A full weekend off

I actually get a full weekend off and have no definitive plans. Awesome. Not sure what I will do yet, but it won't involve an alarm clock for two days. Not suppose to be as nice as last weekend, but it is suppose to be 50's tomorrow and upper 60's for Sunday. I can live with that. Did my errand running after work to get it out of the way. May work on the truck a bit tomorrow. Have a few minor repairs to do. Want to do some work in the garage as well. Be nice to get out of the house a bit and get a little sunshine.
Caught the republican debate. It looked like a three stooges episode. Kept waiting for Trump to poke Rubio in the eye and slap Cruz in the head and holler wise guy. It was a bit entertaining. Kind of a scary pool of turds to try and pick your leader from. Got the Demorats, Killary and Bernie socialist Sanders, or, your pick of the republican reprobates. I have come to the conclusion I am going for Trump. He is entertaining and not a politician. They all suck, big time, but, Obama has lowered the bar on what we expect for someone in the oval office. I figure Trump will build the wall. He doesn't need executive order or congressional support to deal with illegal immigration. He just has to let ICE go back to doing their job unhindered. Hell, congress may start to work together to try and stop Trump. Think of it. Democrats and Republicans working together for a common cause. These are sorry times to live in for sure.

Arghhh

It is in the upper 60's for the weekend, and I am working.  Arghhh.  I did get the Vette out and washed it. Drove it in to work today. One of the guys I work with got his Vette back from the garage and drove in as well. He just got done having a turbo installed along with a lot of other performance upgrades. New tires as well. I am going to go in early tomorrow so hopefully I can get out early enough to enjoy some of the sunshine. I got home from work and took the truck in for it's bath. It is black under all that filth after all. It makes three weekends in a row for work. They say next weekend, they are going to paint the floor at work. Should get me a reprieve from working as I will not paint. The kids can take care of that. Hopefully, next weekend will be nice so I can actually have a two day weekend where I can go out and enjoy the weather.

It is that day of the year again

I hope everyone is prepared for today. A very special day indeed. That is right, new episode of the Walking Dead. Oh, and it is valentines day as well. Happy Walking Dead Day everyone.

A bit more ammo

Hit the other local gun show on the way home yesterday. They didn't have much. Thins it out when they double down on the gun shows. Did pick up some more ammo for the broom handle though. I use to buy ammo at Precision ammo up in Hobart Indiana when I lived up north. They now set up at our local show. They started at the show a couple months back. Talked to him yesterday while buying ammo. He says they did so well, it will be a regular stop. Their website doesn't show all the ammo they actually carry. They had the broomhandle ammo, which is an odd caliber for modern times, as well as ammo for various military calibers not commonly found. I am glad they are coming down now. Saves shipping, or lining up with Og or my brother to get some when I visit up north. Figure I will hit it up again today. I have a ticket to get back in free. Sometimes Sundays bring good deals.

I can breath again

Company did a big management change. We are now part of the corporate division. Means, everyone gets reevaluated and reclassified. They started Monday. A few happy people, most not so happy. You could move up or down the pay scale. Been a long week waiting to see if it was good or bad. I finally got my review in the afternoon. I made top grade of the new scale :) Got a raise and a pep talk of how if I want to go up higher, I can talk about management possibilities. I have about zero interest in a management position. I love what I do. I program and run CNC grinders. I get to work on them, train people. I really enjoy solving problems, figuring out ways to improve machining.  I really have no interest in meetings or having to deal with people. It is still nice to be thought of for further advancement. He did say they are still looking into buying a brand new grinder. Will keep me in mind for it as well. Most of the new container molds are square. The new grinder has the capabilities of grinding non-round components accurately. It costs a whopping 1.4 million bucks, but it would have laser measurement capabilities and is amazing to watch run. It can grind square, oval, round, and off center parts. I have seen videos on youtube of what they can do. I run a couple Kel-varia grinders at present, but they are older and don't do the non-rounds. They do still hold amazingly close tolerances. Everything I grind has to hold a .0002 of an inch tolerance. It is checked on either a height gage , or a CMM and verified. A couple customers tear the molds down when we send them and they will remeasure all critical dimensions, so they have to be right. This will be the second year we put in for money for it. We usually buy new high speed mills and NT's with the allotment though. More machines for less money with greater versatility.

