Little things

A not so little generator.

Things changed a couple of weeks ago with the departure of the winter crew. The most noticable in the powerplant upgrade project is that nobody is there anymore. Our new boss came in a couple of weeks ago and while he is getting up to speed he doesn't have a lot of projects for me or the other general assistant to work on. We finished the clean-up from the winter in the first week (it was supposed to take a lot longer) and installed most of the trim on the roof that was left to be done. The painters aren't ready to start painting the floor and structural steel yet so we have pretty much been dusting and sweeping...all week. We're getting to the point that a wild goose chase all over station for a bucket of paint is exciting. (rather pathetic)

The new powerplant will have two 16-cylinder Caterpillar generators which turn at 1800RPM and put out about 2.4 MegaWatts of electricity each. I got a very good appreciation for the size of these things when I was assigned the task of dusting them. (that was a big pile of rags)

The floor in the powerplant is never clean. Nobody walks into our section except the two of us but we can sweep all day and the floor still looks dirty. We have a 5 gallon bucket that we are starting to fill up with all the sweepings to prove that it will be dust-filled by the end of the season. Feeling like some greek tragedy character destined to roll a stone up a hill forever I decided to bring my past experience to bear on this sweeping/dusting problem. iRobot has released a robotic shop vac so I ordered one that's on its way down. Hopefully I will have a present by Christmas time.

While work isn't progressing very quickly my time at the gym is showing results. When I weighed myself yesterday I had lost 9 pounds since arriving here working out to a little more than a pound per week. That puts me at 19 lbs (or 9%) less than my weight at graduation. My Carheart work pants aren't fitting very well anymore and I will probably have to trade them in for a smaller pair soon. Another few months of this and I will be in better shape than when I was playing football in high school.