Lunch With Hammerhead

Hammerhead cornered me the other day in the lunchroom and sat down at my table. She doesn't go out of her way to talk to me much anymore since Gabe got hired. Poor guy. Hehehehe. Anyway I was grubbin' out at a table by myself minding my own business when Hammerhead came into the room. No one else was on the second floor of the building. It was silent and still. She fixed up some stuff in a microwave and then headed straight over to where I was and sat down right next to me. Ugh. I did my best to be polite and feign interest in whatever it was she was talking about but for the most part I just buried my gaze into my plate of food. I was making the best of a bad situation and blocking out most of her yammering. I interjected a 'uhuh' or a 'yep' every now and again to make it appear as if I was following along.

All was well until she mentions her kids have foot-and-mouth disease. I almost spit up my grub. I looked straight at her and asked what the fuck that was all about. Then she tells me they got this stuff that sounds like a disease livestock can get and how she was wondering if food she got out of the trash cans had something to do with it. I was mortified. She's been digging through garbage cans and feeding her two children scraps she finds in there and feeding them old unclaimed leftovers from the lunchroom refridgerator. Holy fuck. I haven't run across one of these wackos since 5th grade. One of the 5th grade Christian school teachers we had used to tell us about how he dug stuff out of the trash to feed to his family because he didn't want it to go to 'waste'. I realize things are hard for people these days but come on. There's always something you can do other than eat out of a garbage can.

Insane, man. Just insane.

The Beer Bottle Bust

Our Property Manager of the B Street house called me up this week. She was extremely angry with me over the phone. Apparently during the recent rain storm we had, the roof of the hair salon turned into a lake. I had noticed it actually. I was looking out my windows down at their roof and saw it was completely submerged. Must have been at least a foot of water. I laughed when I saw it. A day or two after that it was gone, I figured the rain gutters finally did the trick. Well what actually happened was the rain gutters on their building were clogged with pine needles- and dozens of beer bottles. The blockage was so severe that the entire roof flooded and then sprung a leak into the hair salon and it caused alot of damage. Bummer. The property manager accused us gentlemen of putting the beer bottles up there and was threatening to make us pay for the damage. I couldn't have that. None of us could afford to pay restitution anyway. We're all broke most of the time.

I told Miss Propety Manager that we have a problem with bums in the neighborhood and that they must have been throwing their trash up there and we didn't know anything about it. I seriously doubt she bought my story, but what could she do? She couldn't prove otherwise. I'm not sure who will eat the cost of the repairs on this one but it damn well won't be us.

All summer long I sat up on the roof outside my windows and drank beer. When I was finished with each bottle, I rolled it down the shingles where it would bounce off our rain gutter and hop down onto the roof of the hair salon. It was amusing. I was too lazy to put them in the garbage can so I just disposed of them with the help of my good friend Mr. Gravity. As winter started to set in, it got too cold to be outside on the roof drinking at night. Since that was months ago I forgot about all the beer bottles that had piled up out there. Oops. As long as they don't try to fingerprint the bottles I think I'm gonna get away with this one. I hate that hair salon anyway. It's a pain in the ass having it in our front yard. And their customers keep thinking our one lane driveway is a parking lot. I don't know how many times I've had to go down there and tell them to move their shit heap car out of the way so one of us could get out- or in. Sheesh. Those dingbats just don't get it.

Everyone Hates A Snitch

The Army Guy I work with is really pissed off at Mr. Janitor. Apparently Mr. Janitor has been snitching on swing shift employees for minor infractions most of which are entirely petty. Mr. Janitor is no one's manager or supervisor here and as Dave says all that guy needs to be paying attention to is the ground. Washing and waxing the floors are Mr. Janitor's business. That's it. Anyway, Army Guy and Mr. Janitor had a big blowout the other day over something dumb that Mr. Janitor reported to management concerning Army Guy. He's still in a rage over it and I think he's plotting some payback.

During our first break of the shift we usually go outside to hang out and bullshit. We watch the sun go down and stand around in the parking lot giving each other cheap shots and coming up with elaborate cut-downs. It's fun. I got to talking with Army Guy about Mr. Janitor in front of the rest of our crew and as it turns out most of the employees on swings have had some run-ins with Mr. Janitor lately. He's definetly the most unpopular person on the shift it seems and anger towards the dopey custodian is mounting. I already don't like the guy because I think he's an idiot, but he hasn't tried to mess with me over any work related stuff. Not yet anyway. If he does mess with me, he will be sad when I'm through with him. Very sad.

I mentioned to everyone that I had been sniffing horrible stench at certain times on the second floor of our building and Army Guy told me the smell is coming from Mr. Janitor. I couldn't believe it, but it's true. I happened to catch him in the hallway the other night as he was taking out the trash and sure enough he stunk so bad I just about choked. Guess he doesn't like to use deodorant... or soap for that matter. The stench of Mr. Janitor is one of the most awful things I've ever encountered. What is wrong with him I mean, why show up to work smelling like a human garbage dump? That's so messed up. Maybe Jeesus told him that using soap and water is the Devil's handiwork. I'm not sure what if anything to do about it but I was thinking of putting a few cans of Right Guard in Mr. Janitor's utility room. Just so he gets the hint...

Exploding Vacuum Cleaner

I've warned the guys at the B Street house about using a vacuum to clean the livingroom carpets, but they never listen. B Street is Animal House for reals. Decades of abuse from College and High School drunks throwing keg parties that have seen up to 250 people show up in a single night. The place is mangy, run down, and wasted. All of the downstairs carpets are that thick shag junk from my least favorite decade of the 20th century. There are all kinds of hazards hidden in the carpet's seemingly comfortable and innocent fluffy tufts. That's why I don't walk barefoot in the livingrooms. I'll end up with a small rusty nail through a toe, or a piece of broken beer bottle glass, or maybe a thumbtack in my foot.

Senor Random decided to be a good house mate and vacuum the front livingroom. I warned him that it was foolishness and to just sit back and have a beer, but he decided otherwise. He started in on the front livingroom where the ping pong table used to be (Senor Random broke the table down and put it in the back yard on the ground so he could park one of his Volkswagons over it. He was worried about the car sinking into the mud. And no, he didn't ask anyone if it was okay to do that with the table). Not two minutes into his cleaning frenzy the vacuum started making this horrible whine. Smoke poured out of it and then it made a loud bang. The electric motor seized. I just stood there laughing at him. It was his vacuum and I did warn him.

We turned it upsidedown and started checking out the intake on it and discovered one of Senor Strange's bass guitar strings had been picked up by the vacuum and it got wrapped around the brush axle so tightly that we couldn't cut it off. The vacuum was ruined. Senor Strange has been using the front livingroom as a makeshift music studio and he busts his guitar strings alot. Then he just throws them on the floor where the shag carpet gobbles them up never to be seen again. It's like a anti-vacuum cleaner minefield in there.

Senor Random recently stole us another vacuum cleaner from the pink apartment building across the street. He knows some girl that lives there now and spotted our new one in a hallway over there so he swiped it. That's cool, I just hope these goofballs don't try to clean up down here again. There's no point to it. Really.

2.19.1995

Jennifer is at work and I'm sitting at home drinking one of her leftover beers from last night. It's a Moosehead. It's not that great, but it's free so I shouldn't complain.

I turned 24 on Tuesday. Nothing special happened on my birthday, in fact it was downright dull. I got stuck at work and it was just another day. Saturday was more of a day for celebrating. Jennifer had it all planned. We stayed in bed all day and had sex. We didn't do anything else. She started to turn me on to being blindfolded while she did different things to me, and I got to douse her in oil. Looking back on it all now I think that was one of the most erotic experiences of my life. Trouble is those sorts of intimate times need to happen between the both of us more often. This once a month crap is getting old fast. I have a bad feeling the only reason why she was being so accomodating all of a sudden was just because of my birthday.

Saturday night after we were all sore and raw, she took me out to dinner and a movie. Dinner was okay but the movie was pure garbage. Another one of these retro-1970s films based off of a TV show I hated. I absolutely hate 70s stuff. Most of the film made me wince in my seat and I was fidgety. I wanted to get it overwith and go do something else. Anything else. Jennifer's sister Aubrey and her boyfriend Darren were there with us for the show. Afterward Jennifer and I went home and watched some porn she rented. Porn was a much better way to end the evening.

