the train station, and had a long and crowded trip back to Yokohama. Once back at Minako's I tore into my new toys, and everyone looked at me as if I was a child, which might been true. I was ecstatic to have have my own variable YF-19, which I played with for a while, because I had trouble transforming it. Before bed we had to neatly pack our things, because we were going to Nikko, and Minako was having other people stay at her house while we were gone.

back to work

2008-07-09T16:17:00.001-05:00

Work started on my new project yesterday. Today they’re just clearing and grubbing, so only one person needs to be out there. I’ll have to be out there late in the afternoon after the other inspectors go home, since they don’t want give OT. Which is fine by me and actually works in my favor, because I can come in later. The contractor works from 7am to 5:30pm, so the early birds can cover the morning, while I do the afternoon. At least for now, until we get more things going on. We stopped flex time this week, so people not on project have to work 8am to 4:30pm or 5pm. It’s odd writing this while everyone is still here. I originally started writing this to kill the last 30 minutes of the day after everyone leaves.

I’ve been working semi-hard trying to final out my old project, since I’ll be working on this new one. Copying a couple thousand excel entries into an orange workbook sucks. I also got assigned a new phone today, which is odd. I had to give my phone to the new senior, and I got the old phone of a tech. Why the tech didn't give the phone to the senior, I don't know. Luckily most of us keep the same contacts, so it's not that bad.

Starting next week, we'll have a new tech transferring in from the North office. It makes sense to transfer here, it's a bigger office and we have 4 empty desks. They have tiny cubicles and cram everyone in half the space we have. We also have an awesome boss. I've worked with the new transfer before, and she very friendly and likes to talk a lot. We're not so talkative in our office since we're spread out more.

The Roots

2008-07-02T16:30:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, we had a meeting for the project that I was assigned to. There's 5 of us, the project manager and 4 helpers. I'm the only helper without a specified job. I'll just float around and help out when necessary. So I'm probably going to be aimless for quite a bit, answering to people that are technically lower than me on the totem pole. The project starts sometime next week and is expected to finish around xmas time. An interesting aspect of project is that project manager wants try our best to conserve fuel. He wants us to start now before the state mandates it. He wants us to try to carpool and to not leave our trucks running. I personally never leave my truck running or even use air conditioning. I also choose to walk everywhere on a project. I wouldn't mind carpooling, since unlike everyone else, I don't keep my office in my truck. Mine is fairly devoid of personal items. Though if I'm a floater, if there's nothing to do, I'll probably just go home and get very little OT. I don't look forward to being out in the field for 6 months, so hopefully I can get that promotion.

Much like half of the office, I'm taking tomorrow off. I'm going to take my truck into the shop, then head to Kansas City for the Roots Concert. I like the Roots, but I'm not a huge fan, I don't even own any of their many CDs. They're playing at the Harrah's, so I thought I might have some fun at the casino, then catch a show. A couple of my friends are coming along too, so it should be fun. Though I'm going to feel awkward being at a hiphop concert with two very white guys.

Japan Trip Part 8

2008-06-30T17:00:00.004-05:00

We got up early to check out, then took the subway to JR Station. We said farewell to one of our members from the Czech Republic, who wasn't touring with us any more last night. We met her again at the station waiting to buy our tickets. We said goodbye again and went our separate ways. Then when we boarded our train for the airport, we saw her again, getting on the train next to us.

The train ride felt oddly longer than the bus ride. We arrived 2 hours before our flight at New Chitose Airport. We split up into groups for lunch, and then went shopping. I figured I needed to buy some something that was Hokkaido specific. I bought several knick knacks which I actually ended up giving away as gifts. In Chitose, we said goodbye to 3 more teammates, who were going back to their homes around Japan. We flew out of Chitose and arrived in Haneda. We took a bus to the bus terminal in Yokohama, where one of our members, Minako greeted us with her family and friends. We all piled into 3 vans, and headed to her family's house.

Minako's father is a priest at the Tenrikyo church, which is attached to their house. It was a surprisingly large house, though it had low doorways. It was funny watching the taller men hit their heads and walking around hunched over. Apparently they normally have visitors and were easily able to accommodate our large group.

After unloading our things, Minako gave us tour of the house and church. Once in the church, her father gave us an intro to their religion. He answered our questions until it was time for dinner. Her family was kind enough to provide us a delicious temaki sushi dinner. There was two kinds of squid, tuna, salmon, and eels. There was a challenge to eat the whole tiny squid they provided. I ate my squid before the challenge was even brought up. It was a bad taste and odd sensation as your bite through the head. Most of them didn't try it.

We finished a little after 6:30pm, which is when the church has their twice daily services. We sat in on it. Following the service, we were asked to give a performance by her family. We did 3 dances. It was slightly odd dancing in the church immediately after they just had services. After our performances, we piled into the vans again and they took us to Yokohama Chinatown.

Chinatown is supposedly famous for its nikuman (pork buns). We just finished a big dinner so most of us weren't interested in trying them. I personally found no interest in Chinatown, so I just walked around, not going in any of the shops. Our destination in Chinatown was the karaoke box. There was 18 of us in one room. It started slow because there was only one song list in english. A former member of the team, worked nearby and hung out with us. He was even kind enough to pay for part of our fee.

Seiji wanted us to pick songs that everyone could song along to. Only about the group were interested in picking songs, so I picked a couple that they might know. I picked the Cardigans - Lovefool, Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody, and Weezer - Buddy Holly. I didn't pick up the mic for lovefool, but I did for the other two. We picked a few disney songs too hoping everyone would know them. We only sang three Japanese songs; Re:Japan - Ashita ga Arusa, a song I somewhat knew because we sang a version of it in Japanese class, the Theme from Totoro, which was a hit, and Minako with Wildcats - We are wildcats, a song that no one knew, but it we felt it needed needed to be sung. My favorite moment was when Ada, our 13 year old member, and Ashley, a fairly quiet person, sang Metallica's Master of Puppets. It came out of nowhere, and they did a great job. After singing, we took cabs home, and prepared for a day of sightseeing in Tokyo.

Japan Trip Part 7

2008-06-26T16:05:00.006-05:00

Sunday was another day filled with performances. Before our performances, a member from one of the other teams came and taught us the new Soran Illusion dance at our request. They also gave us t-shirts. We started at the Sapporo Factory Shopping Center, and had lunch there after our performance. Next we went to the Daiei Shopping mall. They had all the teams lined up behind the stage. Much to our glee, Mai Docomo was standing right next to us. We cook a couple more pictures with them and cursed that they didn't go before us, because Seiji said we had to leave immediately after our performance, so we wouldn't be able to watch them. We walked very slowly and once we got far enough, we actually just stop so we could watch them.

Our next stop was Odori Park for our parade. We had to perform our dance 5 times in a row with a water break after the 2nd one. Before our first dance, we saw someone from the team ahead of us being hauled away on a stretcher. Our first couple runs were kinda off. We practiced moving at a much faster pace, and we didn't think to leave space between us and our music van. During our water break, I was still hyped up and kept dancing. It was hot and I was happy to see the end of the block by our 5th performance. After parade, we took some time off and bid farewell to one of our supporters.

We had an hour break, then it was time for Soran Illusion part #2. It was basically the same as last night, but with less teams, because the semi-finals were going on at the same time. This time we started at the fron of the group right behind the Kenyan team. This time the experience was a lot more fun since we actually knew the dance. In fact, it was probably the most fun I've ever had in my life. I purposedly moved at the slower speed so I dance with other people throughout the dance. I want to come back next year just for the experience of dancing in the parade again. I definately had a lot more energy in this than in any other dance.

After the parade it was time for our farewell dinner. We went to the Monja Tanuki restaurant which was an okonomiyaki and monjayaki restaurant. People gave going away speeches, which was surprisingly tearless compared to our end of the semester going away parties. We said goodbye to our Assistant Director, who was flying back to Tokyo that night. After the party we were free to do whatever. Half of the group went to watch the finals. I went with Seiji and the other Japanese members to the onsen (hot springs) for a bath.

Bath house was an experience. They had serveral different pools. They were at various temperatures and had different minerals in it. There was one with lemons and one with a light electric current running through it. I didn't actually see that one, but they talked about it. There a couple of saunas too. A regular and a super sauna. The super sauna was crazy. I began sweating immediately and could barely breath once I got in there. After a couple minutes, I gave up. The best part was the outdoors portion. That's where the pool with the actual spring water was. There was also the foot baths and heated chairs. There was kind of a line for the chairs. The backs of the chairs were heated and warm water runs from the waist down. After the bath we went to the relaxation area. They had full body massage chairs, a mini arcade, a restaurant, and a tatami room for laying down or stretching. The trip to onsen was by far the best bang for your buck in Japan. Just 300 yen for a relaxing finish to a day, and a great last night in Sapporo.

On our way back to the hotel, several of us took the posters for the yosakoi festival since it was officially over. We probably arrive back around 11pm, and had to pack for tomorrow.

Japan Trip Part 6

2008-06-25T16:15:00.010-05:00

Saturday, we had a full day of performances. We were constantly on move going from venue to venue. We started at the JR South Station. The ground was still wet from the night before, and our tabi shoes didn't help much on the pavement like they did on the main stage. At the very beginning of our dance, I slipped and fell. I quickly recovered and proceeded with caution. Other members complained about slipping too, but no one else fell. After our performance, we broke for lunch. I grabbed some onigiri from the conbi, and watched the other performances. I even got to see Toppu perform, which was the team of our former assistant director. We learned about 3 of Toppu's dances. Our next dance was back on the big stage at Odori Park. Then it was off to Aka-Renga, (the old red brick government building). We were rushing, but we actually got there early, and got our team picture taken again. This was a smaller venue, so the audience was right in front of us. We had to make sure to shout really loud and to smile really big.

We thought our next dance was at the elevated circle stage back at Odori Park. But it was actually on the street. It was supposed to be a short form parade style, which we didn't rehearse at all. We just basically did a stage style dance, which I felt cheated the audience. The crowd is to the side of the us, but we faced forward the whole time.

