Year: 2010

Status Quo


Lake Jocasse from Devils Fork State Park

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 860

10/10/10

This year is the 10th anniversary of geocaching and as a way of celebrating:

The geocaching community is attempting to break the record for number of accounts that logged caches in a single day. Currently that number stands at 56,654. Even one log on 10-10-10 counts since we are tallying how many accounts log a cache, rather than the number of caches logged.

There were gobs of events around the world and probably one or two locally to help get folks out caching and logging. Donna and I planned to do a little caching today, in the manner in which we usually cache, by ourselves. But after yesterday’s trip we decided to scratch our grandiose plans of finding 10 caches on 10/10/10 and figured we would just go get one. We had no clue which one, but wanted something close by.

Last night as I sat in front of the PC logging yesterday’s geocaching adventures an email alert came in of a new cache. I opened it up expecting to that it was 18 or 19miles away in Augusta, it wasn’t, it was .5 miles away. After briefly toying with the idea of trying to be the First To Find, we opted to use this cache as our 1 for ten-ten-ten.

We slept in a little this morning and had pancakes for breakfast. I checked the cache and sure enough, a couple of folks claimed the first to find last night at 9:20,so we grabbed the GPS on our way out to do some grocery shopping, thinking that we would get the Kissing Your Sister prize of Second To Find. We arrived at ground zero and started to search around. I had left the PDA at home so we had no idea what size container we were looking for, nor any clues if available. So we only gave a half-hearted 5 minute hunt before leaving empty handed.

Well, the record attempt requirements didn’t say anything about finds, just logs, so a DNF was just as good.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 860

Two South Carolina Geocache Challenges Finished

Donna and I finally made a day trip to the northwest part of SC to get the final 5 caches we needed to complete the South Carolina DeLorme Challenge [GCVG6Y] (Pages 16, 22 & 23) and the South Carolina County Challenge [GC1ACWC] (Oconee & Pickens). Now we just await approval from the cache owners that we have completed them to their satisfaction and they will send us the coordinates for the extra special bonus cache associated with the challenges. The County Challenge one is less than 10 miles from here, but I have no idea where the Delorme one is.

All top transitions occurred today because the Emperor sat in the garage all day on Friday as Donna and I rode the tandem to work…

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 860

Hourly Communications Meetings

To help foster communications the Director of Operations (AKA the Big Kahuna, the Head Cheese or Plant Manager) meets with representatives from the various departments roughly each month. He has one for the hourly employees and one for the salaried folks as well. Each month, persons are picked at random to attend and they are supposed to solicit from their surrounding fellow employees questions that are bothering them so management might be aware of outstanding issues.

Every month there are always questions about pay:
1. Are we getting a raise this year?
The wage package is currently in St. Louis being reviewed by Emerson corporate. The expectation is there will be a raise increase this year. An announcement will be made as soon as possible following Emerson?s response.

The Director of Operations hates questions about the parking lot and I think word got around that he did, so someone usually sneaks on in:
3. Why are the shifts putting their motorcycles in the parking lot instead of where they are supposed to park? *
A motorcycle is a vehicle and can park in any space they choose.

*There are 2 designated motorcycle parking areas and I guess it upset someone to find a motorcycle in a regular parking spot when they couldn’t park in the much closer to the door motorcycle spots.

Questions about the break area and cafeteria are always popular:
14. Could there be a border placed around the snack machines to prevent your money from rolling beneath the machine?
I really don?t think so. If we put something around them we would not be able to clean under the machines.

There is at least one bathroom question each month:
34. In the ladies bathroom down below Joey Marshall office we don?t have any hot water.
Each sink in the specified bathroom was checked and all had hot water.

There were at least 6 or 8 questions referring to a particular job that came open when someone moved to a different department recently. Several of them felt that race was a determining factoring in who they hired:
56. A lot of us black people bid on calibration job. No one got it. Someone doing the job that only has nine months (job requires 3 years).
This question is a good example of how rumors and false information get circulated and employees end up frustrated and upset by false information. Note the following misstatements and errors: no one except HR knows with certainty how many people bid on a position, including how many from any particular race, nor does any one else know who was tested, or who was or wasn?t qualified to even be considered. At the time this question was asked in the Communication meeting, a determination if any internal bidders would be awarded the position had not been made, so the statement ?no one got it?was a false assumption. As for the experience of ?someone doing the job,? again no one knows for sure someone else?s past experience. Rest assured that HR – through a third-party entity ? verifies the experience and qualifications of every employee before hiring during pre-employment background screening.

My pick for question of the month goes to:
21. When is the next Opinion Survey?
I do not know. Emerson schedules the Opinion Survey.

Every 3 years or so, corporate does an Opinion Survey. This is a way for the employees to “communicate” their dissatisfaction further up the ladder than the monthly meeting with the local top guy.

Corporate takes these very seriously and in the past it has led to several of our management team taking early retirement or moving to another corporate locale in a “promotion.” Management always denies that they know when the survey is coming, but there has been very strong circumstantial evidence over the years that points to them knowing. Steak cook outs, t-shirt and jacket giveaways seem to occur at very coincidental times.

My guess is they are not told the actual date for deny-ability purposes, but do know what two week period it will happen in. And my guess is we are in for one soon. The other day as Donna and I went for one of our walks on our break we got stopped in the hall outside HR by the guys from the stockroom pulling pallets stacked with boxes. Each pallet probably had 20 boxes, each had “10 each” hand written on the outside with a Sharpie and the UPS shipping label was addressed to the HR manager. I think we are getting an unexpected gift which will lead directly to an expected Opinion Survey.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 858

Not A Hyundai, But A Kia?

Apparently Kia’s design chief has a soft spot for the Miata and possibly hinted that a two-seat rear-wheel drive drop-top sports car might be in the company’s future: Autoblog article. Maybe we will just wait until 2012 to buy a new car. By then we should have the next generation Miata , possibly VW’s Bluesport roadster and a Kia to choose from.

Or maybe next November we will just plunk down 3 grand more than we we planning on spending for the Hyundai Sonata and get the Turbo version: Autoblog article.

Started down, went up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 856

Sorry I Doubted You James

Oh, about a month or so ago, we had visitors and one of those visitors was a 3 year-old nephew named James (Hi James.) One of the things we had to amuse said 3 year-old was a book about airplanes. It wasn’t just any ol’ static book about airplanes, it came with little cardboard replicas of planes that needed to be put together and had the advantage of being capable of flight. Not real aerodynamic flight mind you, but by brute force. Each plane replica had a small notch on the bottom of the “fuselage” that you hooked the rubber band of the included primitive slingshot thingie into and then pulled back as far as your mighty 3 year-old arms would go before letting loose launching the plane into the wild blue yonder.

James and uncle Brian spent a few enjoyable hours over the course of a couple of evenings “flying” planes in the back yard. One evening James launched the B-2 bomber with a mighty tug and it soared off in the direction of our mimosa tree and I didn’t see it come back down. He said it was stuck in the tree. I couldn’t see it, so I figured it had come down in the neighbor’s yard. James insisted that he could see it and wanted me to go up and get it. I just knew it wasn’t there, so told him I would get it, but I couldn’t, because I didn’t have a tall enough ladder.

Tonight as I walked underneath the mimosa tree on the way to the shed to get out the lawn mower and leaf blower so Donna and I could do a little lawn maintenance, I looked down on the ground and this is what I saw:

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 852