WARNING!!! I'm a bit pissed right now

Sweety is in the other room trying to figure out what's wrong, I've already told her it's not her, she of course wants to talk about it and I don't, she's gonna find out soon enough and then it's really gonna blow up. I got a yellow slip of paper given to me today, shoulda been pink. Yep, as of this friday at 3:30 pm I'm offically unemployed. I got layed off, bumped out of my job by a half-wit dumb shit just because he has a bit more seniority than me. J. my foreman was irked when he gave me the sheet this afternoon, and after I mentioned that the guy bumping me had been red-flagged and had his fork truck license yanked because he ran into a truck out in the yard, he was really P.O.'d, you see you spend about a quarter of the day driving a fork truck doing the job, not to mention that fairly often you have to use a overhead crain to move some of the parts and I don't recall ever seeing him use a crane before. Enough about that idiot. I've now got three days to find another job that pays decent, because we were floating bills already just to survive and an unemployment check just isn't gonna cover things. I can't think really clear right now, more later.

People Watching at Wally-World

I've kinda restarted a old hobby of mine, people watching. I did quite a bit of it while I was working at the mall in the cigar shop, now there's a place to see the world. All kinds come to the mall.

Anyway on to today's people watching, Wally-World, another good place to see America at its finest?

First, I have to tell you about Miss Priss & Gomer, both early 20's. She's all done up in her finest today, she's got on her low cut hip huggers, hot pink baby doll tee and matching hoodie, both of which are adjusted to proudly show off her belly button ring. Black stilleto heels with little rinestones on the long pointy toes, and matching knock off tiny handbag, she's not about to carry a women's purse that can actually hold more than a lipstick, cigs, and cell phone. And you can't forget, got to have the make-up and hair just so, you never know who your going to bump carts with in the frozen food aisle at Wally World. Then there's Gomer, most likely her first hubby, he's pushing the cart, following along behind her,looking like a puppy you just yelled at, wearing old camo pants, his faded out high school baseball t-shirt, dirty work boots and an old freebie ball cap he got somewhere. Scruffy would be a good description of him, looks like he hasn't shaved in a few days, probally rolled out of bed this morning and drug on whatever clothes were close at hand. What a pair.

Next up, your typical mexican family. Dad's a cowboy, got the starched,pressed, skin tight Wranglers on, multi-colored cowboy shirt, white ostrich skin cockroach stomper boots, tooled leather belt with chrome lacing and choncos with a belt buckle big enough to serve lunch on, and you can't forget about the blazing white straw cowbot hat either. He's strutting along like a peacock on viagra doing nothing. Wifey, on the other hand is wearing a pair of old jeans, frumpy shirt, and scuffed up old tennis shoes, her hair is pulled back in a no nonsence ponytail, and very little if any makeup. She's probally been running like mad all morning taking care of the house and everything else, including all of the shopping currently going on. Let's see now, on to the kids. The teenage son is pushing the cart, was drug screaming to the store, he's wearing baggy jeans, a t-shirt about two sizes too big, and high tops, the height of teenage male fashion. The teenage daughter is there as well, she of course spent two hours getting ready for the trip, making sure she looks like the biggest hoochy mama slut that you've ever seen, enough make-up for two girls on, trying her best not to fall out of her halter top that is about a size too small, skirt short enough that if she bends over, everybody's going to know what color panties she has on, and the best part is, I'd guess her age at about fourteen.

Well, that was the two most interesting sights today, can't wait to see who I see next.