Jennifer has been putting me under alot of pressure to move in with her. She's also brought up marriage a few times. Because our sex life together has been so weak I have a gut feeling things will turn out bad. I have been thinking about it alot and at a minimum I think I should at least live with her for a while before I even consider for a second marrying this woman. It could be a disaster.

Liquid Nitrogen Can Be Fun

Back in the final test area and in the environmental lab I have to run machinery that uses a ton of liquid nitrogen (LN2) as a coolant. There are a few of these big ass portable pressure tanks that have to be filled at least once a day. I ran out of LN2 on the swing shift a couple of times recently and as a result we lost some test time. The solution my supervisor came up with was to train me on the tank filling procedure so this wouldn't happen on the night shift again. Oh joy, yet another new thing to learn and be responsible for.

Marty is the top technician in the final test area and he dragged me out to the back entrance of the building where they have a heavy duty roll up garage door and they installed a high pressure LN2 line from the main storage tank. To fill up one of these beasts it's a little dicey. You have to wear a blast shield over your face that looks like a welding mask but it has a clear lens over it instead of a heavily darkened one. Then you grab some ear protection that looks like those giant headphones people wore back in the early 70s while listening to their Barry Manilow's Greatest Hits. And finally there's the super goofy light blue oven mitts that are rated for severe minus degree temperatures. One looks like a total fool wearing all this gear on top of your lab coat. If you get a few drops on your skin though you'll end up with cryogenic burns. So looking like a fool for a few minutes is the better alternative compared to a trip to the emergency room.

The best way for me to learn stuff is to just jump right in and try it while the trainer is talking me through it. Marty was right there with me telling me each step and what to watch out for. The first thing to do is to bleed out the high pressure line from the main LN2 tank. It can take up to five minutes before the line cools down enough to keep the nitrogen in a liquid state. When I first opened up the valve on the wall Marty warned me that the line would kick hard and it sure did. I was amazed at how hard the line lurched in my oven-mitted hands. The sound was awful too. It was like having your head inside a jet engine intake with added whistle. Really sucks. Once the LN2 finally makes it all the way to you the line kicks hard again and a steady stream of clear liquid arcs out onto the pavement and instantly boils from the ground into a pure white smoke. It looks like fluffly clouds rising up from the parking lot as it cooks off. The line is now ready to hook up to the portable tank.

There's three main valves on the top of the tank and it's tricky to set them up just right so you pressurize the tank enough to keep the nitrogen a liquid. If you don't do it right you'll just fill up the tank with gas. The method Marty showed me to use was to set one of the valves as a brake and only open it up just enough so that the gas inside the tank could bleed off, but just enough pressure would be there to keep the LN2 in it's liquid state. I screwed up the first couple of times so we had to stop and re-bleed off the tank and then start over from scratch. What a pain. Once I got it right though I realized filling up these tanks would be kinda cool. I'd get to have a twenty or thirty minute break while they are filling up. You have to stay there the whole time and watch the open door to make sure no one comes into the building as well as monitor the equipment while everything is pressurizing. I think I can dig it.

Along the wall there is another valve that is for a low-pressure LN2 line so you can fill up something small like a bucket. Later on I took a thermos sized container out to the low pressure line and filled it up about half way with the stuff. When the smoke clears it looks just like regular old water. The fun begins when you pour a few drops of it on the concrete. The droplets bounce around and smoke off the instant they come in contact with the ground. Wooden dowels and other objects smoke off inside the container. And I discovered you can dunk a bug in it, then drop 'em on the ground and watch it shatter. I don't know why but when I do that it makes me grin. Some of the other guys have been thinking about what other mischief we can get into with LN2 at night. I have no doubt we will be able to brainstorm up some dumb stuff to do in no time.

The FSO Is A Comedian

Well who would have known? John the Facility Security Officer actually has a pretty sharp (and twisted) sense of humor. Part of John's job is to send all of us employees monthly security training and he does this by sending us all "Security Awareness" memos. Near the top of the page every memo we get has a faceless, beady-eyed figure with a Spy Vs. Spy hat drawn over his head. It's supposed to be John I guess. The holidays have already come and gone, but I liked his December edition so much that I keep reading it. Really cracks me up. Here's what he sent us that month:

Hey! It's that season again. You know, Jack Frost nipping at your nose time (ever since Jack saw "Interview With A Vampire" he's been trying to imitate Tom Cruise. Unfortunately he has a vision problem so all he gets is a mouth full of nose??!!). Okay... Okay... forget the nose-nipping, let's concentrate on something like merry-making. Now, there's something everyone can get into because it definetly goes with the season, especially if you are going to be NIPPING at the bottle. However, if you do that plan on NOT driving. Designated drivers are "in" this year.

Alright already, let's try something else like gift giving. Now that is definetly in full swing. Packages coming and going. And that's a happenin' scene particularly the packages-a-coming part. Unfortunately not ALL incoming packages bring joy and excitement. If you are not attentive to what kind of mail you are receiving you could definetly experience the EXCITEMENT part of it. I am referring to the recent events involving mail bombs. Yeah! Happy Holidays! It is a truly sad state of affairs, but nonetheless, it is real life. So, to help ensure that your holidays will be happy, I want to share some information which will help keep you from becoming a mail-bomb victim.

If you receive a suspicious looking package that exhibits any of the following indicators- do NOT open or tamper with it. If possible, place it on a table near an open window or a similar location; then notify the Security Officer and your supervisor immediately. Do not attempt to move it again. If you are alone or at home, follow the same scenario, but notify your local law enforcement agency. Again- after you set the letter or package down- do not attempt to move it- and... oh yes, leave the room.

Letters
No return address or fictitious return address, mailed from foreign country or postmark differs from return address, excessive postage, address uses misspelled words with person's title rather than full name, badly typed or written, rigid or bulky envelope, lopsided or uneven envelope.

Packages
Buzzing, sloshing or strange odor. Excessive weight, oily stains on wrapper. Protruding wires or aluminum foil which would complete an electrical circuit and detonate explosives when package is opened. Excessive securing material such as masking tape, string, etc.

Granted, some of the Christmas packages left by the older, chubby red-nosed guy dressed red (No, not the boss) might resemble the above description, you can probably get by without calling the local bomb squad (even though the gift in question might "bomb" with you- Ho! Ho! Ho! a pun- in case you didn't recognize it). So enjoy YOUR gift giving, the season and Happy Holidays to you.

What's That Smell?

They're running me into the ground.

I'm working on assembly processes in the Closed Area, final test, environmental test back in the lab, and I'm running upstairs throughout the night to do some testing on a prototype artillery gun flash detection system. I've been thinking about wearing two watches now because I have to time some of the tests in various parts of the building and be there at the right moment to keep things going. It's been insane. At least the shifts are flying by.

Usually a couple hours after dark I've been noticing this horrible smell on the second floor of the building. It's always in the office section just outside the lunchroom. It hangs in the air so thick that sometimes I barrel through the area and I hold my breath. It smells like rotten green onions mixed with the worst under arm body odor and a dash of stinky feet. Just awful. I have no idea what's causing it but I'd sure like to find out and do something about it if possible. It annoys the hell out of me every time I have to go through that part of the facility to get to my next test setup. The weird thing is like I said it only happens at a certain time of night in this one part of the building. Damn strange.

The FSO Isn't A Punk After All

For some months I've seriously disliked our Facility Security Officer, John. I've avoided talking to him as much as possible because he's frequently rude and mouthy. Each day he leaves the building by a side entrance where the smoking area is. We're usually at break time so about a dozen of us are out there smoking cigarettes or playing hacky-sack. Usually I never said anything to John as he was leaving but something in one of the counterintelligence briefings made me want to ask him some questions. I wanted to know if there was some history behind each one of the main rules we have to abide by. You know, like if someone really did do something that stupid in the past rather than the guidelines just being common sense. We got to talking about it one afternoon and he told me about the Aldrich H. Ames case as a good example of someone who completely fucked up with classified information.

