IKWYDLS 2012

Rapt, as you no doubt are, by minutiae you will quickly realize that this is failed journalism.  Failure, in journalistic terms, because this is so far into the middle of the process that it is nearer the end.  This, after all, is a week into the month of August.

Rapt failure, this.

However, I did have sense enough to take pictures along the way.  So, I am actually ahead of last year’s journal since I am beginning with pictures rather than adding them later.  I am just behind the actually blogging itself.

The first thing I did was get a new job—the good kind.  The good way to get a new job is to get a promotion.  I say that with the experience of someone who has had wayyy too many jobs by this point in my life.  Even I think I am flaky.  I have done plenty of the “get a new job” thing.  So, I am very certain that getting a promotion is much better.  You, however, can do whatever you works for you.

The job itself is nothing to brag about, really.  It’s just different.  And a raise.  And more time off.  And that is really the point of telling you all of this—I am able to do what I have done this summer because I have had the time off to do it, and that is different for me.  For the record, I love my job, it's just not a high-ranking flashy position or really close to anything like that, and I doubt I would brag even if it were.

And that brings me to the first picture:

This here is one of the first tasks I did in my new position.  When I tried to explain what it is that I do, I usually just explained that I do whatever they ask me to do.  It’s true, really.  Who am I to refuse?  The back story is that my “boss” ordered these panels one day and some other stuff including the magazine rack thing in the middle of it.  And, typically, by the time the stuff got here, it was mostly forgotten, so it sat and sat.  Eventually, the people in the warehouse got sick of it, but by then, my boss had me to send to get it and take care of it.  So, I had the fun of installing the miss-matched oddity.  It was fun, actually-- I enjoy building and construction, obviously.  There is an explanation for its oddities.  But, seriously, who really cares?  The point is, this is what it is.  And what it is was my job to put it together.

But, my job isn’t all oddities.  For the first time in all the time that I have spent there, I got paid to travel.  I have always enjoyed doing that.  Some of my previous jobs have allowed for that.  It was good to get to do that again.  I hope it continues.  And the place that I got to attend was the company world headquarters.  When we got there, we took a picture:

This picture cracks me up.  This picture exists because of all the good fortune I just mentioned.  So, just to keep me humble, it definitely needs to have the taker’s finger covering a chunk of it… and some stranger in the background.  But, for the record, this machine is one of the products we make and it is cool that it was on display in such prime real-estate.  For the record, I am wearing a company shirt and a company jacket (I told you I love my job, right?)

But, the best part of traveling on the company’s dime is the free meals.  So, we went to this place called “The Machine Shed” which was awesome.  Part of the awesomeness was this sign above me when I sat down:

They had all-you-can-eat fried chicken and I ate all that I could.  They also have great home-made applesauce (it’s more like a pie filling than applesauce in a jar.)  But, they also have an amazing brisket.  You can’t just get brisket anywhere, you know?

So, that is the fun part of the new job.  The more realistic side of it is this:  This summer I have to complete a safety and ergonomics analysis of every task in the factory.  And, now that we are building tillage equipment in the summer “off season” I basically have to do 4 major sections of the factory twice.  It works out to, like, 115 spreadsheets.  It is mostly tedious.  It is mostly the kind of job that gets done by grinding away at it a little bit each day—day after day after day.  On the other hand, that is the kind of thing I probably do “best.”  Not best is the sense that it is my best work or the pinnacle of my abilities, but best in the sense that most people in the world just can’t bring themselves to do a task like that.  They get bored.  They get sick-of-it.  They lose interest.  They get depressed.  I understand.  But, this basically describes the majority of my life for the first 18 years, so I am used to it.  Go figure. 

It also describes the kind of tasks I blog about here.  True story.