After that, we sneaked off to a empty road and practiced our parade style dance. We practiced it quite a bit back at the hostel, but we didn't have the whole there at the time. After a short practice, we were allowed to go explore and watch other performances.

I watched some of the big stage performances on a big screen. I actually saw a team that was smaller than us, they only had 10 people. After watching a couple of those, I watched the parade performances.

The teams will have these ornately decorated trucks, and that's why the hype men will stand. We were lucky, being a special team, we got our truck provided to us for free. We also got our $2000 entry fee waived too.

At around 5:45pm we went to dinner at a viking restaurant, which the Japanese word for buffet. After that, it was time for Soran Illusion Night. Various teams get together to perform a parade dance together. We were in the college group, which was called the Kenya group. They gave us all wraps. We were actually expecting to the Pokey Pokey dance, which they learned last year. Instead we did a whole new African themed dance. It was a fun dance once we went through it several times and learned it. The Kenyan team was at the front of the parade. This was an extraordinarily fun experience. Dancing with 1000's of other people while the crowd cheers us on. The chorus of the dance motioned for the audience to join us, some of more enthusiastic dancer would run right up to the crowd. We danced up the street first, then a different group danced up, then there was some flag battle going on after that, but I couldn't see it. While waiting for turn again, our director Seiji lead us in doing the Pokey Pokey Dance. We thought we could start a wave since we figured these people would know the dance. Only a few actually knew last year's Soran Illuison dance. Some tried to dance it with us anyways. After our little impromtu dance, one of the people that helped make the dance thanked us. He said it made him very happy to see his dance performed again, though it was different. On way back, everyone danced Yocchore, which was a dance we did know. The announcement of Yocchore made everyone happy. People were screaming "yocchore" and cheering. There wasn't enough space to do the dance properly, but it didn't matter, because there was so many of us. It didn't matter if the dance was right anyway, as long as you had enough enthusiasm. Once Illusion Night was over, we went home and prepped for the next day.

mmm, steak

2008-06-25T16:13:00.002-05:00

My boss continues to be awesome. We had a cookout today and she provided the steaks. I brought fried rice, while others brought three different pasta salads. There was also strawberry cheesecake, some kickass brownies, and watermelon, which made me happy. It was actually a cookout/staff meeting, so got some business taken care of too.

The north office EAIII got the FEA position, and I still waiting for them to open the position. This recent cookout is reason a why I like this office so much more than the north office. I’ll apply for the EAIII job, but I won’t be upset if I don’t get it. I figure I have to at least try, can’t let myself get too lazy, plus it’s a $6k/yr raise. Though I’m afraid it’s already too late.

Japan Trip Part 5

2008-06-24T15:54:00.005-05:00

Friday is the day of our first performance. We had to get up slightly earlier, because were checking out of the hostel and into a hotel downtown. It was unfortunately raining that morning. We first took the subway, then proceeded to walk a kilometer with or luggage through the covered shopping district. The pace we were moving at really upset my knee, but I did my best to keep up.

Our hotel was just a couple blocks from the main venue. The rest of our team met us at the hotel, except one. We now had 24 people, 18 dancers. Most of us were on the 4th floor. The three of us had a double as a triple. It was a tiny room with barely any room for our luggage. It was slightly smaller than the room at the hostel, and the hostel had futons, so we could stuff our bedding in the closet, though I was the only one that actually did that. We didn't spend much time in our rooms anyways. We at least had internet, but it was wired, so we had to share.

As soon as we checked in, we had to change and get ready for rehearsal. It was still raining, and we didn't know how to dress for rehearsal so we came in our uniforms. Every other team there were in costume, but with ponchos. We were out in the rain for hours being thoroughly soaked. Tonight was World in Souran Night, when all the international teams were showcased. There were teams from New Zealand, Kenya, Brazil, and Taiwan. And despite the distance they travel, they still brought a lot more members than us. The Brazilian team was called Sansey, most were descendants of Japanese living in Brazil. The Kenyan was actually mostly Japanese. They wore yellow and black African outfits.

Right after our rehearsal, we were interviewed Sapporo TV, the major local station. They chose three of us, Austin, Michelle, and myself. Michelle did all the talking, while Austin and I just nodded and smiled. Apparently we were interviewed semi-famous model/actress. She asked her questions about yosakoi and global climate change, since the theme tonight was the environment, which was related to the upcoming G8 summit in Sapporo. It was good that Michelle did the talking because she did a great job, and came up with better responses than I could have ever done in short notice. They interviewed the other international teams too. We had stay cheerful, because we never knew when we were going to be on camera. And whenever we noticed the camera, we had to get excited and yell, like the people in the backgroud of the Today show.

The performances started at 5pm. One of the top teams actually opened with a dance, and halfway through it, all the international teams joined them. After the group dance, we were up. There was a decent turn out despite the rain. The dance went great as far as I could tell. The acts were precisely scheduled and we had to run off stage quickly. As soon as we finished, it stopped raining. We got our picture taken, then they handed on Bandai Namco Happi coats for the group dance. We waited until it was time to perform the special dance that we learned for the night. We performed it with Chapi, the extremely cute penguin mascot of this year's festival. It was very fun, but very crowded, really didn't have room to properly do the moves. After that we went back to the hotel to dry off. Our flag waiver, Ryan arrived during our performance, so Dr. John had to wave the flag. It was extra difficult because it was wet. It made me happy that Dr. John got to perform on the big stage with us, and he was ecstatic about it too.

Afterwards we were invited to a dinner with the Taiwanese team and the president of the Yosakoi festival. They had a lot of tasty food. Sadly there wasn't much mingling because of the language barrier. We actually performed for the president. The song we used for our dance the theme of last year's festival and they were playing various yosakoi songs in the background. Most of our team will instantly start dancing whenever they hear a song they know. So the president saw them and was wondering what they were doing. It was explained and had to give performance. It went well considering that it was a small stage and we were in the middle of eating. Most of us were in street clothes, though I was still wearing the pants, which I love very much, and an older version of our shirt. My knee held out even though the painkillers wore off.

Following the dinner we split up, and I followed the director to watch the rest of the performances. Once that finished, we went home to prep for the next day.

Japan Trip Part 4

2008-06-23T16:02:00.003-05:00

Next day was more of the same. We went to a family restaurant for lunch which took the while lunch period and then some. It seemed to be some Japanese franchise of Bob's Big Boy called Victoria Station. Our group was too large to sit together, which was often the case here, and I had to sit in the smoking section with other males. It wasn't as bad as expected. The reason our meals took so long was that once we finished the main dish, many of us ordered dessert and those took a long time to come out. I got a flan parfait with coffee jello. That's one of the things I love about Japan, there's melon and coffee flavored everything. Nothing like starting the morning with coffee bread. (this is not what our restaurant had but, a picture I took in Tokyo, but it gives you and idea of what they look like.)
We ended our afternoon practice because we were going to watch a earlier performance. There was a line for the shower, so I decided to try out the public bath down in the basement of the hostel. Luckily it wasn't busy nor were there any Japanese present, because I'm sure broke some etiquette rules. It was refreshing to soak in a hot bath after a workout, but the water was very hot that after a while I was sweating.

We went to another night of performances, which started slow because they featured a lot of kids teams. It picked up with team dressed in hip hop fashion, followed by one of the favorite teams of the festival, Konza Freak. They're a team from a women's college and they started off wearing yellow dresses with fairy wings, then they shed them to reveal a cheerleader outfit with pom poms. Our tickets were for only a certain time slot, so the organizer prepping us to leave. Luckily we stay until the end and got to finish with one of our team's favorites, Mai Docomo. Austin is huge fan of them, and wanted to track them down after their performance. After performing on the main stage, all the teams go to take an official group photo. After they finished with theirs we asked to take some photos with them. Their costumes are so simple. basically dress liked a old fashion Japanese blue collar worker but with happi. Their moves are fairly simple, but they all do it with such precision and to the sounds of the music, that is looks awesome. Any team that has a corporate sponsor has to be good.

Sadly, I guess the combination of the workouts and sitting in those uncomfortable bleachers messed up my left knee. I had to limp my way home after the performances. I went back to the hot bath to soak my knee and it really didn't help that much. I went to Dr. John, who gave me some ibuprofen, a wrap and an ice pack. The pain in my knee really upset me, because I worked out much harder in the weeks before the trip and on the day before our first performance it starts to hurt. I hoped it go away after a night's rest, but it actually plagued me for the rest of the festival.

Japan Trip Part 3

2008-06-20T15:33:00.004-05:00

Wednesday June 4 was our first actual day in Japan, since there's a 14 hour time difference and the total flight time including lay overs of 24 hours. I woke up at 4am, because that's when the sun rises and we left our blinds open. Out of laziness I just rolled over and went back to sleep until 7am.
Our practice involved a really short job to the local grocery store, just so we'd know where it was. I opted to run it barefoot, which is probably frowned upon since I'll be bringing in the outside dirt indoor even when I take my shoes off. The hostel had a little gym for us to practice in and we had to take off our shoes before going in.

After practice, we had an extra long break for lunch so we can go shopping and explore a little. Half of us chose to follow Seiji, our director around, and we went to Mos Burger for lunch. I just got a regular Mos burger, which was fairly messy and tasted like a sloppy joe. It was a solid patty though, it was just the sauce. After lunch, most of the group went to the nearby shopping complex which the grocery store was attached to. Seiji, Dr John (the team medic), and myself went to the Geo, the used game, book, and cd store. I bought two Bonnie Pink albums for $2 and $9 which made me really happy, since they usually cost $25-30.

We practiced again in the afternoon, and then we went to downtown Sapporo to watch the other teams. Our first performance wasn't until Friday night, so got two nights to watch the performances. The performances on the main stage weren't judged the first two days. We had to pay to get into the stands. The performances were all excellent, though we were a little distracted by the cold weather. Seiji said none of the top teams were performing tonight, which amazed me, because I was in awe of the performances that night. The size of the teams, the cheographery, costume changes and props, they were definately more than just dances. Every team had what I called a "hype man." They stand in towers on opposite sides of the stage, and yell at parts of the song when the team yells, since the crowd can't hear the team yell on the main stage. Some of the teams have actual singers, which really adds to the performance. I remember one team that had two hype men, one singer, and three rappers. My favorite that night was a group called Las Vegas. They wore glittery tuxedo looking costumes. A lot of my teammates didn't care much for them, because they were far away from traditional yosakoi, but I still think they put on a great stage show. Watching those performances made my anxious to get on the main stage, and made me proud and amazed to be part of such a wonderful festival.

