And I Thought I Had It Bad

When I started work here in Aiken in 1989 there was one other draftsman already here. I say draftsman, but he was much more than that. Lynn was also designing all the valve assembly test fixtures. After he designed them, he built them. In between all that he had to teach me how to use AutoCAD. When I was in Florham Park I used something called CADAM that ran on a mainframe computer. Everything in Aiken was running on PCs (8088 and some 286s) and they had AutoCAD version 9.

Lynn used to do all the drawings by hand, but a couple years earlier and engineer had won an Apricot computer with AutoCAD version 2 installed on it at a trade show. Lynn learned to draw on the “new” computer and even started redrawing the plant layouts. The kicker of this is the Apricot didn’t have a mouse, he navigated around drawing walls and lighting and such in our150, 000 sq ft plant using the arrow keys to move the cursor.

As we started growing on the production side, all that work defaulted to me and Lynn kept up with the assembly side. We shared a 20′ x 20′ room that had the back 1/3 separated via cubical walls where Lynn built the test benches and fixtures. I nicknamed him the Mad Scientist because it was almost comical the noises that emanated from behind those walls. About eight years ago they really separated us when he got his own room on the other side of the plant.

Two years ago he retired from ASCO. The Assembly Engineering Department had grown from just Lynn to an Engineering Supervisor, 3 Engineers and him. He didn’t stay retired very long. Seeing as he had pretty much designed and built every piece of test fixturing out there, he had to come back in and consult to help them fix them up. Soon he was coming in every day, they found a spare cubical and dusted off his old PC, and he was back doing pretty much what he was doing before he “retired.”

Two weeks ago, after he got done burning some leaves in a pit behind his house, he hung up the rake in his garage. There must have been a piece of something still burning on the rake he didn’t notice. The ember fell off onto a gas can and before you knew it the garage was on fire. Lynn tried to put out the fire with a nearby hose, but couldn’t do it. Before some construction workers from next door could pull him away from the fire he was badly burned. Lynn is lying in an induced coma in the burn ward of an Augusta hospital with 3rd degree burns over nearly 25% of his body. His lungs were burned badly from the heat and he is breathing with the help of a ventilator. It was touch and go for a while, but he appears to be getting a little better each day.

His daughter has a blog where she is posting updates for all of his family and extended work family to read: Lisa’s Family Page

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 116

Move Along

Nothing here to see. Move along. Return to your homes.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 114

A Beer & A Fudgesicle

After we finished up some yard work this evening and showered off, I was watching a little TV while enjoying a malt beverage. My wife decided that she wanted a fudgesicle, so as not to make me feel left out, brought me one too. Somehow I don’t think the fudgesicle will be replacing salted peanuts as America’s favorite bar snack soon.

When I talked with the last Allstate Claims drone I was informed that I would have to pick a body shop and tell them who it was before they would cut a check. The check would then be made out to both me and the body shop to protect the lien holder of the car, Amsouth Bank. This way I couldn’t just cash the check and not get the car fixed reducing the value of Amouth’s property, makes sense. I picked one of their recommended shops, Satcher Ford because I would get a lifetime warranty on the repair. Last Thursday I told Allstate who I picked. Well, I got the check in the mail from Allstate today, and it was made out just to me. I guess I could go ahead and get an undamaged trunk from the junkyard and have it painted, blending the metallic paint be damned and pocket seven or eight hundred dollars, but I won’t.

I got an email today from MLB.com:

Dear Valued Fan,

Thank you for sending your email.

We really appreciate your feedback and comments and have forwarded your email to the appropriate department.

Please feel free to call our toll-free Customer Support Hotline at 1-866-800-1275 for information or assistance. Thank you again for taking the time to write!

Regards,
MLB.com Support

Was that in response to my April 1st email? Or the one on April 10th? I guess after paying all those players gazillions of dollars a year there isn’t much left over for actual customer service…

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 112

Phucking Phone

I have been a mildly disgruntled Tracfone customer for a couple of years now. Donna and I are limited cell phone users and they are a very cheap, for us, alternative. We bought a second phone from them at the end of last October and it didn’t work for the first week. Seemed dead, but miraculously it started working.

This last Saturday it just as miraculously stopped working. No signal. Same symptoms as when we first got it. I called customer service and was told to take the phone to another city and see if I get any signal. I took that sucker all the way to Norway and still got nothing. To make things more interesting I have an identical phone, that was sent to me back in October, that I had never opened up. I charged it’s battery and it has been showing no signal right along with the current phone where ever we have gone for the last couple of days.

I was tempted to just buy another Tracfone, get it up and running and then transfer my 54 minutes of time over to the new phone. But I decided to not to throw any more good money after bad. Narrowed down my choices to two providers and came with in a hair of pulling the trigger on a Boost Mobile phone, but in the end elected to get a Cingular GoPhone with the pay as you go option.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 112

Oh So Close

For those of you hanging around to see if my lipid profile ever levels off with all the numbers in the green, you will have to come back in 6 months. My latest numbers, from a blood draw on the 6th of this month, are the best ones yet, but a couple of numbers are still slightly off. Medication remains the same from the last testing, Tricor, and the supplement as well, 600mg of “red yeast rice.” Two things have changed since the December test; 1) in January I started drinking one 4oz glass of red wine with dinner at home and 2) about a month ago I changed my breakfast cereal from Frosted Mini Wheats to the new Smart Start? Healthy Heart Maple Brown Sugar.

  Chol HDL LDL Trig
Goal <200 >40 <100 30-150
09/21/04 209 24 131 271
01/10/05 176 33 110 167
05/06/05 174 27 108 194
06/17/05 164 31 85 238
07/28/05 177 30 113 169
12/08/05 182 35 120 137
04/06/06 168 37 106 126

Visited Norway Today

Visited Norway TodayI may have to start a South Scandilina gallery. I’ve already got a picture of me in Switzerland and the town of Denmark is just around the corner.

Donna and I got up early and drove to Orangeburg to visit the city’s really nice Edisto Memorial Gardens. Not the best time to visit, the roses aren’t totally out yet and most of the azaleas are past, but still worth the drive. There is a really nice sensory garden, a really cool metal palmetto tree fountain and a long boardwalk along the south fork of the Edisto River. We walked all over the place for a couple of hours, but knew it was time to go when Easter services around town let out and families descended on the place to have pictures taken in their spring finery.

I spent the afternoon up a step ladder installing two ceiling fans in our soon to be new bedroom. Two, because the first one didn’t work once I got it 90% installed. Lowes was more than happy to swap out for another of the same style fan, but they wouldn’t refund me for my time spent. The good thing about the second install is it took less than half the time of the original one.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 112

Saturday?

We took Thursday off as a vacation day. We had Friday off as a holiday, so we are having a nice little 4 day weekend with no real plans. We have done a bit of shopping for stuff we need (and some stuff we didn’t need) as we are redoing one of the bedrooms. We want to move in on the other side of the house because it is cooler in the summer than our current bedroom.

Thursday seemed like Saturday to me, but it was not. Friday seemed like Saturday too, but it wasn’t. Today was Saturday and it felt like…Friday. Wonder what day I’ll think tomorrow is?

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 112