<body><script type="text/javascript"> function setAttributeOnload(object, attribute, val) { if(window.addEventListener) { window.addEventListener('load', function(){ object[attribute] = val; }, false); } else { window.attachEvent('onload', function(){ object[attribute] = val; }); } } </script> <div id="navbar-iframe-container"></div> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/platform.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> gapi.load("gapi.iframes:gapi.iframes.style.bubble", function() { if (gapi.iframes && gapi.iframes.getContext) { gapi.iframes.getContext().openChild({ url: 'https://www.blogger.com/navbar.g?targetBlogID\x3d7964919\x26blogName\x3dBill+And+Dave+Are+Dead\x26publishMode\x3dPUBLISH_MODE_BLOGSPOT\x26navbarType\x3dBLUE\x26layoutType\x3dCLASSIC\x26searchRoot\x3dhttps://billanddave.blogspot.com/search\x26blogLocale\x3den_US\x26v\x3d2\x26homepageUrl\x3dhttp://billanddave.blogspot.com/\x26vt\x3d4370529864444180878', where: document.getElementById("navbar-iframe-container"), id: "navbar-iframe" }); } }); </script>

Monday, October 31, 2005

Lightwave Interview Part Three

Dingbat Blondie said good bye and good luck to me, then she waived me off in the general direction of where Tom's cubicle was supposedly located. Her directions were so totally confusing and jacked up that I started walking off towards a wall she pointed at. Wandering around looking for Tom I got a better self-guided tour of the Lightwave division than I ever would have received with the help of that airhead blonde dimwit. I was certain of that. I travelled through a human rat maze of test racks filled with few familiar pieces of gear. Lightwave employees were everywhere across the shop floor wearing the same light blue labcoats. It reminded me of what an army of Smurfs would look like if they were people-sized instead of only being three inches tall.

I hated Smurfs. Castle Smurfenstein really was the shit, wasn't it?

Stumbling across Tom's office I got his attention and waited for a few minutes outside his cube until he finished interviewing a woman I barely recognized from one of our instrument lines at the other site. As soon as she left, Tom asked me if I would like to tour his product line first and then get down to the interview or vice versa. I was restless from sitting around and still somewhat agitated with the way my afternoon was turning out so I decided to stretch my legs a bit and go for the tour. Tom escorted me through his area. He did a thorough and thoughtful job introducing me to some of his assemblers and technicians, showed off their whole instrument line process from start to finish, and he answered every one of my questions. That was more like it. The Lightwave products he was responsible for were actually quite interesting. At least from an engineering standpoint. They were like nothing I had seen before. For a moment I thought it would be fun to work on a project like this. It would be fun, until I saw who Tom had working for him in his semi-clean room area.

The last part of his Lightwave box production line we hadn't walked through yet was a closed room that had been set up to be a hybrid clean room slash micro assembly area. It wasn't a true clean room with an overpressure air system and employees covered up head to toe in paper suits breathing through dust masks. And it didn't seem like a real microcircuit area either. They had some nice custom scopes mounted at some of the workstations, but it appeared to me that a large portion of their assemblies could be done without the use of heavy magnification. Before we entered this room I peeked through one of the windows and I saw Felix. As soon as I saw that guy sitting in there, I knew there was no way I'd allow myself to be working with this group no matter how interesting or cool their boxes were.

Felix wasn't really a bad guy. I never had any personal problems with him and actually I enjoyed talking to him when he was still with us working in the Precision Group's assembly area. He was a nice enough old fellow. But, he had his problems. Felix wasn't content with doing the job he was hired in for. He was just another factory peasant like myself, hired in to build PC board modules, front panel displays, and power supplies, among other things. Felix was one of those people who gravitated to any and every extra job role he could find in an attempt to tie up the majority of his 40 hour work week doing anything but build instruments. I've seen that sort of thing before. Other employees have tried the same tricks with limited success. When Felix did get stuck working on boxes, he'd mangle shit up like you wouldn't believe. I saw that guy smoke more live power supplies than even Stupid Guy did. Felix also managed to consistently wreck his board mods. So, I liked Felix well enough as a person, but I really hated his fouled up workmanship. When he left us I didn't know he took a job up here in Lightwave but I was somewhat glad to be rid of him just the same.

Tom pushed open the double doors leading into their closed production room and he began explaining what they were working on. I listened to him as we walked past various workstations equipped with fume hoods and specialized microscopes. Felix hadn't spotted me yet. By the time Tom and I made it to where Felix was sitting, Tom introduced me as another potential new hire for their group. Felix stopped what he was working on and backed away from his microscope. As soon as he turned his head towards me and recognized me, he interrupted what Tom was talking about and yelled at me. "Hey Factory Peasant! Great to see you!" Felix reached out to take my hand and he thrashed it about like I was a rag doll. I smiled and asked Felix how the hell he had been, and to tell me a little about what he was working with.

Both of us forgot Tom was standing there as Felix pushed back from his bench and got out of his chair. He invited me to sit down and look through the scope at his work. I said, "Sure thing" and seated myself. I pulled in close to his microscope and adjusted the eyepieces until his work in progress came into focus. It had been a few years since I last did any micro stuff, and to be honest I really didn't miss it.

Felix was putting together an unusual precision-machined aluminum bulkhead that had a few tiny pods adhered with some sort of glue. Each pod had a number of miniature wires sticking out of them. He explained that they would be connetced to small motors and when activated would flex a couple of key areas on the bulkhead. Felix pointed one or two of them out to me so I could find them in the view of his microscope. It was clever design. The flexible points had been machined in such a way that they were like a tab that could be gently pushed or pulled by a motor with a worm gear or something similar and the base of the tab would provide resistance for smooth movement without the use of a mechanical spring. The idea was simple, as the piece of metal moved, some optics that are attatched would move with the piece changing the focus of a laser beam being pumped through it. That was the basic gist I got from Felix's description anyway.

Because Felix had been notorious for wrecking so much work back in the Precision Group, I decided to have a little fun with him in front of his boss. Still sitting at the microscope I turned to face Felix. He was standing off to my left. Tom was out of my view standing behind my right shoulder. I looked at Felix and said, "This is cool stuff here, Felix. But I have one question I gotta ask you about it. How many of these have you ruined so far?" Felix laughed and blurted out, "Heh! Well you know Factory Peasant that's not too far from the truth!" As Felix got my joke and laughed about it, I heard Tom make a noise that sounded like he had choked. I didn't look to see if Tom was okay, and I smiled to myself.

Back at Tom's cubicle we began the interview. I was disappointed when he produced the exact same form with the exact same scripted questions that Dingbat Blondie had already asked me. What was up with that? Were these people so insanely lazy and uninterested that each manager couldn't come up with their own questions to ask of us? Whatever. I just went with it and answered the same battery of questions in an identical manner as I had with the first supervisor.

After we finished that mess, I noticed Tom had populated his cubicle with dozens of pictures of people dressed up in Star Wars costumes. It seemed odd and somewhat retarded this guy had so many of them pinned around his cube and I had to ask what it was all about. Tom said, "I like to have fun at work. One of the things I try to do is to encourage team spirit and keep things really fun in the area. Frequently we're under extremely tight schedules and we're also under an intense amount of pressure to make shipments. So I schedule Star Wars day and everyone has to come to work in costume..." Tom kept yammering away about his team building efforts through the medium of Star Wars. There was no fucking way I was going to come to work dressed up in that shit and be a space nerd. No way in hell. Ever. At that point, I wrote Tom and his instrument line off.

Tom did mention one interesting thing about himself. He used to work at the same optical coating lab company I worked at for a short time years ago. I still had a few buddies I kept in touch with over there so I figured I'd call them up later in the week and run Tom's name by them and see what, if anything they had to say about the space nerd.

Next up, the panel interview.

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Lightwave Interview Part Two

After what seemed to me like an eternity of conversational babble mixed with free of charge bland and lukewarm cafeteria food everyone turned in their trays full of dirty dishes. We walked out of the dining area in a group following Tom to head back for Building 1 and some job interviews. It was about damn time. As we began the walk up long flights of stairs towards Building 1 I caught up with Tom and asked him point blank about the level 92 deal here in Lightwave. He said that management in the Lightwave division felt the work here was so much more complex than at any other department in the company therefore entry level 91 jobs were not appropriate. How arrogant, I thought. It takes an average of six years for an entry level employee to get a 92 job at Bill and Dave's company and here these people were just handing them out like candy. I seriously doubt the instruments they work on are more difficult skill-wise than what our people do in Micro, or in the Clean Rooms working on semiconductor wafers, or on more traditional instrument lines for that matter. And if this was such a simple explanation why didn't Tom or that goofy blonde just answer my question at the table in the first place? Ugh.

Once we were back in Lightwave's department Tom and the dingbat bleached blonde supervisor with him broke us down into smaller groups. Dingbat Blondie said there would be three separate one on one interviews with managers plus a panel interview with some engineers, technicians, and assemblers. I was under the impression the interview I was here for was going to be with one product manager and then I'd be out of here for the day so maybe I could go back to sleep before going to work. Didn't look like that was about to happen. This was going to be a long drawn out all afternoon production. Weak.

Dingbat Blondie got me first. She took me to her postage stamp sized cubicle that was temporarily made even smaller by a collection of a few dozen brightly colored balloons filled with helium. Maybe it was her birthday. Who cares. I sat down at the corner of her desk because there wasn't anyplace else to locate myself. She sat next to me and produced a photocopied script of questions to ask us interviewing for available jobs. That was when I started to notice her shaking. As she wrote down paraphrased sentences of my responses to her questions, her hands were trembling. It got worse as we continued. She didn't seem like she was nervous, it was more uncontrollable than that and she acted far too animated and speedy. I suspected she had covertly done a rail of crank or something.

The whole time I was talking, balloons were gently drifting into my forehead and bouncing off of me.