He let me read a copy of the DoD Security Institute's assessment of Aldrich Ames and I have to admit it was completely disgusting. Ames was working for years at the CIA in their Russian intelligence section. To fund his own greed and that of his wife Ames sold out many of the Soviets who were working for the CIA. Most of them were picked up by the KGB and summarily executed. One of these executions was of a man chained up and lowered alive into a blast furnace. It was filmed and later became a training tool for the KGB on what to do with traitors. Ames went unchecked for far too long in part because his peers at the CIA kept overlooking his security breaches and swept it under the rug because he was a part of the "club." I had not heard about Ames and I was fascinated with the read. It was actually quite cool of John to let me check it out. I picked up a few books from the library about the case after that and read through them in no time.

A few days later when John was leaving for the day he stopped in front of me in the break area and he tells me about the Walker Spy ring. I had never heard of this, either. From his description it sounded like another really ugly case that went on for far too long. I went to the used book store and found a couple things on it and bought them. Sure enough, the story was pretty bad. John Walker was a guy who started selling information to the Russians as early as 1968. He mainly gave them Navy codes and technical information on our Crypto machines that code and de-code messages. So, from the late 60s until the early 1980s John Walker essentially allowed the Russians to read almost everything the Navy was transmitting. John didn't stop with his own treachery though. When he got out of the service he ended up recruiting a friend still in the Navy to continue supplying the Crypto codes to the Russians. John Walker also had his son doing some spying and even tried to recruit his own daughter who was in the Army. Totally messed up. Both Ames and Walker were eventually caught, tried, and convicted but the amount of damage they did was extreme.

I've been talking much more with John since then and I'm actually starting to like him alot. I think maybe he didn't want to talk to me before now because he wanted to see if I was gonna last. I think I'll be here for a while.

The New Guys

We got two new guys on swing shift this week. Gabe and Dave. They've been friends since high school and they both just graduated from a technical school together. This is their first job in the tech world. Gabe is stuck working with Hammerhead on the other side of the building. I feel sorry for him because he's gonna have to deal with her as his trainer every god damned day. Hammerhead seems to have a thing for us guys in our 20s so I'm sure she's going to be hitting on him non-stop. Dave is a long hair dude that's real quiet. He's gonna be in the Closed Area with us but he has to wait a few months for his clearance to come through. In the meantime he's stuck in the hallway at the exiled workbench like I was when I first started. He's getting all the grunt work. Kind of shitty but I think he will manage OK. Seems like a good guy.

There's another product area I don't know much about and we got an ex-Army guy working in there now. I've been picking his brain about his wartime experiences since he was in Iraq and saw some action during the brief ground war. He tells me he feels sick alot of the time but he's not sure why. I asked him if he was around any burned out Iraqi tanks and he said no. That rules out contamination from depleted uranium rounds shot into them by aircraft or M1 tanks. I also asked if he was around any chemical agents that were either dispersed over his group or detonated by our guys to eliminate them. Again he said he wasn't. Then he tells me about these pills they were forced to take. I hadn't heard anything about that before. From his description they sounded like some horse sized pellet that they had to take under orders. I got a bad feeling about it. Reminded me of Vietnam-era shit where they ordered some of our guys to take pills that they didn't know anything about. I'm curious about this now and I'm looking into it a little. Anyway the poor guy is sick alot of the time. He will eat dinner and be fine one minute then the next he's puking his guts out for no reason. He says it happens all the time since he's been back Stateside and it always happens at the worst times. Like when he's trying to take a woman out on a date or something. I feel sorry for him.

I'm getting to know the wafer cutter guy a little more. He's a really tall scrawny guy with jet black hair named Dan. I think he said he used to be a Marine. He's very quiet and always busy working. He's into techno electronic music and keeps telling me about this mp3 shit. I don't have a computer so I don't know what the fuck he's talking about but he's really into it. I have a few techno CDs at home so I've been trading compilation tapes with him at work. That's one really cool thing about this job is they are OK with us listening to stereos and stuff while we work. Bill and Dave's place was always really shitty about that. They told us we could not have walkman tape players out on the floor because it would pull in radio frequencies and screw up what we were working on. I think it was all a lie since all we worked on then was raw PC boards.

Jennifer Troubles

I'm having serious doubts about my relationship with Jennifer. It's all becoming very mundane. Sex with her is at a total standstill and has been for some time. I think the last time we made love was at least a month and a half ago. Since then nothing more has happened. Now it seems that every time I bring the subject up with her all I get is excuses. It's weird. It hurts me and I miss being intimate with her. The feeling I get is she must be bored with me and I spend way too much of my time thinking about it. By the time sex is finally convenient for her I probably won't be interested anymore. The whole situation has been driving me nuts. At night I can't sleep because I'm thinking of being with her even though I'm not. I drift between being severely depressed and being extremely angry. When I'm angry I think about being with other women. I haven't done that yet, though. I am trying to be patient. Now I don't know what I will do.

Our relationship in high school was similar in that she was really distant and odd about having sex. I can't understand it and never did. This is a mistake being with her again. Nothing has changed. Jennifers are pesky and should be avoided at all cost.

Hammerhead And Mr. Janitor

Man am I glad to be back on swing shift. I love working those hours. Get to sleep in every damn day, stay up all night drinking beers if I want to and I'm never hung over. On swing shift every weeknight is a Friday night. It's true. Another bonus is I can run errands in the early part of the afternoon while all the 9 to 5 slobs are stuck in front of their desks. Yes, it's definetly good to be a night owl again.

I got my first review at TDS. There wasn't a wage increase with it unfortunately but the overall write up I got was pretty damn good. I'm sure this will put me in a decent position for a raise by the time I'm due for my next review. That should take place later in the year. The only problem my nice boss had with me was my attendance. It got spotty for a while because I was so sick the beginning of this winter season. Not having any medical benefits didn't really help either. I kept buying over the counter medicines at the drug store and none of it did much good. I was laid up in bed ill alot longer than I should have been.

The night crew at TDS is very small. There's only a few of us in the Closed Area, one or two in commercial, one guy who runs a wafer cutter all night long, a greasy Janitor, and maybe a couple of other people in areas I don't know anything about yet. There's this one woman over on the other side of the building I try to stay the hell away from. I call her Hammerhead. Hammerhead is one of those unfortunate people that comes into the world after mother nature played a cruel trick. She's damn hard to look at. Very short, very wide, with a big old round head and an eye spot at either side of her skull. The first time I saw her it made me cringe and I thought of a Hammerhead shark hence her nickname. She has poor taste in outfits most of the time she reminds me of a nurse because she wears flower print tops that look like hospital scrubs and she has her hair cut in a Mullet. I always hated the way that haircut looked on people.

Hammerhead sat down at my table a couple of times in the lunch room when I first started on the night shift. No one else was around and I hadn't really chatted with her yet so I did the polite thing and yapped with her. Boy, was that a big mistake. That woman is a black hole of need. She has suffered through a terrible life and it was way too much information that I didn't need to know about. Basically she ended up married to a Mexican guy that already had a wife and family in Mexico. He wanted citizenship here in the States so he found Hammerhead and had two children with her and got married. Most of the time he doesn't see the children here or her for that matter. He stays in Mexico and only visits them once or twice a year. He doesn't seem to support them financially either so they are very poor. Life's rough.

Mr. Janitor is kind of an asshole. I never really talked with him or even saw him much around the building until now. He works four ten hour shifts Monday through Thursdays and then he takes Fridays off. We all breathe a sigh of relief on Fridays knowing he isn't going to be around. His schedule is more like a split shift, I guess. He comes in to work in the late morning and works part of the way through swing shift. Then he bails out. There are a couple of annoying things about this guy. One, he thinks he's some sort of a shift manager so he is rude to employees here and he bosses them around. He doesn't even know what most of the people do here so how can he get away with that? I asked management about him and they said he has no authority to tell anyone to do anything. Interesting. Two, he's a Jeesus freaked bible thumper. If he gets even a minute of your time I guarantee you're gonna learn about how great the Lord is. I don't want to hear it. I've been down that road for too many years of my life and I'm sick of it. When he comes into the Closed Area to wax the floors and vacuum the ceiling tiles or whatever other Janitor bullshit he's got to do we have to babysit him the whole time. It's fucked because he generally won't shut his fat mouth. We've got to sit there and take it.