Been Awhile

Yep, it's been a bit since I've posted anything. Life has a way of getting in the way of simple things like this. Not that a whole lot has happened since I last posted anything. As for what's going on now, a whole lotta the same old, same old. I have started a new project bike for Sweety, she's really been on my case lately for a bike to ride, she's realized the scooter, while cute and fun, just doesn't cut it in Tulsa traffic. So, I've agreed to rework my '76 Honda CB750ss into something she can ride. First order of business is lowering it for her, after a bit of searching and price gathering, I've decide on a set of 11" shocks for the rear, I bid on some on e-bay, but got outbid on them about two days later, so last Saturday I checked at a local shop and they had a set that would work for 90 bucks, pretty good price, I'll stop by Tuesday after work and pick them up. Then comes the fun part, lowering the front. It's time for tool shopping now, since I no longer work at a bike shop, I've got to start picking up some of the tools I'll need to do this kind of work, right now all I need to get is a disk grinder, cutoff wheels and sanding pads, so it's a trip over to Harbor Freight for those items, nice thing is, they pull double duty this fall when I start reworking the front porch, more on that later. After I get it lowered, then come the really big jobs, rewiring the bike and getting it running.

More Later
W.

Gotta luv Sunday mornings!

Yep, gotta luv 'em. I woke up this morning with a major kink in my back, amble to the bathroom for the morning routine, then head to the kitchen to make some coffee and find the pain killers, as I'm walking towards the kitchen I hear a strange hissing sound. Nope, not a snake, the water line going to the fridge's ice maker is spraying water. Fricken mice had chewed on the water line under the sink and there was water everywhere. Got the water shut off, looked around and decided - Damage Done. So I picked up the coffee pot and headed to the bathroom for water. I got the coffee started and pulled out the shop vac and started sucking up the water, after a bit Sweets stumbles out of the bedroom yelling at me about running the vac while she's still sleeping, I politly informed her about the flooded kitchen and got a repreve for being so rude. I don't blame her, I would've done the same thing given the circumstances.

After a quick inspection and figuring out what I needed, I headed out to the truck to go to Lowes, and had to laugh, Sweets had locked the truck as usual, but left the driver's window rolled completely down and of course it had been raining for awhile, so, back into the house for a towel to dry things off and on to the hardware store I went.

Gotta luv Sunday mornings
W.

It's a Monday, do I need to say more?

Hey all, it's been a few days since I've been here and nothing has really happened. Last friday was the last day for all the guys that got layed off, and basicly not a whole lot got done at work, they told all the guys that got layed off they had to be there until 1:30 or they would change thier status from "layed off" to "they quit" which would screw them out of any unemployment pay. So, needless to say we had a bunch of guys hanging around that basicly did nothing most of the day, and at 1:30 it was pretty much a mass exodous around there. I start my new position today as a parts cleaner, yippie (not). Oh well, not much else to say today.

Until next time.
W.

Well, survived another layoff round

I gotta find a new job. About 60 people were affected this week, I survived by accepting a transfer to the parts cleaning dept. and of course a pay cut. From the looks of things, CCC is basicly taking the whole plant down to a skeleton crew and it's really starting to tick people off.

On the good news front, Sweets started her new job last night, she got a job dispatching at Storey Wrecking. Of course it's second shift, so basicly I'll only get to see her durning the day if I drive over there and visit because she doesn't get off until midnight. But she seems happy about it and I'm getting good vibes about the place whenever she talks about it, she doesn't seem stressed about it like she was with the last couple of places.

Well that's about it for this morning, it's pouring rain outside so, I need to get my butt in gear and leave early, it takes a bit longer to get to work on the bike in the rain.

Asta
W.

Well, the truck is totaled

Finally got an answer from State Farm last night, the truck is officially totaled. Sweets is going to get with them today and finish up the paperwork. Then we get to spend this weekend finding a new car because the rental has to go back on tuesday. I've decide to take tommorow off for two reasons, one, to go check out a lead on a part time job and second, to start looking for a new car. I say new but it's going to be a used one, we figure once everything is said and done, we'll have about 3,000 left over.

Not much going on at work right now, L. has been working on battery cables for the last two days, I've finished prepping every truck I could, and J. is actually three weeks ahead on chassis wiring. I had everything I could do finished up at about one o'clock yesterday and didn't have anything else to do, luckly J. had one chassis left, so I worked with him the rest of the day. Today is going to be rough though, because we've got nothing to do now. It's going to be a day of scrounging to find work, another reason I'm going to take tommorow off.

