"Daddy ruined xmas!"

Today one man lost his job so mine could be spared; Pink slip friday strikes again. The ruthlessness of the business world is a commonly known tail, especially so to the white collar folk working in the city of detroit, but today i saw it first hand. One man had to go and there were three contract workers in the group. As the youngest, newest and least experienced member of the group, i dodged a bullet i never knew was coming. Joe-worker on the other hand gets to go home and tell his wife and kids that he's been granted an extended vacation. "No Billy, Daddy doesn't go to work anymore. The new guy at the office took my job and we can't afford your prosthetic leg."

The only reason i knew the whole thing was about to go down, was so i would attempt to pick up his notes in preparation of taking over his work load. somebody actually wanted me to wonder over and nonchalantly scam him for data before he was told today was his last day. As it turns out, it didn't matter; from the looks of things, his desk remains as it was moments before the bad news came, sans the photos of his over weight kids. (all limbs intact, if i remember correctly.)

You see, no-one knew exactly when he would get the news, since as a contract worker, it is the responsibility of the contracting organization, or "house" to tell the poor employee that his contract was expired. "Open ended," don't you know. And sometimes, such as in this case, the supervisor chooses not to forewarn the employee or even take part in the conversation at all. In fact, Joe-worker was gone forever before the supervisor returned to the office. Maybe they think it's safer that way.

There's a lot to be learned from all this. I'm too tired to expand on it all.

Stolen joke Day!

Two antennas meet on a roof, fall in love and get married.
The ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent.

Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar.
One says, "I've lost my electron."
The other says, "Are you sure?"
The first replies, "Yes, I'm positive..."

A jumper cable walks into a bar.
The bartender says, "I'll serve you, but don't start anything."

"Doc, I can't stop singing 'The Green, Green Grass of Home. '"
"That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome."
"Is it common?"
"It's Not Unusual."

A man takes his Rottweiler to the vet and says, "My dog's cross-eyed, is there any thing you can do for him?"
"Well," says the vet, "let's have a look at him." So he picks the dog up and examines his eyes.
Finally, he says, "I'm going to have to put him down."
"What? Because he's cross-eyed?"
"No, because he's really heavy."

I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn't find any.

I went to the butcher's the other day to bet him 50 bucks that he couldn't reach the meat off the top shelf.
He said, "No, the steaks are too high."

rice eater

three words and a letter: "A-pillar gauge pod." The Pontiac is gonna rock out with it's cock out.

next stop: neons. Can you say "Cadillac II; Son of Cadillac?"

(at this point it seems that i should proclaim some hopeless lust, such as "i need a woman" or "I need a hobby" or "I should go back to taking my pills" to keep me from haphazardly dispensing funds on such silly things. But i'm won't.)

(geitar-a still for sale)

watch your back

the whole site is interesting. but you didn't find it here.

also, check us out.

worms in my brain get them out

i thought this was some kind of joke. guess not. (if you're not a mistress of the technology, you ain't gona appreciate it.)

FOR SALE

-guitar
-wood, six string, acoustic
-digital tuner, soft case and some "learn to play book"

Any takers?

Probably worth about $100, but i'm just looking for enough money to get myself and two petite women drunk... with a quarter to spare. (I should have bought this earlier in my college career, when time was like beer, flowing free and dense)

If you're not interested, enjoy this amusing internet photo instead.

mortality strikes again, again

As you've all probably pieced together from the last few mumblings, the Hubbel Street Bar is Dead. There's not enough room here to recount the whole history and I'm not going to get into the reasons why it's gone now. nstead, let me take you on a journey, if you will: The story of the a bar, a boy and a dream.


(Note lower left, the folding bar top that is hinged and hanging but at no point, to my knowledge, was NEVER equipped with a mechanism that would hold that piece upright and thereby rendering it useable. Note also the cobbled together collection of bar stools and high ratio of Liquor To Shelf Space or LTSS.)

It was a quiet, hot summer in Houghton that the bar was born. That's when Ace Hardbody and I were jogging heartily through the woods and happened upon a top from an old science lab table made of that heavy, fire-proof and nary impenetrable material you all remember from chemistry class. What it was doing out there, alone and away from it's family, we had no clue; but at some 2 feet wide by 8 feet long we immediately saw the hundreds of applications such an objected offered. And the one use that mattered. With nothing but time to kill, we immediately put on our thinking caps and launched into action a three man plan that would requisition our new found piece, under the cover of darkness and with the power of whiskey. And just as it's tattooed on my ass, "We carried that 150lb slab, drunk, through 3 miles of forest with nothing but our BAL and wits to get us through." The rest, couldn't have been easier.



To pass the time during the initial construction phase, we set out to drink one (or actually, at least six) of every type of beer sold in the metro-Houghton area. I think some people there might be drunks.


Bar version 1.0 featured an albino AND a woman.

Eventually, thanks to the work of our bearded friend T-bone, we managed to scam some more bar top material, this time made of a stone material, but originally designed for the purpose. This was a two piece addition and featured the help of a pick-u truck. The existing section was rotated 90 degrees and shifted so to allow the wider, newer section to serve as "the main bar." Oh, and also, "dinner table," "guest bed," "work desk," and "dance floor." I'd post some of those dance floor shot, but uh, my lawyers advised against it.