One evening I got stuck with babysitting Mr. Janitor. I got dumped on because no one else in the area wanted to do it. They all kinda hate the guy. So, I let him into the room and he brought his prized posession. It's a tiny black HEPA filter vacuum cleaner. He told me over and over again about how special it was and how it cost over a thousand dollars to buy one. Big deal. I followed him around the room while he was vacuuming away and then he started in again about the Jeesus junk. I rolled my eyes and tried to think of anything else while he rambled on. I daydreamed about hubcaps, hot broads, beers, anything. Didn't matter what it was as long as I could shut out the drone of Mr. Janitor's stupid voice. He spotted the rings on my left hand and asked if I was married. I told him that I wasn't married, those were my Masonic rings. Little did I know that Mr. Janitor was one of those really evil Christians, the empty-headed fundamentalist kind that are brainwashed early on that Freemasons are all Satanists and shit. Our conversation started to heat up bigtime after that.

Whenever I get roped into doing battle with one of these guys I really laugh on the inside. Beady eyed Christians like this believe in alot of kindergarten crap, like there's witches and warlocks, and demons hiding under every bed. Mr. Janitor has been programmed to think that Freemasons are Satanic because they believe in something that isn't God, but they don't have a clue as to what Freemasonry is really all about. It's actually one of the most positive things I've ever done in my life, and in my opinion it's also one of the most Patriotic things a person could do. Most of the founding fathers of the United States were Freemasons. The fraternity was instrumental in helping establish our country. The money in your wallet is loaded with Masonic symbols and references. So every time I hear one of these nutcases cry that Freemasonry is against God I bust up. They're basically calling George Washington a Satanist. I mean come on, do you honestly think the revolutionary general and first President of the United States was a devil worshipper? Get real. I shut the fat slob down when I mentioned that every time he puts a few dollars in the hat at his church to look closely at all the Masonic symbols and remember that he's putting a little bit of the Devil in the collection plate every Sunday. He finished up his cleaning job and then I booted him out of the Closed Area. Good riddance.

Oldsmobile Attack

Last Night The Colonel and I went out to dinner. He showed up here at the B Street house the exact moment I was pulling into the driveway coming home from work. As I was parking in the back yard I misjudged my turn to park behind my Oldsmobile and plouged the Cougar into the side of our chicken-coop garage thing. The front fender hit the wood hard and got bent a teeny bit. I splintered the hell out of the corner of the garage. Crunched it good. I was embarrased about what I had just done because The Colonel walked down the driveway and got there just in time to see me rake the wall. Neither The Colonel or I had anything to eat all day so as soon as I got the Cougar squared away and inspected the damage we left to go out to eat something. It turned out he had some important news to tell me.

Around 2:30am Tuesday night The Colonel came by the house to hang out on his way home. He had been in the city earlier that night decked out in a tuxedo and black overcoat for the opera. When he got to our front door and started knocking to see who was around, he looked through the front window hoping for some signs of life. As he was peeking inside he saw the silhouettes of three figures on top of our garage in the back of the house. The Colonel quickly and quietly walked down the gravel driveway and crept up to the wall of the garage that was closest to the three miscreants. There are no lights in our back lot so none of them noticed The Colonel was now standing only a few feet away from them on the ground. At that point he pulled his semi-auto pistol from his breast pocket and aimed it at the head of the man closest to him. He said he was maybe four feet away from the guy and he still hadn't seen him yet. From the way they were acting it sounded like they had designs on stealing the Oldsmobile. It's a rare car, actually. 1962 Oldsmobile Starfire that's light mettalic blue with a pure white top. It's got a high compression 394cu. in. V8 that GM only made for a couple of years. 1961 and '62 was it I think.

In the dark it takes some time for eyes to adjust, and the would-be criminals must have been blind for a while as they formed their plan. When the guy perched closest to the edge of the rooftop finally noticed someone was pointing a gun to his head he was startled. As he saw the pistol pointed at him from a figure below, he tipped his top hat to The Colonel in a very polite manner and then all three of them got up from where they had been crouching and fled over the rooftop and down the back of the garage. There's a walkway between the edge of our lot and the new high rise parking garage. They jumped off the roof and ran away down the walkway to the other end of the block. Somehow I don't think they will be back. I couldn't thank The Colonel enough. If he hadn't dropped by that night who knows what would have happened to the Olds. I'm already real paranoid about the car and Senor 23 suggested we put a motion sensitive floodlight back there. I think that's an excellent idea.

Jennifer's New Job

Earlier tonight I went down to the old Rosenberg's building for the grand opening of a chain bookstore and Starbuck's coffee. Jennifer and her friend Pam both got jobs working at the Starbuck's place. It was insane when I got there because of the wall-to-wall throngs of snotty people in formal dresses and three piece suits. I hate crowds. Navigating my way through the maze of tall bookshelves and zombies in formal attire I finally got to the side of the building where the Starbucks was. At first I didn't see Jennifer. I was afraid she might have been busy in the back or something but after a few seconds I caught sight of her behind the counter. She was so buried in lines of people that I didn't get much of a chance to talk to her. I did mention to her I wasn't into the mass of bodies wandering around so I wasn't going to hang out for long. She understood and didn't have time to talk to me anyway.

I got a cup of Starbuck's coffee shoved into my hands. It was just okay. Nothing great really. I mean it's definetly better than the Mom and Pop coffee joint she used to work for but it didn't knock my socks off either. If anything else I hope having the Starbucks here will put another nail in the coffin of Jennifer's old employer. Jennifer's boss there was a horrible woman named Barbara. If she went out of business now thanks to the Starbucks that would be poetic justice. Especially since her two top employees left to work for the corporate coffee machine.

When Jennifer and I were in high school together she went into a vocational program and ended up in restaurant services or something like that. One of her first jobs was at the local Mom and Pop coffee house. She also worked part time as a hostess at an Italian restaurant downtown that specialized in gourmet pizzas. At first everything went well for her at the coffee place. The owner treated all his people well and he had a great location downtown. His spot was right next door to the newspaper building so he always had the news staff in there all day long getting their caffeine fixes. Apparently his ogre of a wife Barbara cheated on him or some junk and they ended up getting a divorce that was bitter. She got the coffee business out of him and then he split the scene. Almost immediately afterward Barbara began running the successful business into the ground. She was consistantly manipulative and mean spirited to Jennifer as well as her other employees. One by one they've all quit. Who could blame them.

Jack Of All Trades

My boss came up with a plan that I liked alot. She wanted to have me trained on everything in the Closed Area as fast as possible so she could place me on swing shift. On the evening shift she hoped I would be able to go wherever the worst problems were at any given time and force work through, as she put it. That was cool with me. I got to learn the entire process from start to finish. My clearance came through finally. It took about three months or so just like they figured. I can't even begin to tell you what a relief it has been to finally be "cleared" and be able to work on my own in the Closed Area without someone practically handcuffed to me the whole time. It's good to be able to just simply card myself in and get to work. Also I kinda like all that worst case scenario stuff they're gonna throw at me when I come in to work every day. It means a challenge and that keeps me on my toes. As a side benefit I seem to always learn more about how all this stuff works. I'm a Jack Of All Trades in there now which keeps everything interesting. Nothing worse than a boring job.

They've been doing a bunch more hiring since they are so behind schedule. I hit swing shift in another week and some other guys around my age were just given jobs here or already started working. Should be fun. On dayshift I mostly work with nice old ladies. There isn't much to talk about with them and I always have to be careful about how I approach them with work stuff. They freak out too easily. Well, there's one guy in the area that's pretty cool and he's about the same age. His name is Robert. Very cool guy with a laid back attitude and easy going personality. Funny as hell too. I am gonna miss working with him when I go to swing shift. I'll still get to talk shit with the guy for an hour or so each day but it won't be the same like working dayshift. Oh well. I'll have to prank him or some shit from swings.

Been A While

It has been a few months since the last time I wrote in here. I haven't felt much like putting together my thoughts and writing it all out. No motivation. Alot of it has to do with the schedule I've been keeping at the job. Early dayshift hours and an overwhelming amount of stuff to train on and learn. I'm always worn out by the time I get home each evening.