Well, time to get ready for the day.
W.

Joe Arpaio - "The toughest sheriff in the west"

I got an e-mail from my uncle the other day about Arpaio, I decide to Google his name and see what would come up. Quite interesting some of the info that popped up.

"Arpaio is among the state's most popular office-holders. He enjoys an 85 percent approval rating among voters in the county, which at 9,200 square miles is larger than some states, and includes the city of Phoenix. "

http://www.cnn.com/US/9907/27/tough.sheriff/

Granted, there are problems and some conditions do need to be addressed, but it seems the county is happy with him considering that they have re-elected him three times.

And here's something I find impressive. Source - http://www.mcso.org/

Arrests by Sheriff’s deputies of persons transporting or being transported illegally into Arizona

Month to date total as of 06/12/07: 546 illegals

Arrests by Sheriff’s deputies who, in the course of their duties, determine the arrestee is in Arizona illegally.

Month to date total as of 06/12/07: 177 illegals

And that's only this month, hmmm, sound like he's got the right idea to me, and they don't get an immeidate free ride back to Mexico either, they get to spend two years in jail first.

I noticed one thing though, everybody that is complaining about his tactics, either was an inmate or belongs to one of the liberal weeny organizations that wants us to molly-coddle prisoners, these people committed a crime and were sentenced to jail time as a PUNISHMENT, and that's what jail time should be!!!

Ok, that's my political rant of the day
W.

Another weekend has come and gone.

Well, this weekend is about over, not much to tell about it either. I stacked the remains of the stump up neatly in the drive next to where I put the trash out and weed-eated the yard, that about killed saturday. I did send a nasty e-mail to the channel 6 news team saturday night, it's the rainy season here in Tulsa and we had one of our usual sever thunderstorm warnings happen about 8pm, well the idiot weatherman on ch. 6 decided he just had to have a running announcement about it for 45 minutes, the alert only lasted for 30 minutes, he rehashed the cloud patterns, talked to other weather chaser via the phone, and basicly caused everybody in the viewing area to miss the first 45 minutes of "Die Another Day", I must have not been the only one to complain because the very next commercial break after he did go away he was back and made the comment that he was only going to interupt the commercial break and get us right back to our regulary scheduled programming. Anyway that was saturday. Sunday, well I got a haircut. Exciting weekend huh.

Till next time.
W.

Just though I'd post this

Here's a pic of the truck sitting in the fence before it got towed to the repair shop.

Made it to the weekend!!!

Well, another week survived. Stopped by the repair shop to check on the status of the truck, the State Farm adjuster was supposed to have been there today to finalize the estimate on the truck, he still hasn't showed up, according to the claims office he has 48 hours to show up. The State Farm estimate so far is a little over 5000.00 the repair shop has added about 500.00 more to that total, but we're still under the total loss value of 9025.00, so it looks like the truck is going to be rebuilt.

As for work, well, pretty much SSDD. Spent the first couple of hours making battery cables, then had to go down to the final assembly area and re-route a power lead breakout that wasn't done correctly, my fault on that, it was an engine that they only use when shipping the rig overseas, and I had wired and routed it the same as the standard engine setup. Spent a hour cutting it all loose and reworking it correctly after the engineer had explained the correct routing. After lunch was another rework job, not my fault this time, the build sheet for the truck had been revised with a new main chassis harness, but the dummies had forgotten to revise the parts kit pull sheet with the new part number, so the old style harness got pulled and installed instead. At first we were going to have to pull the whole 30 ft long harness out of the truck, but one of the senior engineers loked at the prints and discovered that there was only a minor difference in the harnesses, so I spent about 15 minutes altering and retagging the harness, instead of two of us spending a couple of hours pulling and replacing the harness. Spent about a half hour doing finish wiring on another truck and then spent the last couple of hours of the day making more battery cables, LOL.

Well, that's about all that happened today, looking over my to-do list for theis weekend, I'm going to be a busy beaver out in the yard this weekend, a lot of clean up to do.

That's all for now, you may return to your own borning life now.
W.


