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Monday, February 21, 2005

9.22.1996

Slobbering Mouth Kid has successfully buried himself deep into The Drunk's ass. He's been licking her booty so fiercely that she's now grooming him for a test position working closely with the techs on our line. On one hand I'm happy about it because I will have to deal with him much less on a daily basis. This is good. His ignorance is astounding and very irritating to be around every day. The guy can barely hold a conversation much less speak any word with more than a couple of syllables in them. On the other hand I'm amazed at the lack of character judgement The Drunk has excercised in allowing Slobbering Mouth Kid to make this job move. I'm not really jealous. I'm just disappointed about it since I know I have much more technical experience than that guy has ever had. I told Mom about it and she agrees with me, but she also stressed the point that I can move up in this company by accepting a better position just about any time I want. That's cool and all, but I think it would not be wise for me to move from this line any time soon. I'd prefer to stick around just to spite Slobbering Mouth Kid and the rest of these dummies. Also, it really wouldn't look good if I quit this line after only having worked on it for a few months.

Mom isn't doing so hot healthwise. She broke a toe a few weeks ago, and when she was in getting it checked out by the doctor they discovered her blood pressure was horribly high. I think Dad is right to worry about her health. Mom drinks too much. She's a white wine soak. Add being overweight and no excercise to the mix for real trouble in the near future. That was the other main thing Dad complained to me about the whole weekend he was here. He's frustrated about the shape Mom is in. Every time he tries to bring it up with her it starts into a fight. Of course alot of that has to be Dad's approach though. He's real shitty at trying to talk to us about stuff. Anyway, Mom never listens to reason and Dad is worried that she's going to end up being a medical wreck in the hospital. The bills will pile up on them and wipe out what little retirement money they've managed to set aside so far. I think Dad is justified to be concerned, but all he ever really seems to be worried about is his bank account.

Roses For Jennifer

I did a really good thing today.

I sent a dozen roses to Jennifer at her work. She must have been totally surprised and I feel pretty good about setting it up. When I got back here to the apartment after my shift today there was a message on my answering machine from Jennifer. She sounded really happy and thanked me over and over again for the flowers. I had them delivered during her shift because I wanted to make her feel special, and of course so her coworkers would see what a cool guy I am. Heh heh. A couple of days ago I lied to Jennifer so I could get her work schedule for the week. I told her I was going to order some parts for the Oldsmobile and I needed to know her work schedule so I'd know when she would be at home to intercept the shipment. She mentioned in the answering machine message that she figured out I was up to something. Jennifer is pretty smart and I probably should have come up with a more plausible lie, but hey it all worked out.

Black Eye, Fat Lip

The Drunk has shacked herself up with another woman who came up to work on this project. Her name is Donna. Being the rumor mill that this place is, I heard Donna was married for 20 plus years and recently got divorced. Seems she decided to hop over to the other side of the fence and get busy with my beast of a boss for some woman-on-woman experimentation.

Every other week or so, one of the two of them comes in with a black eye or a fat lip. Sometimes both. Everyone has been speculating about what goes on when they get home each evening, but it's pretty damn obvious to me. They're both getting shitfaced drunk and then squabbling over stupid stuff. The squabbles turn into brawls and next thing you know they're throwing each other down flights of stairs and punching the daylights out of one another. It's kinda neat. I have seen rich, vibrant colors in the shiners they wear to work. It's amusing to watch them try to play down the beating they got, as if nothing happened at all. I listen to them attempt to convince coworkers there really was an "accident" at home the night before and I laugh to myself. They're just a couple of bad booze hounds in a stupid relationship.

I don't think this product transfer could get any weirder.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Fairchild AFB


I got a package of tourist bullshit tossed on my kitchen counter when I first got here. Ninety nine percent of the material in the propaganda binder was useless to me, but my eye was fixed on a museum that was located in the Air Force Base just outside of the city. I called the number that was in the binder to find out more about the museum and got some nitwit airman on the line.

Nitwit Airman: Fairchild Air Force Base can I help you?
factory_peasant: Hey there. Yeah, um you guys have a museum out there I want to check out. What's the hours and what do I need to come on base?
Nitwit Airman: We have a museum?
factory_peasant: What?
Nitwit Airman: You're asking about a museum. We don't have those here.
factory_peasant: Huh? It says right here in the brochure you guys have some air museum out there and I was interested in...
Nitwit Airman: No, we don't have anything like that.
factory_peasant: Are you sure?
Nitwit Airman: Yeah.
factory_peasant: Okay, whatever. Bye.