Today was really hectic in there. Currently I'm finishing up my final phase of training in the Closed Area. They've been bouncing me back and forth between the Final Test Area and the Environmental Lab. So I've been training in both areas simultaneously and working on product headed out the door. To make matters worse our product is terribly behind schedule so we're under a tremendous amount of pressure to get a certain amount of completed products out by the end of each week. We're in a phase of production the military likes to refer to as LRIP. It stands for Low Rate Initial Production, and there are a number of phases within each LRIP stage. At this time the end of week goal is steep and it's very difficult to meet on time due to all the problems on the production line. Each unit is totally labor intensive to build so that isn't helping either. Seems like every day in here I keep discovering more bugs that still need to be worked out of the whole product area that no one is paying any attention to.

One of the things I never thought about when the US Government is your primary customer, is that if you piss them off they won't simply just go away like any other dissatisfied customer would. With Uncle Sam it's almost like being in double trouble. You burn the Government they not only will stop doing business with you, they might shut down your operation and fine your business into oblivion all at the same time. It's rough and to a certain extent that's some of the pressure that we all feel here when we're drastically short of meeting the required goal for the week. If we do meet our goal by tomorrow I'll be very surprised.

The stuff I'm working on is all classified, and every day I learn a little more about what these things do, how they are deployed, who our customers are, and most importantly what other products we work on. On a few occassions when it has been very slow they've loaned me out to the commercial production area in another part of the building. While I was there I started working on some odd stuff. Very different from what I had been working on up to that point. It seemed like it was of a more vintage electronics technology than what I was used to. Turns out I was working on components for the TOW missle and also some stuff for Stinger missles. I thought that was pretty cool but, I didn't know it at the time. It's all just so sneaky here...

Flo Has Bad Breath

I'm in the first phase of my training in the Closed Area these days and the woman they have assigned to me as my mentor is named Flo. She's an older woman who was widowed a few years ago. Her husband was a cop and he died from Cancer. Flo has been trying to sue the police department he worked for ever since her husband died. She's convinced that the radar guns he was using to catch speeders somehow gave her husband the Cancer. I've heard the story about it in the last few days like fifty fucking times. It's getting old fast. Flo rambles on and on at me with a slight southern drawl. I think it's Okie but I'm not sure really. When she speaks to me I keep daydreaming that she lives in a shabby old house with overturned cars in the front of it and gutted rusty appliances are strewn everywhere on the ground.

My clearance hasn't come through yet so the deal they have worked out with security is that I can be in the Closed Area with my trainer but she has to be shoulder to shoulder with me at the workbench. It's a little too close for my comfort if you catch my drift. And here's the worst part about it. Flo is constantly flapping her jaws the whole time I'm working with her and she has got to have the worst breath I've ever been hit with. Smells like a mouse crawled inside her mouth and fucking died in there. I'm not exaggerating one bit either. It's foul, and there's nothing I can do about it. One or two of the other people in here warned me about Flo's halitosis from hell. Sounds to me like it has been brought to Flo's attention that she reeks, but she hasn't done anything about it. Maybe she never brushes her teeth. Maybe she eats poo for dinner every night when she gets home from work. Smells like it anyway. This sucks working so close to her every damned day. Can't wait to get it overwith.

Flo has a testy, short temper too. If I don't catch on right away to what she's trying to learn me up on she gets all irritable and shit. Part of the problem is she knows what she's working on but she isn't very good at communicating it to anyone else. When I ask questions some of the time she gets all bent out of shape about it like I'm stupid or something. All I can say is as soon as that clearance comes through from the DoD I am going to settle in somewhere in this room as far away as possible from Flo and her garbage dump mouth.

11.15.1994

Ricky Rockanova lost his latest job again. He got hired on a month ago over at Compumotor. They offered me a chance at employment there about the same time I got my full time permanent job at TDS so I turned Compumotor down. I was glad to do it. I don't like their hiring procedures. They're pretty fucked. First you come in as an external temporary worker, slave away for months and go through a series of interviews again for the position you've already got. Then they lay you off for a week to two weeks while they decide if they want to offer you a permanent position. That's way too much hassle for me, man.

I feel pretty sorry for Ricky because he doesn't understand that the root of all his problems is his mouth. What he says to people and how he chooses to say it will be his undoing. The other night when he told me he had been tossed out of Compumotor I tried to tell him that he is his own worst enemy. He completely dismissed it. So be it. I tried to warn him. I'm looking into getting him a job at TDS right now. He does have good skills I know they would find useful, and they are still looking for people like mad. I just hope he can keep his mouth shut long enough to get in the door.

I spent last night with Jennifer over at her place. She didn't sleep hardly at all because of all the coffee she drank when we went out to dinner. I had a bad feeling in the back of my mind she didn't sleep well because I was there with her. Sometimes she doesn't sleep well when I'm around. It bothers me. I'm insecure about our relationship for the same old reasons just like back in high school when we first met. She's always been really weird about sex. I want her to have as much fun with me as I do with her, but she's kinda frigid and acts like she can't be bothered with it. Most of the time I have to pester her into it and that's junk. I don't want to put up with a sex life like this for very long. Maybe I lose her again.

11.14.1994

Joe Evilsizer is a dead man.

Last weekend I went over to my old place to see him. I heard he was very sick and wanted to find out what was going on. I hadn't had much contact with him after I moved out because I was tired of him and his bullshit. I guess he got AIDS at some point in the past and he didn't know it until he was in a really bad car accident that destroyed his car and seriously threw out his back. The doctors discovered what he had when they were trying to fix him up after the wreck. When I heard Joe was pretty sick I decided to give him a call and see how he was doing. All I got was his answering machine and I left a polite enough message. At that time I didn't know what he was sick with yet. I just thought he was messed up from the car accident.

Two days later I got a call back from Joe on my answering machine that said, "You're an idiot. I've done away with idiots." That really made me angry. I mean, I never did anything to piss him off or treat him like he was an asshole. In fact out of all the people that rented a room from him I think I was the only one who never wrecked his stuff or broke the house rules. All of a sudden I'm lumped in with all the fuckups and people he disliked though. It's all been part of his mental state I suppose, and it's definetly not right with the world. I mentioned the shitty message Joe left on my machine to Senor 23 who in turn brought it up with Joe directly two days later. Senor 23 went over to Joe's to help repair his beater car. It died and Senor 23 is a most skilled beater car mechanic. So I got another call from Joe on my answering machine this time all polite and sincere and denying any sort of a rude previous call. Yeah right. It was Joe's voice and he couldn't lie his way out of it.

Saturday I went over to see him and I was shocked when I got there. Joe was laying on a couch in his livingroom in a sweatshirt and pants, and he looked like a Jew that had just escaped from Auschwitz. Joe was a tall, broad shouldered man and what I saw laying on the couch was a man that was all skeleton covered in thin white skin. My whole visit was awkward and I had a tough time looking at him while we were talking. I tried to avoid talking about any of my problems. They were miniscule compared to what he was going through. To a certain extent I also tried to avoid talking about his illness. Everything else I brought up whether it was television, movies, politics, or whatever Joe was evasive and blunt in his responses. There wasn't much to talk about. He kept mentioning the AIDS and what it's done to his body. He thought it was a plot to destroy people. He showed me sores on his legs and he went on to tell me how he can't eat anything except for candy like Life Savers and Tic Tac mints. I watched him as he did a nasal wash from the couch over a waste basket. Then Joe showed me all of the bottles of prescriptions he's on. I couldn't believe how many different kinds of pills he had to take. It was out of control.

When Joe tries to get up from the couch to go to the bathroom or get a glass of water he is so weak that he needs help. Joe mentioned that his room mate Luke has been really helpful around the house. He even helps Joe bathe. I thought to myself well that's cool he's got like a live-in nurse then. Then this Luke person came into the livingroom and I recognized him right away. Luke is this retard that moved into town some years ago with his girlfriend to go to the Junior College here. His girlfriend left him shortly after they got an apartment together and then a short time after that Luke decided he was gay. We used to call him "Milktoast" all the time because of his demeanor and personality. He had this weird hobby of collecting ashtrays. I remember the one and only time I went to his apartment I saw literally hundreds of ashtrays everywhere in the place. It seemed odd at the time.

Luke has been basically homeless for long periods of time so I figure he somehow latched onto Joe and is getting a free place to stay as long as he helps Joe out. I had a sinking feeling about it though, like Luke is gonna swipe anything and everything he can and pawn it for drug money as soon as Joe dies. Maybe he's already been stealing from him. Joe would never know about it since all he sees everyday is the inside of his livingroom and the bathroom. Having Luke in his house as a room mate I realized Joe is doomed. I can't think of a worse person Joe could have under his roof with him. Oh well, it's like I said. Joe is a dead man.