Japan Trip Part 2

2008-06-19T16:01:00.002-05:00

There were 12 of us traveling together. 1 bought her tickets separate from the rest of us, so she was on all the same flights, but wasn't seated anyways near us. The 11 of us were split in into 3 groups and I had the pleasure of being in the girls group. The flight from Chicago was around 12-13 hours and it wasn't too bad. I only watched one of the inflight movies, Jumper. I actually watched it in Japanese, because the button on my remote was broke and I couldn't switch it to english. But it was a simple enough movie that I actually understood everything. Japanese dubs always seem to use the same actors, which are a completely different set of actors used in anime. I read my book, "I am America and So Can You" and played some FFIII DS. I took a couple naps early on so when I arrive in Sapporo, I'll be ready for bed.

We arrived in Narita Airport in the afternoon. We immediately exchanged our money went to our gate. There was a gift shop/restaurant/convenience store close by and our group immediately squealed at the Hello Kitty display. Our flight to Chitose was mostly empty, so some of us spread out to lay down to sleep. We arrive in Chitose at 8pm and took a bus into Sapporo to the Youth Hostel. We met up with a few other memebers and increased our number to 17. 8 more were coming once we checked into a hotel in the city. It was a international hostel, so most of the people there were Americans waiting to move in with their host families. There were only 3 male dancers, so we were always together for lodging. There was a total of 7 males, 3 dancers, 2 supporters, the director, and flag waver.

I was part of the two groups that got Japanese style rooms. We were directly above the lobby so we were able to get the wireless signal. I didn't realize that everyone else was without internet. The hostel had what everyone called "space toilets." They were indeed nice and had heat seats. They also had awesome hand dryers. It's bascially a trough with two air jets blowing downward. You slowly pull your hands out and the water is blown off your hands, so much better than the dryers they have here. I took a quick shower and went with a group of girls to the conbini (convenience store) for some snacks and breakfast for tomorrow. We made it back right before midnight when they lock the doors. Finally got to go to bed for some much needed sleep. Our first practice was scheduled for 10am to give us plenty of time to rest.

Japan Trip Part 1

2008-06-18T16:32:00.003-05:00

I left Wichita on June 1 at 3pm with another member of the team, Michelle. She drove her van and was very pleasant company, which was good since in addition to riding with her for the next 5 hours, she was also going to be sitting next to me on all of our flights. We first drove to Manhattan to pick up two other members, Holly and Austin. We actually got there ahead of time so we got some coffee, then waited at chipotle for them to arrive. After dinner, we drove to KC to spend the night at another team members house, but he wasn't going on the trip with us. Either he gave bad directions or Michelle wrote down the wrong ones, because we got lost on the way there. We finally arrived around 9:30pm and went to bed around 10pm. I couldn't fall asleep that early since I've been working the night shift the week before, and just laid there until Austin finally got up and started playing his DS around 2am. Which was good for me since I could stop pretending to sleep. The girls were upstairs in the guest rooms, while us two guys just had the couch in the basement. We got up at 4am, because we had to be at the airport byt 5am for our 6:30am flight to Chicago. Made it through security without a problem. In fact throughout the whole trip, I didn't have any problems with the TSA or customs. I even brought back a Marimo from Hokkaido.

Not ready to be back.

2008-06-18T15:29:00.003-05:00

Two weeks didn't feel like enough vacation for me. I should have taken an extra day to recover, because as soon as I got back to Wichita, I went to a lan party for the weekend which really mess up my schedule. I did manage to get some work done on Monday and Tuesday morning since I had some stuff piled up. But soon after 11am, I lost any focus I had. With no motivation, I just tried to catch up on everything I missed in the past 2 weeks. Today, I managed to do no work, felt tired the whole day. I even took a short nap during my lunch break outside. A couple engineers from district drove up during it, hope they understood it was my lunch break and that I wasn't blatantly slacking off. I don't think I'm jetlagged because I'm able to go to bed a decent time and still get 7-8 hours of sleep at night.

There were a couple changes at work while I was gone. The Construction Engineer (EAIII) got a new car. They replaced our old Taurus with a new Impala. We actually got that Taurus a couple months ago. We had an old one and they replaced it with an older one. We got our new senior, The tech with 15 years of experience can finally stop bitching. I am happy for him though. They're having interviews for the FEA position in the north office today, and I was sad to hear that our EAIII didn't even apply for it. She didn't want to work in that office. Truthfully, neither do I, but I'll still apply for the engineer position assuming it opens up. The EAIII from the north office and Pratt office recently passed the PE exam, not sure if the Pratt EAIII applied for the position though.

The next several posts will be about my trip to Japan. I didn't really write much while I was there other than some tweats. So they won't be very detailed. I did take quite a few pictures, but not nearly as much as everyone else in my group. I guess Japan doesn't impress me as much as everyone else.

Vacation Time

2008-05-30T03:12:00.002-05:00

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.

jpop

2008-05-22T16:29:00.003-05:00

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
.

pavement marking

2008-05-20T16:23:00.003-05:00

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.

labeling

2008-05-19T16:24:00.003-05:00

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.

Pearls

2008-05-09T16:19:00.002-05:00

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.

mp3's

2008-05-06T16:44:00.003-05:00

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.

Reading

2008-05-02T16:39:00.002-05:00

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.

Third

2008-04-29T16:47:00.002-05:00

Another rather boring day of work. I wasted some time adjusting the chain on my bike. It makes an annoying sound, and I can't quite figured out if it's too tight or loose. I might just have to lube it again, even though I just lubed it 400 miles ago. After my lunch break I went to Best Buy to pick Portishead's new album, Third, and GTA4. I actually haven't read much about GTA4 since I can't read about games at work, but I figured it'll be great. Plus my friends are getting it so it'll give us something to talk about. Hopefully I'll play it enough to warrant me buying it now instead of waiting to get it used.

Rain

2008-04-23T16:28:00.004-05:00

I actually got something to do today. My project that's administered at the north office, so I don't see them very often. I delivered some paperwork to the construction engineer there over a month ago, but he was out of the office and I just put it in his inbox. He finally cleaned his desk and found the paperwork yesterday. So I had some minor corrections to make, 30 minutes work at most. Though I feel I've been doing a good job of occupying my time, since I've been bored a lot less lately.

We were under a severe thunderstorm watch. When I woke up I checked the ambient morning temperature, but didn't look at the forecast. So I rode my bike today. It was nice riding to work, but it's raining pretty hard right now. I didn't pack my rain pants either. At my jacket, helmet, and boots are waterproof.

Recently, the female Senior quit. Now I'm the only person in the back after 4pm. My boss and the office administrator are in the front and still stay until 5pm. Since she's gone, I'll have a greater chance at having to answer the phone. Also because of her departure there is a Senior position open here. We've got 4 Techs in this office and 1 from the north office that will competing for the position. It'll be interesting since two of them have over 14 years experience and have seen 6 other Techs with only the minimum 4 years experience pass them up. In the past two openings I've been around for, there was an obvious candidate, I haven't noticed one this time. Maybe someone from outside of Wichita will come and piss everyone off.

FAIL!!!

2008-04-17T16:27:00.000-05:00

On my way from Manhattan I ran out of gas on my bike 0.5 miles from my target gas station. Yosakoi practice ended at 9:20 and I usually speed home so it won’t be midnight by the time I get home. I normally take K-15 between Abilene and Newton, because it’s fairly empty and I can go like 100mph most of the way. The problem with going that fast is that it greatly reduces my gas mileage to about 35 mpg. I can normally get about 45-50 mpg at normal speeds. My gas light turns on when I have 1 gallon left and lit up at 125 miles, so I calculated my mileage to be a little over 35 mpg and that 160 miles is my max. I figured I’d stop at Park City which would have been at 153 miles. I was attempting to pass a semi when the bike finally decided “no mas.” I pulled over and restarted the bike and puttered along for another several feet. I did that two more times before it finally stopped starting. I could see the gas station sign so I wasn’t too bad off. Two concerned drivers actually stopped to help, but I declined, because I figured I was close enough and could push the bike. It was quite a workout. So decided to take off my helmet which I clumsily dropped and the face shield popped off. They’re meant to come off, but still are a pain to get back on. Once I got to the off ramp I hopped on the bike hoping to coast to the station. It amazingly started again and had enough gas to make it to the station. I almost lost control at one point, because I had to throttle it more to get it to go, and all of a sudden it got more gas from somewhere and accelerated unexpectedly. When I filled up, I calculated my mileage to be 34.6 mpg, amazing how 0.4 mpg can screw you. And apparently my bike got less efficient even though I was driving about 15 mph slower once I got past Newton.

This little ordeal added only about 20 minutes to my drive home. So I still got home faster than if I had driven the speed limit. If I was smarter I probably should have slowed down more once my light came on. I always sacrifice efficiency for speed on the bike, and that was my main reason for getting a bike in the first place. The loss of mileage means I have to stop at gas stations more often to refuel, almost offsetting any time gained. Though I don’t mind stopping, it gives me a chance to stretch out, and rest my ass, because my seat is uncomfortable after about an hour.

Improving the ground

2008-04-10T16:19:00.000-05:00

I just came back from a 3 course from the National Highway Institute about Ground Improvement techniques in Topeka. I was a fairly interesting class, though I will most likely make no use of any of the techniques. The majority of the class were geologists and soil engineers. We were introduced to 10 different methods and most these were developed by the Swedes and Japanese. One of the instructors was Scottish which made his lecture a little bit more interesting. Also in that class I met the cousin of one of my old friends, that I haven't talked to in years. I discovered that he's in Iraq for his third tour.

