Killing some time at work

I'm sitting at work icing my ankle, with a few minutes to kill, so I have the luxury of writing whatever I want in here! I'm ignoring the burden of past experiences that I haven't yet documented.

My left ankle is pressed up against a stiff ice pack that's pressed up against my man boot that's pressed up against my desk. I'm hunched over to reach the keyboard, backing up every minute or two to fork off another piece of enchilada, or take a sip of the SoBe Essential juice+energy Berry Pomegranate flavored energy juice drink. Nobody else is around, so I'm playing The Strokes comfortably loud through my desktop speakers. Since mowing the lawn last week, I've gotten to like them a good bit. More British stuff from Craig.

XM47, "Lucy," plays at volume notch 1 in the speaker above me. It's just on so I can hear a page if one comes through. Gotta pause the iPod quick and try to catch the repeat. "JAWN BAREIN, WUN SEVINDY FOWR.. JON BARIN, WUNSEVINDYFOR PLEEZ." And since it's night turn, you never know when you might get a whoop in the background as they're hanging up the phone, or maybe some intentional clatter of the receiver, or best yet, a multi-syllabic mispronounciation of Frank Fronzaglio's name :-)

My hot end is in good order. Dale didn't show up, so I've been hauling cullet most of the night (which is why I'm icing my ankle), but I've got 7 truckloads, and we use about 9 per shift, so I'm close to even. The sand car is done unloading and I pushed it down the tracks to the other empties. The tin bath is running well and we've got two of the most experienced operators there right now. Frankie is learning the furnace from Josh, and they've got some hot & dusty cleaning yet to do. We may not get the debris cleaned out from under 3 port left and right... we'll see. Roy Hi-vac'd all 3 levels of the batch house, so I'm waiting awhile before I ask him to clean up the busted glass in the casting hall. QC tests show that the glass color is holding steady, and the last defect sampling didn't have any bottom tin pickup, so we seem to have licked that. There's not much I can do about the tab alumina or chromite, and the seeds & bubbles aren't bad enough to warrant action. Joe has been cleaning up around the tin bath, and that's one of the main things remaining for the last 3 hours of the night: cleaning up the place for all the daylight folks coming in in a few hours. I try to leave them as few things to complain about as possible.

It's been a very relaxed weekend, which is welcome after the HELLACIOUS day last Tuesday. I messed up, we went out of spec, lost a lot of glass, and didn't have a very good reason for it. Bleah. I learned my lesson, though.

Enough sitting around. I could do this all night, but I gotta always light a fire under my own rear and get out there, look around, think, take a step back mentally, scout around for anything left untended, anything that should be done, anything that somebody could give me a hard time for not doing or fixing or addressing or noticing. If somebody walked in right now and looked around, what would they see? What would they ask me about? Would I have a good answer? Could anybody look in on me right now and say I'm being lazy? Would they be right?

That's what these weeks as a supervisor-in-training have been like. On good days, I love it. On the bad days I want to bash my head into an I-beam.
There have been many more good days than bad.

Ahhhh. Good song just came on :-)

Hope this was somewhat profitable, or at least mildly entertaining to read!

--JPB