P.S. Check out a friend of mine on YouTube, he runs http://www.outragedpatriots.com/
He's speaking to our city council.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYxsM7W2F8g

More life to love

Well, I survived another fun filled day at work, most of the day was fine, but the boss walks by right before last break and tells me that S. is leaving for the day because of a dentist appt. (I already knew about it) and that he wants me to finish up wiring the engine that S. was working on. No biggie, I figure that S. has it pretty well finished and all I have to do is zip tie up the loose cables and maybe put a little sealant on some connections and basicly take the rest of the day off. Boy I was wrong, he had about half the wiring routed wrong, so I had to tear it all out and rework half the engine. Oh well, still got to kill about a half an hour doing nothing.

BTW, it's freaking HOT, it's got to be at least 90 out there right now!!!


And just think, only a couple of months ago we were all complaining about how cold it was. LOL



And now the topper for the day



After three whole days working at Nonni's Cookies, Sweets gets fired, and you gotta love this reason. She was talking politics with a couple of coworkers while they were on break. Yep that's the reason they fired her. Apparently since 95% of the workers there are mexican the management doesn't like anyone to talk about immigration policy and law even if they only do it on thier break time.

God bless America and all the stupid idiots in it!
W.

June 6, 2007 - Morning

Well, the truck is in the repair center for it's final estimate, they picked it up yesterday morning and I stopped by after work to sign the paperwork. hopefully it won't take them long to decide if it's totaled or repairable.

Not much went on at work yesterday, finished up putting all the ABS harnesses that I had pulled out back in along with fixing the other couple a trucks that I couldn't get to Monday. Only other thing I did was relocate a backup alarm that had been mounted in the wrong spot. Have no clue to what I'm gonna do today, I think it's time to start looking for a new job, this place has no problems with laying off people and after the last round, I know I'm next on the list if they have another round. Granted, I'll get unemployment pay, but considering that we're just getting by right know, we'll be screwed if I do get layed off.

Gotta love life.
W.

Well, survived another day

Not much happened yesterday, 4am came way too early, but I dealt with it. I figure I might as well get used to it and just consider the days that Sweets doesn't work a sleep in day.

Work was about the normal level of stupidy, just before lunch my leadman gave me a list of nine trucks that they wanted the ABS harness pulled out of because the new style engines have the exhaust running down the right side of the frame because of the turbos, so I pulled all the harnesses and piled them on a cart, just after I finished the engineer decided he didn't want the harnesses pulled that he wanted to try a slightly different routing instead. These engineers have no clue as far as I concerned. My leadman and me looked at one of the trucks that had the engine and exhaust all in place and decided that his alternated routing wouldn't work either so I suggested, just let me figure it out instead. It took me about ten minutes to figure out that if I ran the whole harness down the left side of the truck it would work just fine, so I ended up reinstalling three of the harnesses that way yesterday. Today I get to look at the others that had a different harness and see if I can do the same to them. At least I don't work in air piping, those guys had to strip all the air tubing out completely and start over because all of thier tubing is cut to length as they install it, needless to say there is a big pile of scrap air tubing laying in the middle of the line right now.

OK, time for me to get ready for work, catch ya all later
W.

I feel like do-do

Couldn't get to sleep last night, went to bed at 9pm, Sweets came to bed shortly after. The neighbors decided it was time to make noise, finnaly at 10pm I decided to get up and see what the hell was going on, couldn't figure out what N. was doing, but apparently they saw me standing at the frint door and decided to quit for the night, so I went back to bed and layed there for another hour listening to the various sound in my house: the chain on the ceiling fan ticking, Jazz's stomach doing I don't know what, Damien was coughing and hacking, and of course Morgan snoreing like a bear. I felt like I wa in a sound stuido durning the mixing for the latest Ailen movie. I ended up putting in my earplugs, they helped a little. Then 4am comes and Sweets alarm goes off. I think I only ended up with about 3 hours of sleep last night. Of course today is Monday, so we all know how that will go. Time to get things ready for work, I'd like to be able to get at least one cig in after I get there, before I hit the line.

