A Good Day

Even coming home to tales of guild drama within WoW couldn't bring me down from the great day I had. Have I mentioned that it sucks coming home to tales of guild drama? It's freakin' World of Warcraft! Learn to have fun and play nice. It sucks coming home to tales of guild drama. Not that I can't empathize, it is just stupid that situations arise that lead to the bullshit that is then related to me. The poor girl puts up with stupid shit just so she can play online with her friends and try to have some fun and then they go and... but I digress.

My work day started with my supervisor taking all three of us maintenance guys into the office to show us something. He handed me a loop of saw chain and asked, "What's wrong with this?" My internal reaction was, "Oh FUCK! What shift made this crap?" Just about everything was wrong with it. Unchromed cutters with burnt edges and horrible edge shape. All the spins on the rivets looked so bad I thought I would be able to break them out by hand. The drive links were pitted and soft as were the tie straps. Every part on this piece of chain was shit. Then I noticed the name stamp on it. It looked exactly like our chain, but it was not one of the brands we run. Turns out, this loop was made by our competition in China. It was meant to show that the competition, while still crap, was getting better. Bullocks! This was the company that the world's largest home improvement center (rhymes with Dome Hepot) contracted with to replace our account. Their chain is in all ways inferior. We know it. Our testing department has proved it. The average home consumer wouldn't be able to tell the difference because they don't know what they are looking at. But this is the real kicker. It sells for the exact same price as our chain did when we had the account even though the stores are picking it up for a fraction of the cost. Our tests have shown that this chain doesn't even last a quarter as long as ours and usually ends with potentially dangerous breakage. Consumers beware. It comes in the same store brand packaging as our chain did and you are paying the same price for it. If you are reading this and are either too dumb to figure out who I am talking about or just as stupid and go buy it anyway, it's your own damn fault if you lose a limb. No skin off my legs, arms, face, etc. The stuff I help make is awesome. I can take pride in it.

Which leads to the other great thing about today. Since work is paying for me to take machining classes, I am now allowed to use the shop's machine tools to make parts that we need. Today there was such a need. It was a simple part. I pulled up the blueprint and machined a replacement. When I put the new part on the machine, it fit perfectly and ran great. Up until now I had only been using the mill and lathe to modify existing parts that didn't quite meet spec. This was my first attempt at machining a complete part from start to finish. It feels good to know that a machine is now up and running again thanks to the part I made.

It feels good to know that even if American consumers are a bunch of dumb shits willing to spend just as much on something crappy, allowing giant corporations to amass wealth faster, and eventually resulting in my current employer going out of business, that by being able to build and maintain machines I can always move on to some other company that hasn't been outsourced to death yet... perhaps an aerospace company building space colonies that I can move to and live amongst the floating tattooed boobies. It feels so good that even tales of guild drama in WoW can't bring me down.