Monday, July 26, 2010

Monday

My entries - for now anyway, will no longer be in the morning with the occasional afternoon addition. I have no access to my blog at work anymore. That, after 3-1/2 years. I was only getting on before work, before signing in, but, it has been blocked by my company.

Well, no big deal. I'm eating frozen Talapia - okay, sounds bad but it's really good, actually and was my price range. Yes, delicious.

Onto other things. This morning, my first delivery, these people at a construction site I was delivering to had no equipment to unload the one stick of pipe I had on my truck plus a pallet full of fittings.

That one stick of pipe weighed 360 pounds. Those 2 plus me - equals 120 pounds a piece, I can do that. However, their idea was to take off one end of the pipe and set it on the ground and then get the other end off. Okay. We lift the pipe, turn it, set it on the ground.

Unfortunately, I was on the wrong side of the pipe to be able to do anything about what happened next: it started sliding down the rail of the trailer. I would have jumped over there to save the truck from being hit, but, I couldn't and those guys? No idea. Was it amusing to see the pipe crashing into the battery box cover and destroying it, along with one of the batteries under neath it? They made no move whatsoever to stop it.

99% of unloads are customer unloads. I always help, yes, unless they either don't want my help, or need it or - they are being reckless. Loader operators that have no clue take the top of that list. NOT that all loader operators are reckless, but when I see one that is, I just back off, however, if the equipment is going to be damaged by that recklessness, then I do intervene.

Well, the battery is probably $200 and the cover is more than that.

I have been out twice this afternoon hacking with a pick and digging with a shovel a VERY stubborn area where I am digging out the pond hole. I found the reason why, too: a huge chunk of cement. NO idea how it got there, none of my doings, but it's a pain to see the least. I am digging around it and will get that sucker out of there.

LONG interlude. I have been out there hacking with the pick, digging with the shovel and hauling wheelbarrow loads of dirt from point A to point B. Sweating profusely. Felt good - heat be damned.

G'day.

ben

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

G'day Ben

Bugger about not being able to post in the morning anymore. :( I enjoyed having a read first thing in the morning (our time).

When you have some time up your sleeve, have a look at this -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x5UsEsIYag

Majority of the footage was taken in the northwest. The red dust up there gets into everything.

Cheers

Lynne
Western Australia

Anonymous said...

Hiya Lynne, definitely no fun on the blogging thing in the morning, but there's nothing I can do about it. I will take a look at YouTube later, I can't access streaming video at work, either, but that has been in place since I started working here.
ben

Anonymous said...

Well, I can post my blog entries in a previous entry now that I think about it, there is no limitations to the size "comment" that can be made here as far as I know!

Tuesday

I pretty much have the writing juices flowing in the morning, not the afternoon, so, I will simply write my entries in the morning, email them to myself to my house and then post them in the afternoon. I was able to gain access to my blog this morning – I had seen others on personal blogs, but, I cannot access my account to be able to sign in and post an entry. I could stay home in the morning and do it, but – it’s all about atmosphere I guess. I spend enough time at home, for goodness sakes, coming to work early is simply a habit that I thought I was going to have to forsake since the internet was shut down. It turned out it was some glitch in some software that corporate had downloaded onto all computers nationwide and after 2 days, well, I was able to get back on again.

I can deal with not being able to blog in the morning if I can still access my favorite news sites, look at all the bantering back and forth on Craigslist and other sites as they come to mind to search things or seek information. Mostly, it’s the news that stimulates me in the morning, such as South Korea and the U.S. doing the war games – or whatever they are calling them – in the East sea (I erroneously reported it as the South Sea, now I understand the major waters there are the Yellow Sea and the East Sea).

The funny part is, of course, there is no nuclear war being initiated by North Korea. The not so funny part is that since a panel of experts from different nations came to the same conclusion that North Korea definitely destroyed that South Korean ship, THIS is the best answer we can come up with?

If they attempted to sink one of OUR subs would we be sitting around playing games in the ocean? I think not. Of course, it wasn’t one of our subs and South Korea is responsible for starting their own initiatives – sort of. Since the U.S. is basically the only REAL thing they have going there to defend themselves, I don’t doubt that they pretty must MUST consult with us before doing anything. There are, after all, 28,000 of our men and women out there serving our nation.

I’ve heard the call recently from Americans saying we should just do away with military installations in all of these nations. Perhaps in OTHER nations, but not here and definitely not in Japan. The cost of freedom is expensive, we all know that. Our military is a voluntary one, we don’t force people to sign up – which is a good thing, they know what they are getting into LONG before they get into it and they know the potential for not coming out of it alive is also real, just ask the families of those that have fallen in Afghanistan or Iraq. Or, for that matter WWI, WWII, Vietnam, etc etc etc etc .

Anyway, and running out of time here, the sky is overcast again, with no sign, again, of rain.
Yesterday afternoon I was hoofing it out there swinging the pick axe away. I thought what I was running into was a chunk of cement, turns out it is a HUGE boulder that is going to have to be removed. I have it halfway unearthed, I hope to finish getting that thing out of the ground this afternoon.

Nothing much else, work day approaches and I’m outta here!
G’day.
ben

Fijufic said...

OMG picking concrete out of the ground in that heat is way more ambitious than I will ever be....

Hang in there brother.

Bobby

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