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Mar. 18th, 2005 07:55 amWhen I came in to work today, our ticketing server was up. Considering it's been down twice, for up to an hour and a half at a time, in the last week and a half, I'm counting this as a blessing. Taking notes in notepad for future tickets, using your break time to enter them all into the system after it comes back up, and then emailing all the users with their ticket numbers is not the best way to spend your extra time a-day.
I am, though, rather surprised at the activity level on the desk. Traffic was decidedly light this morning and Andrea and I assumed that a large number of people had decided to call in sick aftergoing out to get drunk celebrating yesterday's holiday. Then I find that there are 6 people in the phone queue. *sigh* At least it's down to 1 now, just as I'm getting on the phone. Here we go; this entry will be updated as I have time...
Stress level, after reaching a peak a couple days ago, is going down. Andrea helped me out with a cover letter and I've been sending out résumés. Haven't hit up the temp and employment agencies yet, but I've combed monster and hot jobs and applied to a few things. I've even had two nibbles. The first was from someone looking for a 'puter techie in Auburn Hills. Well, that's out. After explaining that I am relocating, the recruiter did offer to send my résumé to the Chicago and Milwaukee regional offices and that was nice. The second contact was by email last night and I responded this morning. There's a company interested in me for a position in Brookfield, Wisconsin. Admittedly, this is a long drive from Kenosha (I'm actually not quite sure how long. I'll ask my parents this weekend). However, since it's a contract position it won't last forever and I can deal with the drive temporarily. Especially since they're paying approximately one and a half times my current hourly rate. The fact that people are intersted in me is making me feel much better about my prospects. I'm going to call that recruiter after work today since it'll still be four o' clock there when I'm done here at five.
The quest for a new car continues. We've found a few cars that we've called on and not one private seller has called us back. We'd really prefer to avoid the lots if possible, even though Vance, our mechanic, extracted a promise from Andrea to not even think about buying a car without getting him to check it out first. I like Vance.
The reason she had occasion to talk to him is for repairs on the trucklet. The locks on both doors had gotten all funkified and the passenger side door was stuck closed. He also finally addressed the missing driver's side windshield wiper which had been missing for about two months now. Therein lies a story.
I was on my way to work in a fierce November rain shower. Not entirely unexpectedly, since it had happened a time or two before, the wipers stopped working. I pulled over and got out of the truck and spent about 15 minutes trying to coax them into working, becoming ever more frustrated as my being late to work became inevitable. I kept trying to drive further down the road and several times had to stop and pull off again after realizing that the rain was just too heavy to drive in. Finally, in the midst of poking and pulling at the wiper arm and motor, I pulled a bit too hard and broke an arm mount. The arm now pivoted freely on the mount. Ooops.
I did manage to get the wipers to work again; I opened the hood and gave the motor a good wack with a wrench. The spark that flew out was pretty impressive, but at least it worked again and I could drive the rest of the way to work by leaning way over to the right and looking out the clear half of my window.
Being no stranger to driving cars of questionable mechanical integrity (my last car was an '83 Olds with bloody near to 400,000 miles on it), I put off fixing the wiper issues as non-vital. After Andrea explained to me just what she thought of that classification on the way to Midwest Fur Fest last year, I revised my opinion and bought a new arm. I pulled the old one off and laboriously attached the new one to the mount, a process involving much prying and pounding with various blunt instruments in freezing whether outside of an Advance Auto Parts store by our apartment. Finally, with hands sore, red, and numb, I declared the job a success. The wiper was wiping and I could see again. For a while.
After a week or two, it started slipping again. Pretty soon the arm was again just lying against the hood, forlornly wishing it could join it's sibling in sliding back and forth across the windshield but, instead, just feebly twitching with each reciprocation of the wiper motor assembly. *sigh*
This was temporarily remedied with an idea from our friend Ed from Chicago; take a piece of cardboard, put it on top of the mount, and jam the wiper on to it. This worked off and on for a while. Whenever the action got loose I'd put a new piece of cardboard in. Problem solved.
Solved, that is, until the time when Andrea and I were driving home from her mother's house and the wiper arm, at full extension along it's path, suddenly flew off the mount and, bumping once along the side of the truck, was lost in the darkness.
I decided not to go back for it; it was obviously stripped out and I'd need to buy a new one. It looked to me like, at that point, the grooves on the mount were stripped too and that it would need to be replaced. Time to take it to Vance.
I should have done it earlier.
The grooves that looked stripped out to me had nothing to do with keeping the arm on. All I would have had to do was pull out the little retaining widget (that I completely failed to notice earlier), slide the arm on, and lock it in place. Done. I suppose I really should have bought the Haynes manual, but I didn't figure I'd need it just to do the windsheild wiper arm. Brilliant. I'm going to have to buy a new arm now. The old one that flew off the truck was probably perfectly good but it's long gone. It's ok. At least, having moved the passenger side arm over to the driver side, we can see again.
