rants by Ariane su kanji

I guess it has been a while since I posted anything. It's been a pretty crazy time honestly. I have been putting in long hours chez the supplier doing my downtime stuff and getting to know some of the people here a little better. DP is the guy who is in charge down (or is it up?) here and he and I get along pretty well. I was trying too hard to proove to myself (and them I guess) that I can handle this when I was up here last week, and this week I am not doing that anywhere near that much. I know what I am here to do, and I do it and help with the rest of the team in the meantime when I am not babysitting this piece of machinery. Anyway, DP and I get along well, and he has stepped into a mentoring position for me, help polish me for corporate when I get there so I don't stick out too much in a bad way. I kinda figure that I have one thing a lot of engineers don't: an outgoing personality :-) so i can work off some of the rougher edges and have something to work with afterwards. I also keep DP pretty amused, I am a little (read 'a lot') mouthy, and I can be pretty quick with a comment that stays within the bounds of what is appropriate but be on the edge. What gets really bad is this new (to here) guy, used to be a co-op and is now full time, is here and he and I get along well also, so lunch with me, DP, and RR was entertaining yesterday.

Dinner last night was fun too. There are 7 of us here doing QC and we all went out for Italian last night at a pretty nice restaurant after going go-karting for about 30min at 7:30 and ordered drinks and appetizers and way too much food. I had a sangria and it was goooood. I need to find out what all they put into that stuff, could be pretty lethal for me. But YUMMY! It was awesome with the bread and dipping sauce they have, and incredible with the grilled scallops I had as my entree.

I was kinda peeved last night. I am staying at a pretty nice hotel here and they have a hot tub and pool that I am usually the only one using. I am not sure what happened, but I know that they have way too much chemical in there. I came out with my eyes burning and smelling terrible. I go up to shower and I am scrubbing with a washcloth and see that instead of being my blue-white bubbles, I now have a cloth with a hand shaped yellow spot.... hmmm... ok.... That damn pool left a scum layer! tarnished the carp out of my ring and I hope I did no damage to my phone from the vapors. I talked to the clerk and told her they had too much chemicals, but I dont know if anything will come of it. It's an automatic system and I think it was set wrong or miscalibrated or something, but it was bad and it was gross.

I am also pretty amused by the dynamic on the shop floor. Part of it is that I am really not used to being hit on as much as I am here, used to the Rose guys who dont have a lot of nerve or something, but it is pretty flattering to hear about it from some of the other guys on the floor that some other guy has been staring at me for the last 30min. I really need to work on adjusting my mental picture of myself to not include the glasses and braces and add a couple years. But then I remind myself that its ok to know know that and I dont worry.

Hm... a little wordy today, oh well. I'm sure there will be more later.

You know, I really expect better of some of my friends. Will spent a year on co-op doing business trips and now I am up here, all alone for all practical purposes, and the @$$ can't find 10 minutes to say 'hey, I was thinking about you and wanted to say hi.' Jerk. Even my new buds from last week are taking the time to just check on me... first business trip and 6 hours from home. Jerk. Its after 10, I'm tired, and I am going home to the hotel to take an institutional shower.

Wow... this was unexpected: I go into work Tuesday morning after being up til rediculous thirty Monday night with the full expectation that I will be able to get off work at 5 and go home and nap. BUT NO! I walk in and am promptly told to go back home and pack to which I respond "Hunh???" Turns out that I am being sent to Michigan to be part of a team working with a supplier to get some handles into spec and enough of them to make production happy. So after a dozen phone calls to get the name of the place I am going, a hotel and car (which took for-ever) I was merrily, albeit a bit hungover, on my way.

It was almost a 6 hour drive with pretty decent radio stations and once I got a double shot of espresso into my system it went pretty well. I met one of my co-workers that night and the rest the next morning and they all seem fairly entertaining and amazingly competent. There is a huge difference between the way people work in the different base plants for my company and the corporate culture is quite different, and I was a bit worried about fitting in, but no worries. As long as they feel that I am contributing to the team and I am able to provide what my boss wants, I will be a happy camper.

I thought I had a topic for yesterday when I was tooling around work and got to e-mailing back and forth what should have been an IM conversation. I was going to talk about failure and how some people seem to skate past it and others can't seem to do anything right (no, this is directed at no one I hang out with, I promise). And then I got to go out riding last night....