 I did get a new to me CNC universal grinder to play with though. I have finished getting it cleaned up, repainted, and repaired the damaged components. They really should send someone that knows what they are looking at to see the machine before buying it. She had some really messed up components, fortunately, the ways are good and everything is solid.  I got it all fixed up and ready to run. One interesting thing they didn't notice. Machine controls are metric. For the life of me I cannot understand why some companies design a CNC machine in either metric OR standard, pick one. How hard could it possibly be to put a soft key in the programming that would allow user to simply switch between metric or standard mode. You have a simple 25.4 mathematic constant you can use in the controllers programming to convert back and forth. I contacted the company and am getting a price for some new EPROMs  with the correct settings and parameters to convert machine to standard. Hopefully, they don't require changing the scales as well, as they may also have decided to use metric scales on metric machines and standard scales on the nonmetric machines. Of course neither service nor the parts department are sure. They have to check with Switzerland to find out. Hopefully, the chips do it all. I can upload programs and use a G20 command to run programs I use on the other machine on this one for now, but the main control will display the moves in metric, which would confuse the people operating the machine. The manual also says that the parameters that I use for size adjustment will stay in metric mode, therefore, if you want to make a size change, you have to measure the part, convert error to metric and enter correction value. Total pain.

Got off work and hit one of the gun shows that are in town this weekend. The one at the armory landed on the same weekend one of the two 4H centers that throw gun shows is having theirs. The 4H one is suppose to have the local military show showing up there as well. Have to work tomorrow, but I will hit the 4H show up after work tomorrow. Democrats would hate my town. There is a gun show almost every month at one of three locations. Obama has been really great at driving up the sales. I am so relieved and wish I had the weekend off just to unwind and get my mind completely off work.

Wow

I am impressed. I upgraded to windows 10 when it first became available. Windows 8 sucked to put it mildly. Anyhow, my hard drive went south. No warning, just black screen stating no hard drive detected. Dead. I bought a new laptop. They have some great sales going on now. I proceed with the usual long tedious process of reinstalling all my info, or so I thought. I started the new computer up. It immediately asked me for my outlook address. I put it in. I made it when I upgraded as it was required for Windows 10 upgrade. When computer boots up, there is my custom wall paper greeting me. It brought in my favorites, and setting up e-mail was almost automatic. Unreal. Still not quite sure of the how, just relieved most of my settings and info are still here. Somehow synced from the cloud. I had to dig in the cobwebs I call my brain to remember how to get internet explorer to come out of hiding. I dug it up and pinned it to the bar for easy access, made it my default browser. I open it. All my favorites including the ones I made yesterday on my back up computer were all there. WOW. I lost some things, but nowhere near what I thought I lost. Windows 10 may make my new favorite replacing XP, which I still use in the garage. Some of the software I use doesn't bode well on anything above XP.

Indy 1500 is going on as is a huge gun show in Louisville. I just don't feel like taking the drive. I have almost every gun I have an interest in, so I am not really in the market for anything in particular. I can hold out for a couple more months for the machine gun shoot. With Obama opening his big yap whining and crying because congress won't take everyones guns away surely made the gun sales go through the roof and the crowds heavy. I hate going to gun shows and being elbow to elbow and getting shoved down the isles. I do have a gun auction coming up in a couple weeks.

Hope everyone had a safe and pleasant New Years

Spike and I just chilled out at home. He was content with a few sticks of puperoni's. I made a crockpot full of chili with some cornbread on the side. Chili made a day ahead as it always seems better after a day in the fridge. I hate boarding Spike. He is recovering from an eye infection at present. He loves rubbing his face on the carpet. Doesn't work so good at a kennel. Bad Peke trait. He is getting better, slowly. Eyes aren't watering as bad now. Have to keep cleaning them out with eye wash followed by some eye salve. It is almost as much fun using eye meds on him as it was with my son when he was a tot. At least he is getting use to it. Think he is realizing I am trying to help, not dig his eye out. Still doesn't like it, but tolerates it somewhat. They have me giving him benedryl as well. It doesn't come in bacon flavor, so I have to hide it in some lunchmeat. Only two more days until back to work, dang it. Maybe I will hit the lotto tomorrow.