She obviously thought highly of herself, like she was a sexy blonde bombshell. She wore black hip hugger slacks and a long sleeve bone white top that was skin tight and very low cut revealing what little cleavage mother nature endowed her with. Her legs were crossed and she kept rocking one of her feet at me. She was wearing open-toed heels and she had chosen a deep mettallic blue nailpolish for her feet. I got the feeling she was trying to tell me, "I'm totally hot, mister." Dingbat Blondie didn't do anything for me, really. In fact, I found her down right annoying. She reminded me of what a person might look like if they had been hit in the face with a shovel at birth. This broad was not attractive. To make matters worse during our question and answer session, mullet wearing handlebar moustached white trash dudes popped in to interrupt us just so they could ask Dingbat Blondie questions like "Are we gonna party tonite, babe? Heh heh heh." It was all fun and giggles for her, she was having a grand old time. Idiot.

Upon completely filling out one side of an eight and a half by eleven sheet of paper with barely readable written versions of my answers to her scripted questions, she happily announced we were going on a tour of her instrument product line. Oh joy. We left her cubicle and I trailed behind her as she took point. Both of us crossed the main aisleway into a production area filled with employees wearing blue labcoats. She stopped in front of a gray metal shelf unit stacked full with small sized test instruments and turned to face me. She said, "This here is my instrument. We call it 'Bud Light'. Okay? And this here... is a FIBER OPTIC CABLE." As she said fiber optic cable she placed great emphasis on the words to impress me with the sheer gravity and awesomeness of the tiny yellow insulated flexible cable she held in her hands. I knew what a fucking fiber optic cable was for christ sakes. Moron. I can't believe they elevated this woman into a management position here.

And with that, my two minute tour of Dingbat Blondie's product group was over. I didn't get to ask any of her employees questions about what they did or what they liked about working here. She failed to show me their assembly area or demonstrate how their test process flow worked. It was overwith almost as fast as the tour had begun. I don't know why she bothered in the first place.

My next interview was to be with Tom.

Friday, October 28, 2005

Lightwave Interview Part One

I got a call to interview with our Lightwave division up on the hill this week. So I showed up at eleven this morning at the other site. Eleven in the morning might as well be three in the morning for me, since I work swingshift I usually sleep until two in the afternoon before getting up to start my day. If I have to get up early for any reason, no matter what it is, I am angry at the world. Potatohead doesn't know what I'm up to yet. He will probably get a call from some manager in Lightwave announcing that I am being interviewed for numerous jobs here and I know it's going to piss him off. Should happen in the next couple of days. Can't wait to see the look on his face when he finds out.

Whoever set up my interview at Lightwave told me to show up at a specific time and go to Building 1 upper floor, then find a marked column in a hallway. I have to tell you, that's fucked up. We normally don't do shit like that. Usually when a person is scheduled for an interview you have somebody to go meet and talk with for a while in a cubicle somewheres. When I arrived in Building 1 and scrounged around for a non-descript post holding up the ceiling I stood around and waited. And waited. And waited some more. Employees walking by looked at me like I was some kind of misplaced obsolete test equipment. Partially I received attention because of the flashy shirt I was wearing. I chose the red and black bowling shirt Autumn bought me on our trip to San Diego for today's job fishing extravaganza.

Thirty minutes passed and no one showed up. So I walked over to the nearest production area and I swiped one of their chairs. I dragged it out into the middle of the hallway and plunked myself down in it. By this time I was angry. What kind of shoddy organization invites an employee up to interview for filling a position they desperately needed help with and leaves them to rot in a hallway? Apparently Lightwave does.

Fourty five minutes passed. Still no contact person or escort. That was when it hit me. Observing the rushed employees scurrying about this floor of Building 1 I recognized many of them as chronic non-performers we had back in the PC board division years ago, problem employees from the Microcircuit department, and total fuckups from some of the instrument lines. That really worried me. Perhaps the management here in this division was lacking. Only one way to find out, I thought.

Before I continue I should probably explain a little bit about Lightwave test instrument products in comparison to the test instruments I have been working on for the past few years. Currently I work on RF/Microwave wireless laboratory test instruments. The industry appilcations of RF/Microwave boxes are anything from Aerospace and Defense to making a simple cell phone. You need to test and troubleshoot a deep space satellite? No problem. You buy the boxes I build and test. You need to tune a radar array on a F-16 fighter? We got you covered. Designing a new breed of cell phone? We have the instrument that will get you there. That's what I do. Lightwave on the other hand produces Fiber Optic test and measurement boxes mainly for broadband communications. So there's some overlap and competition there between our two product divisions, but it's not direct competition. It's more like industry competition, I guess. For example both kinds of instruments can be used in telecommunications but they are completely different from an application standpoint. One of my power meters might measure signal strength in decibels, but a Lightwave power meter would measure signal strength in laser nanometers. Where our wireless units transmit signals internally through metal cables, Lightwave boxes transmit signals through precision lenses and optics. Very different breed of test instruments from ours.

Sitting impatiently for someone to come pick me up I became more agitated. A crowd of ten or so people entered the hallway and walked towards where I was sitting delibrately blocking access to a coffee station. When they reached me a red haired guy with neatly trimmed moustache introduced himself as Tom and apologized for keeping me waiting so long. He said they were terribly behind schedule. Whatever. I stood up and shook his hand while the others looked on. Tom informed me we were being taken to the cafeteria for lunch on the company dime before interviews were going to take place. Great.

If I wasn't really angry before, I was now. See, working the swingshift schedule I don't eat breakfast until after 5pm every day. I can't handle food this early and I wasn't here for a free lunch, dammit. I was here to shop for a new job and head back to my division to work on time. That's all. I asked Tom if this was the way Lightwave handled their interview process. "We've had groups of employees here every day for weeks and we always start off with lunch." I smelled company abuse taking place. If a group of managers here were scheduling this stuff around their lunch time every day they were getting a free ride on grub bigtime. Average lunches in the cafeteria cost six bucks. Multiply two or three supervisors by five days at six bucks for weeks and the dollar amount adds up fast, and it's even worse if you figure in ten hopeful employees along with them every day.

So we were marched to the cafeteria. More of my time was being wasted. I couldn't eat anything, the only thing I bought with their lunch voucher was a shitty cup of coffee in protest. I rejoined my group at a table and listened to the mindless banter. Nothing work related was being said. No questions from other candidates about the work they did here or what they liked about it. Just pure trivial crap. After a few minutes I'd had enough of it and I asked a question of Tom and his supervisor counterpart, a dingbat bleached blonde woman that looked too young to manage a product line. I asked them, "I notice here in Lightwave all your entry positions are 92 level. Why?" Here at Bill and Dave's company we have jobs broken down by generic skill levels. An entry-level job for someone who has never worked in electronics before would be conisdered a level 91 job. The skill scale goes from level 91 to level 96 for most hourly wage workers in assembly, technical, and production administrative jobs. So an entire product division starting all entry level jobs at the 92 mark was odd. Neither Tom or the dingbat blonde answered me. So I asked them again, and I was brushed off. I sat quietly watching ten people scarf down lousy cafeteria cooked food angrily waiting to leave and get down to business.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Goodbye Clint


Clint Thompson died last Thursday. I got an email from Gina about it at the beginning of this week. He had been ill for a long time, waiting for his health condition to improve so doctors would clear him to receive a lung transplant. I didn't talk to Clint much this year. I had been thinking about him recently and I was wondering how he was doing. Gina told me his memory had gone completely. If I had called he probably wouldn't have known who I was.

During the past couple of years I went over to Clint's house to clean and do odd jobs on his property for him. Mostly it was yard work, but sometimes he asked me to help him finish up woodworking projects in his garage that he converted over to a wood shop. I preferred doing the yard work and housecleaning over the wood working projects since I'm not very good at it and I'm always afraid I'm going to lose a body part to a finger hungry table saw. I liked helping Clint. It made me feel good because nobody that knew him would go out of their way to really help him. Well, there were a few other people helping out from time to time but most of them would flake out on him or show up and not work very hard. Then they would never come back.

His son Justin, didn't come by to see Clint or help him much at all. I don't know what was up with that. I met Justin once there at Clint's place. He was there to assemble a kitchen table for his Dad. By the time I arrived there that afternoon Justin was nearly finished setting the table up and seemed to me to want to leave as soon as he possibly could. After he left, Clint told me his son had just completed schooling at the Police Academy and was applying with police departments all over California. None of the departments wanted to hire him. They said he would be too rough on people. I guess they figured that out from putting Justin through numerous psychological tests.

Clint talked to me about his personal problems with his only son while I was mopping his kitchen floors or moving his furniture around the house. It seemed to me Clint was hurt because his son would not come around to help him, and every time they spoke over the phone it ended up in a heated fight. As months passed by I noticed Clint became more bitter towards Justin. I wonder if they were able to resolve anything before he died. Clint was also angry with various people we had both worked with in the Closed Area at TDS. That's where we first met. We were both working on new smart weapons programs there. Most of his anger was directed towards women. He felt women were incapable of making sound decisions, and totally unreliable. I would agree with him to avoid making him more agitated while I was working.

I was always paid extremely well by Clint for helping him around his place. I heard from a few people still working back at TDS that Clint was really happy and grateful to me for my help. He made a comment once to one of our coworkers, a lady named Jean, about how amazed he was when he asked me if I would come over some weekend soon to do odd jobs. I agreed immediately and I didn't fail to show up. Jean mentioned later that Clint had been asking for help from people at TDS for months and most of the time they brushed him off. I felt good about myself when she told me that because going out of my way to assist him was no big deal.