11.13.1994

When Senor Random moved into B Street with us he brought his two cats, Emur and Shamus. We didn't have any problem at all with pets and it was cool having some cats around instead of possums. Shamus is real fucked up though. He got hit by a car about two years ago and was lucky to have lived. The car that hit him crushed his skull somewhat so his fangs are always popped out of his mouth. He lost an eye too. It's weird because the eye socket is all grown in with fur and you can put your finger in there and wiggle it around. Senor Random demonstrated this for me one night. Gave me the creeps. Shamus didn't seem to freak out like I would have expected. Anyway since Shamus is screwed up he doesn't clean himself much and frequently appears from the basement covered in dust and cobwebs. I think he likes to run around in the foundation under the house and he comes back upstairs all filthified. When I pet him drool leaks out of his mouth off his two fangs. He can't help it and it's kinda nasty. I don't pet him much.

A couple of times when I've come home late at night Shamus has completely tweaked me out. We usually leave one light on in the kitchen at night and the front door to the house opens up to the main livingroom. If the kitchen doors are open you can see all the way out to the utility room in the back of the house. The lights are never on back there and it's really dark. Shamus seems to like to sit on the floor on the far end of the kitchen, just inside the pitch black doorway. Since his fur is jet black it's as if he was invisible. However the light catches his one eye and it glows bright green about a foot from the floor. Coming home late at night, tired, and maybe drunk I'm not exactly alert. Then I see this hovering green eye with nothing there and I can get pretty damn freaked out fast. Shamus has almost stopped my heart by suddenly showing up and staring at me. That damned one eye of his... the first time it happened I jumped about four feet backwards. Startled the shit out of me.

Emur is about the sweetest little cat you could ever hope to have. She's a little light tan shorthair that's a slightly on the skittery side but warms up to you fast when you start to scratch and pet her. Senor 23 and I have noticed something really strange about this one though. Sometimes Emur will start to howl in the house for no apparent reason, then squat, and pee the floor. It's been a total mystery as to why the cat does that. Well, it was a mystery until one particular evening that is. One night Senor 23 and I were drinking beers and playing video games in his room and Emur was with us visiting. We were being silly and for some reason I forget why we were saying the word 'Seed' in a wacky tone of voice. I'd say it like "SeeeEEEeeeD" with an emphasis on the E. Emur promptly began howling and pissed the floor. Then she tried to get out of Senor 23's room by leaping head first into his window blinds and got caught in them. She was hanging in them a couple feet from the carpet and started thrashing around to break free. Craziest thing I've ever seen a cat do just because I said a word all stupid sounding. So, we figure some sounds or tone of voice freaks the cat out. Since then we've pretty much been able to make her pee the floor on command by saying SeeeeEEEEeeeeD out loud. Who woulda figured.

On Monday this week I flea-bombed my room. I was being eaten alive by hordes of fleas courtesy of Emur and Shamus. At night as I slept in my bed the fleas were chewing me up from my knees all the way down to my feet. It was getting so bad I seriously considered getting a couple of Hartz 3-in-1 flea collars and putting them on both my ankles. Thanks to the flea-bomb my life is now more pleasant. As I sat at work on Monday I was day dreaming that all those little pests were being gassed in my room and slowly dying in agony. Revenge was mine that day.

We lost our pirate cable reception recently. The drunk lady in the side apartment here decided to call the cable TV company to complain that her reception was bad. Well, the cable company was extra interested that her cable reception suddenly was poor because no one at this address was a paying customer. The cable company sent out a sneaky recon team of cable police and they discovered our super-secret cable splice job that was done at the block's junction box years ago. One of the B Street guys had done a professional covert job breaking into the box, splicing in cable, hiding it in there, and then he ran it all the way up into our house which was a long distance. He buried it the entire way and just to make sure it would be difficult to trace he covered the first few feet underneath bricks that he planted a few feet down. It was a superior job. The cable guys figured us out though and the jig was up. They were so angry that they chopped up all of the cable, smashed a gold plated attenuator and splitter box that belonged to Senor 23, and then they threw it all on the drunk lady's doorsteps. I'm so glad she called to report her bad cable quality. Now we're all screwed.

The FSO Is A Punk

John, the Facility Security Officer found me in the hallway toiling away at my exiled workbench. I turned in my completed security clearance forms two days ago and he shoved them back in my face and told me to fill them out properly. He was sarcastic about it and said I had better learn to read forms properly, or maybe I simply needed to learn to read. Then he did an about face and abruptly walked down the hallway to go hassle another employee about something.

I spent alot of time filling out everything on these forms. John scratched out stuff on every page with a red pen just like a fussy high school English teacher would have done. One of the main things he didn't like was the way I filled out date information. Apparently on Governement forms they want the four digit year first, then the month and day. I didn't pay any attention to that and filled them out like any empty-headed civilian would with the month, day, and then the year. Well he sure didn't dig it at all. As far as I'm concerned all the information is there and it's correct so what's the big deal? I spent a half hour just rewriting all of the dates in and believe me there were a ton of them. They want to know every place I've ever lived at practically and I have to put in the date I started living there, the exact date I moved out, and the names of my neighbors who could prove I was there. It also required information about every school I've attended, fellow students or teachers who knew me there and when I first met them. I had to fill in hire dates at all the jobs I've had for the past ten years and when I quit, and names of people who were co-workers. Then there's a whole section on friends who can vouch for me and how long I've known them. It's insane. I tried to be as precise as I could but to be honest I had to make some of the shit up. There was no way I could remember or find out by some other means everything they wanted on the paperwork.

On a couple of occassions I've had to go up to John's office to ask him a question to clarify what something is on the forms. He's usually busy with someone else every time I go to see him in his closet sized security empire and he won't even acknowledge I'm there. If he's yapping away for a half hour with another employee about the weather or something he'll just ignore me until he feels like getting around to me. One time I got pissed off and butted into his useless conversation with another guy so I could take care of my business and get back to work. John just looked up at me and said, "I don't remember anyone talking to you." Fucker. This guy is really starting to annoy me.

11.11.1994

Boy am I glad to finally be home from work. I'm beat. This six o' clock in the morning shit is really getting to me. After two or three years of being on swing shift or graveyard, I can't handle being awake that early in the morning. Senor 23 and I were talking about it the other day. He reminded me of our elementary school schedule and how screwed up it was. We went to school together and our schedule was alot earlier than the rest of the schools in the district. I don't know why they set it up that way but Senor 23 figures that being woke up by his parents that early every day messed him up and he's never been the same since. I hated getting up in the morning for school. Especially when we started private Christian school. On the days that Dad was at work at the firehouse my sister Brandy and I had to get up extra early. Mom had to be at work and since there was no one else to take us to school except her we'd end up at the school's day care center sometimes two hours before classes started. It was always pitch black when we got up, and it was totally lame.

Dad was always the worst to wake up to. He'd flick my bedroom lights on from the hallway since the switch was out there instead of in my room. I can't remember all of the annoying things he used to do besides yelling and shaking me awake. I'd usually lag in bed for as long as possible until he'd get even more angry. By then he would have been in my room at least a half a dozen times fucking with me. One of his incentives, or bribes to get me and Brandy out of bed faster was to cook breakfast for us. That didn't work out so well for any of us though. Dad's breakfast cooking kinda sucked. His omelettes were always extra watery because he thought it was a good idea to add milk in with the eggs he was scrambling. So the eggs were always kinda funky. The french toast he made was equally bad, always totally mushy and really bland. And he liked to put pepper in everything. I got so sick of pepper. After some months of his breakfast bait failing to get us up and out of bed on time Dad gave up cooking in the morning because we wouldn't eat it. He'd just get more and more angry at us yelling downstairs from the kitchen that the food was getting cold.

Mom's approach for getting us up and ready for Christian school was always more pleasant. It still sucked getting up so early every day. When we first started at the private Christian school Mom would have us up in the kitchen for breakfast and she would read science fiction books to us while we ate. Her grub was tasty too so that didn't hurt. She would usually have a little TV going in the background with some news program chattering away. Things were much more laid back with her.