I hung up.

That weekend I drove out to the base and hit the main gate. Security stopped me and asked what I was doing and where I was going. I told them I wanted to hit the museum on base. They waved me through but said I had to stop off at the main office and show proof of car insurance or they wouldn't allow me to be driving around. That seemed so unreal to me. I followed their instructions and parked in front of some weird single story building. I headed for the lobby. Inside, I was greeted by a hispanic looking dude in camo fatigues. He seemed bored out of his fucking mind. I told him I wanted to check out the air museum and he had me fill out some bullshit forms, then he gave me directions to the museum.

Driving deeper into the base I caught sight of the massive hangars for KC-135 tankers. Above one of the huge buildings the slogan "Global Reach = Global Power" was painted in ominous black letters above the hangar entrances. Fairchild AFB seemed to me to be a tanker base, nothing more.

I found the museum building and parked the car. It was cool. I checked out a flight simulator for an early model B52, finger fucked a 20mm cannon, and poked around in the electronics cabinets of the B52 flight simulator (it was 1950s vintage and resistors in the circuitry were as big as my index fingers). I took alot of photos of the planes out in front of the museum on static display as well as some targeting computers from the 1950s B52s. Really weird shit. My favorites for photography on the lawn in front of the museum building were a F86 Sabre, a black B52D, a F105 Thunderchief, a Voodoo, and an A-20 from World War II. I think I got some great shots since there was a storm blowing through and I got a break in the storm with a little sunlight. Should make for some killer backgrounds on the planes.

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Nudie Beach

On Jennifer's last visit here I took her down to the Spokane river to check it out. The river runs through the city out to Coeur d' Alene, I think. Anyway one afternoon we hopped in the car and drove to the river and parked next to a cluster of cars overlooking a drop in the hillside out to where we could see a part of the river bank. It was a hot afternoon and we thought about taking a swim. Leading away from the pavement there was a well worn dirt trail wandering through the dry golden weeds that were four or five feet tall. I took Jennifer's hand and we started down the trail towards the river together.

Walking next to a close scattering of trees I happened to look over to my right and thought I saw an old mangy hippie man with a long white scraggly beard and balding head sitting cross legged and completely naked in a patch of weeds. I whispered to Jennifer that I thought there was a weirdo nearby and discreetly pointed over to where he was. Sure enough, she saw him too and was immediately creeped out. We could hear him mumbling crazy shit to himself. I put my arm around Jennifer and pulled her closer to me as we passed by this miscreant. The two of us kept going and we went through a meadow. There was another grouping of trees up ahead and then what looked to me like dry riverbed rocks just beyond. We heard voices as we approached the shade of the tree line and then we got another surprise.

Peeking from behind one of the trees both of us saw about two dozen ugly, greasy, old guys and they were all stark naked and sunburnt. They were clustered around a single icky fat girl who was running her mouth non stop about all kinds of dumb stuff. She was damn loud. Man, she really sounded like a total dingbat and listening to her I actually felt sorry for her, because she was obviously too stupid to feel sorry for herself. They were all standing around in tennis shoes or sandals and stepped into the river just enough to have the water up to their shins or they were mulling about on the dry gravel. Most of these dirtbags were fixing their gaze on the icky fat girl's tits. I looked at Jennifer's face and she seemed repulsed and horrified at the same time. It was apparent I needed to get her out of there and go find someplace else to be or something else to do right away. I had no idea we would stumble across the local hippy nudist camp. It was bad luck really, but Jennifer probably thought I brought her there on purpose.

Churches And Meth Labs

Boredom causes me to scour through Spokane neighborhoods when I'm off work. There's two things I've noticed about this city that makes it stand out in my mind. No matter what neighborhood or part of the town I'm in I always see a derelict meth lab and a church on virtually every block. There's few upscale places to live in, but even in the wealthier areas you can still easily find a house that was once a meth lab. They all look the same from the street as you drive past. The former nest of drug cooking nastiness will have all it's windows boarded up, and there will be trash laying all over the yard. Spray painted graffiti will adorn the walls in most cases and many of them have miscellaneous pieces of rotten furniture strewn about. Occasionally you'll also see an overturned appliance like a stove or an old washing machine. These places are an eyesore and it made me wonder why no one cleans these houses up. I wouldn't want to see that crap in my neighborhood every damn day.

