How hard have they been working us? Let me just put it this way, I got a blister on my hand -- from doing the same job I've been doing nearly every single day, for nearly 20 years. And I have a fresh blister. From holding my brazing tip. The same tip I've been holding in the exact same way for 20 years. That's how hard I've worked this week.
Driving us into the ground, they have been. See? Talking like Yoda, I now am. Because so tired I have become. But now, I'm on Christmas break and don't have to go back until January 2nd. Oh, you should have heard the cheering when that final end of shift buzzer went off! It'll go by in the blink of an eye, but I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts.
Anyway, that's why there hasn't been any blogging going on. Oh, I've had stuff to blog about. Like, I was going to tell you that the missing Christmas ornament has been found, and now occupies a place of prominence on the tree.
And I was going to tell you that I've finished another hat for my friend's blessing bags.
And I was going to say at this rate, I could singlehandedly fill all the bags for next year, but I probably won't, because peak season at work is about to hit and I won't have time to do much knitting, except on Sundays. But I've been so tired once I've gotten home that I've pretty much fallen right into bed. Thus, you haven't been told anything.
Speaking of work, we have a new supervisor out there, and he's definitely got a cocky attitude. He said he's going to straighten everything out. We were all laughing at him behind our hands -- until he asked one of my coworkers, "Why is tubing so slow?"
And every sub-brazer in the plant said, "Hallelujah!" Somebody is finally asking the right questions! All this time, they've been screaming at the brazers for not getting the header assemblies out, but honey, we can't braze parts we don't have! My downtime is usually between 3 and 5 hours per day, just waiting for tubing to get something ready for me to braze. I help other brazers out, but here lately, everyone has had to wait for parts.
So, he's asking the right questions, but I doubt he gets anywhere with it. They don't want solutions. They want scapegoats. Solutions take time, effort, and sometimes money. It's a lot easier just to find someone to blame.
That's enough about work for now.
This week, I became just slightly less of a Luddite. How did that happen, you may wonder? Well, I'll tell you.
See, I have a fairly old TV, and it only has one HDMI port. I usually keep my Roku plugged into it. What it means, though, is any time I want to watch a DVD, I have to get up, tromp all they way across the room, unplug the Roku, and plug my DVD player into the single, lonely HDMI port my TV has. Not only is it tiresome, I worried about wearing out the port with all the plugging and unplugging I was doing. As a result, sometimes I just chose another movie -- one I could stream -- rather than switching the cable over and over again.
For a while now, I've been saying as soon as I get this credit card paid off, I'm going to get a new TV -- one with multiple HDMI ports. Then, I got to thinking, "Why spend all that money on a new TV when the one I have works fine"? That'd be one mighty expensive HDMI port. So, I started looking into getting a DVD player with Roku built right in. I researched a few on Amazon, then told myself I was being stupid.
I did some more poking around and came up with this little gem:
It's a splitter/switch that converts one port into two. Or two into one, depending on what you want to use it for.
I've got a cable from TV into one end, and connected the Roku and DVD player into the other.
Voila! Multiple HDMI ports! Now, when I want to watch a DVD, instead of switching the cable out, all I have to do is push that little button. It's a miracle, I tell ya! And it cost less than $10!
That's pretty much how I spent my day today -- watching Christmas shows and knitting. That's also what I'm about to get off here and do some more of.
Laters.
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