OK Ship It... or Maybe Not

I work at a company that makes stuff... I know, sounds interesting. You see, the thing about stuff is that someone needs to buy the stuff you are making. We have a pretty good business at the moment. People are buying our stuff at a great rate... keep it up!

One of the essential ingredients in any business that makes stuff is shipping. Your customers have to get the stuff you make. In my case it is paint. None of our current customers are large enough to need a dedicated pipeline to their facility. As a result we ship our paint via truck.

Before a company decides they want to use our product they usually talk to one of us to make sure we are providing the correct product for their needs. The next step is to send a sample of the paint. For this we would normally use a reputable shipping company such as FedEx or UPS.

Sometimes, the shipment does not make it to the customer. The shipment could be damaged, the container could leak, it could smell funny, etc. We ship our samples in paint cans... like this one:

Notice the shape, a cylindrical metal can with a metal lid. This is basically the same can that we use to ship paint to customers. We add a special plastic ring around the lid that helps prevent spills and also make the can difficult to open.

Sometimes they come back to us because the customer didn't want them, or they made a mistake. Sometimes we send the wrong paint, but very rarely.

One time we sent a free sample to a customer for a trial they wanted to run. They needed to test the paint for a new program they were working on. Appearantly there was something wrong with the shipment's paperwork and they tried to file a claim against us for about $200, simply because there was a problem with the shipping paperwork. The product was correct, it was what was requested. Oh, and it was a FREE sample.

Another time we shipped a sample material to a customer. It came back to us because it was leaking, a little.

OK, maybe it was leaking a lot. It also kind of looks like frosting. I promise it isn't.

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So I don't Forget

For lunch or dinner I sometimes like to have salad. I put lots of different things on my salads. Some of my favorites (besides the greens) include:

Hard boiled eggs

Grilled chicken

Black olives

Peppers - green, yellow, red

Bean sprouts

Onion

Mushrooms

Avocados

That is a small list, there could be more things or a combination of those and other things... I'm not picky when it comes to food.

My salad dressing choice is something that is what some people would consider a little odd. I like a combination of ranch and honey mustard. I will also sometimes go with blue cheese and honey mustard, but I prefer the ranch. 

The Chief also uses ranch dressing for salads. She also uses ranch dressing for French fries, cheese sticks, cheese curds, and various other things except vegetables. I let the Chief run out of ranch dressing because I was eating salad for lunch. I got scolded because the French fries the chief brought home were now worthless, ketchup just will not do. As a reminder, I left this note to get some more ranch dressing at the store...

We now have a minimum set level of ranch dressing in the house of one in the refrigerator, and a minimum of one in the pantry. Now there are two in the pantry...

We did just run out of ketchup but that was for me so it wasn't important.

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Go Wash!

During my return home from Juarez, Mexico I am upgraded on the first flight to business class. It is a domestic flight and there is a meal. Since my flight left at 6:15 am I did not eat anything beforehand. I was expecting something tasty for breakfast on the plane. I was mistaken. Cheerios. Seriously, Cheerios? I don't eat cereal. For one, it is not on the Paleo Diet and second, I don't really care for it. Soggy crusty bread or twigs in milk, what is good about that. Plus almost all breakfast cereals have a bunch of vitamins and minerals added (they are listed in the "Ingredients" section on the nutrition label). Why would someone want to eat something that started out so unhealthy that it need to have all the vitamins and minerals added to it to make it healthy? You got me, I don't know. That isn't really the important part. I could rant about the crappy food we eat and are pushed to eat, but I won't, at least not now.

Regardless, I didn't eat the cereal. They did have some yogurt which is only marginally better and a bowl of fruit, which I ate gladly. When I arrived at my layover in Atlanta I got a cup of fruit and went to wait for my next plane.

The last plane was going home to Evansville, Indiana. It is an hour flight more or less and there is definitely no food, maybe some peanuts if you are lucky.

While I am talking about food, for lunch we ate in Juarez since crossing the border always comes with a long wait. We did not eat at the plant but we went out to eat. The first day we went to a Mexican buffet with a lot of traditional foods. The second day we went to a Chinese buffet, which was still cooked my Mexicans... just like in Evansville.