It's been awhile since I've been here

Life has really gone screwy for me lately, actually to tell the truth it's bent me over the chair and is not even giving me a kiss on the cheek.

Let's see if I can sum up the last couple a weeks in short terms.

1. Company laid off about 20 guys, just missed the cut on that
2. A drunk plowed through the yard tearing out the gas meter, big flower box and ramming my truck into the neighbor's fence.
3. Sweets wanted me to kick the snot out of a little 20 yr old piss ant at the pizza place she worked at, she quit, has a new job now.

And that's just the last two weeks.

Just enjoying life
W.

Prohibition Today

I find it interesting that America hasn't learned that Prohibition doesn't work.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032601893.html

I heard about this on CNN this morning, the only thing I have to say is that it won't work, it didn't work in the past and it won't work now. Back when Prohibition was in effect, we had bootleggers, mobsters, and such running illegal booze all over the country, very little good came from it, only a lot of strife and problems. Now it seems everybody wants the same for smoking, it's just going to start all over again. People are going to smoke, no matter what the government says, all the government is going to do is create a blackmarket environment for cigarettes. They've already show us that they can't control smoking pot, what makes them think they can control smoking cigarettes which are more generally accepted. I think they should just back off and leave the American people alone, we all know the danger, we all know the health risks, if someone doesnt' want to be around smoke, then they should stay out of areas that are know to have smokers.

Stupid people

I ran over to Smokey's today to pick up lunch for Sweets and me, going down Pine St. there is about a two block stretch that, due to the road construction has been a one way for the last couple of months. Kinda hard to miss all the road signs posted everywhere about it. Anyway, as I'm driving along Pine St. I notice something, a Ford Explorer coming down the road at me, this nut job is driving the wrong way on the road. I think the idiot realized it when I didn't move over into the other lane and I continued to drive straight at him, granted I was keeping an eye on the other lane just in case I had to bale over there. He finally turned off onto one of the side streets. And everybody wonders why I get pissed off when I drive around this town.

Back at it.

Yep, it's been awhile since I've been here. Not much has happened since I was last here either. LOL It's finally gotten decient enough that I can get out in the garage and work, and I've finally gotten enough of Sweet's yard projects done that I can actually do some work in the garage. :) It being Easter weekend I got friday off as well, so I was able to run around all day picking up bits and pieces for some bike projects today. I did a couple of mods to the V-Star and re-sync'ed the carbs, tommorow I'm going to finish up a partial gut to the exhaust pipes that I actually started over a year ago, talk about procrastanation. LOL After I get that done, I'll recheck the sync again and make sure all is good. And just for all of you that think, "OMG, he's making a annoying loud bike." No, I'm not, I'm only removing one of the four baffle plates in the exhaust, according to the guys I've talked to about this, it should give the bike a bit of a rumble, but not be earshattering, all I'm trying to get away from is the sewing maching sound it currently has.

Well, asta for now, and more later.

yada, yada, yada

It's 4am, it's friday. Not much can be said about that.

The shop is back on 50 hour weeks, the only reason I heard was that PR wasn't happy that only a couple of the electricans were coming in on voluntary ot, it wouldn't suprise me if that was the case. Granted, since no one seems to know where LC vanished to, and JB is going to nights week after next, I'm gonna need 50 hours to keep up, normally with two of us things run sweet, neither of us has to crazy rush to get things done, just keep a steady pace all day, but with only one, well it can get hetic.

And Sweety is on the trail of a 450 Rebel again, or at least something similar. I hope I can find something for her real soon.

I'm outta here, gotta finish getting ready for work.

New Avatar

Just a new one I made.

Been Awhile

Yep, it's been awhile since I've posted anything. Work and the real world have been taking up most of my time lately, I'm taking a break from it all to go to the Starbird Car Show here in Tulsa today. First real car show I've been to in a long time, most of the ones I've gotten to in recent years have just been the local cruse night types or a local townie event, this one is actually a national event, and of course the admission price tells that, 20 bucks to get in! But what the hey, might as well go. I did a little research and it turns out that the Starbird Museum is about an hour and a half from here, so maybe it might make a nice day trip this summer.

