Luke’s Notebook

I’ve recently rediscovered some old favorite songs of mine. This evening, I’ve been listening to a couple of CDs that I haven’t heard in a long time. One of them is “Fragrant Oil” by David Ruis; the other two are “You Shelter Me” and “Jesus Lead On” by Vineyard Music. Such songs as “You” and “Your Beloved” by Vineyard and “Wash Over Me” and “Shake The Heavens” by David Ruis are ones I’ve always loved. It’s really neat to rediscover these CDs, and as I listen to them I remember why I liked them so much!

Volleyball tonight went… okay. We won the first game handily, but we couldn’t take the final two. I think our overall record is something like 10-8 now. That’s respectable.

Well, it sounds like we’ve got quite a bit of scoping to do tomorrow, so I’m going to call it a night.

By the way — thanks, everybody, for the comments in regards to the new layout/design of my blog. And Becky, I thought about making the background picture fixed, but then it doesn’t look quite right when I’m scrolling. Maybe it’s because I have a large (1280×1024) screen resolution. I fixed the emoticon legend, by the way.

What do you guys think?

I decided to give myself the day off from making an entry yesterday. It was a pretty full day, though! Around noon, Dad, Mom, Paul, John, Jude, David and I went over to Red Lobster in South County. Red Lobster is Mom’s favorite restaurant, and since it was her birthday as well as David’s on Saturday, that seemed to be a natural choice.

In the afternoon, I spent quite a bit of time working on Dad’s laptop. He has only had this computer since June of 2005, but it appears that the hard drive is dying. Upon boot-up, the BIOS (I think it’s the BIOS) gives the error message: 1720-SMART Hard Drive detects imminent failure (Failing Attr: 05)

So I’ve been making phone calls and trying to see what we can do to get this repaired in an expeditious manner. I’m still hoping that somehow I’ll be able to do the repair myself — that is, without having to purchase a new hard drive myself — but we’ll see. Tomorrow morning, I’ll probably give HP a call to see what can be done.

I also concentrated quite a bit of time on transcribing a deposition. I was really wanting to finish that depo. So with a little bit of extra work, I was able to have it out a little bit before our FamTeam Live Webcast. So I got that stuff done, and now it’s Sunday.

Well, to be fair, we were told that Thursday was our final day. This morning, however, Uncle Joe called and asked if we would be able to still make it in the afternoon because some parts arrived, and they would be able to still use our help today.

So we ended up working the 10th day, which, really, I had no problem with. I did the same thing as I did yesterday, only today I did 1,404 pieces instead of yesterday’s 1,010. I got quite a bit faster!

Now, we are really finished. In fact, in three minutes, the midnight buzzer should be sounding at the shop, and Paul and John will be off and ready to head on home. And we have the weekend here! And… lots of deposition work to do, it seems! But that’s a very good thing, to have work to do.

Prior to working this afternoon, I spent a bit of time troubleshooting Dad’s laptop. It appears that his hard drive is going south. I don’t think any important data will be lost, thanks to us backing up files when the computer first showed symptoms of being sick. The actual hard drive replacement is really easy to do, but since it’s under the warranty we might have to send the computer in to get the drive replaced.

I’m going to try to call them to see if there’s an exception that can be made, whereby I could put the hard drive in myself. It would take me, like, five minutes to do, and it would mean that we don’t have to ship the laptop off for a couple of weeks. So I’m hoping that will work out.

Guys, I’m still typing on this e-fatuation thing. To be honest, though, I’m not real happy with how it’s turning out up to this point. I know precisely what my thoughts and feelings are; it’s just hard to type it all out. Maybe I’ll just scrap it and start over. Or maybe (hopefully!) I’ll be able to salvage this. We shall see.

Saturday is a very special day, as it’s Mom’s birthday and David’s third birthday! Chub is growing up.

Well, today has just been full of good news. Starting around lunchtime, I learned that John would likely make it back from his deposition in plenty of time to take the 9:00-midnight shift at the shop, meaning that I’d only have to take care of another five-hour stint instead of the full eight hours. So that was kind of a relief! Of course, the only downside to this is that I didn’t get a chance to try out one of the delicious sandwiches that Christa suggested I make (see http://www.famteam.com/luke/comment.php?entry=888). Darn.

Then, as Mark and I were entering the shop, preparing for the 3:30 buzzer to sound, Uncle Joe approached us and let us know that they actually don’t need us to work tomorrow since they had caught up on some of their jobs. So… we finished a day early. I guess, if anything, that means we did a pretty good job over the nine days we worked there.

Anyway, as far as what I did on this, my final day — I operated the same 60-ton press that I used on Friday, Monday and Tuesday. I was actually doing the same type of thing as I was doing yesterday, where the machine kind of crimps a plate of metal. I believe it’s for the bottom of a fusebox.