The bar gets long, bent and a few new keepers. Note the "Malt Duck" sign amid the VERT high assortment of bar paraphernalia.

So that's the story of the bar. Or at least the parts that can be retold here without incriminating, embarrassing or condemning those of us that lived it. The rest of the story require a dank room with booze and stools to be retold. And remember, I'm not trying to live in the past; the moral of the story is simple. If ever given the chance, you should all rent an old house, dump an absurd percentage of your total yearly income into an extremely traditional and extravagant bar, and surround yourself with tremendous group of drunkards with which to live out your "cheers" fantasizes. Then get blown out. Also, drive a Cadillac.

The sophist promise

It has been deemed that any one-sentence combination of the words "I," "gave," "her" and "a" is the work of people that hate america and hate freedom. Therefor, consider the war on terr'r under way.

Now to distract you from this new reduction in civil liberty: cartoon breasts

mortality strikes again

Tuesday my aunt (actually mother's cousin) died. I only mention it here because she was an extremely unusual personality, in that she was giving and selfless almost to a fault. Before she retired a few years ago, she was a social worker for the state of Michigan, working in the city of Detroit. Read that part again. She was a white woman working as a social worker in Detroit. Right. She lived most of her life just off Clark street which is on the out skirts of Mexican Town and just off I-75. Eventually she moved out to the suburbs but continued to attend church and be active in the city.

She lived alone after her mother died; she was never married. She loved to order merchandise from QVC (home shopping network), most of which would end up as gifts to friends and family. Distant relatives, their children, old coworkers and even their children: No birthday's were forgotten. Everyone could count on a gift or a bit of cash on their birthday and Xmas. The remainder of those packages from QVC would likely contain a stuffed bear of some type, as she loved to collect them and filled her house with them.

She died young and suddenly; she had leukemia. But as she would never go to the doctor and didn't dare mention what ailed, pained or troubled her, no on knew she was sick. In fact, she herself probably never knew the extent or nature of her disease. More likely than not, she felt a lot of pain near the end of her life but she was not willing to share it.

And now there is a big hole that has been left in the world.

She was buried with her bear. There was a box from QVC waiting on her porch.

Internet play time!

Here we go again...

All ya'll people that went to tech with me, recognize anyone in this here campus page? (if you're real hardcore, you'll also notice they copied exactly what i did for the lode months before i gradated, camera angle and all)

Speaking of Tech, you guys probably thought Guts Frisbee was a dead religion, like the snake charmers. You're wrong about both.

And finally, This link has a strange way of making me feel like a sexists pig, though i'm pretty sure there's noting wrong with it... it's just odd. (click on the woman and drag her around for entertainment)

hello little robot buddy

in college i built a robot insect. It's a beetle looking device that fits easily in the palm of one's hand but would be difficult to balance on anything less than three fingers. The bug, who is nameless, is solar powered by two cells that cover his back. he has two antenna on front that keep him off the walls and two eyes to direct him towards light. As my desk at work is void of all personal objects, i brought the little guy in to keep me company. unfortunately there's not nearly enough ambient light to charge his capacitor and trigger his activation voltage. Likewise, my florescent desk lamp is weak and diffused, so the creature sits motionless. I wait and look on, hoping the poor creature will evolve, buy everyday i come in and everyday it has not moved. In the mean time, I'll be taking recommendations for names.

bizarre-o world?

Took a nap earlier; can't sleep now. I opened my eyes while laying in bed and with room being all dark and whatnot, i was very confused for an instant: I was expecting my room from college, then my old room from my parent's house. It was odd and made me a little reminiscent.

I spent my day today in an assembly plant in Detroit. The majority of the time was invested discussing life at the company with an old time engineer who had at one point retired to Florida, but then got called back to be a contract worker. (i guess he was good, so like Superman and George Foreman, they called him out of retirement) I learned more about my job and the company in 4 hours than i had in the past three weeks. This guy had it all nailed down; he could walk through a plant one time, listen to the sounds and watch the people work and tell you exactly how efficiently the place was running. He's been back in the game for a month and can already pin down every guy in the office; what motivates him and what's his agenda. He knows the game the union workers play, and as an old supervisor and worker himself, he's seen all the angles. He's an engineer so he's planted in one of the main offices, but he's at home in the assembly plants, interacting the people who build the product. And most folks in the plant take to him like they would any friendly old man, which is contrary to the typical worker/engineer feudal system. The best part is, he's out there, accessible and willing to give all he knows to anyone who would be interested.

