New Regime

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

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

catching up

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.