Passing time in coffee shops on my weekend mornings I've been able to ask alot of questions from the occassional friendly local person. I have asked some of these talkative folks why no one cleans up the abandoned meth labs and the answer they all give me has stayed consistent. When a meth lab is discovered by the police and shut down, usually no one is responsible for the clean up. The inside of these places are generally destroyed. Outside the meth freaks tend to dump the toxic chemicals that are ingredients or by-products of the meth cooking process. Chemical cleanup of the soil is expensive. No one wants to pay for it so the house gets boarded up and abandoned indefinetly. They are trying to change this though. They're working on a new law that will make landlords directly responsible for the chemical cleanup as well as make them face a variety of criminal charges for allowing a meth lab in the property they own. I think the idea is to force lazy landlords to do a better job of screening out meth lab tenants before they even get a chance to set up their operation. I wish them the best of luck and I hope it makes a difference. There's nothing worse than meth labs and the tweakers who run them.

The other thing I notice here is an overwhelming presence of churches. Just about every corner in every neighborhood seems to have one. All of them were residential homes that some tiny congregation bought and converted over to a fundamentalist brand of Christian church. Competition for the souls of Spokane must be fierce because one hundred percent of these little bible thumping command centers have billboards on the front lawn with inane or downright crazy slogans and messages on them. It's obvious they're trying to capture the eye of passing motorists and entice them to stop in some Sunday morning and check them out. I wish I had brought a camera with me on this trip. I could burn roll after roll of 35mm film taking pictures of nothing but these goofy church billboards. With such a heavy saturation of religion here it makes me wonder if some of the crime problem Spokane seems to suffer from might be related somehow. Like, maybe it's a reaction or a sort of rebellion to being smothered and suffocated by overbearing religious zealots. I suspect there's a connection but I can't put my finger on it. I'll have to think about it some more.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

9.18.1996

I'm angry again at the idiots I have to work with. I'm kicking ass on this instrument line and I am working hard at the final assembly job so we can keep up with the planned order schedule management has for each month. We are always behind on the order schedule for a variety of reasons, but I don't want one of those reasons to be due to the fact that we don't work fast enough. Today J2 wanted to talk to me. He pulled me aside and said he wanted me to start cross training in other areas of the instrument assembly so I might slow down on my final assembly job. His excuse was that I have backed up so many completed instruments on the test area that they can't keep up. It's making him look bad. The real situation is J2 doesn't want to start working on any of the instruments. He wants to kick back and every once in a while test a power supply so he looks like he's doing something. J2 is just being plain lazy.

Testing a power supply takes J2 about 25 minutes, he said. I know for a fact one of the only capable techs on the line can do the same job in 10 minutes. So I don't see what J2's problem is in the first place other than he just doesn't want to do the work. I didn't see any sense in cross training anywhere else in the assembly area because I already know most of it. When The Troll burned me out of my desk job the first thing I got dumped on me was all the sub-assemblies on this product. I told J2 this, then he suggested I train on Slobbering Mouth Kid's job.

Slobbering Mouth Kid works on VCOs (voltage controlled oscillators). Each one of our boxes needs a matched set of these VCOs or the whole unit is essentially worthless. One of the main selling points is the product's extremely low phase noise specs. Nothing else out there in the test and measurement world can touch what this box does with regard to phase noise and this design of VCO is unique. It's like nothing I've ever seen before. Each VCO has to be hand built, tuned, and tested. None of it is easy. The construction consists of two paper thin copper plated boards that have sets of matched pin diodes soldered into one section. These boards have to be precisely bent to form a box shape and inside will be placed a few clear acrylic blocks. A lot of skilled soldering has to be done. Outside plates are mounted to the assembly and then a PCB is added to the top. Threaded copper slugs are loaded in the bottom and they are run up and down inside the acrylic blocks to cause the frequency ranges to shift. From what I've seen so far working on VCOs is a job I don't want. It's a king sized headache, besides they already have The Squirrel slated for training on that job.