Clint was a pretty decent guy despite his social shortcomings. In a way, I'm glad for him that he is dead. His ongoing pain and suffering are finally over. I called Justin on Tuesday and told him I regrettably would not be able to attend the scattering of Clint's ashes on top of Mt. Tam in Marin, and that I was sorry Clint didn't pull through in enough time to get the lung transplant he so badly needed. Clint ended up not getting the transplant because all the drugs he was on made his guts turn to mush. He never got past a certain point of recovery and was susceptible to becoming very sick from just about every kind of common illness. He ended up in that situation from decades of being a heavy smoker. Cigarettes destroyed his lungs and he told me once that his doctors estimated he only had a few percent of his total lung capacity left. If it drops below something like 5%, you die. He was very close to that lower limit.

When I had been working with Clint in the Closed Area at TDS, we spent time talking about his past days when he was a foolish twenty-something Airman in the US Air Force. It sounded to me like Clint led a rough lifestyle and it had been very hard on his body. It all came back to haunt him in a big way. He was full of regret. He never recovered from a breakup with his only wife, her death, the less than desireable relationship with Justin, and how badly he had taken care of himself.

Seeing Clint in his home hooked up to a variety of breathing apparatus and the heavy amounts of pills he had to take was a big time eye opener for me about the consequences of cigarette smoking. The drugs he was on made him have to crap and pee almost every fifteen minutes so that kept him at home close to the bathroom at all times. He couldn't leave the house most of the time to do the simplest of errands for fear of being someplace where he couldn't get to a bathroom. He sent me out to the hardware store and the video store many times on those weekends when I went over to see him. I think if more people could have the opportunity to see someone like Clint, they'd seriously reconsider their smoking habits.

Some of the really funny things Clint told me about himself was when he was in the Air Force back in the 1960s. He was an electronic technician on B52 bomber systems. Clint was constantly getting into serious trouble with his superiors and in particular, the Military Police. One story I'll never forget him telling me was when he had been busted down for doing some stupid shit, so he had been confined to his barracks on base for a long while. He said he was a horrible drunk then, and because he was stuck weekend after weekend on base with no booze, he took to drinking aftershave. Clint was hitting the Aqua-Velva pretty hard and had developed a taste for it. So he's stuck on base drinking aftershave and he gets the idea to have a barbecue. Only problem is, he's someplace in the world where it's constantly snowing and there's no wood or coals anywhere to be had for a BBQ. Clint snuck into the officer's mess and stole a whole case of steaks.

He quickly found a solution to his fuel dilemma. Clint went outside his barracks and began pulling wooden planks off the building for use in his fire pit. While he grabbed each plank with his hands and put his foot against the wall to pry them off, an MP patrol happened by. Stunned at what they were seeing before them they asked Clint what he thought he was doing. He replied in his drunken aftershave stupor, "I'm havin' me a BBQ!" One of the MPs then had to ask him what he was going to cook up. "Steaks from the officer's club!" As I could imagine I'm sure the MPs were unimpressed. Clint ended up with large amounts of time being added to his confined-to-base sentence along with a lot of time spent peeling potatoes and washing dishes.

Another one of Clint's episodes involved seeking revenge upon the MPs he hated. Clint serviced radar sensors in the tailguns of B52 bombers. High security went along with B52s wherever they happened to be parked on the ground. Bright yellow lines were painted along the pavement of runways surrounding the bombers. Those yellow lines were called "The Line of Death." Anyone who crossed that line without MP escort would be shot on sight. There were no exceptions. Clint despised MPs because they were constantly busting him down no doubt due to his stupid antics. He liked to test the MPs by crossing the Line of Death. Clint would put one foot over the line in plain view of MP patrols just to fuck with them. He hopped back and forth from side to side over the yellow marking. Despite repeated verbal warnings from security specialist MPs patrolling the tarmac, Clint continued to dare them to shoot him when he crossed the line of no return. Usually when he did it, MPs would jump him and beat the shit out of him in addition to locking him up.

To get his revenge on the MPs Clint would wait until he was inside a parked B52 working on the radar sensors in the tailguns. As soon as MPs patrolling the perimeter came into his view, he would flip a switch on the radar seeking unit causing it to go active. It was so sensitive that it would lock onto the MPs belt buckles and the gun pod would begin tracking them, aiming the guns at them as they passed by. Clint told me it freaked them out and really made them furious. He did it every opportunity he got while inside B52s servicing their systems. I think he got a lot of enjoyment out of that.

I'm glad we crossed paths, Clint. I know you're in a better place now. My friend, perhaps someday you and I will meet again on the other side.

7.27.1999

I have returned home from work. It is almost two in the morning. Too late to cook up some chicken for dinner, so I'm having a rum and coke instead. Senor 23 would approve. I delibrately skipped going to the department meeting today at two because I'm totally fucking sick of them. I've been sick of them for years, but lately I have been absent from as many as I can without getting into some sort of trouble with Potatohead.

Most of the time I get away with it. Today I did not. I was told by my buddies Potatohead was wondering why I did a no-show, and since I wasn't there before four he assumed I wasn't coming in at all. The dick. I've told that asshole a number of times that if I am not going to make it in to work I would at least give him the courtesy of a phone call telling him so. Besides, it would be suicide to not show up for work and fail to inform Potatohead about it. All he needs is a good excuse to fire me. I'm not going to give him one.

Potatohead thinks I'm stupid. I'm convinced.

Autumn sent me another polaroid picture of herself in the mail the other day. I love it when she does that. Then I know for sure she's thinking of me and misses me. Sometimes, I'm not so sure she does. Anyway this particular picture is badass! She not only put on her super-blonde flapper girl wig, she also has blue colored contacts in her eyes and wild sparkly blue eyeshadow and lipstick on. The title she wrote on the back of the picture is, "With Love, From Mars..." Yup. I've got a crazy Martian woman for a girlfriend. I like it.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

No Kids, No Marriage

This past weekend left me with the feeling I still need another day off from work. Saturday was a total bust. Autumn volunteered to watch her little niece for most of the day because her brother and sister-in-law needed a break. It's cool of Autumn to help them out, but the weekends are really the only time Autumn and I have to spend together. It's due to our opposing work schedules and the fact that we live fifty miles apart from each other. I don't mind it when Autumn's niece is around, actually. I don't like most kids but this one is actually pretty good. Most of the time anyway. It's fun to watch Autumn interact with a child. She does an outstanding job. Very attentive almost to the point of doting on the kid. I think she would make a great mother someday. When I brought that up with her, she felt the exact opposite. Like she'd be the world's worst Mom. Autumn doesn't want to have children, ever. Or get married. I don't understand it.

If we're still together in the next couple of years I sure hope she changes her mind at least about the marriage part because Autumn is the best woman I've been with. I'm not clear on what it is concerning marriage she's so weird about or opposed to. For me, I've always thought of marrying the woman I'm in love with. It's the ultimate goal. I mean, I'm at least open to the idea and I always assumed someday I would end up happily married. Children I'm not so sure about at times. I think about being a Dad on occasion. Doesn't seem like it would be too harsh. Then I go somewhere like a grocery store and I see children at their worst. Screaming and crying about the most insignificant things being horrible tyrants for all to hear. It's those times that I say to myself, "No fucking way am I gonna have one or two of those brats." But, I know someday I could be a father and I'm okay with that. Maybe.

Squirmy's Offer

I got an unusual surprise from Squirmy. Guess he talked with Master MC about my situation and he offered me a job working on his Carrier Wave Signal Generator group. That made me smile. Now I've already got one possible avenue of escape. I told Squirmy about my idea of checking out Lightwave first though. He thought that was a sensible plan and said, "Go ahead. Interview with them and take a good look around. If it doesn't work out you have a job here waiting. I'll hold it open until you make a decision, but I'd like to have you working with us in Area 51." Awesome. Can't ask for anything better than that.

Potatohead caught me sitting in the break room a little while later that evening. I was feeling extra arrogant when he opened his stupid mouth to hassle me about something or other. I didn't pay him much attention. The best part was when I looked him right in the eye and said, "Potatohead. I can work for you, but I can't work with you." He turned red and yelled at me. Then he stormed off to go hassle someone else. Probably Musclehead. Poor bastard.

Gotta press those buttons...

Escaping From An Idiot

Yesterday afternoon I met our department manager, Master MC, to bring a number of complaints against Potatohead sneaky style. Doing something like that here at Bill and Dave's is very risky. You don't hassle the management club and succeed. I won't lie, I was very nervous when I began talking. Master MC didn't interrupt me until I was finished. He looked over my documented arguments with my imbecile of a supervisor and asked me if he could keep them. I said sure. My name wasn't anywhere on the paperwork but as I agreed to let him keep them I wished I had thought ahead of time to make a copy. There was some funny stuff in there. Oh well.

I explained to Potatohead's boss that I had tried to work out this personality clash between the two of us but I didn't get anywhere with him. I mentioned that it isn't much fun to come in to work anymore because Potatohead is constantly fucking with me. Obviously, I didn't state it like that to the man, but that's basically what I was getting at. I did make an attempt to smooth things out between the two of us. I really did. I didn't make much of an attempt though, wasn't worth my time.

All I wanted was to be allowed to move out of Potatohead's grasp. Master MC was super cool. He said, "It seems that some of the things I have already discussed with Potatohead are still a problem. I will have to talk with him again and work through this. We had some issues with him when he was assigned to Sources, you may have heard about that." I did hear about it, but I didn't see any point in bringing it up. I kept my mouth shut. Then he said to me, "If you are able to find a job in another area we'll let you make the jump." Yeah! I thanked the man too many times and then we both went back to work. Deep down inside my little black three sizes too small Grinch heart beat rapidly. Potatohead was going to get a bad mark in his personnel file for this and I was going to leave the line whether he liked it or not. Just that alone will surely anger him to no end. Heh.

We have a product division in another manufacturing site nearby called Lightwave. They have been hiring like mad from within the company over the past six months. I'll begin my search for a new job there. In the meantime I'm going to mess with Potatohead some more. I'm going to push his buttons, enough for him to be sick of me but not enough for him to be able to fire me. Perhaps that will be a fine line to cross and tempt fate with. However if he gets a call from another department informing him they are going to hire me, I want him to be extremely happy that I will be out of his hair for good.