I haven't been on a motorcycle in almost 2 years, and I definately still want one. The wind in my face, feel of the engine between my legs and under my feet, the back of the driver when I hold on tighter to take a turn... amazing. I want me one of them! So anyway, last night I was out riding and we go out for BBQ at a new place in town and are tooling around downtown just making noise and I am having a blast. My hair was a tangled mess and I've got some tension blisters from my jeans and getting on and off the bike in them, but man that was fun. Hee hee, get to go out again when JJ gets his bike fixed. The only rough part was that I got to get up way too early this morning after being out way too late last night....

I was thinking about my dad earlier today... Probably havent been calling enough or something. I was remembering his habit of announcing his arrival times to the minute: "I'll be home in 13 and a half minutes" and others along those lines. Once I started going to college it really started to seem really funny, and I think that was about the time I started to use the egg timer: "Daddy! you're 43 seconds late, shame on you!"

Wow. I am on IM, just typed GFY attempting to mean 'Good For You' and not 'Go F#@& Yourself' Whups.

I think the reason I have been dreaming so much is that for a change I am actually getting enough sleep. I do the work thing and get up at 7am + or - 15 minutes depending on if i showered the night before, get there before 8, work til 4 or 4:30 unless I am working OT, and then head out. Most days I am now training myself to go work out immediately even if it is just for 45 minutes, every day is what I am going for. Then I get home and have some dinner, shower, and am basically done for the day. Yeah, I talk to my friends online and post stuff and call my family, but there is only so much to do so I have been doing a good job getting to bed before midnight even if I read for a while. I'm loving it, this whole 8-ish hours a night. Back to the dreams: I have been reading an amazing series of graphic novels by Neil Gaiman called 'Sandman - Book of Dreams' Check it out on amazon or something. The funny thing is I am reading about the Kind of Dreams and I have been having much more vivid dreams as of late - seeing baby gargoyles and circular dreams that go everywhere at once. I tell myself that I am just thinking too much and I should put the book down, and I go and finish the story and the next day I just HAVE to go buy the next in the series. I have curbed my reading of that for at least a little while though... it will take a week or two for them to arrive :-) And I always knew that a credit card would get me into trouble... just too easy to go and get what I want sometimes.

I am so difficult sometimes. My father and I have this great relationship (I'm a daddy's girl) that involves about 3 million inside jokes that occasionally translate to others, but usually dont. Whenever I end up driving his car for whatever reason, be it my car is in the shop, or just moving it on the driveway, he can rest assured that the next time he gets in, ALL the mirrors, the seat positions, lumbar, steering wheel and whatever else I can think of has been moved. It's fun for me, and he knows it is coming, so he allots a few extra minutes to put his car back together after I have had it. Last time I went home the joke was "I'm with stupid" usually accompanied by a stupid face and a finger to the nose. I think, I'm not sure but I think this stems from the fun we used to have being stupid out in public with my sister when she was younger in a usually fruitful attempt to embarass her. I guess me and daddy did a lot of that... no wonder she does it now too... amazing what the little things do :-)

I have discovered one thing about myself: if I go home after work, I lose any and all motivation I may have had for working out. Grrr. So today I packed my gym stuff with me and I will not allow myself to go back to the apartment until I have spent at least an hour working on my bikini body!

I talked to my parents last night for almost an hour, lots of catching up to do even though I was just there last weekend for Passover. I kinda trained my parents starting early on in HS that if I bring a guy home for dinner, they really aren't to think a whole lot of it since I had a ton of guy friends. I guess this can kinda make the guy nervous but it is no big deal at my house and it makes it pretty easy for me to go meet parents since I forget to be nervous. So over the years my parents have met a lot of my ex-boyfriends and have been able to give me some pretty good insight. Not that I always listen of course, but hey, what are kids for afterall. I had a couple of guys that came over that my parents basically told me they didn't like, and as much as I was into the guy at the time, I have always come to see those flaws that I was blind to and my parents hinted at. So I called them and asked them what they thought of Will who did in fact have the time to come to KC with me and told my mom that I would go ahead and bypass the whole hindsight thing and just get her opinion on him now and not bother waiting. As little credit as I have given them they are damned perceptive when it comes to me and relationship drama.

Speaking of drama, my big is single now and my best friend is now engaged. I'm definately happy for my big: the guy was being waffly about what he wanted from her and jerky and was kinda irritating me since he would do things he obviously was not interested in doing to make her happy, but then he didnt seem to care about that either.... hmmm. About my best friend, she and her boyfriend broke up not too long ago (maybe a month) and hes been wierd since, but apparently decided that he couldn't live without her and proposed and she accepted. I am happy for her, but I can't see myself engaged now: I am way too young and have big plans for myself and the whole family thing is still a ways off. A LONG ways off. Not that I am opposed to getting married while still this young, I just don't understand it. But hey, I never claimed to be normal and I take after my parents way too much in some ways.