More later....

Another week is over with.

I gotta tell ya, 50 hour work weeks really suck. I'm glad it's over for a couple of days, of course now the house work begins, I got a head start by cleaning up most of the kitchen and after I finish this post I'll go back and finish the other half and put away the dishes that just finished up. Sweety is just getting home right now, I can tell because I hear the truck and the dogs are stirring. Oh well, see ya all later.

My Garage

I posted awhile back that I had finally got my garage back. Well, I have now spent several days cleaning and organizing and it looks pretty good. The V-Star sets on the left side, I have to keep it in there for now because I keep it plugged into a battery tender. My chopper is setting on the right side, looking a bit rough right now, because I haven't been able to work on her because it's been too damn cold and the garage is not insulated or heated. Two problems hopefully that will be solved by next winter.

Once again into the payroll fray

Well, I found out something today that explained why my check was screwed up, it turns out it was my fault. I had a small bout with the flu bug last week and took Monday off as a sick day, now up till now all the companies I've worked for had the same policy - If you call in before work starts, the absent is noted and approved. Appears that at my current employer, they still want you to call in, but after you get back you have to fill out a form stating that you want the hours you missed taken from your sick time hours. In other words, if you call in sick, you still have to request sick time afterwards. Kinda silly I think, also a pain in the butt when no one bothers to inform you that you have to do that, all I was told was that you had to call in and let the boss know. Plus I forgot that I had went home early on that Friday due to the ice/sleet storm and that I was riding the bike at the time.

Oh well, lession learned. Now because of this I've started keeping track of my hours and hour usage in my schedule book that I carry with me at all times now.

Payroll screwed me again

Ya know, sometimes I just get fed up with blaten stupidy. The payroll dept. where I work has screwed up my paycheck once again and it's going to be Monday before I can get it straightened out. They processed my check through with only about half my hours on it. The damn thing is annoying enough to figure out to begin with. Instead of filling in the regular and overtime hours like any normal company would, they have this thing about refiguring the hours. I'll explain using round numbers.

Normal company's math
(40 regular hours * $10/hr) + (10 ot hours * $15/hr) = $550

My company's math
(50 regular hours * $10/hr) + (10 ot hours * $5/hr) = $550

Now, while this does add up to the same total, it doesn't make any sence to me why they do it this way, I mean it's not like they have to do any real math, everything is entered into a computer that does all the math and then prints out our checks. In general this does work fine when I work a full week with no sick/holiday/missed days in it, I know my check should read 50 and 10, but if you through anything odd into the mix, you have to stop and calculate what your hours and payrate should be. And it never fails, if you do take some time off, your check is going to be screwed up, I had a bout of stomach flu last weekend and ended up taking monday off as a sick day, needless to say my check was all screwed up, they only payed me for 27.8 hours of regular time. Don't ask me how they ended up with this number, I worked the rest of the week. I should have had 32 hours of regular time and 8 hours sick time. I can't wait to see next weeks check, it should be for 40 regular hours and 3 ot hours, but there's no telling what it will end up being.

My rant for the day, thank you for listening.

I hate insurance companies!!!

Yep, that's right I hate them all. Every last stinking one of them. They're all a bunch of money hungry, stab you in the back a-holes (pardon my french).

This opinion has of course come from trying to get a new rate quote tonight, I've been at it for about two hours now and still haven't gotten anything worth looking at, or the systems have been down and not able to process my request at the moment. I think they do that just to get all you info so that they can put you on the tele-markerter list so that somebody can call and bug you all hours of the day/night. They all talk about how fast and easy it is to logon and get a rate quote, what they don't tell you is that they want a life history on you before they tell you that thier system is down or not working at the moment. Big buch of sorry loosers as far as I'm concerned.

Enough bitching for now, I think it's time for something fun.

Asta