We talked about company engineers and the faux notion that they "design" a product. The reality is, no one designs a circuit; a supplier engineer clones a design from clone from clone that was designed by an Asia-man. They package it into a universal module with specs that can fulfill 78% of all application. A team of electrical engineers who don't even need to know what an electron is (in our company now) are handed a set of general requirements from some higher up and then develop specific sets of specs for say, a switch or Nav System. These specs are pumped to the supplier, who in turn throws back at them a black box that is probably utilized by some other companies in various applications. The engineers take the module, which is perhaps needing 2/3 of it's capabilities (maybe we'll use that other 1/3 later, in next year's model) and if need be tweaks the design. (i.e. pumps a redefined set of specs back to the supplier who then either reprograms the black box or pulls a different box off the shelf). With the boxes in place, we tie them together and test the shit of them, reworking the iterations and driving the error towards zero again and again until you run out of time.

As for the old engineer, he claims 30 years since he last designed a circuit that was bread-boarded, printed and then evaluated to make it's way into a product; He used a slide rule last time he needed to derive a value. I'm entering into the realm of speculation now, but i figure this is why he likes to spend time in the plants. Since we're not the guys making the sexy drawings, this is the last venue for him to put his influence on the final product, i suppose. He identifies where the process is failing and fixes it. Quality issues for part X go down. And that is truly the name of the game now; Quality. Quality is directly measured in money and vice versa, and both are easily represented on a piece of paper. I'm not disheartened. I suspect i was saved when any preconceptions i had about all this died years ago. It's just, i guess, you can't really wrap yourself around what it's all about in a company this big until you're in it. The reality is, no one truly understands the process; too much information.

watchin' the game, having a bud

We're all completely fucked. And i didn't even mention the summit.

But hen again, Maybe we're not.

either way, i'm so sleepy...

Reminds me of the SlipKnot concert

Wall of Death

"peace be with you, yuppie-scum bastard"

I spent the weekend in Suttons Bay, attending a wedding in a highly affluent little peninsula just north of Traverse City. It's been a long time since we played the "out of ten" game and since I'm lazy about typing and think myself a pretty darn funny guy, here we go:

Crazy, old, gay, New York Playwright, Uncle of the groom embarrassing bride by naming her old boyfriends as part of rambling but very comedic reception half-time speech: 8/10

Catholic mass wedding ceremony: 0/10

Drinking champaign in your hotel room out of plastic hotel cups: 7/10

Letting the champaign work it's bubbly magic: 9/10

Live R&B/Mo-Town Band of black men in shiny suits entertaining an all-white reception with uber-hits like Will Smith's "miami" and "Too Close" by... is it Next? Anyway: 10/10

7ft tall basketball player for Serbian Basketball League attending wedding, insisting Darko "good player, not respected by coach:" 5/10

Live fireworks: 1/10

Andrew's assessment of my role in life (see title): 2/10

My assessment of owning a sailboat: 10/10

back to my roots

now i remember why i wanted this job.... i saw the new Jeep Commander yesterday at work. I think it comes out next month and it looks very much like the old cherokees, though fatter and a little more bulbous on the rear roof line. I still like the new hummer h3 more than any other small/mid size truck. It reminds me of an older willies jeep. If i was a truck person, that's what i'd drive. Or an ice cream truck.

quick thoughts

if i had access to all of the internets while at work, i'd spend my days playing this game.

also, yesterday was the 24th centennial recognition of Holly's birth. Should you see her, be sure to nod approvingly at her continuing ability to not die.

Everyone seems to be fellating the new Batman movie. I hope to see it soon, so that i too can rave, but i'll probably see that new zombie movie instead. Damn i loves me some zombies.

Yesterday Rob and I went mountain biking (though we couldn't find any mountains). 4 or 6 miles into a 13 mile loop (read: farthest from our cars as possible), Rob's chain decided life was hard and gave up. We flagged down a rider-by who happened to have a chain breaker, and proceeded to break that poor man's hand tool, just before fully reassembling the chain. He told us to keep the corpse of a breaker as he rode off. We limped the bike to the next check point that happened to be near a beach with several pleasure boaters; Rob swam out to the nearest vessel while i frolicked on the beach. The boaters were not inclined to deliver us to the nearest port but the water was quite nice. It was clear the chain wouldn't hold up on the pseudo mountains and we had to find a flatter route home. We had zero thinking beers on hand but a fire trail presented itself which we were able to follow to a lovely dirt road. It, inevitably led to a second dirt road featuring an old man in a van, who would ultimately direct us towards pavement and the trail head. Several road miles later on thick-tired mountain bikes (the old man claimed 7.5 miles with an preciseness that demanded respect) we were back to our cars and none worse for the wear.

I think i'm going to buy a bike repair multi-tool.

reality makes a house call

Two days down at the ol' office, several hundred thousand to go.

I've spent the majority of my first two days rearranging an empty cubical and reading mindless and repetitive technical data. I have a computer and phone, but no one needs/calls me and my login account isn't active, making me and it 100% useless. In fact, about the only thing i've engineered in the last few days was a lunch.

i forgot to mention

but another old building dies in detroit because there's no reason for anyone to try to invest in rebuilding this place. Sniff you later Madison Hotel. Sniff you later forever.






Sorry about the size, but you really need the detail

for nick

i talked to the home-boys at DC. Told 'em what you said. It seemed to work.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/06/13/Autos/funonwheels/dodge_challenger/index.htm