Looks like I win, Potatohead loses.

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Coffee Talk Sideshow

As I've already mentioned before, we have far too many meetings on a daily basis here at Bill and Dave's company. One of the methods upper management types like to use for communicating company propaganda is called a Coffee Talk. Generally a Coffee Talk is an hour long corporate spin session. To bait us into attending these gigs management usually serves up cookies and really shitty gas station coffee. When I first started working here I went to Coffee Talks because I was lead to believe it was mandatory to attend them.

I noticed a few trends about the corporate talking heads after my first year or so on the job. One, they never talked about anything that directly related to my job. It was all too general and vague. Two, when a manager told us about a new direction they were taking our business in or a decision that was going to be implemented company-wide, by the time anything happened many months later their story might have changed more than a half dozen times. The final outcome was almost always radically different from the bullshit they fed us in Coffee Talks. So I decided upper managers have close to zero credibility and I stopped going to their meetings. Cafeteria cookies and substandard coffee isn't enough to get me to listen to their crap anymore. Many of our employees flock to Coffee Talks though. Some of them are genuinely gullible so they swallow just about everything that eminates from the mouth of management. Others go there just for the free grub and a paid hour long nap. Coffee Talks are real snoozers.

We had a big turnout last week for a lady from corporate HQ that held a Coffee Talk on site. I never heard of the woman before so it didn't matter to me one bit what the hell she was going to yap about. A few minutes after she stepped up to the podium and began to spew forth with company propaganda at a couple hundred employees, I snuck into the back of the auditorium from the hallway and rifled through their baskets of cookies. My plan was just to grab a couple handfuls of oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip cookies, then head back to the instrument line and munch out. While I was in cookie scavenger mode I spotted Unabomber. He got up from a seat in the audience and walked over to the side of the stage. I got a feeling he was about to do something very, very stupid. So I stuck around and observed.

Unabomber began to motion with his arms at the speaker in an attempt to get her attention. When she saw the jerk she left the microphone and walked over towards his side of the stage. That's when he unloaded on her with both barrels blazing. Unabomber was yelling at her, almost shouting. She received his opinions concerning how messed up the company is, what he thought they should do to change, how much he hated his job, and it went on and on from there. It was kinda funny. If it had been me he was yelling at I would have called security and had his stupid ass hauled off the premises right then and there. Instead, the woman looked confused and took the beating. What a little trooper. I walked out snickering to myself with a pile of cookies in my hands.

I heard later on the manager lady Unabomber hassled thought the reason he was trying to get her attention was because of a family emergency or something. I guess that's why she had such a perplexed expression on her face when Unabomber began his mentally ill tirade. She got his name from our department manager, apparently. So she knows who he is now but I seriously doubt anyone is going to do anything to him. Like hand him a written reprimand or sit him down for a serious heart to heart talk. It's so strange working here in this environment. You can get away with just about anything and not have to worry about losing your job. For me, watching all this mayhem happen around me is like working in the Twilight Zone.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Squirmy's Advice

I called up Squirmy and asked if he had some time to talk with me about my problems with Potatohead. I don't really care much for Squirmy but I do trust him enough to help me out in this situation because I suspect he thinks Potatohead is a loser. This afternoon we took a walk outside and I filled Squirmy in on all the bullshit that has been going on in the area since Garden Tool was moved downstairs to Sources. He didn't seem surprised, he heard through the management grapevine that Potatohead has been causing friction and personality conflicts on almost every product line he's been assigned to. After I gave Squirmy the lowdown I asked him what he thought I should do.

He said, "Put in a call to Master MC's secretary and schedule an appointment with her to see him. Talk to him directly about this and make sure you tell him that you have been trying to work out your problems with Potatohead, but you haven't had anything positive happen as a result. Don't make accusations. Just tell him the facts and get to the point that you want out of there. He's pretty receptive to situations like this if you go about it the right way." Master MC is our department manager. I don't know him well, but I have heard he is fair and open minded. Most people here seem to like him. I thanked Squirmy for his opinion and split.

Cool. I can do that. I'll make an appointment and see what happens next. In the meantime I'm going to act slightly more abrasive towards Potatohead when he messes with me. I want him to want me out of his product line if and when his boss allows me to make a move.

Monday, October 17, 2005

Open Door Policy

My daily conflicts with Potatohead have gone on for months. Recently I began writing everything down in a log book detailing the nature of our arguments and what the outcome of them has been. I thought at some point it might be a good thing to have documented for a few reasons. To have verifyable evidence that Potatohead is totally incompetent as a supervisor. To show he has been going out of his way to make my life here at work unpleasant as he possibly can. And to have either myself or him removed from the area. What I'm thinking is to try and make a lateral move out of here to another department. I'll leave Potatohead behind to rot and hopefully derail his career in the process.

In my current position it's only a matter of time before Potatohead sabotages my employee reviews which will result in my ranking being dropped. Then I won't be able to receive a merit wage increase. It's also very likely he will fabricate some excuse to fire me. It's close, I can feel it. Because I don't have a technical degree in electronics I can't get promoted off of our line into a higher paying job. No one in management can stop an employee from taking a promotion in another part of the company if and when a promotion is offered. That's the route a bunch of people here have taken to escape Potatohead. Promotions. He couldn't stop them from leaving and I know it infuriated him. I don't have that option, the only way out is a lateral move, which management generally doesn't allow unless there is a serious need. Lateral moves are like when a person in an assembly job leaves the line to go to some other department as an assembler in a similar capacity. If an assembler got a job as a technician, that would be a huge step up so no one in management would be able to obstruct it.

We've lost good people thanks to Potatohead. It's seriously crippled our ability to get boxes shipped out of here on schedule.

I need a lateral move out of here as soon as possible. After careful thought, I think I can force a lateral move. But it's going to be very risky and that's where my little Potatohead journal is going to come in handy. If I can present my problems with Potatohead to upper management in a professional way, I might be able to convince them to move me into another department.

Bill and Dave came up with a number of company policies that were pure genius. One of those corporate ideas they invented is simply called "The Open Door Policy". The Open Door Policy works on a variety of levels, no managers here regardless of how high up they are in the food chain get to have an office with a door they can shut. Bill and Dave did have real offices, but they made a point to always leave their office doors wide open. This was supposed to create an atmosphere and a culture that felt like managers in the company are approachable and open to discourse with any employee. On another level The Open Door Policy allows employees to approach managers at any time to bring up personal job-related greivances or concerns without fear of adverse consequences or reprisals from management.

That's the theory of Open Door Policy. In reality just about every case I can think of where one of my coworkers has invoked the Open Door, they've been blackballed or marked by elements of their management chain as troublemakers. Some supervisors who have been involved with those incidents have been quite vindictive. I don't think I've ever seen Open Door Policy work the way it's supposed to around here. But, those employees generally didn't use The Open Door appropriately. They went into conference room meetings with mid-level managers making half crazed complaints against so-and-so or such-and-such while yelling like lunatics. No wonder things backfired so badly.

Before I do anything I'm going to talk with someone in management off the record and get their advice on how to handle this.

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Customers Don't Matter


Things around here have been extra stressful lately. I wear a bunch of hats on my production line, everything from assembly to rework and repair, mechanical inspection, electrical inspection, dealing with warranty units from the field, and helping other lines when they fall behind their production schedules. The techs use me for all the worst case rework jobs. I'm the blue collar grease monkey they wheel fucked up boxes to and expect fast turn-around. Most of them only troubleshoot a failing unit down so far and when they've narrowed the problem to a section of the box I get to do all the rewiring and replacement of various electronics. Some of them prefer to do their own rework which is good, but most of them don't. They take the lazy way out.

Sometimes I damn near have to gut close to a hundred pounds of electronics out of a box to get to where the problem lies. It's challenging and tedious work all at the same time. I don't mind. In fact, sometimes I volunteer to take the worst of the worst cases because I always seem to learn more about our instruments in the process. While I'm working like that I'm constantly looking for misloaded components on the PC boards, or other random damage. If I find any I power through it by replacing an IC or repairing a cooked wire. I never say much to anybody about that stuff, I just do it and move on.

What I don't dig is while I'm mired knee deep in new production that has to get out the door and dog piled with broke-dick boxes, I don't like being fucked with by my supervisor. My boss, Potatohead, has pretty much unofficially declared me Public Enemy No.1 so he's been getting in my face and trying to jack me up as often as he can. I already have enough shit around here to worry about and stress over without Potatohead adding himself to the mix. Keeps me on my toes though, believe me. Thankfully he isn't too bright. I attempt to stay a few steps ahead of him regardless.

I try to treat customers really well who have sent their boxes under warranty back to the factory for repair. The last step in our process is what we call MI/EI which stands for Mechanical Inspection/Electrical Inspection. Some employees refer to this job as "Button Up". We go through the unit with a fine tooth comb looking for any missing hardware, damaged parts, chewed up wiring, and anything else out of the ordinary. There's a final battery of electrical tests we perform to verify basic functionality of the box, and then we close it up. All the cosmetic stuff like outer instrument covers, bottom and rear feet, and side strap handles are installed. Then we inspect the unit for any cosmetic damage like chipped paint or dirt smudges and fix them. After the calibration certificate is complete and all the shipping documents are in order the box is ready to go.

With warranty boxes I have a personal policy of trying to make a customer's test instrument look like new again before we ship it back to them in good working order. I maintain a secret stash full of scrap but useable parts that I will give to customers when the hardware on their unit is screwed up. Little stuff, like when their instrument has a busted side strap handle or a snapped rack mount ear, if I happen to have a better one in my scrap box, I give it to them free of charge. I also clean smudges and crap off the covers and front panel displays and repaint any surfaces that have been scraped down to bare metal. It doesn't take me but a few extra minutes of my time to do stuff like that and it costs our company practically nothing but a few drops of touch up paint, a few drops of isopropyl alcohol, and a couple scrap parts at most. This is the way I have been operating for the last couple of years here and nobody has complained about it. Until now.