I'm frustrated at the lack of motivation these people show on the job. All of them with few exceptions screw around way too much. They wander around the building aimlessly, bullshitting on the phone, and taking tons of smoke breaks (in addition to all the other breaks they get around here). The Drunk is pretty weak as far as a supervisor goes. I suppose I'll start training on the power supply job tomorrow. Fuck 'em. I'll learn this job on top of all the other shit I'm already capable of performing and I'll still manage to keep the pressure on them. Lazy shitbags.

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

9.16.1996

Well, Dad was here for the entire weekend and now he's back home. I put him on a plane for San Francisco at 7:30 this morning and I'm glad he's gone. He made me nervous most of the time he was here, and he was also completely annoying. There just isn't much here to do in Spokane and Dad seemed to think it was my fault things were so boring for him while he was here. It was like he wouldn't believe me when I told him there isn't much going on in Spokane or that there aren't many places to go outside of the area that are interesting. One morning we bumped into a talkative guy in a coffee shop and Dad started grilling the guy about what there was to do for fun around here. Much to my amusement the guy told him they like to call the city Slo-kane because it's so slow all the time and that's the way people who live here like it. Then he told Dad there isn't much to do around these parts. I was laughing hard on the inside.

Dad told me he was surprised I haven't been cheating on Jennifer. He said if he had the opportunity to be young again and be away from his girlfriend he'd be "chasin' pussy all over town". I'm not like that. I explained to him that I can't cheat on the woman I'm with, and that if things don't improve dramatically with Jennifer once I arrive home, I'll just move out. I will never cheat on Jennifer, no matter how bad things become for me. Dad didn't seem to get it. He also belittled me for not "making friends" with the local people in Spokane that are my age. All the ones I met here seemed really weak or messed up to me so I chose not to hang around them. I thought what Dad was really getting at was he'd have had a much better time on this weekend trip if he'd met some people. I can't invent people to meet or things to do, so he got restless.

I slept on the couch the whole weekend so Dad could sleep in my bed. Like the dumb ass that I am I didn't figure out I could just pull the cushions off the couch and sleep on the floor much more comfortably than I did on the couch. I don't fit on couches or hide-a-beds or in sleeping bags very well. I'm too tall so I have to sleep in a semi-fetal position and I wake up the next day aching and feeling like crap. Happens every damn time. I slept all funky Friday and Saturday nights and really messed up my neck.

We went out and saw the film "Eraser" at the theater Saturday night. It was okay. I went just to kill some time so Dad wouldn't be quite so bored for a couple of hours. Part of the problem during the weekend was the weather. It was really cold and raining most of the time so we couldn't get out of town on a road trip. There would have been no point. On Friday afternoon we drove part of the way around Lake Coeur 'd Alene. On the way to the Idaho border there's a sign that says you can't bring in fruits or vegetables from Washington. When we both saw the sign I acted very apologetic to Dad and I told him I was going to have to pull over and drop him off along the side of the interstate. He was looking at me like, "What the fuck are you talking about"? I said, "Dad didn't you see that sign? I can't bring you into the state of Idaho. No fruits OR vegetables so you can't go. Sorry". I thought it was pretty funny but all he did was sit there in the passenger seat and glare at me for about five minutes. He never did have much of a sense of humor. About 25 miles into the trip we stopped at a little roadhouse bar. Inside the bar we saw a map of the entire lake and realized it was way too big for us to drive around in an afternoon, so we turned around and came back into Spokane.

There was only two main things Dad talked to me about over the weekend, and he sounded like a broken record almost as soon as he stepped off the plane. He rambled on and on about how shitty things have been at the firehouse for him, and how frustrated he has become with Mom. I'm really worried about the latter issue because he's angry and he apparently started drinking again. It's the first time in like, fifteen years or more. I knew something was wrong when we went out to shoot some pool at a place called Mc Q's. The whole time I grew up I knew my father had a serious drinking problem but Mom forced him to stop when I was very young. After we shot a couple games of nine ball Dad started ordering both of us beers. This was the first time I've had a drink with my Dad, and it seemed wrong. All wrong.