I overheard a lady talking on the phone while waiting for the Evansville flight. It turns out she was on the same flight, except Evansville was not her final destination. From Evansville she was flying to Detroit and then  back to Ft. Wayne, Indiana. I don't know why? Evansville does not have an area for connecting flights. She will probably have to go and get her bag and then check back in... She could have driven from Evansville in the time it takes to fly to Detroit, wait in Detroit and then fly back to Ft. Wayne. But what do I know, I'm only approaching 750,000 flown miles...

Anyway, the flight back to Evansville I am sitting next to a Japanese lady that does not speak much English. She also did not understand our flight attendant as she was based in the south and had a bit of a drawl. So there was no talking between me and the lady sitting next to me. I also noticed a smell emanating from her. I wasn't sure it was her at first. The flight attendant said all the passengers were on and that we could move to another seat if we wished. The two seats across the aisle were open, so I moved. The odor vanished immediately. Of course, then the two people came on board that were in the seats that I had squatted in. I looked everywhere and there were no other empty seats. I had to sit down next to Smelly. I was not sure if she actually smelled until I sat back down next to her. It hit me in the face like a flaming sack of dog poo. I opened my air vent and had it pointing straight at my face and it didn't help all that much.

So, to the lady sitting in 3A. Go wash!

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Waking Up On the Wrong Side

Last week I was travelling for business to beautiful, tourist friendly, Juarez, Mexico. We have a customer there and they are having some issues. They could likely fix the issues themselves, but they need someone in their facility keeping them focused. Kind of like an industrial dose of Ritalin…

Since Mexico is not as safe as it used to be, we always stay in El Paso, Texas which is right across the border from Juarez. To give you an idea about the safety concerns… how’s this. The price for the Hampton Inn in El Paso is approximately $130 per night. The Price for the Hampton Inn in Juarez is $60 per night. Both hotels were built near the same time and both offer similar amenities.

I have made many different trips to Juarez over the years of my employment. I remember my very first visit in 2002. I head across the border, cross the bridge, and the first thing I see is Mexican Federal Police, armed with automatic rifles. There were 5 or so officers at the border crossing. Once we left the border crossing there were no other machine guns in sight. There were also people walking, children playing in the local parks, and dozens of street vendors selling anything from cell phone chargers, to candy, to knock off oil paintings.

Fast forward to August 2011, my previous visit to Juarez. The drug cartels and the Federal Police are in the midst of an epic battle… I cross the border and still see the automatic rifles, about the same number. We move past the border and immediately notice there is nobody outside. No children playing, no people walking, and I could count the street vendors on one hand. The street vendors were also very concentrated near the border. There were some people out in the town, they were federal officers and they were all carrying automatic rifles. There was one officer approximately every 500 yards along the main streets. Each one was wearing his full uniform with an addition of a face covering mask. There were also mobile gun trucks with a large 50 caliber machine mounted to the top that patrolled the main roads of the city constantly. During the 4 mile drive in Mexico, we saw 3 machine gun caravans.

During this last trip, there was a line to get into Mexico. This is a first. There has never been a line for getting into Mexico; there is almost always a backup to get back into the United States. The issue is that the US Border Patrol cut the traffic down to two auto lanes and added a series of speed bumps before crossing the bridge into Mexico. This causes everyone to slow down greatly. They also stop autos and inspect them. I witnessed one or two different vehicles being searched on the way into Mexico.

Once we cross the bridge into Mexico, there are the customary federal officers with their rifles waiting at the border. They also installed some barricades to drive around in an ‘S’ shaped pattern with their own compliment of speed bumps. The next thing that I notice is that there are many more street vendors than last time. There are also people outside after dark; including me… we worked in the plant until after dark. When we were driving back to the border, I noticed people eating at restaurants and sitting outside, not as many as in 2002 but still an improvement over the zero people out after dark the previous year.

We go back to the hotel for the night and then repeat on day 2. The hotel we are staying at is the Embassy Suites (the Hampton was full…). The room layout is a living room with sofa, chair, coffee table, desk, refrigerator and sink in the first room. The bedroom contains two double beds and the bathroom is attached.

The first thing I do is set the air conditioning. Then I pick a bed. I chose the bed furthest away from the window and closest to the A/C vent. I use the other bed to hold my suitcase. The first night I slept well until about 4:00am, then I woke up, went to the bathroom and then went back to bed until my alarm sounded.

