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Friday, October 31, 2008

End of the Week Wrap Up & Rant

Oh yeah, and also end of the month too.

Happy Halloween everyone! I'm sitting this one out as I've enjoyed my fair share of parties, trick or treating and drunken shenanigans while wearing questionable outfits. I'm relaxing at Laura Anne's and tending to her kitties (which are doing well, if you are reading this Laura Anne, Boomer is currently playing with paper and I scooped the litter box out as well) as well as planning my weekend well spent in New York in autumn. So that means bargain hunting, vintage shop scavenging and fancy food feasting.

This week has been interesting to say the least. Work has been good, except certain people I work with. One in particular has turned into a complete whiny baby and I have a feeling those anabolic pills he's taking cannot be helping his already dwindled hold on reality. Apparently telling someone to turn down their speakers makes you a completely vicious and horrible person. How dare I ask that you either turn down your speakers in the early morning or that you actually use the door of your office and close it for once.

It's sad because he has the potential to be a really great person and he's someone that I had a little thing for in the past. But I'm just worried that those pills are turning him and his emotions into swiss cheese. Dude, I just asked you to turn your speakers, that's all. I wasn't trying to attack you. I told you I was a little on edge from finding out I have another cousin that's going to be deployed soon and some how that even became an issue. That's not cool and I worry about you.

So besides this weirdness, I have a full day planned ahead of me and I'm turning in now to watch some DVD's and then sleep. :-)

Monday, October 27, 2008

I am not a drafter

A couple months ago we laid off our only structural drafter. Now granted the guy had some issues, some of you know them and I'm just going to leave it at that, but to be honest, the guy used to run the friggin' the structural drafting department at his previous jobs, so regardless of his personal life the dude was f*cking money on drafting.

So as a result of his departure, the engineering department now has no dedicated drafter. I and my structural boss now have to tap people in the architectural drafting department if we want anything done. This means that we have someone who can draw, but who does not know the language we are talking. For example, a structural drafter will know how to draw something if we just call it out: "can you make this a moment connection," "can you add another angle here and weld it using a fillet weld" or more importantly and the number one thing we need done "can you stretch this out a few feet." So now that we have someone who doesn't understand our language drawing up what we need, I now have to spend extra time either drafting things myself or sketching out what I mean and going through a mini training session.

Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoy teaching people. I love that the drafter's are beginning to understand our language and aren't so reticent when I tap them for help with drafting. However, when you add a deadline that I need to fulfill to the mix, we have ourselves a problem when I'm trying to teach someone at the same time. Therefore, I've been taking the structural drafting reins.

I engineered and drafted for 3 years at the first company I worked for and I'm very happy to still have the skills enough to actually draft and help us out. However, I am not a drafter. Therefore, problems will arise because I'm not familiar with our drafting styles at this firm and our architect has expectations that he and our client's like to like to meet. Hence, there are going to be some problems and errors that will arise when you have a switchhitter at the drafting bat.

I had a mini blow up at both our architect and our COO to let them know that I can't be taking the reins for much longer. If we start to pick up again project wise, we will need to look for a structural drafter or steal someone from the architectural department, permanently. I can't be relied on for the structural drafting alone, I have plenty of engineering tasks at hand and will so in the future.

So after my discussion (yes, I'm using the term as if talking to my child, "no, mommy and daddy are having a 'discussion,' we're not fighting") everyone now knows my view on things. And then afterwards I offered everyone nice stinky cheese as a peace offering. :-) (stinky = good, that's my nickname)

I'm glad I finally said it, but also a part of me worries that maybe I should just keep my mouth shut. However, my structural boss and myself are getting fed up about things and know that in time this will be a HUGE problem if we have deadlines to meet and we can't get things drawn in time. And I'm not going to be doing two jobs and only getting paid for one, I'm not that nice and I don't have a "Welcome" mat as a shirt.

So I'm happy I said it so that I can vent to the proper person, all my cards are on the table and it seems like it was the right thing to do. I just hope no one is secretly like "oh my god, I hate that engineer" or "she is overstepping her bounds, she shouldn't be questioning that." But to be honest, I've always been this way, my boss hired me as such, so it shouldn't be a problem. I do worry though which is what I do best, and I worry that maybe I did overstep my bounds. However, I went to the right person to vent my issue and it was within ear shot of my big boss and nothing bad happened. Later on my big boss gave me a problem to solve about a garage addition we were doing and everything seemed OK.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Stone (40,000 BC) vs. iPhone (2008)

Lovingly snurched from Shreena:



*cough cough*Crackberry rulz*cough cough*

Friday, October 10, 2008

My Gloriously Messy Desk

I couldn't even fit it all in one picture. :-)

And I don't know why that makes me so happy, but it does. Maybe it means that I'm working so hard that I can't be bothered to clean it? Perhaps...
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Job YAY

I guess this shouldn't cause me so much joy, but I'm like a little damaged work doggie that constantly needs to be told that it's doing a good job, "such a good girl Eris, yes you are!" But, my boss was going over my drawings for the car dealership that we're doing and he was very pleased.

Aside from some alterations he wants to make since he knows WAY more about construction than I do (15 years >> 4 years) it seems like he's pleased and really respects my opinion. His alterations consist of easier ways of actually building this thing i.e. he knows ways of keeping the concrete guys happy while also keeping the steel guys happy while also not breaking the hearts of the masonry guys. "OK, if you make this simply 1" change, you will eliminate a lot of headaches with the steel since it's easier for the concrete to be cut in the field and grouted then having to tell them in the steel shop." That's a typical statement young engineers will hear since we're still full of theories that work on paper, but not in the field.

So yay! Eris is happy and working away like a good worker bee. Bzzz bzzzz...

Friday, October 03, 2008

Economic Backlash

My industry is now beginning to feel the crunch of the current economy. You know it's bad when wealthy people (I'm not talking rich people, I mean in the Chris Rock sense of the world wealthy "they sign the checks for the rich people to cash") are having difficulties digging up capital to build stuff. These wealthy people are no longer wanting to break ground so easily anymore because they are having similar problems that schmucks with bad credit (like me) typically only do and that is a very scary thing.

I'm not big into Reaganomics; as the current situation proves, we are in fact in a "trickle up" economy enough people defaulted on loans and mortgages that it actually created an effect. However, I do believe that there needs to be some type of bailout enacted in order to allow capital to start flowing to these people again, because (selfishly) these people like to build things. This keeps us architects/engineers fat and happy little piggies.

Right now is definitely a lean time, admittedly I actually have some down time during the day which is a bit frightening. I'm not used to having down time during work, typically me checking my email or venturing to my messageboards is a task left to a sneaky 5 minutes rounding out the hour so that I can take a mental break. However, now is the time to "take stock" as they say: I can start my PE exam studies, finally make sense of my past calculations and actually file and of course actually talk with the people in my office.

However, a little part of me is worried that people will get laid off and that I may be one of them. *sigh* Realistically, it doesn't seem like they would let me go since I'm pretty much the engineer in charge on a daily basis. The head structural engineer is typically off to meetings or off to handle larger problems/issues with the site guys and the big boss is off garnering clients for us and handling money issues. However, it gets to a point in any business' financial outlook that no one's job is safe and I've just coming up to my year, so who knows if I'm expendable or not.

*sigh* I think everything is OK though, I just needed to vent my feelings a bit and my general paranoia (which my boss and the COO typically point at me and laugh about, "awww, poor Eris, she's gettin' the shakes again!"). So I'm just going to get back to some busy work with this current project and get my head and heart in gear.