I actually got to see what these metal plates are used for, as they had a mostly-assembled fusebox near the machine. So I could get an idea of what these pieces are used for. That was kind of neat. Anyway, I ended up crimping 1,010 of these plates, and I put them in these big boxes. Each box contained three layers of 250 pieces, for all of those who were wondering.

I need to answer a couple of questions that were left in recent comments.

Matt asked if the machines have counters on them. Indeed, they do.

Deborah mentioned my profile picture (which can be seen on Xanga). She actually snapped that photo on New Year’s Day. She did a good job, especially considering what she had to work with.

And it seems a few people are interested in what I’m writing. Well, it’s actually the “e-fatuation” post that I’ve been wanting to write for nearly two years. I’ve just kind of put it off for a while as I could never quite get a grip on what exactly I wanted to write. I decided to take the plunge the other night, so I just opened up Word and started typing. It’s a start, anyway.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&…

DISCLAIMER: I don’t recommend trying this, unless you’re wrongfully imprisoned. Even then, guards and prison authorities probably wouldn’t be too happy to see you plotting an escape. So you might want to try and distract them. Or, if they catch you trying to squeeze through the hole, perhaps try to hurry switch the subject to the weather or some hot-button political issue.

Well, it’s been interesting to have split days — doing half of my work at home, on depositions and such, and the other half at the shop, operating a machine.

This afternoon/evening, I used the same press machine that I used last Monday. There was a different die in it, and I was working on part of a mop rack — you know, the hardware you would mount on a wall where you can hang mops, brooms, et cetera, on. Anyway, this time the machine was taking a small, flat piece of steel — say three by five inches — and it would bend over the edges.

It was actually pretty clean work. The pieces were slightly oily, but thankfully it’s a clear oil that isn’t very slick and doesn’t have a bad smell. I pressed approximately 950 pieces tonight. This entire week, the five-week shifts have been a breeze. Obviously, they’re easier than working eight hours, but I honestly think a huge factor is simply getting accustomed to the work environment, getting to know the coworkers, and also just getting used to having to kill so many hours doing the same thing.

Tomorrow, it looks like I’ll be back to working the full eight hours. John has a deposition in a far away land, so he probavbly won’t be able to make it back in order to relieve me. But that’s all right; I can handle eight hours. I’ll just need to figure out what to eat for supper during the half-hour break at 8:30. Hmm… I could bring something, or possibly I could even run out. I’ll likely just bring a sandwich and an apple or something like that.

By the way, you guys will never guess what I decided to (finally) start writing…

In three short weeks, I’ll turn 21. That’s kind of neat, if I do say so myself. I’ve never been 21 before, so I’m anxious to try it and see what all the hubbub is about.

Checks, money orders and bags with dollar signs on the sides may be sent to Luke Arndt, P.O. Box… Just kidding.

This afternoon’s duties had me riveting two pieces of metal together. I would insert these four rivets into the two pieces, push them under the press, and that would fasten them together. I didn’t know what these pieces were for, but Uncle Joe came by later in the evening and told me that they were actually used as part of the latch or something in an emergency door.

It’s kind of neat to realize what it is you’re actually making. Anyway, I managed to do 752 pieces. So this was definitely much slower than the setup I did yesterday, when I did over 1,600 pieces. I liked this, though, because that meant more time passed in between presses. I averaged 150 pieces an hour, so that’s only two-and-a-half presses per minute.

Tomorrow, it looks like I’ll have to spend some time in the morning working on a deposition that we need to have out in a hurry. Thankfully, I started on it this morning, so I’m already well into the job.

I was just thinking to myself how it’s kind of interesting the different “hats” we’ll wear as far as working. I’ll do white-collar, blue-collar or no-collar work. One day, I might be videotaping a wedding. The next, I’m making a website. Later on, I might be handling oily pieces of metal. Whatever is required of me on a given day!

Ah, there’s nothing quite like a productive Monday in order to start off a week, is there?

This morning, I spent a few hours scoping a deposition. I took care of the final 40 or 50 pages of that particular job. Later on, I spent some time binding depositions and even copying a lot of exhibits. So that’s what I did the first part of the day.

At the shop this afternoon/evening, I was working on the same 60-ton press machine that I used on Friday. The five-hour shift was really a breeze! And, inexplicably, I managed to stamp out 283 more pieces today than I did last time! I put out 1,629 tonight versus 1,348 on Friday. I tell ya, the shop is getting a bargain.

All in all, it was a really productive day, and that is very satisfying. Tomorrow, I believe I have quite a bit of scoping to take care of before leaving the house at 3:00 to head out to the shop.

For some reason, I really want to share this excerpt from the first chapter of James:

My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it, he will be blessed in what he does.

If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Stay tuned for Tuesday.