Potatohead got into yet another fight with me while I was working on a customer's $70K box that came in from the field for repair. He saw me cleaning up the unit and repainting some damage on the front panel so he came over to where I was working and questioned what I was doing. It was pretty obvious, but he didn't get it. I explained to him my policies on warranty boxes which seem reasonable to me. He brawled me right there on the spot. Potatohead told me to stop doing that kind of work on customer boxes and he informed me there was some new corporate policy that came down from the top recently about not making cosmetic repairs anymore for warranty boxes. That's fucked up. I mean, how would you feel if you spent fifty thousand dollars on an item, the shit breaks on you under warranty so you send it to the manufacturer for a repair and when you finally get it back, it's dirty with coffee stains and fingerprint smudges and there's paint chips in it. I know how I'd feel about that. It would kinda piss me off.

How can they justify this? Isn't the customer important anymore? Apparently not as much as it used to be. So I argued with Potatohead about it to the point of him threatening to fire me. Unbelieveable. I told him what he wanted to hear just to make him go away then I continued to fix up the warranty box like I normally do. I guess from now on I'm going to continue working like this but on the sly. I simply can't do anything less than what I think is required to keep customers happy with our repair services.

Trenchcoat And A Briefcase

I was talking to Paul the other day over in the Precision Group Test area. He mentioned some pretty funny, and some very disturbing things about Unabomber. It's no newsflash that just about everyone in the department now hates Unabomber with a passion, but one of the other electronic technicians on their line is starting to play practical jokes on the bastard. He said Barley has been collecting subscription cards for useless magazines and signing Unabomber up for them. Heh. I don't know if Barley somehow got the asshole's home address or not, but that was cool if he's actually going through with it.

What bothers me is Paul said last night Unabomber stormed into the area in an especially foul mood. He was cursing out loud and mumbling shit under his breath. He came in, sat down at a test bench wearing a jet black trenchcoat saying shit like, "Motherfuckers." Paul looked up from what he was working on to catch Unabomber mumble, "I wish I had a bigger briefcase!" The way he made the comment caused Paul to feel like the guy wasn't complaining about running out of room in his case for paperwork, it was more like he was making a veiled threat to anyone within earshot about carrying a bomb in to work. Unabomber has some serious fucking problems, man. I'm gonna avoid him like the plague from now on.

Home Again


This trip left me with the feeling I still need another day off all to myself before going back to work. I'm tired.

I had alot of notions rolling around in my mind about what it was going to be like in Mexico. I'd assumed everything was filthy and destroyed. Turned out many of the neighborhoods were just as clean and quiet as the neighborhoods where I live. Houses there were meticulously maintained and plenty of people in Mexico had brand new American made cars to drive. I expected every vehicle on the street down South would look like cars from the film "Road Warrior". I did see some crazy shit cruising around on the road, but nothing that far gone. Tijuana had some of the worst filth- and stink I've ever smelled in my life. I think that was pretty close to what I imagined it would be like. Many other things surprised me. I'd like to go back to Mexico sometime, go further South, far away from the US border. The whole time we were there everything was paid for in American dollars. I'd like to see pesos buying my meals and souveniers instead of the old familiar greenbacks. I think I only got a small glimpse of what Mexico is really like.

While we were still in San Diego Autumn bought me a really stylin' bowling shirt, black with a single red stripe on either side of the buttons. She picked it out for me at a goofy little shop in a section of San Diego called Hillcrest. We also went to see a collection of World War Two memorabilia that was on loan from Russia. Most of it was captured by the Russians as they pounded their way into Germany. Amazing amounts of captured Nazi gear and weapons were on display behind plate glass. They even had partial aircraft in the collection, and when I say partial I mean it because it appeared the shit had been shot out of the sky. Of particular interest to me was getting to see the famed MP44 up close and personal. Right after the war ended a Russian engineer took the MP44 design and re-worked it from the ground up to create what we know today as the AK-47. I was surprised how different, and yet oddly familiar the MP44 was when I saw one behind glass in a cabinet with an alarm attatched to it. Guess there was no stealing of vintage weapons, darn it.

Autumn studied Russian and spent some time living there while working towards her degree. She told me how much the Russians seem to love museums and how they happen to have a museum for just about anything you can think of. Once she got talking about how they have a museum of bread. I laughed at her like that was the stupidest thing I had ever heard in my life. Museum of bread, hah! She had to be making that junk up. Our conversation about it was months before coming to see the WWII display in San Diego. While we were wandering through the self-guided tour, Autumn motioned me over to an uninteresting looking pedestal enclosed with glass which had a single black brick under a track light. I walked over to it and read the card explaining what it was. It said the nasty brown-black brick was a loaf of bread made by starving Russians during the 900 day siege of Leningrad. They ran out of food supplies while the Nazis were trying to crush their city, so the Russians used wallpaper glue, sawdust, and a little flour to make loaves of bread like the one sitting in front of me. It looked like it would taste awful. To top it all off, the end of the information card said that this item was on loan from the Museum of Bread.

Next time, I'll believe Autumn when she tells me some random fact about Russia. She knows her stuff. When we left the Russian WWII museum attraction we passed by a bum with no arms who was panhandling in the park. He played a guitar with his feet. He was pretty good too. I didn't give him any money though 'cause I was pretty much broke by then...

Friday, October 14, 2005

Gassing The Car

The drive back to San Diego was much faster than our trip to Ensenada, and it was much more pleasant. As evening approached Q rolled up the windows in the car because all of us were getting cold. That's when my enchilada lunch decided to wreck havoc with my guts. Perfect timing, unfortunately. The enchiladas were ripping me up. I tried to be as stealthy as possible while practically crapping my pants. Q noticed one of us was polluting the air inside the car almost instantly after each silent gas cloud emerged. Guess his sense of smell is pretty good, his nose must work better than the rest of his faculties.

He didn't say anything at first. He rolled his window down just about an inch or so to clear out his airspace. Like clockwork as soon as he rolled his driver's side window back up again, I'd rip another silent stinker. Then back down his window went. It was like a little game between the two of us. This cycle repeated itself a half dozen times without anyone saying a word. Q eventually reached a breaking point with my stench and he yelled out in a rage, "WHO SHIT IN MY CAR!" Both Autumn and her stepmother were in shock that Q had asked such a thing, partially because they thought it was crude of him and partially because it startled all of us. I kinda jumped in my seat he was so loud. Meekly, I rasied my hand and said, "I, uh. I did, sir." Really I didn't care about gassing out Q and the rest of the vehicle's occupants. I couldn't help it. He kept complaining about it though and eventually Autumn and Annoying Stepmother snapped at him to shut up about it already.

At the California border with Mexico we got snagged in bumper to bumper traffic. Q had been expecting it. He said weekends are always a mess trying to get back across to San Diego. I got slightly twitchy about the contraband we were bringing back with us. Namely the switchblade and three sets of brass knuckles Autumn and I bought. Q was cool about it though. He had no problem with us becoming small-time smugglers of what he considered to be stupid shit. When it was our turn with the US border guards Q told them we bought a watch and one leather handbag, or something like that. We were waived through the border and back on the highway for the hotel and a good night's sleep.

Tourist Trap


Some jerk was having his wedding reception that night at the resort. It kept us from being fed dinner for hours because most of the hotel's employees and all of their kitchen staff were being overwhelmed by the wedding party. I drank bottle after bottle of Negra Modelo, which is one of my favorite dark beers. Autumn and I waited, sitting patiently at a table in what was probably the resort's cafeteria. The wedding group had seized all of the main dining area. I peeked through a doorway to see what was going on in there and I spied hundreds of people in tuxedos and expensive formal dresses having a wonderful time. Meanwhile we were sitting in a cold, utilitarian style room, quietly starving thanks to them. Fuckers. By the time we were finally served some dinner Annoying stepmom and Q had discovered our table and seated themselves with us. No escape. There wasn't much on Autumn's or my plates, for me it was a mere inadequate snack. I have to say the food was decent though. I wanted much more of it in my belly.

The next day Q and his wife were up early and gone to go see some rock formation on the coast that as waves crashed into it caused a geyser. Neither Autumn or I were too interested in going along so we stayed behind and slept in. When we finally hauled ourselves out of bed we found our way to the dining hall and had one of the best meals of our entire trip. The resort had set up one of those serve yourself all you can eat deals with all kinds of tasty Mexican dishes. I got up from the table for seconds and thirds and fourths. It was so good. After both of us were quite satiated with food it was time to go back out past the pool for a long walk on the beach together.

I have never seen such pure white sand with so much flakes of gold stuff in it. Each wave that rolled in seemed to be made of liquid gold in the sunlight. Truly beautiful. I'm sure it was something non-precious, like mica, but it was so pretty to look at in bright daylight. Autumn took a couple pictures of it. The sand was soft to walk barefoot in. It felt warm and nice. I wished we had more time to stay there and that we were alone, instead of with her folks. We were going to have to leave for home in a few hours.

The rest of the time we spent in Ensenada was horribly rushed. When Q returned from the coast later that afternoon he took us to the tourist trap part of town because all of us wanted to find some junk trinkets and souveniers to bring back. Q got us lost again though, and we had to stop at a small run-down shopping center to ask where the chump section of town was located. While we were there he decided to hit a drug store and buy a bulk package of nicotine patches. He could get them in Mexico over-the-counter in a stronger doseage than you can in the States.

