Steelworx Blog: September 2005

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Friday September 30, 2005

Well on this fine day, I get to go in to the office and go over my expenses on my Delaware trip.

Mother fuckers just giving me the run around, you don't work for me, even though I hired you at one rate, you work for some one else and they will not pay you the rate I promised you. If you don't like it you can go some place else.

Never quite heard a fucking take so many words, quite talented these Smith-Emery folk are.

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Fit up and welding

This is how the window walls and curtain walls are tested for weather resilience. First you build a mock up of the building then you attach the system to it, strangely enough not too many pass testing. Most buildings require that the erecting be done by professionals who are certified by some building authority or union school.

What we have here are two young men laying down fillet welds with 7018 ( a low hydrogen electrode that absorbs water from the air and leaves brittle, unacceptable weldments when exposed to the atmosphere for too long) rod that has never seen a rod oven in it’s life, let alone been kept dry. I bet that the chick in Flash Dance who strikes arcs all over creation could weld better than what we have here. Humm…

If one would watch one of these go up, one might wonder where the control points and transits are, or where the plumb bobs are. I did. Guess it is plumb with in it's self.

The Funny Farm, Nurse Ratchet!!

This mental institution is in one of the older sections of the city, up by Dodger stadium and the Police Academy in the not so pleasant city of Silver Lake. Once a very nice area, now pretty seedy, I mean that this is not the sort of area that you go out for a midnight stroll in.

I had to test the anchorage of the wall studs to the concrete slab in a renovation to a patient wing.

The patients all had a look of desperation in there eyes, the way that they looked at me just gave me the willies, can’t say that I particularly approve of this sort of treatment.

One of the teenage girls wrote on her window “help me”, it was backwards to me being on the other side but I still got the message. Thoughts of teenage angst and memories, as vague and faded as they may be, filled my mind. How many of these people were really crazy? How many just has some serious hormone imbalances? You know the teenage awkwardness that affects us all?

When I left this place I was thankful that I am as sane as I am, or that they just have not caught on to how crazy I am yet.