I had a fairly busy week. Friday night was a friend's birthday and we played Rock Band until we broke the pedal. Saturday was the KU Japanese festival, which I danced at. Sunday was another performance at the KSU international talent show. Since my class was in Topeka, I commuted to Manhattan for dance practice on Monday and Wednesday.

I got home Wednesday night at 11:30pm and I found two of my packages that I've been waiting for. One was from Amazon, more Street Fighter manga, and the first Cow and Boy book. The second was supposed to be my helmet and riding jacket which I ordered 5 weeks ago. I got the jacket, but no helmet. This order has been a pain for a me. First the helmet I originally ordered was out of stock, and they never bother to notify me. I just happened to check my order status and saw a note on my order. So I called them to change the order. Then I waited 3 weeks and called them again wondering about my order. They immediately shipped it after I called them, but it arrived without the helmet. I'm not in terrible need of these items, since I already have helmet and a KDOT jacket that suffices. Now I have a jacket, but old helmet doesn't match. In addition to that, the flasher relay that I ordered two weeks ago for my bike has yet to come in. I was planning on riding my bike up to Manhattan for the KSU Japanese festival, and it looks like I'll have to do it without turn signals. Hopefully the weather will be nice this weekend.

Finally

2008-04-02T16:28:00.000-05:00

I finally got the last set of certs for my first bridge project. I might finally be done with this project that was physically complete almost 10 months ago. I recently discovered that the NY Times puzzles page isn't blocked, so I have 3 more sudoku puzzles to do daily. The crossword is actually premium content, which is fine by me since I don't think I good enough to do it anyways. I like the interface for the Eagle's sudoku and crossword better.

Aside from puzzles I've been reading King of Bandits Jing, which I borrowed from a friend. I'm finally catching up on all my manga. Probably by next month I'll be back to reading actual books. I got a small stack of used Dave Barry books that my friend has been buying for me. Jing's art reminds of something Akira Toriyama would do, but not as clean. I'm halfway through the first series, I'm still indifferent to the story.

Pandora

2008-03-19T16:41:00.000-05:00

I mentioned pandora.com to a friend, because he had forgotten his mp3 player, which didn't really help since he didn't have this headphones either. I hadn't listened to pandora in a long time, because I was discovering too many new artists. Last year I acquired 218 albums, over 1 album every other day, and that's without using pandora. I decided to listen my Bitter:Sweet station and when I got home I downloaded 22 new albums. 2 were albums that were released that day, but the rest were from pandora. One was Hotel Costes with was a lounge compilation and there were 10 albums and the other was Quantic who had 10 albums of his own. Those recent acquistitions has put me up to 78 albums for 2008. I do listen to all of them on a regular basis too, anything new I get I take with me to the work and I keep all my music on one playlist.

Today was a very boring day I read some XXXholic and Street Fighter III manga and I tagged and sorted my newly acquired music. Mp3's are almost never labeled the way I like. Most of the office was away at some class this morning so was very unmotivated.

In charge

2008-03-10T16:28:00.000-05:00

The boss is away again, this time she actually put me in charge. Last time she was gone, one of the other seniors brought it to her attention that I was neglect, so maybe that's why she put me in charge this time. So far I haven't actually had to do anything. But my main duties are to make sure the gate is closed and that the phones are covered.

The cake is not a lie

2008-03-07T16:44:00.000-06:00

I was slightly worried, because no one on the construction side has a birthday day in March, so my boss wouldn't been making a cake. I had forgotten that she often brings us leftover treats. Today she brought in part of a drum kit made out of cake. She made this for her son, who apparently plays the drums. The snare was solid chocolate cake, bass was angel food cake, tom tom was a checkerboard cake, the cymbal was a giant sugar cookie, and there were pretzel drum sticks. the drums had white frosting and nice icing details. She brought us the cymbal and half the tom-tom.

I had a semi busy week. I finally got some certs, but after weeks of doing nothing I'm slow to get to them. Then I had two days of class which slowed me even more, but gave me an excuse for having gotten anything done. I have websites that I like to read daily and it's difficult for me to work until I read them. After two days of class I have a back log of stuff. I actually did some work today but it feels weird, because I'm still not caught up on my readings. Part of my readings including a daily sudoku and crossword in Wichita paper website, that's surprisingly not blocked. I really need to do more of these, because I'm slow, my mind has become dull. If only I had the drive of when I first started two years ago.

The boss is away

2008-02-27T16:42:00.000-06:00

The construction engineer and the specialist are away at some concrete conference that I wasn't even invited to. She left one of the seniors in charge which is fine by me. That just means I won't have to answer any questions on the phone. During this time of freedom, not that it would matter if they were still, I've been playing some Sim City 4, trying my hand at city planning, mainly for the transportation planning aspect. I went broke the first time because I was busy building and neglected the budget side. It took a while and lot of proper cost cutting and allowing the dumping of toxic waste, but I was able to get a positive cash flow after going into debt the 2nd time.

Aside from playing games, I've been watching more shows besides my usual Avatar over lunch. I started watching Flight of the Conchords. It's a great show about a New Zealand comedy-folk duo, playing characters of themselves, trying to make in New York. I especially enjoy the songs. I might look into finding their albums, but I doubt it'll be as funny out of context of the show.

Superpave

2008-02-19T16:30:00.002-06:00

I had a fairly good time in Manhattan. I got to go to 4 yosakoi practices and even got to perform. Pity messed up on the first dance. On Tuesday there was the engineering career held in the same building as my class. I saw several friends representing their companies and as applicants. We had a nice long break in the class that I was able to wander around for an hour talking to people.

The Superpave class itself wasn't too bad. It was half lab work, half lecture. We never stayed the whole time, usually left 2-3 hours early, and they even gave us lunch 2 of the days. Being half lab work really helped tie-in all the stuff we covered in lecture. That's part of the reason I was able to get through my civil engineering classes in college, because so many had labs. Another bonus from the lab, was that we got a black apron, which I'll probably never use for work. Actually most of the stuff I learned in class I won't use, but I need to be certified to enter asphalt information into our database. Pity this class's certification is once every 5 years. I don't get many opportunities to come up on the state's dime. There's this and the annual KSU transportation conference, which should be in a couple of months. I should look into that and make sure I'm registered to attend. I missed last year's because I had a class in Salina.

Manhattan

2008-02-08T16:04:00.000-06:00

Every other Friday, I come in 30 minutes early so I can leave early, so I can make it to Manhattan by 7pm for yosakoi practice. Though today I forgot to come in early, I'm still going to leave though since I got some extra time from the Monday field trip. I'll be in Manhattan for the next week, taking a 4-day Superpave training course. It's taught by the only CE dept teacher I never had. I'm sure it'll be boring and simple, since techs have to be able to pass it. Though I've heard its one of the harder courses. I look forward to my week up there, though I don't look forward to living off fast food for the week. I'll be staying at the hotel across the street from the Union, so I won't have to worry about the parking nightmare.

Yesterday, I went to a couple beauty supply stores to find some special dreadlock shampoo, no place had what I was looking for. The Nubian Beauty Store, which was run by asians, had a conditioner, but the not the matching shampoo. I ended up picking up a "dry" shampoo. It sucks, I'm not supposed to wash my hair for a week to give the dreads time to lock up. My head itches.

New Hair

2008-02-06T16:20:00.000-06:00

Today feels like Monday to me. I took yesterday off, and went on a field trip on Monday. I decided to get dreadlocks, which was a 3 hour ordeal, so I decided to take the whole day off. I also went and got fitted for contacts. So came in today looking fairly different, and one of my coworkers felt the need to reintroduce himself to me. He did this to me once before after I came back from rotation and had shaved my head and goatee.

Several employees took a trip to Tulsa, Ok to tour the lab facilities of a major asphalt producer, Sem Materials. They provided two charter buses for a Wichita and Topeka group. I slept for about 2 hours each way. It was a nice tour, it would have been a little more interesting if I worked with asphalt testing, but it was basically a day off. They had a beautiful facility, it's almost tempting to start looking for a job in the private sector. After the tours, they gave us lunch, then some VPs came, gave a presentation basically kissing our collective asses. I guess that's business though. We're one of their biggest customers, and we're usually the first to try out their new and unproven designs.

Last week, he had our annual District Construction and Materials meeting. It wasn't too bad, and our office surprisingly won the District Safety Award. They got their picture in the monthly newsletter, but I missed out since I left quickly. At that meeting, our Metro Engineer asked if I was interested taking over the Hutchinson construction office, since the engineer that they were grooming for the position just quit at the end of last year. It'd be a promotion and a nice pay raise, but I'd have a lot more responsibility that I don't think I'm ready for. Plus I don't want to move or commute to Hutch. I told him no thanks, and he easily gave up.

Profilograph

2008-01-30T16:34:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I went to very simple class about reading the results of a profilograph. Basically after a major paving job, they run a profilograph over the surface to test the smoothness. It'll probably be a long time before I ever do one of those, since we're focused on repairs instead of new construction. But the class got me out of the office. I rode with the office admin and on the way back I got to hear some office gossip, which I usually never hear. I usually prefer to mind my own business and just listen to my music. I do talk with my coworkers more often now though. They'll all bored, spending their days playing games and watching DVDs.

Recently our Field Engineer Administrator announced that he's leaving us for a job that pays more and doesn't require a 50 mile commute. He is a fellow KSU alum and very easy too get along with. Yesterday, my boss was making a giant KSU banner for him. His position, FEA, is one step above Construction Engineer, EAIII, and requires a PE license. So if my boss wanted to move up she could, and then I can move up to her position. Though I don't want to move just quite yet, I don't want the responsibility of running an office and conducting meetings with people who clearly know more than me. Plus I like my boss and her cooking. Though there is the possibility that they'll keep the position closed until the EAIII from the north shop passes his PE test, so he could take it. I'm not too crazy about moving to that office either. Though it's not like I'd automatically get the position anyways, I still have to compete with the other EAII from the north shop. Ideally I'd like to stay in this office and take over in 6 months or so to get more experience, but that's not going to happen.