I wanted a real switchblade and some good brass knuckles. Q brought me a crude but rowdy set of brass knuckles he had picked up on their coastal day trip. It set me back ten bucks. I was a little disappointed in his choice of skull buster because they were so funky looking. The knuckles he handed me were cast out of some low grade metal and spray painted gold. I anticipated buying polished, high quality brass knuckles. It wasn't until much later I realized the shrewd wisdom of Q's purchase for me. He really knew what he was doing. Autumn's brother had put in a request for brass knuckles too. Autumn hoped to find some Oaxacan animals and Day of the Dead figurines. Q and Annoying Stepmother were also after some goodies, but I already forgot what they desired to find. After we made it to the tourist trap part of Ensenada and parked the car we split up in two groups and went our separate ways. We planned to meet up at four in the afternoon. That gave us plenty of time for lunch and to scrounge around for trinkets and contraband.

Autumn was so cool to me that afternoon as we window shopped. By this time in our trip I was pathetically broke. She not only fronted me the dough to get a nice Italian switchblade, but she also gave me some money to buy Senor 23 a hand carved marble pipe, and she bought me an entire figurine skeleton mariachi band for Day of the Dead. She spent over a hundred dollars at one particular shop on all sorts of things. The Mexican shop owners were a married couple and they were amusing to watch her barter with. When Autumn was trying to decide what kind of carved Oaxacan animal to buy the shopkeepers kept trying to make extremely silly deals wth her. Autumn would say how much she liked an Oaxacan figurine carved in the shape of a deer and the shop owner would say something like, "You have to buy the one next to it as well since it's a female and you can't take the male one away from it." Shit like that. They were doing everything they could to work more cash out of her.

When I was looking at a shelf full of little dead mariachi skeletons holding different trumpets and acoustic guitars Autumn noticed me eyeballing them and she asked me if I wanted one. I said sure, so I picked out a good one and held it in my hand. The pesky but amusing merchant was like, "No man! You can't break up the band! You gotta take them all!" So Autumn bought me a whole band of dead mariachi guys.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Hotel Arrival

When we pulled up to the lobby at the resort it was near sunset. I mentioned aloud that the first thing I wanted to do was find a bathroom. Annoying stepmom parked the car, got out, opened my door and said in a sing-song voice, "You go run and go potty." She spoke to me as if I was one of her grandchildren. I wanted so badly to slap the stupid out of her but my bladder demanded attention first. There is nothing more satisfying in the whole damn world than relieving bladder pain by pissing every last drop out especially after being trapped in a car for the better part of a day.

The resort hotel appeared only half built and occupied. Branching out in two directions from the main lobby there was one whole wing that had been mostly constructed and then left abandoned to rot. It became a home for hundreds of birds. On the way to Ensenada I saw this sort of thing many times. Seemed like people began construction on a home or a business and then for whatever reason never finished it. These places were left to crumble, modern day ruins that made me feel like everyone around had mysteriously and suddenly died. I was fascinated by it.

After Autumn and I checked in and got a room key, we threw our stuff on the floor of our room and made a beeline for the bar. We both needed a drink in a serious way. Myself especially. Once each of us had grabbed an adult beverage we walked through the resort complex past the inviting swimming pool and wandered on to discover soft white sand leading down to the beach. By the time we made it to the water the sun was fading fast over the ocean's horizon. I wanted to see the sunset if we had enough time and we just barely caught it, bright red orange dissolving into sky and shimmering in the sea. Autumn seemed to be pleased with me that I suggested we hit the beach together for a romantic moment. It's little things like that she loves, and I'm so oblivious to it most of the time.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Ensenada, Mexico

As we entered the outskirts of Ensenada, Autumn's stepmother decided to run red lights. The first one we should have stopped at was manned by two policemen. One of them was the veteran, the other a rookie. The veteran policeman was in the process of training his new recruit how to change the traffic light from green, to yellow, to red. Both of them were looking intently at a small box affixed to the side of a weather-beaten dull grey concrete traffic pole and it became obvious to me the signal was being operated manually rather than on an automatic timer. No matter, that was the first red light we ploughed through. I gripped my seat on either side of my legs with anger. This woman was going to get us into a fat, juicy, broadside wreck. We'd end up seriously injured or killed thanks to her stupidity. When she stopped at a green light and then proceeded to run a third red light, I snapped.

I was sitting right behind her. I reached up around either side of the driver's head rest with both hands so I could grab her neck and choke the living shit out of her. I was just about to hit paydirt at the last second when Autumn turned her head to look in my direction. Without a sound she lunged at my wrists and forcefully pulled my arms back down towards my lap. Q hadn't noticed a thing inside the car. He was busy paying attention to the mess out on various streets of Ensenada. The dingbat behind the wheel didn't seem to notice two hands grasping for her throat, either.

We had been on the road for six hours. All I wanted to do was get to the resort we were staying at and take a big old leak, then get some grub. And hopefully spend the rest of the evening drunk on the beach with Autumn. That was all I wanted. It didn't seem like a whole lot to be asking of the world and at the same time I realized it didn't appear what I wanted to happen was going to take place anytime soon. Q was acting as co-pilot and navigator during our journey and he decided he couldn't remember how to get to the resort we were booked into. He got some directions and a crummy map from a travel agent he did business with but the directions were so vague that he got us a little bit lost.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Roadtrip To Ensenada

Autumn and I talked about trying to fit in a quick trip to Mexico while we were on vacation in San Diego. We thought about going by ourselves, but it would have been better if we could con Q into being our South of the border guide. He went to Tijuana often for everything from simple shopping to having his teeth fixed. He spoke some Spanish and I felt if he took us we would probably get into a lot less trouble. This was correct thinking to a point, but I didn't take into account what it would be like trapped in a car for hours with Autumn's stepmother.

Q was cool with the idea of going to Ensenada for a weekend. Autumn decided it would be best if her stepmother drove the car because Q was blind in one eye, and deaf in the other ear. His driving was currently a little below par so Autumn was less nervous about her stepmom being behind the wheel. I wasn't complaining, it was nice of them to agree to drive us there and back. Before leaving town we had to stop at a drive-thru Mexican auto insurance place and get insured for two days worth of travelling. That seemed strange to me but Q said it had to be done. After that was paid for, we were on the road and crossing the border.

First we passed by the Northern end of Tijuana on the freeway. I have never smelled such putrid air before in my life. I mean, it was awful. The air reeked of raw sewage mixed with the pungent stink of death. I looked out onto the hillsides leading away from Tijuana proper to see shanty towns. Dwellings were built out of trash, anything people could find. I felt depressed as our car passed through and those garbage towns faded from view.

We stopped for lunch in a tiny coastal town that was only a couple blocks long and wide with just a few solid two story buildings. The roads leading around each block were dirt, there was no pavement at all. There were concrete or wooden sidewalks in front of most buildings, but those abruptly ended at the edge of each structure as if they were a part of the building or house themselves. Some of them had a gap of a few feet between each place and I had to step up or down to get a foothold. None of them seemed to be at the same level as the previous one. As the four of us stretched our legs we were hassled by doormen trying to get us to come into their restaurant. Some of these guys were using a loud in-your-face kind of approach that pissed me off. It reminded me of pushy strip club doormen, in a way. Q and Autumn's stepmom wanted to have lobster with lunch so we ended up going into a joint that claimed they had the best lobster in town. That was amusing since there was only one other establishment there claiming the same thing. We ate, and I hoped I wouldn't get sick. During our meal Q thought it would be cool to have the house mariachi band play a serenade for his wife, which they did. Then we finished our meal and continued South on a coastal highway to Ensenada.

The road we were on was a toll freeway, every so many miles we had to stop at a checkpoint and hand out a few coins to an attendant. One of the toll collection plazas we hit was particularly overwhelmed with traffic and we got caught sitting for twenty minutes before we got clear of the mess. I looked over to the side of the road where about a half dozen Mexican soldiers were combing through a brand new Cadillac sedan. The owner was a white haired overweight American who was wearing an obnoxious hawaiian shirt. He was standing alone many feet away from his car but under the watchful eye of a soldier. The soldier had an M16 slung over his shoulder with the muzzle end of the rifle pointing towards the ground. He was so short that the weapon's barrel was almost scraping against the pavement. That made me laugh.

Now it just so happened that on this particular weekend there was a huge bicycle race going on with riders dashing on a course between Tijuana and Ensenada. Thousands of people were participating in the race and Mexican police had blocked off one of the two highway lanes leading into Ensenada for the exclusive use of cyclists. This caused a massive traffic jam which backed up cars for miles. We were stuck in stop and go mayhem for hours. It fully sucked. That was when Autumn's dingbat stepmom decided to take matters into her own hands and truly become the Ugly American.

She began cutting out of the single open lane to drive on the shoulder into the cyclists' race lane, then attempting to cut back into traffic. To me she didn't seem to have any plan in mind, she cut in and out of both lanes totally at random. As she tried to get back into the traffic lane she would force her way between vehicles which made Mexican drivers ultra-angry. The first few times she pulled that crap I politely asked her not to but she went ahead and continued doing it anyway. I started giving her some lip about it. Still, she didn't listen to me and then things started getting sketchy. We narrowly missed getting into numerous fender bender accidents and each time Mexican drivers came unglued with rage at her. They were shouting out their windows at us, flipping us off and tried to keep her from getting back into the lane. It was totally fucked. I'm surprised nobody got out of their cars to kill us all.

Monday, October 10, 2005

Dick's Last Resort

Before we left the east bay to go on our San Diego trip, there was a bar Autumn told me about that she really wanted to go to, no matter what. It was located in the Gas Lamp district, which is really nothing more than a tourist trap collection of overpriced shops and restaurants. The place Autumn wanted to go to was a huge bar called Dick's Last Resort. She liked packs of matches Dick's gave away, and she wanted a bunch more of them. I think she was running low on them around her apartment. Each pack of matches had a full color vintage photo from the 1950s or 60s of a hot topless bombshell broad showing off her rack. And let me tell you I have never seen finer vintage racks on matches or women anywhere.