Well. Long enough post for now. We're going to Wisconsin again this weekend to drop off more stuff. I'm sure that will merit another entry into the rambling tale of the doggy.
Peace.
I am, though, rather surprised at the activity level on the desk. Traffic was decidedly light this morning and Andrea and I assumed that a large number of people had decided to call in sick after
Stress level, after reaching a peak a couple days ago, is going down. Andrea helped me out with a cover letter and I've been sending out résumés. Haven't hit up the temp and employment agencies yet, but I've combed monster and hot jobs and applied to a few things. I've even had two nibbles. The first was from someone looking for a 'puter techie in Auburn Hills. Well, that's out. After explaining that I am relocating, the recruiter did offer to send my résumé to the Chicago and Milwaukee regional offices and that was nice. The second contact was by email last night and I responded this morning. There's a company interested in me for a position in Brookfield, Wisconsin. Admittedly, this is a long drive from Kenosha (I'm actually not quite sure how long. I'll ask my parents this weekend). However, since it's a contract position it won't last forever and I can deal with the drive temporarily. Especially since they're paying approximately one and a half times my current hourly rate. The fact that people are intersted in me is making me feel much better about my prospects. I'm going to call that recruiter after work today since it'll still be four o' clock there when I'm done here at five.
The quest for a new car continues. We've found a few cars that we've called on and not one private seller has called us back. We'd really prefer to avoid the lots if possible, even though Vance, our mechanic, extracted a promise from Andrea to not even think about buying a car without getting him to check it out first. I like Vance.
The reason she had occasion to talk to him is for repairs on the trucklet. The locks on both doors had gotten all funkified and the passenger side door was stuck closed. He also finally addressed the missing driver's side windshield wiper which had been missing for about two months now. Therein lies a story.
I was on my way to work in a fierce November rain shower. Not entirely unexpectedly, since it had happened a time or two before, the wipers stopped working. I pulled over and got out of the truck and spent about 15 minutes trying to coax them into working, becoming ever more frustrated as my being late to work became inevitable. I kept trying to drive further down the road and several times had to stop and pull off again after realizing that the rain was just too heavy to drive in. Finally, in the midst of poking and pulling at the wiper arm and motor, I pulled a bit too hard and broke an arm mount. The arm now pivoted freely on the mount. Ooops.
I did manage to get the wipers to work again; I opened the hood and gave the motor a good wack with a wrench. The spark that flew out was pretty impressive, but at least it worked again and I could drive the rest of the way to work by leaning way over to the right and looking out the clear half of my window.
Being no stranger to driving cars of questionable mechanical integrity (my last car was an '83 Olds with bloody near to 400,000 miles on it), I put off fixing the wiper issues as non-vital. After Andrea explained to me just what she thought of that classification on the way to Midwest Fur Fest last year, I revised my opinion and bought a new arm. I pulled the old one off and laboriously attached the new one to the mount, a process involving much prying and pounding with various blunt instruments in freezing whether outside of an Advance Auto Parts store by our apartment. Finally, with hands sore, red, and numb, I declared the job a success. The wiper was wiping and I could see again. For a while.
After a week or two, it started slipping again. Pretty soon the arm was again just lying against the hood, forlornly wishing it could join it's sibling in sliding back and forth across the windshield but, instead, just feebly twitching with each reciprocation of the wiper motor assembly. *sigh*
This was temporarily remedied with an idea from our friend Ed from Chicago; take a piece of cardboard, put it on top of the mount, and jam the wiper on to it. This worked off and on for a while. Whenever the action got loose I'd put a new piece of cardboard in. Problem solved.
Solved, that is, until the time when Andrea and I were driving home from her mother's house and the wiper arm, at full extension along it's path, suddenly flew off the mount and, bumping once along the side of the truck, was lost in the darkness.
I decided not to go back for it; it was obviously stripped out and I'd need to buy a new one. It looked to me like, at that point, the grooves on the mount were stripped too and that it would need to be replaced. Time to take it to Vance.
I should have done it earlier.
The grooves that looked stripped out to me had nothing to do with keeping the arm on. All I would have had to do was pull out the little retaining widget (that I completely failed to notice earlier), slide the arm on, and lock it in place. Done. I suppose I really should have bought the Haynes manual, but I didn't figure I'd need it just to do the windsheild wiper arm. Brilliant. I'm going to have to buy a new arm now. The old one that flew off the truck was probably perfectly good but it's long gone. It's ok. At least, having moved the passenger side arm over to the driver side, we can see again.
Well. Long enough post for now. We're going to Wisconsin again this weekend to drop off more stuff. I'm sure that will merit another entry into the rambling tale of the doggy.
Peace.