Tomorrow, we have our annual District Construction and Materials meeting. It'll be the end half of Thursday and beginning half of Friday. I'll be napping in the back. I have yet to make it through a conference or class without falling asleep once, though it not like it's a goal of mine to stay awake either.

Bored enough to update

2008-01-18T16:37:00.000-06:00

I've been busy the past 5 months with projects. My project took an extra month longer than it should have, which is fine by me, because I can get more overtime that way. Now I have to finish up some paperwork with this project and my first project the finished up back in June. I need to get certifications for every little thing used on the jobs, like the bolts, paint, and plastic wrap used to cover curing concrete. We don't pay for this stuff, but we need to account for it. So I'm basically waiting for the contractors to send me the certs. There is some other busy work to be done, but I would rather read GTO.

Today was chili day, the boss made chili and another co-worker made taco soup. The soup was excellent, though I was a little disappoint with the chili because it wasn't as good as the soup. My boss is an excellent cook, and I generally expect nothing but the best from her. There was also garlic bread and some brownies. This past month has been good and bad, because she's been baking a lot more, so I get tasty treats, but it very bad for my weight. If I was able to so some restraint. I'm constantly walking passed the food table on the way to the restroom or to get something from the printer, and it's hard to not grab something.

Not sure how often I'm going to update, since it's fairly mundane not really worth writing about, but I guess it depends on how bored I get at the end of the day. I didn't bring enough GTO manga today, stopped at a really good part too.

Message board woes

2007-05-29T16:35:00.000-05:00

Over the holiday, the message board that I setup rolled into a ditch. Maintenance was nice enough to put it back on the shoulder. It was apparently still working, but when my helper raised it back up, it died. Apparently something on the board burned out, like a capacitor or resistor.

I had the joy of taking the board back to the north shop. I made several mistakes when moving it. Since the board was dead, I couldn't lower the board. It stood about 15 feet, lowered its about 8-9 feet. First I forgot to rotate the sign. I was wondering why I couldn't get any speed, then I realize I basically had a giant wall behind me. I pulled over and fixed it. I thought I had locked it, but as soon as I got to about 50 mph, the sign swung open, jerking my truck back. It felt like back end of my truck was lifted up. I was worried that the raised message board wouldn't make it under the bridges and overhead signs. Hopefully the board can be fixed soon, because we really need it out, since we'll be closing off a major junction.

new engineer, kind of

2007-05-22T16:32:00.001-05:00

Surprisingly two people interviewed for the Construction Engineer (EAIII) position in our office. It naturally went the engineer that has been working here for the past year. But the other engineer did get the same position but at the district office. Except he won't jump right into the new job, he'll be a EAII learning how KDOT works for a year before he can take over. Though for some reason he is actually being put to work under our EAIII, and he has a desk in our office, despite working in the office an hour away. I guess he's somehow supposed to learn from our new EAIII, who is actually still learning from our Specialist.

Days

2007-05-21T16:42:00.000-05:00

I spent the past week watching pile driving. I wasn't too bad. The senior on the project was surprisingly helpful, and gave me good advice for my upcoming project. This is the same senior that was in charge of my first project last summer, that never talked to me. I got some reading done, bridge work is very slow and only requires supervision only for certain parts.

While on the bridge, my helper came out because they thought they would need extra workers for the concrete pour. We set a schedule for the project. I'll unfortunately be working from 5:45am to 6:15pm. Since I'm the coordinator it would be best if I was around during the day so I could consult my superiors. Plus any concrete and asphalt would be done during the day. I could just be my way of thinking, but as the project coordinator, I feel I should have the most responsibility and work on this job. My helper plans on coming in at 5pm, even though he doesn't need to be out on the road until 6pm. I personally think 5:30pm is early enough for him to come in, but I guess I'll be nice and not take his 5 hours of OT away, since I almost make double his pay.

I'm slowly getting all the paperwork ready for this job. I need to get certification for every little thing, including the nuts and bolts used. My helper and I went out and looked at the bridge. He asked a lot of questions, that I really didn't care about. Probably because I assume the contractor knows a lot more than me, and can take care of it. Though thanks to him we did notice something extra that might need replacing. I'll go out tomorrow to take pictures, which will be reviewed Topeka.

New Regime

2007-05-14T16:40:00.000-05:00

Today is the first day under the construction engineer. Rather than vacate the office, the old acting construction engineer, the Specialist, he setup a small desk in the front office. He also setup some of his stuff at my old desk. That was the purpose of me moving so he could have my old one. He spends most of his time in the front office, and only comes to the back to use the internet, since the front is only wired for one computer right now.

They've been stealing my truck for the past couple work days, because it has a tow hitch. There's a truck with a tow hitch that belongs to a senior that hasn't shown up for work in about a month. My truck was being driven by our accident prone trouble-making transfer from maintenance. Immediately after bringing back my truck this afternoon, he got in accident in his own state truck. There was apparently something in the road, and drove over it. It got stuck under the suburban, I have no idea how much damage if any was cause to it.

I didn't do anything all day except add more music to my state cell phone. Starting tomorrow I'll be working on the bridge I was originally assigned to long ago. Since the previous project coordinator has become the big boss, she can't be out on the road as much. I'll have the joy of watching pile driving.

Moving

2007-05-09T16:16:00.000-05:00

Today I'm move my desk to the other side. I already like it better, there's people to talk to. The only problem is that it's next to the designated food table. I can smell the doughnuts right now it very tempting. They're trying really hard to fatten me up. Our office administrator went to Braum's for some reason, so she decided to bring back some chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream with cones.

Luckily yesterday I got quite a bit of walking in helping out with the asphalt paving west of here. I even managed to get some overtime which is nice. I have an opportunity for more overtime this weekend, but I going out of town for several friends' graduation at K-State.

Aside from moving desk, I went out and took some more pictures of my bridge. There's some utilities connected the bridge which may cause some problems to the contractor. I am pleased to say that my bridge still currently bum free. Though there is evidence that someone used to live there

Milling

2007-05-07T16:35:00.000-05:00

Last week I helped with a milling job. The project coordinator went on vacation so I was called in to help out. I am currently the only person the office not working on a project. Starting tomorrow I'll be sent out to help out on another project out of town, because the workers from that office are busy since there were several tornadoes out west.

My own project will start in 25 days. I was finally assigned a helper, though I'm not too fond of the person. I figure we will work 12.5 or 13 hour shifts. I'm not sure how much recapping of information will be necessary, and the project is 1.5 miles from the office so drive time isn't an issue. since it is a consecutive day project, if I go with 12.5 hour/day, I'll work 87.5 hours in a week. I'll almost get more overtime on my 10-day project than I did all last year.

Screwed

2007-04-26T16:35:00.000-05:00

My emergency bridge repair project is schedule to start on June 1 at 6pm, which is the worst time for me. The project will be day and night for 10 straight days, so no weekends for me. The contractor couldn't start until they have all the materials and the piece isn't supposed to arrive until May 18th. And they didn't want to close the ramp on the Memorial Day weekend, so June 1 the earliest date. This really screws me, because I had a wedding rehearsal on the evening of the 1st, and a wedding on the 2nd, then a trip to Japan on the 4th. I'll take day off for the actual wedding, but I'll miss everything else. We're currently shorthanded, so I can't take more days off, plus I want to do this job, because it's my first. I am currently the only person scheduled to work on this project which is impossible, since I can't be out there for 24 hours a day. Though I will get to work at night like I wanted. Slowly I've been getting the paperwork for this job. We've already had to make a change to it, because there was some extra damage that wasn't accounted for in the original estimate.

Lately our office has been going crazy with doughnuts. For the past two weeks, some one has brought two dozen doughnuts. Last Friday, there were five dozen doughnuts from 3 different places. This was the only day I actually ate the doughnuts, because it was day the schedule for my project was decided and I was feeling down. I told myself no sweets at work unless they were homemade.

catching up

2007-04-11T16:18:00.000-05:00

Last week, I finished the last of my training classes in Salina, Aggregate Field Testing. The class was taught by this old 70 year old civil engineer. I feel asleep during most of the lecture parts, which luckily there wasn’t much of. There were a lot of hands on tests that had to practice of the course of 4 days.

When I got back I had a shiny new laptop. It’s a widescreen one with a full number pad on the keyboard. This is definitely good enough to play FFXI, but I don’t have any reason to travel anymore. Maybe if I’m able to go to Japan, I’ll take it with me. 3 others in the office got new laptops too.

Yesterday, my boss put me in charge of doing a 402 (estimates) for a striping job. I went out with another ET and measured the lengths of the lines on a 6 mile stretch. Did the easy stuff in the morning and after lunch we decided to count the skip marks. That was a bad idea, because it was putting us to sleep. Eventually I had to count out loud to keep us both awake. At around 2:30pm, we had to quit because we got a flat tire. We were driving on the shoulders and medians so at some point we drove over a metal spike. Coincidently it was the same tire that I just replaced the day earlier. I was actually the first time I’ve ever changed a tire, and I got to do it twice in two days.

Today I didn’t do anything since the car needs a new tire, and I don’t know what other vehicle is equipped to use the DMI (Digital Measuring Instrument). Plus my boss lent out my truck to be used on another project. I’ll try to finish it up tomorrow. I felt a little bad, not doing anything today when I actually had an assignment to complete.

In my boredom I was looking at the State civil service job openings. I noticed that they opening another EA1 position in Wichita, and the EAIII position which they closed when our engineer arrived. Looks it’s time for a regime change in this office. I should probably move my desk to the other side so my boss will have a spot on this side.

Early morning

2007-03-28T16:35:00.000-05:00

This Saturday I will be batching 1200 cu yds of concrete. Not sure what the regular batch guy is doing, but they asked me. I'm fine with it, because it'll be a full day of overtime. Unfortunately, the concrete has to be on the job by 5am, so I have to arrive at the office at 4am. And to do get out 1200 cu yds, there would be a constant stream of trucks. So I won't have time to nap in-between trucks. I may not even have time to play FFIII, (I finally beat FFTA the last week.) I figure if we're starting at 5am, we'll probably go for at least 10 hours. I honestly don't know how many tons of concrete the plant can produce in an hour.

