Deep Inside My Thoughts

Work’s been stressing me out a lot lately.  This project I’m doing, that I volunteered for of all things to get out of working over night, is boring.  There’s nothing really interesting about it.  I like the contractors I’m working with, in fact, I get along pretty damn well with them, but I have no interest in it.  I’m dealing with underground conduit for beacons for some flashing lights that one day might save a few people from death, as well as huge LED message boards.  I thought it would be fun, actually having something electrical to do and inspect.   Boy I was wrong.

Very little of it is truly inspectable work.  I’ve seen enough pull boxes installed in the ground, as well as conduit trenched to make my eyes bleed.  I’ve kept up with the boredom by keeping very, very, detailed dairies of the project.  Simple jobs this size should never been more than a few paragraphs, but I stretch them into pages.   Totally a bitch to type up afterwords, but keeps me busy through out the day.

I can’t help but feel under-utilized and bored.  I’ve been looking off and on for new work, but there’s really nothing in Topeka that is a pay increase.  I’m supposed to change positions in another month or so that will net me a new theoretical title,  but not any increase.   More work for the same pay is actually an effective pay cut! I’m just very, very tired of working for the State,and looking for a way out.  I’m looking for something better, something grand.

Ahh, It’s construction season again.  No more being cooped up inside a small office, plenty of sunshine, and lots of fresh air.

Unfortunately that also means lots of sweating and sunburns.  On that last note, I still look like a damn racoon.

I just helped finished doing a Mill and Inlay of  US-24 in town.  I’m helping out right now in the Asphalt Plant for the next few days.   Then I have a concrete patching project coming up as well.   Should be interesting, since I’m lead inspector.

Overall work should be fun for the next few months, and I should bring in quite the bank working these hours.

This last week at work has been a string of classes for work, strung back to back.   They’re required for work, and I was kind of looking forward to a few of them.  However, in 40 hours worth of work, I think I found maybe 2 hours interesting enough.  The others I listened to, but just wasn’t very intent on it.

The week started out with Basic Inspection, and I damn near fell asleep in this class.  It seems like half a day of bullshit.  They started off going over the index for two hours.  I mean a freaking index for two hours?  Granted, contract administration isn’t glamorous stuff, but the guy they had teaching the class literally put people to sleep.  It was terrible, and beyond belief.  In fact, more people failed this basic class than any other one, probably due to the lack luster teaching.

Day two was Structures Inspection.  I really kind of enjoyed this class, learning about construction of bridges and various other structures.  Oddly enough, I picked up on most of it working on Valley Falls with Geary, so it wasn’t as much help as I would have thought, but I did pick up on a few things.  I actually enjoyed the teaching style of the two engineers that taught it, and it was laid back, casual, and serious at the same time.  Both of the engineers really seemed like they were passionate about their jobs, and it rubbed off on me.  And, I also learned a new term: gang vibrator.

Next on the agenda was Asphalt Pavement Inspection.  Once again, it was an awesome teacher.  He showed the class first off how an Asphalt Plant works, and I learned a few things I didn’t know before about that.  But in the long run, turns out my work on Asphalt pretty much covered the entire class, and despite learning a few things that we failed to do, I pretty much knew it all.  Easy mode.

The last class, and quickest of them all was Concrete Paving Inspection.  The damn thing was scheduled for 8 hours, but really only lasted 4 hours, spread across two days.  Once again it was pretty basic stuff.  Basically once you grasp the concept on concrete, there isn’t too much to learn about paving.  Essentially, check the slump, air, and make sure your base is moist.  Put it down, slip form, vibrate, and finish.  Then cure, make a few saw cuts, and then cut all the way through when it’s hardened.  Nothing too exciting here, but I did appreciate how quick it went.   Short classes are always the best, and the easiest to retain.

I only have two other classes scheduled: Aggregate Field Inspection, and a Statistics class.  Stat’s should be fairly easy, but Agg Field will be a little more difficult, simply because I’ve done some of the stuff with Ron, and we did it a way that’s not completely kosher.  I also have some sort of Erosion Control conference at the Kansas History Museum on Tuesday, but I don’t know entirely how in depth that will go.  Seems like most of us at work are going, so the breaks at least should be entertaining, if the lectures aren’t.

It seems like I keep goinglonger and longer without posting.  Not much point to your own domain unless you use it right?  Oh well, I’d like to say I’d post more often, but I know I wouldn’t live up to that anyhow.

So, a quick update on my life.  The last three weeks I’ve been pushing 75 to 80 hours a week at work, trying to get this damn project done.  Asphalt is supposed to be finished by October 1st, and it’s now the 10th, and the new asphalt won’t even be down until Tuesday at the earliest.  I had been working saturdays, but thank god, I have this one off.  I’ll probably just sleep and relax most of the weekend, but damn, it will be nice to lounge for 2 days, not one.

Still frustrated about not having a car, but my dad should be out here in a few weeks, and together we should be able to knock that out.  There’s plenty of cars for sale in the classifieds, so maybe I can pull a miracle out of my ass and get something of value for the meager money I’m going to pay.  I don’t need a nice car, I just need something that runs and will last a few more years.  I need something I can pay cash for, and don’t have to carry full coverage on.  I need something basically to get me to work and back.