On a last note for now, I think I have figured out how to graduate early :-) If I can take one class this summer or do my independent study even though I no longer plan to go to Japan in the fall, I can do 20 hours this fall (ece 310, 341, 351, 460 and MAxx) at school, then 18 (ece 379, 414, 461, and 497) and in the winter and be done at the end of February. Kinda cool, and I could save myself the $10K per quarter that my school costs. AND I could go travel for a couple months if I already have a job and get to Japan and France and see my family and friends. So we'll see. I'm pretty tempted.

Schweet, transitions. Leave me a note on my post-it if that is too annoying, but man that was cool. I am the r0x0r. Back to dinner.

Four Letter Words: I went shopping with Maggi on Friday and we sort of got into a discussion about 4 letter words. More me talking, but whatever. There is such a stigma on four letter words, the eff-word, $hit, all those with such negative connotations. But there are a lot of words that are either neutral - blue, cups, tree - and many also with very positive connotations - love, free, game - that evoke some of the much more positive or at least non-negative aspects of life. There are dangerous words to me when shopping as well: sale, book, and silk, just to name a few (and a 6-letter one Coffee). Somehow the possibility of a fantastic deal on something I may or may not need is a tantalizing way to lure me into a store. And, more often than not, I will find something I want or could use and most of the time it is on sale, but not always. Walking from sale to sale is also bad, or at least it got me pretty good on Friday. We were at Circle Center about to go into Nordstroms and there is a booth full of imported from China silk things from purses to cell phone cases to jackets. And then I saw the robe. There was this gorgeous teal robe under this tawdry pink jacket kimono thing and I asked to see it. Of course it was pretty well tied down so the lady decided to see if she had one tucked away in the back. The one that caugh my attention was a silver grey with blue somethings on it and I have her open it up to see that it is a pair of yellow finches on a poufy tree and is just amazing. Easy decision. That thing feels incredible, but it looks so nice I am halfway tempted to get a dowel rod and use it as a wall hanging.

Dust Bunnies: Oh man. Today is Easter Sunday as most of my readers know, and I am Jewish, as most of you also know. So I call my mom (she is not Jewish) and we are chatting, or at least she is chatting and I am listening and we are talking about the upcoming visit from my uncle and cousin from CA. Since niether myself or my kid sister live at home anymore there is a distinct lack of cleaning in the bedrooms that goes on and when we have guests my mom spends a fair amount of time airing out the house, dusting, and vacuuming. Well, she did my room, and since my hair is getting long it gets everywhere like my sisters does and there was dust and hair under my bed. My mother announces to me on the phone that she had to vacuum up all the 'Easter Bunnies.' I guess it is the little things in life that really do traumatize kiddle lids.

Yeah Baby. After a rocky start this morning, I am up and productive! Go tag-board. Post comments, whatever. Be decent to each other, but let me know who all is reading this :-) It makes me happy to know that I am not just barring my soul to the world for nothing.

Sometimes I hate it when I rememeber my dreams.

Some background: a little over a year ago my Grandfather died after losing the battle with lung cancer he been fighting for about six months. Since hes always been pretty healthy, when he developed a pretty bad cough that persisted it took a while before he went to a doctor and while he did pretty well with the radiation and chemo, it just wasnt enough. Last year at Passover was pretty rough with my grandfather being gone and my father leading the service, and while this year was a little better there was still a marked absence at the table. I think I did a pretty OK job at home and at the second seder I was invited to, but the head of the table there was a lot like Grandpa in some ways and it was pretty sweetly sad and I spent part of the service paying no attention to what was going on just thinking. Also, my grandmother died when I was little, and my grandfather remarried when I was about 10 to this pretty incredible woman. I remember a little of Daddy talking about Grandpa's Lady Friend with capitals and going over to her house to make Christmas Cookies and stuff before they got married and I may be the only grandkid on that side that does.

So this dream. Its been raining all week, but sunny today and I am home for the funeral. The service goes nicely with people saying nice/sad things about him and then we leave for the interrment and things go bad. First I am in really high heels and we can walk over to the graveyard, but it is about a quarter mile and part of it is on this wet, soggy grass and I keep getting my heels stuck. Then since it is so soggy, they have temporarily buried him on this little hill and are going to move him later on when the ground is a little drier. Of course we decided that we want to put the flowers we brought (pink roses I think) on the actual spot where he will be buried so we go off looking for it, except the graveyard is not what I remember or the tree I used to use as a guidepost to my grandmother's is gone (they bought side-by-side plots) and there are these little creeks all over the place that are wearing down into the ground and they are so new there are no bridges yet and we jump across one except that my mom falls in. So I go down to try to help her and as I am reaching for her hand I see my grandmothers grave and next to it, where my grandfather should go, is this damn creek.

