6/22/06

Ok, so here’s what’s been going on. Last week we had all of those lamps explode in the projectors. Well, yesterday my boss from Irving came out with two new lamps. They didn’t work. I guess I shouldn’t have deleted that chain letter after all. We tried lamp 1 in projector A and lamp 2 in projector B, nothing. We swapped lamp 1 into projector B and lamp 2 into projector A, nothing. We tried lamps 1 and 2 in projector C, nothing. My boss was on the phone with NEC for some time while I packed up eleven more re-lampable modules to go back to NEC. Ok, I guess I should ‘splain that. These projectors use a module that contains a lamp. The lamps in the modules have to be replaced every 1,600 hours. We can only re-lamp each module four times. Each time one is re-lamped, the tech writes the date in a little box on the back of the module. I had a few modules with one date, some with two, a couple with three, I think three with four, and some with five. Now I know NEC would have kicked back the ones with five, and they may boot the ones with four, but I'm sure they will re-lamp at least eight or nine of the ones I sent in. Oh, have I mentioned that each lamp costs $1,900.00 and a module with lamp is $2,700.00? No? Well, they do. I felt a little funny the day I had $27,000.00 worth of modules sitting in my garage because NEC sent them to my house on a Saturday because we were out. How did I get those to work? I don’t remember. I guess I loaded them into the Scooby-Doo and drove them here. Anyhoo, my boss took the eleven modules I had packed up and the two that didn’t work and went back to Irving to chew on some ass. I hear today that the big boss in Irving called the big boss at NEC and chewed some ass and that there are supposedly four on their way to Irving and will be hot-shotted over to me as soon as the leave the truck. We’ll see. As for other work stuff, they have had me running around all day, every day this week. That is why my rants have been sporadic at best. It looks like we’re moving away from a “shop night” during the week and instituting an all day Saturday shop event each week. That’s cool since I never really seem to get any work done on shop nights anyway and having someone else there on the weekend would be much safer. I think we started shop night because Pat was going down there to work on something and we took it over. Pat hasn’t been to the shop on shop night with any regularity for many years now. Oh, speaking of shops, I said the other day that my long-term plan was not to live in the shop forever. John called me out on that saying that he was under the impression I was. I do plan to live at the same location as the shop, eventually, but the long-term plan is to only live in the apartment in the shop until I build my house next to it. That was what I meant. Of course it could come to pass that I never build a house and do live in the apartment for the rest of my life. Juan never knows. Well, I think I'm going to shut it down for a while since it is rapidly approaching noon. In case I don’t make it back, have a day. And I'm back! I have all nine screens up and running for the first time in two weeks! Actually, the Amtrak desk would say it has been a month since their screen was dark, not off just dim, for the last four weeks or more. I'm a little worried about this new boss of mine. He is really military in his thinking and might just try to make things different out here. Hopefully I'll be forgotten out here in the hinterland and won’t get noticed if I don’t make waves. Trouble is, I need that tech to come out and baby sit the Town Hell meetings twice a month. Well, we’ll see. Ok, so it is 1400 now and I'm not really having any luck thinking of stuff to say. I think I'll call this entry done and plan to talk to y’all tomorrow. Buh bye.