Tomorrow is the office cook out, too bad our resident BBQ expert quit last month. The office assistant has spent the past couple of days shopping and cleaning the grill. It was quite rusty, I hope it'll be safe to eat off of.

Respecting others

2007-03-20T16:41:00.000-05:00

So my Respecting others in the workplaces was yesterday. Luckily there was another today in Hutchinson. I just thought they moved to Hutchinson class to Wichita, but they made an additional class a day earlier. The class was good and he showed a different video from last year. I talked with a instructor a little since it was my 2nd time in a row. It's normally required once every 3 years. He was looking for a minority engineer to help out with a seminar he gives. When he asked our metro engineer, if he knew anyone, he suggested our female engineer. Which is fine by me, I'm not sure I'd want to participate, nor give the typical answers he was expecting. Though it would get me out of the office.

My boss sent out the project staffing for this years projects. I will have a Senior, the Filipino chemical engineer, helping me out. Which is good a thing, I probably get along with him best after the other engineer. Tomorrow is the letting day for my emergency bridge repair project. I'll finally get more information regarding start times. Hopefully it won't interfere with my trip to Japan.

calculations

2007-03-19T16:35:00.000-05:00

Another boring day at work. I actually started reading the construction manual. This document has some useful information, unfortunately I don't learn well from books. I have about 1.5 months to prepare for my first project. My boss actually took me off as a helper on another project so I can focus on this. He finally told me to calculate the concrete quantities at the end of the day, so I'll save it for something to do tomorrow after my "Respecting others in the workplace" class. There'll be 3 of us from our office. Myself, the other engineer, and the new technician. The new technician seems to have done more work in his first week, than I did in my first two months. It really feel like I'm the only person in the office not working.

FEMA

2007-03-12T16:39:00.000-05:00

Got an email from our KDOT safety officer wanting everyone to complete this FEMA NIMS (National Incident Management System) online course. Had to take two very boring and easy courses. Both were basically introductions to the system. The first course took me about 4 hours, because I kept getting distracted every 10 minutes. The second covered a lot of the same material, and I was able to focus, so it only took me like 1 hour.

The game filter didn't originally catch my main site for FFXI information ffxiclopedia.org, but it finally got blocked today. I was actually reading something on the site, then I click on linked and got the dreaded messaged. Normally when you get that message you're supposed to email your boss to explain your actions. Since I wasn't supposed to be at the site in the first place, I'll just hope I don't get flagged.

We apparently have a new employee. I know we had several people leave, but I don't remember a position ever being opened up. I check the State employment site regularly out of boredom and to find a job for my friend. This new guy seems late 20's, early 30's. I noticed the skoal in his back pocket, so I'm expecting him to be like the average KDOT employee. I wonder if he'll become the new concrete batch guy, since that's reserved for the bottom of the totem pole. The last three employees that left, that didn't retire, were the current batch guys. They just spent the past two weeks our new one, so I wonder if they'll go through the trouble again.

gradations

2007-03-09T16:01:00.000-06:00

Whether we use asphalt or concrete, the aggregate has to be tested. For asphalt is has to be test every 1000 tons, for concrete it's every 250 tons. You have to run moisture tests and sieve analysis. Technically the material is to be tested before it goes on the job. Since in Wichita, we normally only do concrete, gradations is the responsiblilty of the concrete guy. Appareently the last concrete guys didn't run enough tests, so now we have to run tests after the fact. They had me in the lab running tests along with another ET. Eventually they left me alone running tests, which is simple enough, but I'm not certified to run them. I don't go to the aggregate testing class until April.

Back pay

2007-02-27T16:24:00.000-06:00

Back after a week in Salina. Had 5 different classes with a painfully simple 10 question quiz after each of them. All but one of the tests took me less than 5 minutes to complete. Except for the 1st day, the classes started at 1pm and ended at noon the next day. The tests were scheduled for 11:30am, but luckily most started them early, so I was able to take off to lunch early, and take a much needed nap. I had a hard time staying awake in the morning classes. They made all the people taking the class for the first time sit in the first two rows, so I was front row center, since I arrived right on time.

Today had a class on traffic control. It mostly went over specs, which is a good thing, since I probably wouldn't have read the specs on my own. Then we watched a cheesy KDOT made video on how to flag traffic. Then we all received cards that certify us as flaggers. Luckily I will never have to flag traffic.

My boss told me that I have some back pay owed to me. Apparently I was in fact promoted back in November, like I was supposed to, so I'm getting that money. It's a nice chunk of changed that I can use on my upcoming trip to Japan this summer, if work doesn't interfere. I will actually be the project coordinator for two projects this summer. One is a 10-day emergency bridge repair in May. As long as it starts on time, I'll be able to go to Japan. The 2nd one will be let in May, so it'll probably start in July. It's actually two separate projects tied together, because they're right by each other and the same contractor is doing the work. It'll be a bridge overlay. Surprisingly there's 3 nights jobs, and I'm not none of them. I think I'm the only person in the office that likes night jobs.

I won't have any class in March, so it'll give me time to read the contractor for this bridge project that I'll be helping out on until my starts. I need to quickly finish/catch up on my tv shows, because I won't have lunch breaks in the office soon.

hurray

2007-02-15T16:25:00.000-06:00

Yatta! I finally got my keys back. It almost caused me a problem after my class on Tuesday, because I'm supposed to put my state truck back in a fenced yard. For some reason the gate was closed, but the lock wasn't latched so I was able to return my truck. The asphalt class wasn't too bad, learned quite a bit and was able to relate almost all of it to my past experiences. I was the first person to finish test, but I didn't get 100% like usual. Felt a little stupid because of the questions I missed. Though a couple of them I just didn't feel like looking up the answers, it was open book. That's a lazy attitude and I shouldn't be way when dealing with specs. Currently I'm answering the phones, and immediately I get 4 calls. I hate answering the phones, because most of the people are gone, and I'm not really capable of answering their questions.

Level up

2007-02-12T16:36:00.000-06:00

I finally got promoted today. I'm now an Engineering Associate II. Good thing I didn't have them put EAI on my business cards. I had my evaluation this morning, same results as the other ones. My boss finally gave me an idea of what I'll be doing spring. He'll put me on a bridge project with the other engineer initially. It's unknown if I'll stay on the project the whole time or not. It'll depend on what comes up. I think there's some nights jobs this year, so he might put me on those, since he knows I like those.

The concrete class wasn't too bad, had a good teacher. A lot of repetition so the all specs are drilled into my head. I passed all 7 parts of the lab exam on my first try, and I have to wait a couple week to get the results of the written portion of the test. I was actually 1.5 hours late to the first day of class. I had my alarm set for PM instead of AM, and work up 10 minutes before the class started, which was 100 miles away. That's the 2nd time I've been late for a class, and it's only the 4th class I've take so far. My next class is tomorrow, QC/QA asphalt. It's a two day course, but it's in Hutchinson, just 50 miles, so I have to drive home afterwards. I'll be sure to get there on time. I try to be on time, but never early.

Field Trip

2007-02-06T16:32:00.000-06:00

We had a field trip a cement manufacturer in Humbolt, KS yesterday. It wasn't too bad of a trip. It's a little over a 2 hour drive, and I slept for 3/4 of it. Half of the plant was shut down for maintenance since we are having a surprisingly cold winter this year. The plant actually runs 24/7, 365. In case you didn't know, cement is what's combined with water, sand, and gravel to make concrete. Sadly I lost my keys there, and didn't notice until I was back in Wichita. I had to get a spare from my dad. I called our tour guide today, and luckily were able to find the keys. They were exactly where I thought they would be. They fell out of my pocket while sitting the van. I had a brochure rolled up in my pocket, which gave it a tunnel to slip out of. The other half of the office is going on a tour next week, so Ms. Engineer will pick them up for me.

Tomorrow is the concrete field tester course, three days of boring classwork. Hopefully we have good teacher. The teachers I've had so far have been good. I've actually tested concrete before, and I really don't like it. Dries my hands out terribly. Oh well, it gets me out of the office, and I get per diem.

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

2007-01-29T18:04:00.000-06:00

KDOT has added gaming sites to it's list of blocked sites. PennyArcade and Kotaku are blocked. Reading Kotaku usually can occupy at least an hour of my day. Luckily FFXIclopedia isn't blocked. I haven't tried any other sites, mostly out of fear. Usually if you look at a blocked site, you get flagged and eventually your supervisor will talk to you about it. Since it would be my second offense, it's possible that my internet privileges could be taken away. Luckily not all the incidents have been logged in the past. Though today I did try to go to three blocked sites. It's bad enough that the sites are blocked, they should have to punish you more for not looking at them. My spirit was temporarily crushed, but now maybe I can focus more and read more books. Got 4 books and 80 volumes of manga to read

Today was apparently the birthday of our soon to be retiring ET. So our engineer baked him a cake. She really enjoys baking, generally bringing in cookies and other treats. The barrels are made from gumdrops, the silt fence appears to be fruit-by-foot with pretzel posts, there's rock candy and m&m for the rocks, and coconut shaving on the parts that required heavier snow. Luckily the whole cake didn't have coconut shaving, because I don't like it. I like coconut flavor, just don't like the shavings.

In-between classes

2007-01-25T16:48:00.000-06:00

Had two classes last week and one two-day this week. In between them I do nothing. Only new thing is that brought a pair of slippers to wear around the office.

The classes themselves were very simple. Usually 6 hours of material with a 10 minute break every hour with a 2 hour set at the end. The longest it has taken me to complete a test was 40 minutes. Since this is my first year, they have me in all the basic classes. The strange thing is that me and the other engineer has only take one of the same class. You'd figure we'd be taking all the same classes. Well I still got 16 more days of classes until April, so I'll see how similar our schooling will be.

Brains...