When we got to Dick's and walked through the front doors, I cringed at what I saw inside. The whole place was packed with drunk frat-boys and off duty military dolts. Every single one of them was out of control. Shit was all over the floor. Everyone was being obnoxious and rowdy. People were throwing food. Hanging from the ceiling behind the bar there were dozens of bras. I could barely hear anything Autumn was saying to me thanks to the shitty local band playing corny 70s and 80s covers of cock rock, badly. Fifty well stewed drunkards were bouncing off each other on the dancefloor.

Autumn and I sat at the bar and got a couple of beers while we observed the mess and tried to take it all in. She discreetly pointed out a loser that waited for any woman to walk within ten feet of him and then do his sexy dance for her as she passed by. After a few girls passed him by pointing to their friends and laughing, he started taking off his clothes while doing the sexy dance. By then a small crowd of people stopped to stand around watching the idiot make a fool of himself.

The bar had small buckets placed here and there filled to the brim with the books of matches Autumn so desperately wanted. Plenty of different ones to choose from as I don't think I saw any duplicates with the same badass chick on the cover. Both of us greedily grabbed handfuls of them and loaded our pockets up. It had to be done. When Autumn decided we had nabbed enough books of matches, we got up and left to head back to the hotel. After one beer a piece we'd had enough of the mayhem and noise at Dick's Last Resort.

Saturday, October 08, 2005

Lifeguards Hate Me

One afternoon Autumn and I went with her annoying stepmother to Pacific Beach. We were planning on doing some boogie boarding in the surf. I hadn't done anything like that since I was a kid so it sounded like fun. The first and last time I boogie boarded some waves was when I was in grade school. I went with a bunch of kids from school on a day trip out to the coast. I remember it wasn't much fun once we got into the water because around where I live the ocean is pretty god damned cold. On one of my first attempts to catch a wave I got slammed into the sand belly first and my swim trunks scooped up a nice collection of rocks, driftwood, and sand. All the debris collected around my nuts as soon as I stood up. I was unhappy. I had to get all that junk out of there but I didn't want anyone to see me digging around in my shorts like a maniac and assume I was pulling on myself, so I tried to stay in the freezing cold surf while emptying the unwanted cargo from my crotch. Late that afternoon when I got home the last of the rocks landed on my bathroom floor. I made up my mind never to try boogie boarding again.

The water at Pacific Beach was cold. Too cold. I figured it would be warm like a heated swimming pool since we were so far South. Maybe it gets warmer here during the summer, I don't know, but it sure wasn't all that great in April. Autumn and I hit the water anyway and swam out on our boards far enough to get some unwanted attention from the lifeguard tower back on the beach. Someone began yelling at us over a shitty PA system. Neither Autumn or I could understand a word the lifeguards were shouting at us so we decided to ignore them. After all, we weren't doing anything wrong and we didn't seem to be in any sort of danger. I thought they must have been high.

Apparently, lifeguards expect action out of people they're yelling at. Since neither one of us responded to their undecipherable verbal assault they sent out an orange wagon of hate to give us the message up front, whatever that message was I had no idea. Looking back at the small figures on the beach I saw Autumn's stepmother walk over to the driver's side of the orange wagon and talk to the person behind the wheel. At that point I decided maybe we had better go back and find out what they wanted. I swam back toward the beach and Autumn was right beside me. When we finally got to dry land I stood up and shouted to Autumn's stepmother, "What are they squeaking about?" This scored me zero points with the lifeguards in the orange vehicle. They didn't want to talk to me.

Autumn's stepmom explained to the lifeguards that we were dumbshits from out of town. The reason they freaked out was because we swam too far out from the beach and went into a cross-current rip tide area. They also said we got too close to a pier and when they first started yelling at us we got off our boards, which to lifeguards is some sort of signal that you're in trouble. So they got excited. After publicly shaming us, they drove down the beach to their observation tower. I have to admit, I was embarrassed. Everyone on the beach knew we were chumps and they were staring at us. I wanted to somehow melt into the crowd of people and beach towels further away from the scene so I could hide from the public slap on the wrist we had received.

Annoying Stepmother

Q drove us to a rental car agency where Autumn had reserved a sedan of some sort at a really cheap rate. It was a brand new Japanese make in a pretty mettallic burgundy color, and it had just about every creature comfort we could possibly want. Neither one of us expected that so we were happily surprised. I think we both thought we were going to get some beater of a car that would break down at the first opportunity it got. I was impressed with the way Autumn figured out the car rental and getting us reasonably priced plane tickets. She did a good job.

From the rental car agency we followed her Dad on the freeway out of San Diego proper to Mira Mesa, which is where he lived. Q had booked us into a hotel for the first few days of our stay and he even paid for the room. That was very generous of him. When we checked in at the hotel and got up to see the room we were again pleasantly surprised. The place was plush. VCR and TV in every room, king sized bed, comfy couch in the livingroom, and it even had a little kitchen. Things on the trip were looking like they were off to a great start. Until I met Autumn's step-mom, that is.

Q had remarried just a few months earlier to a pampered, spoiled, blonde haired woman. The story I got on her life was that she had never worked at a job until recently, like in the last couple of years or so. She had spent the majority of her years at home doing superficial, frivolous things. Autumn's step mom was your stereotypical kept woman married to well-off men which allowed her to be a dingbat housewife for decades. So, she didn't strike me as being a very interesting person to talk to. She definetly wasn't street smart. Her voice irritated me every time she opened her mouth. It was too dainty and high-pitched for my liking, and once she started jaw-jacking about something there was no end to it.

Over the next few days we spent our time doing just about everything in the company of Q and his wife. We ate almost every meal with them, went to Pacific Beach with them, and got stuck running their errands around town. Autumn's stepmother dragged us to meet a bunch of her relatives. It seemed like Autumn wasn't getting a chance to spend any time alone with her Dad, and I wasn't getting any time to spend alone with my girlfriend. The stepmother really was the problem. She kept organizing activities and inviting everyone she knew along. For example, one night she brought along one of her grandchildren to dinner, a nine year old girl that could not stop fidgeting and wouldn't shut up, either. This annoying little girl was so squeaky it reminded me of someone dragging their fingernails across a chalkboard. Nothing but pure noise came out of such a tiny girl. Ugh.

Friday, October 07, 2005

San Diego Vacation

Autumn and I took a trip to San Diego for about ten days, and we were able to squeeze one weekend of that time into a fast expedition to Ensenada, Mexico. Our journey began in the east bay. There's a BART station very close to Autumn's apartment so we walked there in the morning and caught a train to the Oakland airport. BART doesn't actually go to the airport itself, you have to grab a shuttle bus from BART at the station closest to the airport which is no big deal. My glasses broke while we were riding on the shuttle bus. One of the two screws holding the frame together completely backed off allowing a lens to pop out and bounce off the floor. I was sad.

We were flying on Southwest Airlines. I hate flying. Makes me nervous to be trapped inside an aluminum sausage along with a hundred strangers and their pointless conversations. During a flight my mind always wanders to the what-ifs of destruction no matter how hard I try not to think about it. You know, like what if there's a malfunction of some sort in the airplane. What if a wing falls off at ten thousand feet? What if the pilot just huffed a bunch of gasoline fumes and decides to flip out? That kinda crap.

Fortunately for me the flight to San Diego was quick and dirty. As soon as we were back on the ground I was happy to be under the power of my own two feet. We were supposed to be meeting Autumn's father, Q, somewhere in the terminal but we weren't sure where exactly. It's those little details that seem to fall through the cracks when dealing with Q. So the first priority was to get our luggage. Autumn led the way like a hound hot on the trail of a fox. She had already been here on a few previous trips to see her Dad so she knew the layout of the terminal well enough. When my intrepid airport terminal guide discovered the baggage pickup I kept a close eye on the conveyor belts coughing up people's suitcases and sacks looking for something that resembled items that might belong to us. Autumn ran off to look for a human that resembled her father.

Just about the same moment I snagged our bags from the shiny merry-go-round Autumn was captured by her Dad. Q was wearing an obnoxiously overbright colored hawaiian shirt. I mean, that shirt was so loud you could hear it coming down the block. Damn. It was like something you'd see on an American tourist who mistakenly was trying too hard to blend in with the locals at some tropical destination. He also wore a straw hat, white pants, and sandals. One of his ears was pierced with a gold post and a diamond. His manner was soft spoken and limp-wristed. I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was that made me feel a little uncomfortable about him. I was just along for the ride on this trip anyway so I decided to hang back and lay low. Autumn was supposed to be spending quality time with her family here and I was a third wheel.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Unabomber

We got another new technician on swingshift over in the Precision Group. He's an older guy with poor taste in attire and he's got a really bad attitude. I can't understand how people like him keep getting through the interview process and end up hired.

His name is Brian. What I've heard about him so far is that he used to be a pizza delivery guy until just a few years ago. He's got to be in his late fourties to early fiftties now, so if he was a pizza guy that whole time we really scored another winner here. He likes to wear his button up collar shirts open so he can show off his tacky gold plated necklace and his chest fur. Seems as he's wandering around in the hallways he's got the cool-guy-walk down pat. It's so stupid it makes me laugh every time I see him. To top it all off he likes to wear those tacky ass 1970s aviator sunglasses that were popular with cops back then.

This past week Brian has managed to get in yelling matches with Meth almost every night. The way it starts out is Brian will come into the test area to start his shift and begin whining that someone took "his" tools. Problem is, he doesn't have any personal tools. No one over there does. It's all communal property and when you need stuff to do your job, you just take it. Everybody is fine with the arrangement and that's the way it's been for a long time in their test area. Brian doesn't dig it so he gets angry and complains out loud to everybody within earshot and he won't shut up. So Meth goes on the offensive and lights the guy up like a red traffic signal. Then they brawl on and off over the next couple of hours. Brian is such a loser I've even gotten in on the action a little bit.

