Friday, April 14, 2017

New respect for the traveling pros

I have a few friends that work on the road all the time, only home on weekends for the most part. I always respected that, as it is a trait I lack. I like being home in the evenings and on weekends. I hate hotels and can never really and truly sleep well in one. I had to travel for work this week. Spent the week in the Dayton area of Ohio training on the new machine. It was very interesting to say the least. We went over grinding threads and non-rounds, being any odd shape. Totally amazing what the machine is capable of. Got to see the many styles of machines Studer makes. Awesome to say the least.
As par usual, my company did manage to purchase an odd configuration on many levels. The boss, who doesn't machine or grind at all, took it upon himself to order the machine in the configuration we need using the information he thought he had. God forbid management involve the lowly worker in important decisions, like what they need or want in a machine.
Our machine uses an older and less often used software pack than the new machines do. Non round is not a really popularly used item, kind of a specialty niche. Our machine has an older and slower version installed, even though it is a brand new $600,000 machine. They wanted to save a few bucks. The more popular up to date software uses offline programming, so I got to learn how to do it through a computer instead of on the controller I use, because the school didn't have one, since it is not popular. So I did learn how to program, sort of. They are very similar, but it will take some playing with to get use to it on the machine. Also, my version doesn't include some of the features that allow you to import and modify DXF files, which I need to do, so I will have to figure out how to accomplish that. Had work send a couple DXF files for us to practice with. They sent some very poor prints that were done in a weird format, not the one my company uses, so we had to waste time redrawing the threads, which are not normal threads, on a cad system so we could actually import them. Wasted countless hours on stuff we didn't buy and trying to use prints that were useless. Very frustrating week. It is going to be fun playing with, but I would have liked it better if they would have paid for the trainer to come to our place and work with us on our machine with our software. It does look like it is going to be very easy to use once I get use to it though. I just wish management would take the input of it's workers into account. Never going to happen though.

I am very glad to be back home. The dog and I are relaxing a bit. I knocked out the lawn work right after I got home to get it out of the way. I can now relax for the weekend. I am going to start packing things I don't need. and stacking in the guest room. I am hoping a house I went through last week will come down on price. I want to be ready for the next house I find. That one may be it if I can get them to drop price. Has a full basement, an acre of land, two car attached garage and a pole barn. It is perfect. Has more bedrooms than I need, but that won't hurt anything. This weekend is holiday weekend and I intend to rest and enjoy a bit of down time.

 Hope to line up financing for house next week. My bank, which is one of the big ones, is about useless. All they could tell me about bridge loans was "most people don't like them". In other words, the kid I was talking to, their mortgage expert, didn't know enough about them and didn't want to find out. I had taken time to do what you had to do in the old days, printed out last few paystubs, brought in last years tax return, etc. He didn't even look at them or run a credit check. Told me best bet was to sell house and then I should be able to buy the other house. He didn't even check my accounts to see how great my credit is or the fact that I have my mortgage and all accounts there, as well as direct deposit of paychecks. That will be changing very soon, and I will be glad to tell them when I close as to why they lost a customer and multiple accounts.

 My subdivision is very popular and houses generally sell within a week or two of listing. I want the bridge loan so I can get the dog out of the old house, as well as a lot of the stuff in the house and garage to make the house look better and less cluttered. With the dog out of the house, they can put a key box on house and show anytime they want without the dog to worry about. I would also like the extra time to move gradually and put stuff away as I move and paint and ready new house as I go rather than trying to work around stuff. Hopefully this will be my last move.

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