Christian school was dumb. Something I was working with at TDS last week reminded me of one idiot teacher in particular. At work I was using a centrifuge to force some materials into a group of housings. The centrifuge is a small machine that spins up substances at a really high RPM so that you can either separate materials from each other or compact them into something else. It's a simple concept that the force, draws a rotating body away from the center of rotation, caused by the inertia of the body. Now it just so happens that one day at Christian school my fifth grade teacher informed us that centrifugal force doesn't exist and she used some Bible passages to back up her statement. I got into an argument with her about it in front of the whole class and it was one of many arguments I had with her that year, all of which I lost. To this day I still hate and despise that woman. I don't have many positive things to remember about that school either. Those people were off the hook insane. If I ever have children I will never, ever force them into a Christian school. No good can come of it.

Getting Settled In

In my first week at my new job, little bits and pieces of information about what I will be working on has been coming to light. They showed me a five minute video of grainy footage from one of the military's weapon proving grounds. In the film an F-16 dropped a canister filled with submunitions over a desert road cluttered with armored vehicles and trucks. The small muntions scattered in the air above the convoy and in an instant little black puffs of smoke appeared sort of like World War II flak explosions. At the same time every one of those vehicles on the ground was destroyed. I was totally impressed. Watching the film was surreal though because as I saw the destruction take place an announcer kept talking about cost effectiveness and other junk. Giant slowly rotating dollar signs were transposed over the film a couple of times. War really is money.

Because I have no DoD clearance yet and won't for some time, they set up a workbench for me outside the Closed Area. It's in the hallway all by itself near one of the main entrances to the Closed Area. The only times I'm allowed in there is when I'm escorted by another employee that has the proper clearance. Everyone's picture ID name badges are color coded so you can easily tell who has what grade of clearance. Mine is clear plastic so that means I'm a nobody nothing for now. We all have to wear light blue smocks or lab coats. I like the lab coats better because they have more pockets. I can carry more tools around with me. I don't like having to get up and hunt stuff down every couple of minutes. As the Dead Kennedys say, "Give me convenience or give me death."

Sitting in the hallway I get all the gopher work and mindless tasks dumped on me. I better get used to it because it might be months before my clearance comes through. I'm still working on my DoD clearance paperwork and I can't believe this is what everyone has to go through for the Government. For now they allow me to work unsupervised in the hallway on sub assemblies and components. It's quiet and as long as I stay busy the time goes by quickly. Behind me people come and go through the main double doors to the Closed Area. They've got the place sealed up with multiple kinds of locks. There's an electronic key card reader, a big old combination lock, deadbolts, glass windows with thin wires criss crossing through them, and a buzzer on the wall just like a door bell on a house. All of the employees in there are intense about keeping people out who shouldn't be there. And the FSO guy John seems to come through their area at random times of the day and give them grief for stuff. He's very sarcastic with everyone almost to the point of being obnoxious. It's been amusing to watch him rip up a few of the folks in there.

The commercial products area is further down the hall and to the left. It's always busy in there. Employees coming and going with paperwork and small black ESD boxes filled with products. Rows of workbenches are loaded with microscopes and precision soldering equipment. All kinds of machinery I've never seen before is scattered all over the place. Some of the stuff resembles large ovens and other big kitchen appliances. I have no clue what it's all used for. One thing I'm very thankful for is that they didn't set me up to do the insignificant work inside the commercial area. The overhead lighting in their room is filtered with mangy yellow lenses and the entire room is flooded with a depressing yellowish color. I figure having to spend eight hours a day inside that room would be a strain on my eyes. Must take some getting used to.

A Peasant's First Day

My first day at TDS was a whirlwind event. I was handed countless amounts of forms to sign, handbooks to read, training manuals, company policy memos, and a healthy sampling of Government rules and regulations to absorb. The Government stuff is all about guidelines of security precautions and safeguarding measures that must be observed while working with classified technology. Skimming through all of the rules I realized that for each item listed in the guidelines a nitwit at some point in the past did something really dumb. Common sense must have escaped a few people and I bet they landed themselves in a whole heap of trouble. Here's a few examples of the rules that morons must have broken:

"Do NOT record classified information in a private diary."
Uh, right. I sure as hell hope whoever got popped for that one wasn't working on our nuclear weapons programs.

"Classified documents are NOT to be removed from the plant for home study or as an overnight convenience prior to a business trip."
I can see it now, some defense executive was staying at a Motel with a pile of secret stuff and stepped out for all you can eat steak and lobster at the Sizzler down the street. Meanwhile the KGB micro filmed the war plans back in his darkened room. Who in the fuck would be so stupid as to take that shit with them on an overnight "business" trip? Sheesh.

"Never discuss classified information on the telephone. Modern computer techniques make it possible for others to easily sort through microwave communication links to find target conversations."
You think that cell phone of yours is secure? Try again, retard.

"Do NOT bring any of the following items on company premises: unsealed containers of alcoholic beverages, illegal drugs, cameras, tape recorders, electronic listening devices, explosives, firearms or weapons of any kind. Requests for deviation from these restrictions must be processed through the security office."
OK, so I'm going to ask the Facility Security Officer (FSO) if it's all right with him that I show up to work one day next week with an opened, half consumed 40 oz. of King Cobra malt liquor and my 35mm camera. I'll come in covered in wiretaps and I'll bring in a Ruger Super Red Hawk .357 magnum with a sheet of acid. If I request all that in advance it must be cool, right? Sweet.

My boss dragged me all over the company introducing me to everyone she could round up for a couple of seconds. There's no way I will remember all their names or what it is that they do here. I just kept politely shaking hands with everyone and nodding like I understood completely everything they yapped at me. We finally ended up at the door of the Facility Security Officer. He's a tower of a man by the name of John. Apparently he was a career Marine and made it up to a respectable rank before he retired from the service. After our initial exchange of pleasantries I could tell he was a by the book no fuss no muss kinda guy. He looked me over with that Vietnam thousand yard stare veterans are legendary for. Perhaps he doesn't expect me to last long here. His office was no bigger than a closet and he somehow managed to cram a desk along with a half dozen full sized filing cabinets bristling with combination locks you'd see on the front of a safe.

Before I left John's office with my boss he handed me yet another thick stack of papers. This new mess of stuff was going to be a monumental task to fill out. It was my application for a DoD security clearance and I was told I had to complete it all and get it back to them as soon as possible. The frustrating thing about it is they want to know everything about me from years and years ago. I mean they want to know everything. Schools I've been to, jobs I've had, places I've lived, and they want names of people who can verify all of it. There's no way I'm going to remember all that crap let alone be able to dig people up who can verify it. This is going to be a big old headache I can tell. Ugh.

I'm In

I got the job. The physical and drug test were a breeze. When TDS called me back and told me the news I was very happy. Only a couple of weeks had passed since my interview session at the site and during that time I decided I didn't have any moral or ethical complications about working on weapon systems. I was actually looking forward to being involved in the realm of classified technology. I spent some evenings on the roof of the B Street house drinking beers and watching cars and people pass by. As I sat up there invisible to everyone below on the street I thought about what it would be like making bombs and missles. I didn't really feel bad or weird about it. I felt nothing actually. I still don't know if that's what I will actually be doing since they haven't given me any more details about what they are up to. Shouldn't make much of a difference to me.

The Closed Area supervisor told me that the managers in the commercial departments were fighting with her to get me, but she won out and I start working for her in a few days. That made me feel pretty good about myself. You can't have a better situation really, managers fighting over who will get to have you in their department. Right now I'm optimistic that this will be a good long term permanent job. I'm getting real tired of flaky companies who don't treat their people well. Only time will tell if this place is worthy or not so for the time being I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed.

I didn't talk much with Jennifer about what I will be doing once I'm in TDS. She only cares that I'm employed and nothing more. She knows I won't be working those lousy late night hours anymore so this job is already a huge improvement as far as she's concerned. Hope it works out.