Yesterday Brian power-walked through the test racks looking for "his" wrench or some shit. While he was searching for it he kept bitching about how everyone else was a bunch of lowlife theives. Meth yelled at him which aggrivated the situation and then I decided to lend an assisting hand. After all I do enjoy rockin' the boat. I said to Brian, "Hey. I think I know why you are so frustrated all the time. If I had to sit down to go pee, I'd be angry too!" Oh boy. That really did it. Brian screamed at me and I laughed while walking away. I got the nod of approval from Meth on that one.

We ended up calling Brian The Unabomber, but I'll get into the story behind that later.

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Parking Lot Freak-Out

Man, tonight at work really beat me down. Nothing but busted box after busted box to repair. I need a drink, bad.

Meth was ready to bail out by the time I had put all my tools back in the cabinet and locked them up. We've had nothing but squabbles between our dayshift and swingshift crews over petty mundane shit like stolen ball point pens and torque wrenches so Gary and I decided to get a cabinet with a lock. We both have our own key and at the end of each shift we secure our shit. As a result neither one of us has had a problem with missing items. Anyway, Meth and I grabbed our stuff and began the walk through our building to the parking lot.

We weren't really paying attention to anything. As usual Meth was running off at the mouth about what I didn't know or care. Both of us walked down through the staircase leading to the east side of building one lower. Just as we made the final left turn and walked through double automatic doors into the night air, we both saw Screw Murderer. She was walking in the same direction we were out to the employee parking area in front of building one's lobby carrying her lunchbox and a coat. I'd say she was maybe fourty feet ahead of us. I guess she heard noises from the automatic doors closing behind the two of us and decided to look over her shoulder back in our direction. That's when she freaked out. Screw Murderer screamed. Then she bolted at top speed through the company car parking area. I couldn't believe it. I mean, I don't think I have ever seen a fifty year old Vietnamese woman run that fast. Ever.

Meth and I looked at each other like, what the fuck was THAT about. He hasn't been in any trouble with her since Mr. Mo and him hassled her months ago about eating meat. And I've never had any problems with Screw Murderer. Not personally anyway. In fact, for some strange reason when she talks to me she refers to me as a "good boy" all the time. Whatever. Neither one of us yelled at her or said a damn thing. We didn't make obnoxious faces at her or perform any obscene gestures. We didn't do anything to her. Yet there she was, running for her life in terror away from two electronics geeks.

It just so happened that when we arrived at Meth's car, Screw Murderer was sitting in the back seat of her husband's four door sedan right next to where we were. She didn't look at us even though I'm certain she knew we were there. Her husband seemed oblivious to the fact that his wife just sprinted close to a hundred yards to get away from us. Such a strange thing to see. Meth and I chuckled about it as her husband started the car and they pulled away. Their marriage is so old school that it's kinda sick. Screw Murderer doesn't get to keep any of her pay. Instead it all goes to her husband and he manages every last dollar they have. If we're planning a production line function at a restaurant or something, she has to go ask him for permission to attend and beg for the money. Also, he doesn't allow her to sit in the front seat of their car with him. She has to sit in the back seat no matter what.

Meth lit up a cigarette and told me he had to stop in town for gasoline before we headed to my house. That was cool, I was going to give him some loot for gas anyway. We passed through the front perimeter gate to the factory and made a left to head into town. Two blocks after that we made another left hand turn and ended up smack dab on Screw Murderer's tail. To make matters worse, every turn they made, we followed. I figured she had to be going apeshit in the back seat because she knew what Meth's car looked like. I said, "Dude. This isn't good. If she's completely lost it and going to say something to management tomorrow, like we harassed her, maybe it would be a good idea to at least drive over to the station another way?" Meth looked at me and laughed. "Fuck her." He didn't seem to care.

2.1.1999


Just got back last night from staying over at Autumn's place for a whole week. It was pleasant enough. She had dinner ready for me every night when I got to her apartment after the drive from work. She's such a gem. She suggested I borrow her car each day to make it to work and back to her place. Because she works during the day and commutes into the city on BART she didn't need the car. I ended up going in to work hours earlier than I normally do so I could arrive back at her apartment by eight or nine so we could spend more time together before she disappeared for the night. After she goes to sleep, I'm completely bored. There's nothing to do there, really. I brought a book with me to read until I got sleepy, but I didn't manage to get too far into it. Tuesday night Autumn's new room mate Jove came home and he got me into a conversation about murderers.

Jove is from Arkansas and he's out here studying at the Culinary Institute to become a pastry chef. Autumn placed an ad in Craigslist to rent out her other room and Jove was the guy she liked the most out of everyone who contacted her about it. I was a little concerned about her method of finding a room mate, but whatever. Jove is a slightly on the kooky side but he seems harmless enough. Since he's from Arkansas we got to talking about the Damien Echols case. Some people refer to it as the Robin Hood Hills murders, or the West Memphis Three. HBO did a powerful documentary about the story and since Jove was from Arkansas I was curious how he felt about the case. In his opinion there wasn't enough hard evidence to convict three little boys for multiple homicides. That was my conclusion as well.

I had a great time Saturday with Autumn. We went down Telegraph again and I bought her a shiny color-shifting long sleeve tight top. She absolutely loves shiny mettallic stuff. I've been making fun of her for it while we're walking down the street together. On a sunny day her eye will catch just about every shiny foil gum wrapper and bottlecap lying around. Sparkly things make her eyes glaze over for a second or two and she zones out on it. Doesn't matter if she's right in the middle of saying something. It's really funny. We also stopped in Rasputin's Music and I got her a Diatribe CD. Needed to get her one of those before they're all gone. Since Diatribe broke up I think their CDs will become harder and harder to find.

After wasting away much of the afternoon on Telegraph we went back to her apartment and loafed around until 11:30pm. We went out to see a 1970s John Holmes porno in 3D called "Disco Dolls In Hot Skin." When Autumn first suggested we go see the movie I didn't want to go because I was tired, but at the same time I didn't want to skip it because it's not very often you get to see a vintage porno play in 3D at a movie theater. When it was all over with I really was glad I went. The theater was on University and we got there a little early to ensure we seized good seats. That was wise, the place got packed before midnight. I was amazed at the crowd. There were a few white haired elderly couples that looked cute sitting together eating popcorn and holding hands. Made me laugh just because they were here to see such filth. Quite a few frat boys were in the audience too. Three of them sat right in front of Autumn and I, and they wouldn't shut the fuck up. So annoying.

An usher made an announcement before starting the movie, he told us that due to the age of the film colors in the print had faded, so the 3D effects weren't as visible anymore. Especially if you were sitting at the extreme left or right of the screen. He asked everybody try to scoot in and get into as many of the theater's center row seats as possible. Everyone in the crowd had been issued 1950's style white paper glasses with red and green lenses. Lights went down and then the wackiness commenced. A few scenes made me flinch. One of them was a scene where a bondage chick held a dildo out at the audience, shook it and then slowly twisted it around. It seemed like it was going to smack me right in the forehead. I laughed. The best part was when John Holmes was unzipping his pants. His cock came flying out and the three frat boys sitting in front of me and Autumn squirmed in their seats trying to duck it. God damn, that was hilarious.

Monday, October 03, 2005

1.26.1999

Back at Autumn's apartment in the East Bay. I always think of it as Berkeley, where she's at. There's no defining points between where towns begin and end here anymore. It's all a sprawling mess. From the edge of Oakland heading North you hit Emeryville, Berkeley, Albany, El Cerrito, and to me it's all the same junk.

I'm gonna keep this short tonight because I'm damn tired and I'm depressed about work. At work I've been fighting the good fight against those evil little VCOs but I'm not making much progress. Each pair of new VCOs I build have a 50% fail rate when I test them. They also seem to frequently fail in the instruments even after they've passed the pre-testing and tuning stages. Lately many of them have been coming back from the field for repair, which is further straining our ability to turn them around in a reasonable amount of time. Tonight for example, I got hit with two for repair from a service center plus I had to get a new one built and tested from scratch to go into a dead instrument. It takes me most of an eight hour shift to get a couple sets of them at least up to the pre-testing stage. I ended getting only one out, the other one in the test set failed.

1.4.1999

One thousand rounds of 7.62x39mm showed up at my new house on Thursday. The cost to have it delivered was a measley $124. Buying ammo retail at gun shops or sporting goods stores is straight up robbery. They'll charge me $250 for 1,000 rounds. Phooey. I like buying bulk and having it delivered anyway. It comes to me, I don't go to it. I'm lazy like that. There's only eleven more months 'till doomsday (New Year's 2000) so I'm trying to stockpile as much ammunition for my assault rifles as possible between now and then. Some of my coworkers are loading up on canned food and 55 gallon drums of water. I don't get it. I mean, if the end times are upon us, if the seas boil and the moon bleeds, I'd rather have plenty of surplus Soviet hollowpoint action to waste the undead zombies that were once my neighbors. With bullets I can always get canned goods and water from wherever. Yeah. As Stimpy says, "Loot loot loot, pillage pillage pillage."

I saw Jennifer's car again today. It's funny, but I've been seeing her and that dumb little red Dodge Shadow around town alot lately. I know for sure it's her because she never removed the silver and black ECV sticker I put on her rear window. Today it was parked on Steele Lane in front of this dreary looking house with a beat up Toyota truck parked in the yard. About a week earlier I saw her car parked in front of the Starbuck's on Mendocino across from the Junior College. So I guess she's still the manager there. Wonder what kinds of stupidity she's up to these days.

The last time I saw Jennifer on the road was months ago. It was one of those classic moments straight out of a movie. I was in my 1968 Cougar with Dara, and I saw a black 1968 Cougar coming towards us in the opposite direction. It had to be Jennifer. Sure enough as both our cars met, Jennifer and I made eye contact. We glared at each other. It was so cool.