Finally we got everything straightend out (don't ask me how, this is a dream, remember?) and we are back at my parents house for coffee and tea and J, my grandfathers 2nd wife, is sitting down in a chair crying and asks for a washcloth to wipe her face with and I go looking for one, and I can only find these dirty ones that look like they were snot rags for little kids and then I woke up crying.

Hey, I'm pretty stoked! Tomorrow is a paid holiday from work so this afternoon, at 4, I was done for the week. Sweet! I quickly hauled my sore ass body over to the gym for a non-ab workout - half an hour on the bike then ~45min on legs. I was sore from the ab stuff this guy Fred Rishi met talked me into doing: it works, but ouch! Later on tonight I am letting one of the other co-ops, 'I'll call her M,' drag me out for poker at one of the guy's houses. Should be a good time. Then tomorrow M and I are going with her new boy to Indy to 'window shop' and hopefully do minimal damage to credit cards. Anyway, I need to get clean and clean up :-) ciao for now.

Ok, so thus far its a no on the c2.com wiki. I am going to have to put a PmWiki on the school server i think unless Alex is willing to let me branch off of his. Hmmm... dunno how that will work.

So today was the big meeting with the co-ops and the Staff (plant manager and the department heads etc) where we presented some of the ideas the co-ops in February came up with to change the fridges to make/save money. We had been warned that they generally do a lot of asking questions, lots of interrupting, and can be pretty harsh with new ideas. Surprisingly, we got a lot of positive feedback for the work we had done, the concepts we had chosen to start pursuing, and some contacts we could make to start the process of implementation. One of the other co-ops commented that we are frequently asked to introduce ourselves and where we are from, and it was the first time they had seen the big boys do the same thing. I was kind of amused, but then I was the one who asked them to do the whole 'introduce yourself' thing.... Oh well. I think I am a little less intimidated by them now which is good: its hard to ask for help and be agressive when you are afraid of someone. Anyway, the presentation went over really well, they asked us to start following through on the ideas we presented and then my roomie goes back to the office to find that they already have on the one she was looking at! Hooray for speedy processing! The one I was working on may also be possible to implement with a bit of re-tooling the geometry of a mould.

On the downside, since I am working OT tonight I don't get to do dinner with Will. We had talked about him coming down for dinner after I get back from the gym and then just spending some time together since he is on break, but that isnt going to happen when I am here til after 11pm. Oh well, he needed to work on his senior project anyway. Off to try to implement my Wiki :-)

hmmm.. its been a couple of days since I posted anything. In the meantime I went home to KC for Passover - one of those things that I would never miss given the choice, to one of my co-workers in-laws for another Passover, and have gotten my first overtime. Yesterday on my way back from the Lab cooking plastic I got cornered and asked if I would work 2nd shift with some new equipment that we are putting in so I can do some data collection. I was cool with that, 2nd shift doesn't start til 3:30 and I thought I would have all day to do whatever and just go in for that. Of course that was before I realized that I had an 8:30 meeting (moved thank goodness) and a 10am and a 1:30 presentation. So I got to work a little before 10 and I get to stay til a little after 11pm. But hey, OT is OT and I can use the money. Mmmm... Coffee. Ask me tomorrow how it went. 8 hours of data collection and spreadsheet work, but as long as they tell me what they want I can pretty much do it - yay for growing up with computers.

Hopefully by the end of this week I will have a place for people to post comments! It will be a wiki - editable by all and viewable by all. Please be courteous to other commentors.

I get to learn about a whole new part of the process:paint. That whole system is pretty intense with cleaners, degreasers, washers, preps and sealants, before you get to the spray application of the paint. One of the really neat parts is that the way they apply an even coat of paint is to put a potential difference between the paint nozzle and the case or door and that difference forces the atomized paint to spread out and onto the metallic surface. It would never have occured to me to use that kind of force to spread the paint and make it stick while maintaing quality and keeping waste down to very low levels: it only takes a couple ounces of paint to paint the whole thing... wow. Some of the solvents they use to cut the paint out of the nozzles are pretty incredible too... sooo strong.