2007-01-05T16:24:00.000-06:00

Decided to update, because I'm bored and these last 2 hours have been dragging on. I originally brought some work from Topeka to do, but I actually had some paperwork to do here. So after a couple days, Topeka called and asked if I had gotten around to working on it. I told them no, and I probably wouldn't have time either. Which was ok, because it wasn't really my responsibility and they had someone else up there that could do it. That afternoon, I ran out of work to do. Been keeping myself occupied the normal way. I started watching Eureka and reading The Color of Magic. I'm enjoying both quite a bit.

Our Administrative assistant has been on vacation since xmas. Hope she comes back next week, because I need to setup lodging for my classes in Salina. My first class is Statistics on Jan 17th. Followed on the next day with QC/QA (Quality Control/Quality Assurance). I'm looking forward to these classes because it gets me out of the city. I get a per diem, and it's closer to K-State so I can go to practice.

Empty

2006-12-26T16:48:00.000-06:00

Back from bridge design. I left on a Thursday, because I had to be back for the office Xmas dinner on Friday. It was a fattening week. Wednesday, bridge design had a potluck, where we just grazed from squad to squad sampling food. Then on Thursday, our squad leader took everyone out to lunch. Had some delicious BBQ. Then Xmas dinner was more BBQ, but it was tastier, because it was homemade. Our engineer made the best baked beans I've ever had. After a filling meal, everyone was feeling sluggish, The Area Engineer was kind enough to give us the rest of the day off. I promptly went home and took a nap.

Today, Half the office is taking vacation. Only 5 people showed up, and two of them left at lunch. The other left at 3:30pm, their normal quitting time. Being the only one left, I have to stay until 5pm. Guess it's good that stayed, because someone just came in to check their mail box. I am actually in charge today and tomorrow. Funny, because I always think of myself as the bottom, in fact there's only two people above me in this office. I actually have some work left over from bridge design, but I'm completely unmotivated to do anything. I spent the playing FFTA and watching TV shows. The people that showed up are ones I get along with, except for one snitch. If he wasn't here, I would have dismissed everyone at noon, because there's no point for all of us to be here. Our construction engineer won't be back until Jan 3, so I think I'll marathon my TV shows.

Bridge

2006-12-06T16:55:00.000-06:00

This is day 3 in bridge design. The guys here are very lively and entertaining. There's a giant purple monkey sitting on my cube wall. There was a picture of a design leader's face tape to it's butt. Thankfully the face is gone, a little disturbing having it watch me. The guys here seam to be more computer literate, and they play Black Hawk Down. It's not a very fun game in my opinion. They only play flag ball, and they like to snipe a lot. It's slower paced and half the time I don't know where I'm being shot from. This computer has Call of Duty and Unreal Tournament installed on it, but I haven't seen any games up on the network. They gave me temp login so I'll have access to the bridge files and admin rights, but it doesn't have
internet access. Luckily I've haven't need access to the bridge files so my normal login has suuficed.

They're apparently pretty busy right now. On the first day the design leader gave me an assignment to check over some false work designs. I stared at it for the first two days trying to figure it out, because it's structures. Structures was my worst subject. In fact this check looks like some homework that I did in my structural analysis and Concrete structures class. It's even having the same effect of putting me to sleep. It took me an hour to write like 10 lines, because I'd close my eyes after writing one line and fall asleep. The squad finally wasn't busy, and he offered me some help. I found out I was missing some information to complete this check.

The cubicle arrangement is a little annoying. My back is to the entrance, while the squad leader's oriented facing instead my cube. So he can see my desktop clearly, and watch me pass out several times a day. Overall the group here is nicer, but I don't care so much about the work. I always like transportation and traffic better.

Productive

2006-11-30T16:25:00.000-06:00

I've spent the past couple days working the finalization of a project. I'd spend a lot time on one line item, only to discover that I had to make up a conversion factor to balance the equation. It doesn't make sense at all, but it's acceptable. I'd go looking through all the supporting documents to make sense of it all, but it was pointless. My partner take care of the majority of the work.

Since my partner is taking the next two days off, I figured I should try to get as much work done as possible. But it's snowing hard, so all the technician were put on snow plow duty along with maintenance. There isn't that many people left in the office, so I'm severely lacking in motivation. I've basically been renaming and organizing my mp3 collection. This is something I've been wanting to do for a while, but haven't been able to without admin access to rewrite files on my external HD. I would use wikipedia for track listing, then I'll go on tangents to fill my head with trivia.

Besides labeling, I helped decorate the office xmas tree. Our administrative assistant and senior was decorating the whole office. I'm personally not a fan of decorations, mainly because I'm lazy. This is probably the first time I've decorated a xmas tree in 10 years

Admin

2006-11-21T16:53:00.000-06:00

I finally got admin rights on my own computer. I finally found a problem that required me to have access. It took forever for our computer to realize what the problem. I knew immediately what it was, but he always ignores what I say. It took several calls to the district office for them to finally tell them that I need to be added to the admin list. I'm guessing that my explanations were all gibberish to him. There's a java-based database program that we use, and it requires write access to a text file. The program won't run if it can't log the time and date to this text file. I actually found a way around it by making a copy of the whole folder, but I didn't tell them that because I wanted access. Because of my limited access, I couldn't even write to my external drive. Now I can start installing things and I can bring this laptop with me instead of my desktop when I go to rotation.

Early

2006-11-20T15:25:00.000-06:00

I thought there was another 7:30am pour this morning, so I came in early. I actually came in 10 minutes early, because I needed to fill my truck up with gas. I actually got to the plant before the batchman did. When he arrived he asked what was I doing there, and that there wasn't a pour until 9am. So returned back to the office, and the regular plant guy was back from vacation, so he took care of the pours.

I didn't do anything until 1pm, when we had an office meeting. Basically laid out the plans for the winter. He paired us up to final out some projects. Usually some senior employee that has worked on the project and someone to assist him. I get paired up with the other engineer on a LPA (local planning administration)project, which is something that no one in office work on, except for the previous LPA coordinator who retired several months ago. Plus neither one of us has ever finaled out a project. I have no idea where to even start. So we confronted our boss about this, because we will need help. He said that he thought it might be a problem since both of us are inexperienced, but he still paired us up. He thought it would work out somehow. The other engineer said that we're not a team like the others, we're two people stuck in a hell hole.

Something else that came from the meeting was the start of flex time. Everyone seems to prefer to start earlier and get off earlier. I opted for the 8:30am-5:00pm with a 30 minute lunch. I'm used to getting off at 5pm, and its what time my friends get off. Plus I would rather get an extra 30 minutes of sleep in the morning.

We also got a new employee today. He just transfered over from the north shop. Been working here for about 3 years. He's actually my age, but he already married and I think has a child. I met him on a prject once, and talked for a while, he's an alright guy. He even has the same headphones as I do.

napping

2006-11-15T15:26:00.000-06:00

I'm enjoying coming into work at 6:30am to work in the concrete plant. There are long breaks in-between trucks, so for the first 2 hours, I nap there. Then when I'm good and rested, I play FFTA until about noon which is when they're done. I go home for lunch, then come back to the office at 1pm and kill 2.5 hours until it's quitting time.

Mistake

2006-11-09T15:41:00.000-06:00

Today I had to come in at 6:30am to batch some concrete. There was supposed to be 3 pours, 7:30am, 9:30am, and 12:30pm. Right after we batched the 7:30am one, the batch man said it appeared that the other two pours were canceled. I waiting about 15 minutes then I called the inspector out on the job to confirm it. So by 8am, I was already done with work, and the office wouldn’t expect me back until after 1pm. I decided that I would go home to take a nap and play some Guitar Hero II. On the way home I had a lapse in judgment and decided to head back to the office. I was still mulling over my decision, and by the time I decided to go home again, I was too close to the office to turn around. I thought about the consequences, and there were none, plus in the office I just ended up sitting there. The only person that could have found out about the cancellation was boss. When I got back to the office, I found out that he had taken the day off. I almost turned around right there to go home. I sat in the office for 4 hours wishing I had gone home.

Since the batch plant is halfway between the office and my home, I was planning on going home for lunch, so I didn’t bring my lunch with me. I decided to go out and eat with a couple of friends. I took a nice long 2 hour lunch to make up for my missed opportunity to nap. The only benefit of coming into work at 6:30am is that I can leave at 3:30pm. I have to come in at 6:30am tomorrow too, but that all overtime. So as soon they’re done pouring concrete, I’m gone.

I'm back

2006-11-06T16:33:00.000-06:00

I'm back from HQ in capitol to do my normal job, nothing. Other than my employee evaluation that I get every 3 months for some reason, I didn't do anything. Actually I got my schedule for my Certified Inspection Training. I'll be taking 9 different classes for 14 days over the course of 6 week starting mid-January. So I were to go back to HQ for the rest of my rotation it'll be in March, which is getting close to construction season. If Wichita was such a better place to live than Topeka, and if I had some more friends there, I would definitely transfer to HQ. Though if I stay with KDOT long enough I will eventually have to move there if I want to move up in the ranks. Something I'll have to consider once I get my professional license.

We're supposed to get the 10th off for Veteran's Day, but the county is still working, so they need someone to batch concrete. Since our normal batch guy is going on vacation starting on the 9th, I get to work. I don't mind working it, because it'll be overtime, and I'll be spending the whole time playing FFTA. I'll be the main batch guy until he returns on the 17th. So hopefully I can finally beat FFTA and get start on FFIII that comes out next week.

Accident reports

2006-10-31T16:49:00.000-06:00

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

2006-10-20T14:42:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-19T16:59:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-16T16:58:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-10T16:32:00.000-05:00

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

2006-10-09T16:23:00.000-05:00

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.

Finally

2006-09-21T16:22:00.000-05:00

I'm finally scheduled for my first rotation. It starts October 9, and I'll be working with a squad in road design for 4 weeks. Our Office Administrator has already booked the motels for my stay. I'll be staying in 3 different motels. There's apparently some race going on the first couple weeks and I wasn't able to get my first choice of motels. So I'll finally get my choice for weeks 3 and 4. I looked online and all three motels says they have high speed internet. Hopefully it's good enough for me to play FFXI. If not, I'll bring up the PS2 and try to finish FFX-2. Got so many things to do before FFXII and Guitar Hero 2 comes out.