It seems like anymore all I do is work, sleep, and then more work.  It’s nice sometimes to keep my mind from wandering about things, but all this work is fairly boring.  I might be working long hours, but it’s not really hard work at all.  It will all be worth it though, when I get My check in a week or so. When I get that, I can go car shopping

I have nothing going for me right now, but I’m happy.   I’m laying alone in bed listening to Sublime, still don’t have a car, but for the first time in awhile I’m actually upbeat and happy.  That seem’s like a rarity these days, and it’s times like these I hold precious, because I’m not usually that upbeat anymore.
I went to Walmart yesterday to get some food and such, and ended up buying damn near $75 of frozen food.  It really didn’t seem like all that much when I was going shopping, but I really had to organize the freezer really well to get it all in there.  I should be good roughly 3 or possibly 4 weeks on that food, since I’m not really eating some nights because I simply come home and pass out.
It’s amazing how much money I save eating at home nightly, and that’s not something I’d do if I had a car.  I always ate out, but hell, I’m saving at least $210 a month by eating home every night.  Add in another $250 for what I’m saving on a car and insurance and I’ll be able to buy something decent in a few more weeks I think.
I never really depended on people before like I have now.  Its both refreshing and terrifying in the same thought.  I’ve gotten a renewed sense of humanity because people have gone out of their way to help me in a time of need, but I’ve also felt terrible for having to depend on others.  I’ve tried to be independent as possible, and it’s an adjustment having to get a ride to work, or go do laundry.  I’m sure I’ll be in a position to return the favor soon, and maybe I’ll do the right thing next time I find someone in one of my situations.  I stopped doing that long ago because I lost faith, and if there’s one bonus to this huge fuckup right now, it’s that I can have faith in my fellow man again.
Work is slow right now, and it sucks.  I want so badly to get out of the office, and I’m finding every excuse to get out side and do something.  I drove up to Silver Lake on Friday to check out some stationing I set up, and went south to Carbondale last week to check out the company that is doing my upcoming project.  I’m waiting on paperwork to come back on the Valley Falls job I’ve been finalizing for months now, and I’m getting really sick of that.  I’ve been working on that for three months, and there’s still like $500,000 left to be paid on that.   The slow, slow process  of the state, and even private contractors is really biting my ass.  I shouldn’t have to wait for a piece of paper to go up three levels of people for a month, just to get it back to change some small minute wording.   And then after I resubmit the damn thing, it takes another three weeks or so to get back up to whoever sent it back down in the first place.  It’s a huge pain to wait for things.
Other than that, I think I’m doing alright.  I’m taking it day-by-day and hour-by-hour.  So far, that seems to be working.  I know what I have to do, and what I need to do to get there, and I think if I just hold the course, I’ll end up there.   The only variable is just how much time it will take to get to that point, and right now, I have all the time in the world.

I never thought sitting would be so boring.  I’ve spent two days this week surfing youtube, reading the news over and over, and just walking around.  But there’s no actual work for me to do.  It’s strange.  I’m still finalizing this project, but we’ve come up to a bottleneck on waiting on other people for the stuff we need to do to finish.

We were supposed to have some overlay coming up in  a few weeks, but it’s been pushed back and we might not realistically get it the damn thing until September.  That’s two months away, and that’s a damn lot of downtime until my ‘first’ project.

I went out today to help check some bad concrete pavement on I-70, and what was supposed to take twelve hours took only two, probably because the extra fifteen ET’s that were out there.  It’s deathly slow all around.  When people want to get out of the office just to beat concrete with a hammer, you know you’ve got problems.

And problems we do have.  Wog mentioned to me today about how the fuel budget is something like $500,000 over, and we’re only through half the year.  We’re supposed to actually turn off trucks instead of idling them.  Costs must be cut across the board, and sacrifices need to be made.  It probably would do  some good to trim the fat off the bureaucracy, but so far, it’s a stop gap, and nothing else.

One has to wonder the wisdom of hiring new people if you had this shadow of a budget looming over you.  I wanted this job, and I’m damn happy I got it, but still, there doesn’t seem like too much going on to merit the extra help right now.  It’s just so damn frustrating not having anything to do, and I’m sick of going to ‘check on erosion control’ just to get out of the office and walk.

My job at the state is going pretty well.  We’re still very slow at the office, but I’m enjoying learning how to do paperwork and learning more about my coworkers.  It’s rained the last few days so we haven’t had much construction going on, so we’ve been catching up on paperwork and reading spec books.

Yesterday I actually got to go out again.  There’s a $25 million dollar job that is still continuing from 2001, and a Lead Inspector and I went out to oversee the contractor putting rock in a drainage ditch to slow down the current, and protect against erosion.  Before I started this job, I never really knew how much of a problem erosion was, but after seeing how damaging and destructive flowing water can be, I understand all the paranoia about erosion and soil protection.

This particular job was in a protected wetland, so KDOT had to recreate a similar environment for ducks a few miles down the river.  After we checked out the ditch, we headed down there so he could show me more about the project.   Essentially, KDOT built a pond in the middle of nowhere, and equiped it with drainage controls so they could drain the damn thing if it got too full.   The entire area was reclaimed by wildlife, and I saw deer tracks EVERYWHERE we went in there.  It was pretty neat, and not really something I think about when road construction is on my mind.

Tomorrow I’m going in on my day off, from sun-up to sun-down to do a patching project on I-70.   I’m heading out with a different Engineering Technician tomorrow, and I should pick up a lot from this job.  I’ve done some gradation, and watched some grinding, but tomorrow will be my first true interaction with Portland Cement.  I think it will be damn fun, if not damn tiring.  Hell, I’ll probably even learn a lot too.