TOTALLY crazy day.

In an earlier post, I gave a run down of all our projects from the week. Come today, I get to work and nobody knows what is really going on. We have people who want to just get into the factory and start working. We got people (like me) who still had unfinished assignments. You had others stressing over the written exam and final project. As it turns out, we were sent to the lab to finish stuff and/or practice.

Safety Wire. I had this sitting over my head since  last week! I wanted to get my shamrock bought off so I could concentrate more on the safety wire. But alas, the bosses wanted things the other way so I had to do safety wire first. It was just 1 lil part of the whole project. It was a situation where I had to do it upside down. Now, I already suck at safety wire so...  Let's just say by break, I hadn't done a damn thing except end up with sore arms and was really unhappy. Fortunately, I got some support from others and I busted out the 1st part of the assignment. In the end, it took me over 3 hrs! :(

(John asked if I received my check yet. what check? My retirement check! Cuz i was taking so long... lol)

After I got it signed off, I ran upstairs, got the Shamrock bought off. Did some last minute taking apart of it, took my tools back to the shop and it was pretty much lunch time.

After lunch, it was time for our written test. Because it's Boeing, we don't know what to expect. We were thrown into a rather hard exam and while I passed, I would have preferred to do better. 90 minutes to take it.

With the exam over, I returned to the lab and what do I do? I go do the safety wire portion of a shamrock. After 3 hrs of utter frustration, that'st he first thing I go do??? Well, yeah! I know I can drill holes. I know I can countersink and put in fasteners. But safety wire wasn't something really covered (with emphasis) at WATR. I did the shamrock in about a half hour (that includes renting out the tool kit). When I did it the week before, it took a very long time.

By the time I was done, it was clean up time. While almost half the class didn't pass the exam, I was in a fairly cheery mood. I got the unfinished stuff done. Got home and I had 2 packages for me. Got my Footloose figure from the GI Joe club (part of the subscription) and from Amazon, I got the extended/full version of Red Cliff (which I've been wanting since it came out like 2 years ago?) and the latest Misfits cd DEVILS RAIN.

:D

Been kind of a busy weekend.

Bought some plants for my lil garden area out back. They probably won't last long, but hopefully the grasses will. The freeze from the winter knocked off a few of my plants. Mainly landscaping plants over flowers. I'm never been a big fan of annuals. I prefer stuff that comes back each year.

A few months ago, Andre Bynoe suggested that I rework an old GI Joe diostory. It's been stuck in a pdf format due to the crappy version of Comic Book Creator I had. The version I had didn't change the final product to jpg, only pdf. Other friends had versions that gave them a 'save as jpg' option. So I went thru tonite, made copies of all the original shots and well, spent 3 hrs fixing up the Teaser and Prologue for the story THE ISLAND.

I met a fellow GI Joe fan at the comic book store he works at on Saturday. Kind of nice to meet a fellow Joe fan in person.

Sunday was Earth Day. Took a few pictures, went for a bike ride (albeit short, soooooo out of shape), blah blah blah...

Currently in training at Boeing. It's a 10 week training at the ERC for 5 days. We got to spend some time in the factory shadowing other people. It was 1 day a week for 5 weeks; the day we went on shifted each week.


I am now in the home stretch. Week 10 starts on Monday with the finals at the end (when everyone is finished).


This last week was really hard on me. I felt my confidence level plummeting faster than a relationship! For 3 days, I wasn't getting stuff finished, couldn't focus, was overthinking, getting frustrated, etc. The projects are timed and they have to be bough off by an instructor in which, we have several. Fortunately, I managed to turn things around on Friday. :D


Monday was my last day in the factor for shadowing. I stayed busy. Which is rare. ;)


Tuesday was the beginning of the 4 days of hands-on. It's no secret that I get out of shape really quickly. When I was at WATR, the hands-on was 4 straight weeks so imagine my skill level becoming consistent and accurate. In this training, it was mostly classroom settings so months later, whatever drilling and countersinking skills I had, they went south.