My second rotation is supposed to be in December for 2 weeks in bridge design, but that has yet to be confirmed. I'm also supposed to take classes for concrete and basic inspection sometime but my boss doesn't know when those are going to be.

Low tech

2006-09-20T16:10:00.000-05:00

The asphalt part of the project didn't last long and I didn't get as many hours as I was hoping for. Only got 12 hours when I was expecting like 25. I wasn't too bad though. Had to be out on the project by 8am, very relaxed and warm mid 70's degree weather. When there was nothing left except the asphalting, the project manager would take over an send me home, which was usually around 5pm. This manager was really nice, if there was something interesting going on somewhere else on the project, he'd send me out to observe. He would tell me about the decisions he made regarding the project and made sure that I knew what was going on. The contractor had to go pave somewhere else, so they left after placing 6 miles on shoulders on the inside of the highway. They dirt crew will come in now and do the grading and other work for the outside shoulders. The paving should start up again in 2-3 weeks.

The project was 40 miles west of the office. Just 2 miles outside the town of Kingman. I rarely went into town, because I had everything with me in the truck. One day the pavers quit early, so the manager took me into town to show me the mini concrete plant that there. I was amazed how small the operation was. All the plants that worked in in-town was totally automated with computers. To fill a truck it has to batch twice. There's only two people working. The batch man and the driver. The batch man's father actually owns the company. When there's multiple loads, the batchman will drive a truck and meet the driver halfway, trade trucks and return to the mini-plant where he'll load the truck up again. The weighing of material is done manually and all the tickets are hand written. It was interesting to see how everything actually worked. There was laid back fun feeling being at that plant. Probably helped that both the workers were young.

Asphalt

2006-09-08T12:54:00.000-05:00

Starting next week I'll be sent to another project outside out our office. It's an asphalt paving job 30 miles west of my office. They asked for help, they need someone to run gradations and a ticket taker. The Russian engineer will run the gradation while I'll have the joy of taking tickets. This is what I did last summer as an intern. I'll even be working with the same contractor, and it might even be the same crew. It's really simple, something, you have the bottom of the totem pole do. You just walk beside the paving machine, taking tickets when the dump trucks arrive and calculate the yield. Not sure if this project will have the same hours as last summer which was 6am-8pm. I will be a very expensive ticket taker. They want me on the job by 8am Monday, but that's for preproduction.

I finally finished playing Final Fantasy II: Soul of Rebirth and watching Justice League. Good timing since I won't have time to watch anything on this project. I might have time to play games and read though. I managed to read 17 books last summer as a ticket taker, but I had some help though.

I have more back up batching to do today. I enjoy batching because it gets me out of the office and allows me to play games. I can play games at any time, but I don't feel right playing my DS in th office. I prefer to read books, it looks better.

Back up

2006-09-01T16:13:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I had to come in early to batch some concrete. We have a new batch man, and apparently he's the only one. So he has to work several different projects. Yesterday there were multiple pours at the same, so I was called in to help out. The first pour was t 7:30am, and the second and last pour was at 4:00. There was some difficulties with the pour and I actually managed to get some overtime. I have absolutely no idea what project I was working on. I just know how to fill out the ticket books. Other than this, I only did 20 minutes of work, had to check same numbers.

I've been discussing the rotation with my boss, since he finally got some information on it. He's still trying to gather more information and said he'll get back to me on Tuesday. After discussing it with his boss, the Metro Engineer, the Metro Engineer said that he doesn't want us gone for 4 weeks at a time. And that only 2-3 days is required for each section, claiming that it's mostly a waste of time. The black guy told me that the previous engineers, said rotation is all about meeting people, and that they had fun, but actually did not learn much technically. This sounds fine for me and I would like to work in Topeka for a while, because it's close to Manhattan. I want to attend some Japanese dance practices.

I recently added two Tachikoma to my desk decoration. They stand next to my HWT from Gunparade March and bobble-head shisaa. I felt kind of funny sitting at my desk building toy robots. I got several more GITS SAC figures, because they came with DVDs, but I think I'll just stick with decorating with robotic looking toys.

Back to nothing

2006-08-29T15:40:00.000-05:00

I am back on days. I was told that I would be working on a 402, so far I have done nothing work related. I looked up my choices for hotels that I could stay in while I'm on my rotation. I started reading Snow Crash, and I watch 3 episodes of Justice League Unlimited during my lunch break. Periodically I have to step outside to warm up. After working in 90-100 degree heat, 70 degrees feels a little cold. I found a nice clean spot beneath our radio antenna, where I can sit, read, and even lay down. If I remember I'll stop by the bookstore and pick up a GRE study guide. My goal is to take it 3 months, and be enrolled n grad school for the spring semester.

Yesterday when I was out warming up, the other engineer was out there also warming up. We had a nice long talk regarding our office and its future. She generally as the same opinion that I do, there's bad leadership and we engineers are being under-utilized. She is slated to take over, but there is no concrete date, and the current acting construction engineer, who isn't actually an engineer, is trying to delay the inevitable. He has assigned her to lead a project next year, that I'll be working on along with the project manager of my first project. He is supposed to be training us to lead projects. Though he is an idiot, and didn't want anything to do with me when I was working on his project. In my opinion he's the worst person to be training us. He's good buddies with the acting construction engineer, which is why he was assigned to us. Since I'll be on this project, I'll still not get to manage projects. The other engineer in the north office is already managing projects, and he's been around for a month longer than me. This project has an early start date in March and is 120 working days. They expect to tie us up for a while.

Oh, I'm proud to say, that I have yet to fall asleep at work.

Flame on

2006-08-24T21:59:00.000-05:00

Back on another equipment related break. They started an hour late and 10 minutes into working, they had problems which caused a 15 minute delay, then they worked for another hour, before they had to head back to their shop. I was slowly falling asleep waiting for them to repair the shot blaster. So I started playing Soul Rebirth. I decided the next game will be Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, because I want to get it out of the way before FFIII and FFV come out this November.

Last night, they laying down the markings for the stop bars. The basically put down plastic sheets and melt them onto the pavement with mini-flamethrowers. Then they sprinkle glass beads to add to the reflectivity. It was rather entertaining, because the workers seemed to enjoy playing with fire. Plus seeing the public reaction was fun too, since they were stopped in the next lane waiting for the light. Since we were working on the stop bars, we were setting off the sensors for the traffic signal, and exiting traffic has priority on these lights. So people were getting annoyed with extra long red lights. Late in the night, people would start running them. One guy on a motorcycle did it right in front of a police officer, and we all had a good laugh. I'm not sure what was going on last night, but there were police everywhere. Saw about 4-5 pass by every hour. It good to see them out.

Faulty equipment

2006-08-23T00:52:00.000-05:00

Since there is only one crew working, if something goes wrong, we get a break. We also get breaks whenever they need to dump the trucks. There's breaks usually take 30 minutes. I generally take that time to return to the office and charge my phone and mp3 player. Today they seem to have a lot of problems, so I took that time to finally beat Final Fantasy II, and now I'm starting on the Soul of Rebirth. After that I'm debating playing Golden Sun or Advanced Wars. I have a lot of other games to play, but I need to something that I can play with one hand easily.

Last night, the contractor did come out. I was just sitting around watching Justice League Unlimited until 10pm, because that would keep me on track to get 40 hours for the week. On my way out, I notice that the office was empty. I thought maybe the other guys were out doing something else. I lock up and head home. I drive through the project on my way home, and I see the contractors and my two co-workers. I, of course, continue on home, because they don't need me out there anyways.

They're actually finding stuff for me to do now, so it looks like I'm going to stay on this project. Mainly they leave me out there alone, while they catch up on paperwork, which is fine by me.

Switching projects

2006-08-21T18:39:00.000-05:00

The project manager of the striping job is back, so they don't need me anymore. I assumed I would be put back on the old concrete patching project, but I've received no instructions. I was going to go back to that project anyways, but striping manager told me that I should stay, since they're not working tonight. The striping must not like working or something, because they didn't work last Thursday. I was brought to this project, because the manager was on vacation and the other guy was talking time off. So I was going to be left alone on this job, and the one night that I'm in charge, the contractor takes the day off.

I like this striping job almost as much as I like working in the batch plant. In the plant I just sit around in an air conditioned room, listening to mp3s and playing games. On the striping job, I just sit in my air conditioned truck, listen to mp3s, occasionally play games, chat on IRC, and the best part, I don't have to wear shoes. I just slowly follow a grinding truck, driving under 1 mph. Since this is a one person job, the other guy records where they grinded, and I do nothing.

I'm still trying to figure out my schedule. There was talks of me going back to days, but I don't know when. The FEA is trying to get me in the rotation as soon as possible. Since I'll be staying Topeka, I'll probably make frequent trips to Manhattan and Lawrence to visit friends.

rotation

2006-08-16T19:10:00.000-05:00

They temporarily put me on the striping job that I originally was supposed to be on because the project manager went on vacation. Striping is very boring but it's a small crew and there's quite a bit of downtime. The other guy I'm working with goes out early, and just calls me when I need o be out there. He also sleeps quite a bit on the job, which I don't mind, since this is really a one man job.

I finally got some information regarding my engineering rotation. There are 6 sections; construction, road design, bridge design, materials and testing, transportation planning, and traffic engineering. Construction is mandatory and we have a choice of 3 sections. Each section is 4 weeks and is conducted at KDOT HQ in Topeka. Though based on the letter from our FEA (Field Engineer Administrator) you can take more courses but for a shorter period of time. He wants us to do road and bridge design for 4 weeks each, and a week each for materials and traffic. I personally want to spend more time on traffic and take transportation planning. I need to talk to my boss to find out when I'll be free from projects so I can start my rotation.

On a sad note for me, the token black guy is leaving and starting a job in Lawrence. Now there is no one in the office that I can really talk to. We have a new Senior in our office, kind of. She transferred to our office a month before I started, because there were promotion opportunities. Then in June, she transferred to North shop to get closer to the Metro Engineer, and now she's back.