TDS Interview

I sat across the small stuffy, overly bright room from an attractive blonde woman who is one of the supervisors at a company called TDS. She told me that they really liked my resume and my previous job experience at Bill and Dave's. Guess it carried alot of weight with them. As we talked she frequently thumbed through pages of my resume and application. We were off to a good start. She was pleasant and enthusiastic towards me. I had alot of questions about what it was exactly that they did at this company. Up until this point no one would really talk about it so the mystery grew and so did my curiocity. The manager told me that there were two main operations here, one is commercial application micro electronics and the other strictly dealt with military products that were also micro devices. She happened to be the supervisor running the military side of the house. If she was to offer me a job here I would be working in what they call the "Closed Area" and that I would have to get a Department of Defense (DoD) clearance from the Government before I would even be allowed to work on the products. Apparently it's all classified and the clearance I would need might take up to three months to obtain. Whoa.

Our conversation continued along the lines of what I did in nearly two years of employment at Bill and Dave's company, why I left, and what I was looking for in a new job. I yapped on and on about all the different things I worked on when I was still there and how I ended up working way out of my original job scope. I took on alot more responsibilities than the average factory peasant and did OK with it all. I told her my main goal was trying to find a company that did work I found to be interesting and that was stable enough that I could retire from. In the short term I was looking for a place I could become part of a team and make significant contributions. I went into detail about how limited things turned out to be at Bill and Dave's company and how it seemed they really didn't care about any of their employees anymore. She was somewhat surprised at my statements. Bill and Dave's company is huge and many people have heard rumors of how great it is to be employed there. No one really believes me when I tell them how truly fucked up it is these days. It's more temporary workers than anything else and very hire-and-fire. That's not what it was supposed to be all about according to Bill and Dave's book...

The manager informed me that I would have to go through a rigorous physical at an occupational health clinic and also get a drug test. Sheesh, no surprise there on the drug test. That seems to be the latest corporate fad now. Drug test the shit out of people and only then offer them a permanent job. Whatever. The drug testing isn't an issue. What could be an issue though is the nature of the military work. She went on to say that I would have to spend some time considering moral and ethical issues if they were to hire me. That's when things started to hit home that she was very serious about their classified work. I would have to think about whether or not I could work on things that would potentially take alot of human lives. I have never been in a situation like this before. During the interview I didn't really know what to say in response other than a simple "I'd think about it". Something told me I had better consider what the consequences could be working on products that kill people.

Things were sounding to me more and more like a solid job offer without her actually saying it.

I was grilled separately by a couple of other product supervisors and managers after the nice blonde lady left the room. In total I was interviewing for a few hours with their people for a variety of open job positions. I kept thinking about the military work the whole time though. The secrecy of it completely captured my attention and imagination. The commercial work each supervisor told me about after that didn't seem like it mattered. I was definetly interested in the military gig.

Everything went exceptionally well. As I was leaving the building their Human Resources people said they would be in touch with me in a few days. Another positive sign in my opinion. In the meantime I am going to quietly think about if I am cool working on deadly products, whatever they may turn out to be. I wonder if I should discuss it with Jennifer too? I suppose if she finds out and has a problem with it that could mean big trouble at home. Of course if I don't say a damn thing about what I might be doing she will probably never know. Hmmmm. Another dilemma.

Job Searching Again

The past couple of weeks have kept me busy. I've been driving all over the county putting in applications and resumes at all sorts of tech companies. I feel a sense of urgency to get settled in someplace new since I don't have much cash saved up. My loot is running out fast. I've been making lots of phone calls every day to electronics and manufacturing companies to find out as much as I can in the shortest possible time about what they do and if they're looking for people. A few places have already called me in for interviews, which is good. Things are starting to gain momentum. Each place I've interviewed at so far has been interesting because I seem to know in the first five minutes whether or not they're serious about me. I don't know what it is that gives things away between interviewer and peasant but when I feel like they don't really give a shit that I'm there I can tell. Then I don't put much effort into the rest of the conversation. The reverse is true too. Sometimes after I find out what they work on I'm not interested in them at all even if they want to give me a job. Job is a job though and I might end up making a comprimise again just so I can pay my bills and eat. Besides, even the worst tech company would more than likely be better than flipping burgers in some fast food joint or being in the Army hunting for land mines. Gotta keep it all in perspective.

One of the places that has called me back for an interview has spiked my curiocity. They mostly do micro electronics work but they've been delibrately vague about specifics on their products or who their customers are. It's all a big mystery. They said they would tell me some more once I come in for the interview. From the phone conversations with their Human Resources department it seems they are in a bind for people with experience. That's exactly what I wanted to hear. So I'll be heading over to check this company out in a couple of days and hopefully be able to worm my way into a job.

Jumping Ship

The last few nights I could not become motivated enough to go in to work. The thought of having to be there made me angry. I called up and pretended to be sick. Then I lied and told them my car was busted. So I still couldn't come in to work. The staff was so short handed that my annoying supervisor offered to pay for a taxi cab to come get me. When I refused she offered to drive across town and get me herself. I still declined the offer. Wench.

Jennifer and I talked about how she would feel if I quit the Optical Lab without already having another job lined up. She didn't like my graveyard hours at all and said she would be happy if I ditched the place. That was a relief. So, yesterday I called them up and told them to get fucked. I quit, and I hated them so much that I wasn't even going to come in to turn in my badge or keys. I'd mail it to them when I got around to it and hung up. Man did that feel good! I should have done that a month ago. This has been the most irresponsible thing I've ever done to an employer and I have to admit I did feel a miniscule amount of guilt about it. The guilt passed in a few seconds. It will be a huge help to be able to get back on a normal sleeping pattern, start seeing some friends again, and spend some more time with Jennifer. I will miss the technology at the Optical Lab though. It really was one of the most impressive things I've seen and worked on so far. Too bad they weren't better organized and had regular eight hour shifts. That twelve hour shit is bogus.

My immediate problem is finding another electronics company as soon as possible and get hired in. There's quite a few in the general area to hit up for a job and I'm going to start sending out resumes and call in for applications tomorrow. I already saw one company that looked interesting. They placed an ad in the paper looking for all sorts of people with previous electronics and manufacturing experience. A bunch of the stuff they had listed I have done before and can handle with no problem. I feel fairly confident that with all the stuff I did over the past couple of years at Bill and Dave's they will like what they see and hire me in quickly. I detected a sense of urgency in their newspaper ad so hopefully I can exploit that to my advantage. In the meantime it will be nice to have some time off and just hang out.

The dirty hippie that was my room mate has finally moved out of B Street. I can't even begin to describe how happy I was when he gave his notice that he was moving out. Jerry is one of the biggest sacks of crap I've ever had the misfortune of meeting in my entire miserable life. Good riddance to you Jerry. May lightning strike you the moment you step out of your rapist van at the very next Grateful Dead show. Smoke a turd in hell while you're at it, chump.

The other roomies I had also recently left the house and I've been able to become the house czar here. I get to say who moves in and who gets thrown out from now on and that's a good thing. I don't have control over the drunk woman that lives in the side apartment on the first floor though. Wish I did, I'd have her evicted in a split second. She's been here for years and is constantly hammered out of her mind on cheap booze. Her man frequently comes over and beats the shit out of her. We can hear everything that happens in there because her livingroom and our livingroom share one common wall together. We've called the cops on the guy so many times it's not even funny. Each time they arrest him and haul him into the back of the squad car he always yells at her how much he loves her and all sorts of sappy bullshit. She usually bails him out a couple of days later and then he comes right back over and beats the shit out of her again. I kinda gave up calling the police after the last incident.

Last time the next door beatings began I was eating a bowl of soup and dunking some soft rolls into it and grubbin' out on the couch. All of a sudden I heard that asshole barge into the lady's place and start in on her yelling about how she must think she's the queen of Sheba and she can get away with whatever she wants when she wants to. Then he grabbed her, she started yelling, and her head got knocked into the wall right behind where I was sitting on the couch. He busted her noggin a few times in a row and it made some of our decorations fall off the shelf. I became very still and just listened. His shouting white trash insults and low IQ comments at her continued and then it sounded like he had her pinned down on the floor and he was choking the life out of her. It was intense. I called the cops like usual, they came out and hauled the dimwit off and then guess what happened a couple of days later. He was right back in there with her watching TV and drinking shoddy beers. Fuck me, I give up. If he kills her next time too bad. You can only try to help someone so much and if they won't help themselves there's nothing more you can do.

Senor 23, Senor Random, and Senor Strange have all moved in here. It's gonna be a rockin' time at this house now for sure. Yessir.