The drinking started a few months ago, he said. Dad had some cooking sherry in the kitchen and snuck it down into the workshop he has under their house. He drank all of it and got loopy. Then he told me he began making trips to the corner store and bringing home harder stuff wrapped up in paper bags so Mom wouldn't notice or see what it was. He'd take it into the shop and stash it for later or drink it as soon as he got down there. Dad has one bad personality, and when he mixes booze with it everything is exponentially worse for anyone with the misfortune to be near him. He's like what I consider to be a classic alcoholic. He's one of those people that when he drinks his personality is altered completely and he becomes an angry drunk motherfucker. So, something is definetly up with him at home and I'm not real clear on what the story is yet. I'm worried though. This is a very bad development.

Monday, February 07, 2005

Solder Noose

Jennifer was here for her second visit last week. She was much more pleasant to me this time around. I don't know why. I was expecting the worst of it and I wasn't really sure about flying her up here again. I took a few days off from work so we could drive around and see some things in the area. Jennifer likes to gamble, she's particularly fond of playing Black Jack so I took her to one of the Indian gaming casinos and watched her lose some of my money. I don't gamble, but I give her cash to blow on card games and I stand back and watch. It's kinda boring as she's not very good at the games.

When I came back to work the first thing I noticed was a noose made out of solder, hanging from one of my torque drivers on my bench. My coworkers have been extra hostile towards me lately for a variety of reasons. I decided to nip things in the bud before they became more malicious and I called a line meeting. The noose made me angry. It wasn't so much a practical joke as it was an insult from a fellow employee that can barely do their job. These people are so damn worthless. Anyway, I gathered them all up in a conference room and sat them down at the table. I tossed the noose out on the table top and forcefully told them that I was not going to tolerate junk like this from any of them. I threatened them so much that The Squirrel got up from the table and ran away crying. I made a grown woman cry over a noose made out of solder. Am I awesome, or what? It must be illegal to feel this good.

They are all being much nicer to me now.

Saturday, February 05, 2005

8.30.1996

Last night I spoke with Jennifer on the phone. All she did was irritate me. I can tell she isn't paying much attention to what I'm saying especially when someone is there in the room with her or if the television is on. I haven't received a single letter from her. She finally started sending some of my mail from our house, but so far it's all the wrong stuff. I asked her to send me bills and instead I'm getting payroll paperwork and direct deposit slips. Also, it seems more often than not Jennifer has done something really stupid during the week and she tells me all about it on the phone. In the past week she somehow managed to jam my key into the ignition switch on the Cougar backwards, mailed our rent check with no postage or address, then stopped payment on the wrong check and got us into trouble with someone else. Our property manager is totally pissed off at us.

The situation I'm currently in has really shown me how little Jennifer must think of me. She has been the most inconsiderate and hateful woman I've been with. She openly admitted she's trying to punish me for leaving her behind. I explained over and over again to her that I took this job so we would both be better off living together. Three and a half months apart to make that happen is a small sacrifice, really. I don't like being away from her but I haven't taken it out on her. Everybody else on this transfer has wives or girlfriends that miss them while they're away. Jennifer doesn't seem to give a shit.

I expected at the very least Jennifer would have been happy knowing I took this job so that we would be better off financially in the long run. I had hoped she would take it as an example of how serious I am about our relationship. I doubt that has crossed her mind even once. She tells me she needs me to "be there" for her, and to understand her. What about me? I desperately need her love and support while we are apart and I don't feel like I've gotten either. The other night on the phone she made the comment that she was looking forward to being on vacation but not once did she mention she was looking forward to seeing me. I think that shows an underlying lack of care on Jennifer's part towards me.

I've never talked to my Dad about my relationship with Jennifer before. I have nobody else to talk to these days though, so I told him everything for the first time last week. I told him that Jennifer doesn't seem to enjoy having sex with me, and all the observations I've made about her over the past couple of years. She rarely tells me she loves me or misses me unless I ask her about it first. Dad's advice was typically blunt. He told me not to marry her and said that if I do, "You just got your last blow job, buddy". I didn't mention Jennifer doesn't give me head anymore, anyway. She was never very good at it and that's all she wanted to do with me for the first year we were together. It got old fast and I asked her to stop because it wasn't doing anything for me anymore. She got really mad about it and ever since then she's never done it again.