So on this day, we started with Sealing and ended with Safety Wire (which I didn't finish). The class was split in half and the group I was in was split again. Sealing went ok. Pain in the butt to clean. And Safety Wire, I got stuck on project2, then got thru 3 & 4 just fine. Didn't get to start #5 tho I could've done it if I had an extra 20 minutes or so. Confidence level started to drop during those 4 hours of Safety Wire...

Wednesday, I started the Shamrock project. It's a stack up project (aluminum, cfrp, aluminum) with various drilling and safety wire to finish it off. I got frustrated at the beginning cuz I couldn't draw my layout. Needless to say, I was again in last place when the day ended. Confidence level dropped even further.

Thursday, I started the Drilling & Countersinking project. I got thru a bit of it, but couldn't finish in 8 hours. I already had 2 other projects unfinished so you can prolly guess how I was feeling that nite. Yup, confidence was even lower by the time I went home. Of course, I'm thinking, "just put me back in the cargo bay where I don't drill or safety wire or seal..."

Friday rolled around and because the Drilling/Countersinking is alotted for 1.5 days, I got it done. May have been the people I was around too. Different energy, we were all closer to being in the same place, etc. I got the D/C project done and was able to put in some work on the Shamrock before lunch. With the Shamrock, I got a lot done so that last thing to do next week is the safety wire (and of course, to take it apart). That boosted my self-esteem quite a bit right there. (One of the steps to buy off was to correctly torque a bunch of bolts in front of an instructor. When I took the torque class, I was a bit heavy on the torque. When I did it on the project (weeks later), it went really well. May have over-torqued 1 or 2.

After lunch, Mike and I were hoping to finish up the Shamrock (we teamed up so we could get stuff down faster. We'd grab fasteners for each other, set up huck pullers, cherry pullers, etc) but alas, tis not to be. Cuz the other side of the class, when they did it, they had to do 2 other projects after the C/D. We were hoping the instructors would forget and let us finish the other stuff. Nope. HAHAHAHAHA.

The next project Mike and I were put was 90 degree drilling. This is where you use a 90 degree drill motor (as opposed to a classic pistol grip). We set up everything we needed beforehand so we could blow through it. The instructor recorded us at about 1.5 hrs or something, but cuz they round to the quarter hour, we did it in under an hour. Easy project, even with all the stepping up we had to do.

Project 2 for the last half of the shift was gun barrel drilling. There's no stepping up. Just blast right through. And that's what Mike and I did. Blast right through it to get it done. Again, we had everything set up and laid out. Because we had 3 drill kits between us, we set up like this.
-500 rpm pistol : 190 (that's .190" drill bit)
-500 rpm pistol : 250
-90 degree : 190
-xxxxx (had to switch out the last drill bit cuz we didn't have an extra gun.

The drill guides were ready to go and we made sure we were drilling the correct rows and BAM, we were done. :D

Those easier, smaller projects worked wonder for me. I felt a lot better (even good) coming out. I'm not the only one who was starting to get bummed out about stuff. Some say I'm a bit hard on myself but it's like, I know how to do this, I just can't get it thru to my hands to do the work well/right. Anyway...

So I haven't been here for 4 years. Last time I was here was in 2008 and I believe at that time, some things were going bad on an old GI Joe photography website.

In a nutshell, over the last 4 years...
-Started the Surveying Program  in the Fall of 2008; tho i was taking pre-reqs before that thru Bellingham Technical College.
-Earned an AA in Civil Engineering from Bellingham Technical College in 2010.
-Also got into some problems with the law in 2010.
-Moved back home due to crappy economy. Found work for the Riverview School District as a sub-janitor and part-time at Kohls. Also did yardwork for $$$.
-2011, went thru the Washington Aerospace Training & Research Center to get a certificate for Assembly Mechanic.
-2012, got hired on at Boeing and start date was 2.17.12.

Course, a lot of other things happened, but those are the big things, I suppose.