The second night, I woke up and looked around the room in the semi-darkness and something didn’t look right. The alarm clock is on the wrong side and the window is in the wrong place. Also, the bed sheet seems awfully scratchy. I finally realize that at some point in the night, I got out of my preferred bed and climbed into the other bed. I then kicked my suitcase off onto the floor along with the clothes I was planning to wear the next day. I also noticed that I was lying on top of the blanket but under the bead cover. That explains why what I took to be the sheet was so scratchy…

I get up, go to the bathroom. Then get back into the correct bed and go back to sleep until my alarm sounds. I have no recollection of getting into the second bed or of kicking my suitcase off onto the floor.

When I am at home, the Chief must have me on a shorter leash or I might wake up on top of the washing machine trying to cover up with some dryer sheets and using a ball of lint as a pillow…

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Cool, Can I Take It Apart?

Although I'm the engineer in the relationship. The Chief has some tendencies. Normally engineers take something apart to see how it works and then to put it back together, or perhaps to add some features. The Chief, takes stuff apart to, well... take stuff apart. A few things she/we have taken apart include:

1980's era big screen projection television
iPod classic
Multiple computers
A broken TiVo

I know there have been many other things but I can't remember what they are at the moment. However, the Chief's latest "Ooooh, can I take it apart" moment came over Labor Day weekend. I had given a piece of yard equpment to a friend who was good with small engine repair to tell me why it would no longer start. It is not a really big deal. I have had this particular piece of equipment for 10+ years. It turns out that repairing it would cost nearly as much as purchasing a new one. So it gets relegated to the trash bin.

Enter the Chief: "Can I take it apart? Can you get me some tools?"

So the Chief sits in a chair in the garage with an old towel in her lap, and proceeds to disassemble this device. You tell me what it is...

First hint.. here is the Chief sitting in the chair disassembling the device.

Next hint... the engine. Broken down as far as we could without some more specialized tools. I don't have a machine shop at my disposal.

Next hint... the engine plus the rest of the screws, bolts, fasteners.

A little more...

Here is all of it. If you can't get it now. I'm not going to tell you.

Good guess if you said it was a squirrel tail hair trimmer. That is why it has the long bent tube. The noise from the engine would cause the squirrel some distress, so it is moved further away from the trimming end.

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I'm Sorry, That's Classified

Here is another story about Random Task, a former co-worker. Some background information on Random Task can be found here, and here, and here.

He was an odd duck and he no longer works at the same company as I do... so it is game on...

Random Task has some social oddities and seems to be uncomfortable in some social situations. He doesn't know how to start a conversation especially if he has a topic in mind. He won't say, "Hey, how's it going, I've got a question for you..." Instead, he would say something along the lines of:

"What do you know about trees?"

"How many push-ups can you do?"

"He does like girls, right?"

Here is the first conversation I had with him. It was at a company picnic.

Random Task: "How old are you?" 

TurkeyToad: "29"

Random Task: "And you are a manager right?"

TurkeyToad: "Yes, I have 3 guys reporting to me."

Random Task: "That's odd."

Some silence while I wait for him to continue. Since there are no signs that he is going to continue, I ask the only logical question...

TurkeyToad: "Why is that odd?"

Random Task: "Because you have to be at least 35 before you are a manager."

TurkeyToad:" Well, I'm 29."

End of conversation.

All of the above conversations actually happened...

At some point after the above conversations occurred. The Chief changed jobs from working at an insurance agency as the receptionist to working in HR in another local business. She worked at the insurance agency for about a year. During here time there, she was asked to go and sit for a portrait that would be put on the wall in the office next to the other members of the office staff. She is wearing a nice outfit, a business suit and the picture was really well done.

When she left the company, they offered to let her take the picture from the wall, rather than throw it away. The Chief did not really need a picture of herself, so I took it and put it in my office. The picture had been in my office for a couple weeks, when Random Task comes to my office and sits in one of the chairs. He then asks:

Random Task: Does your wife work for the CIA?

TurkeyToad: No... what?

Random Task: That picture looks very professional, like something they would do if you worked for the CIA.

TurkeyToad: Umm, OK. I'm not allowed to say anything else. Please go.

Here is the picture in question...

I had to edit the picture for your protection...

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