man it is crisp outside.


Back during the storm, when I was sleeping on peoples couches/floors, I lost my lucky knife. There is nothing lucky about this jackknife, its just more whimsical to say that it is.
I feel short an appendage without that thing. I have another one but its a leatherman and its too sharp and pointy.

I was thinking about how I got this knife. It was over a year ago. The maintenance tech (I forget the exact classification) used to go out to Home Depot and we would send him around lunch so he could pick Mighty up for us. A lot of times I would decide he needed supervision picking up paintbrushes and that was always nice to get away for at least an hour.
But he brought me back that knife one day and its been super useful since.

He called me up last week. He was one of the last people left at the old factory. It was not really a factory, more like a warehouse. He said the machines had been gone for a long time and the old timers, people who had enough seniority to still be there (15,20 years), just spend their days loading trucks to Mexico with the remaining inventory.



Once again let me rejoice in not being there. Fuck the blood (punching things), sweat, anguish, black boogers, and constant colds that place gave me.

I met up with some friends from college that were in town Sat morning.
My one dude makes about 2x what I make and has a house and a wife and (2) cars and has a closet full of nice shirts.
But sometimes he's bored at work and nobody works under him and he only works with like (5) other people.

I am a mess but I work with a million people and shit is always happening and will alwasy continue to happen. I work with a dozen people in our department and within the plant and with a few dozen mechanics. I deal with vendors and vice presidents and dumbasses.
Its up and down and it sucks and sometimes less-sucks.

We ended up taking different paths.
I bet we both think each other's job sucks, but I sure know that his bank account doesn't suck

I just toasted a 250 gig HDD. The power connecter I was using was this shitty one that is always hard to put in, so I didn't notice that I was putting it in backwards.

Fuck


The smell of the burning hard drive made me think of other smells I smell on a frequent basis.

Here is a [partial] list:
Grapes. It is grape season down in the Chautauqua area. you can smell them from the highway. It is also grape season at the juice factory, and there are lots of trucks of grapes coming through the place. This means there is no place to park.

Dog Food. There is a dog food factory on the way to work. Sometims you can get a big lungful of whatever they make dog food from. It has to suck for the people that live right there by the factory.
They say its all good stuff like rice and chicken but its more likely whatever is left on the floor of a hot dog factory. Which is lower than a chicken nugget factory. Which is lower than manure.


Juice. It can smell really good if they are running a good juice. There is this spiced cider that they are running that is really good latley. I alwasy walk by the line and pretend to inspect a bottle but I'm really just taking it to my juice stash.


Cookies. There is a little cookie factory in Silver Creek. I drive home through there sometimes. You can get a big bag of broken cookies for like $1. I always imagine that all the kids in that town are round faced and bright cheeked and bright copper kettles and brown paper packages tied up with string.


Elmwood. Elmwood alwasy smells good down here. Although the prevailing winds sometimes bring down some reek from Tonawanda

oh boy its great.

tonight I hung out with my boss' boss' boss. ( acutally he will be my boss' boss' boss' boss under a new org chart in the works.)

we drank beer and ate wings but I think the one thing that truly endeared him to me was when he said the words "fuck this shit."

I don't remember what it was about but it was like he could read my mind. Thats been my mantra for a while now.
I guess I'd rather a more constructive or positive creed, but thats summed up things for me, at least recently.




(e:imk2) you need to come over and stay on my couch or something. I only had (3) days w/o power so I'm down on your struggle

still no power

I'm on WiFi somone left open


need caffeine

as I turned north towards the city this evening, the sky was glaring.

There was a cloud that looked like a big clenched fist. Pointed towards Buffalo.
A lot of times I want to punch my computer at work when it freezes up running a query or looking at drawings over a network drive.
I wonder who would want to pummel Buffalo?


Actually its pretty silly to see objects in clouds and stars and tea leaves.
Its like a seashell at your ear, only instead of your heartbeat its your dumb big brain being reflected back. It takes three dots and people can see faces on Mars.


It is time to find a new job. Allready too? Yeah. Allready
Maybe someone in HR is reading The Art of War. ITs probably a stroke of genuis to tell people they are getting raises, or training, or vacation, and just not give it to them.

Clarity of vision is the most important thing in life.

Maybe its my meaning of life. Its whats on top of the Mountain.

Its hard to explain and it means different things to different people.
I used to work with a guy who used pills for his Clarity. It was some pill that pilots take so they don't have to sleep. I tried one of his Clarities once and it was ok.

People can help each other out with COV. If you get bogged down with something, you gotta talk it through with someone.
Me and my sister bounce Clarity off each other when we need to.

Where I am in life isn't important, as long as I can see it. See where everything fits in.

It was a blast seeing everyone Saturday. Although it was more of a sprint than a marathon for me I guess. Heretowith I resolve more marathons than sprints for future Strip-related events.
Also, a kind thank you to the dear ladies who escorted me out of the elements and into a warm bed.


I was crouched down behind a machine today (actually wedged between two machines), checking out a sprocket and forgot there was a big bracket for an air cylinder right above me.
I stood up and really cracked my cranium really good.
(For those wondering, it was a 42 tooth Type B taper-lock sprocket, 3/4" pitch. The bushing was a 2012 with a 1 1/2" bore. We had the bushing in stock but I had to order a sprocket. The bushing was broken and the loose fit was causing an axial clutch to kick out. This is what I do at work.)

But my head has been aching since and I couldn't find any damn aspirin at work all day.

I find myself with a generally poor outlook to going to work in the morning latley, so its fortunate that I have a day off Friday.
I was going to DC but that got cancelled, maybe for the better.

I think getting that damn day off was a stroke of genius.

today I saw a car downtown with a Guam liscense plate

My folks were in town today and I met them down at Graycliff. Pretty interesting. Wright used a lot of straight lines but it was more about proportion than anything else.
That house it beat. Leaky roof and I don't think that it was ever really built to last. The buildings need a lot of work but what I think bothered me the most is the way someone had mowed the lawn.
Isn't that wierd? I mowed a lot of lawns as a younger lad, and I hate seeing someone butcher grass like that.
They had scalped all around the trees and their pattern was just way off on the open sections.

Yes, I am a douchebag philosopher about mowing lawns. That was probably the sweetest job I ever had.

Tonight's Fear & Loathing theme: I talked to one my cousins. We were decently close growing up, we did a lot of fun stuff growing up and got in trouble together, etc. He's my homey and I'd give him at least (1) kidney, maybe even (2).
But goddamn if he isn't an odd fellow. No need to elaborate on that, besides the fact that he's recently really religious.

OK so I would never question a man's chioce in a woman, dog, or religion/faith, so I'm not judging anyone here. But this whole thing is really wierd.
This stuff hit him hard, like a shot of whiskey to a toddler. I mean talk about a violent change.

He's into one of these churches (I think they call it a church) where God is responsible for everything. Lke your shoelaces come loose, its because you did something unGod-ful, or you get an extra bag of peanuts in the vending machine, its because you prayed correctly.

That shit turns my stomach.

He was in this conference this week in DC about important Christian whatever-the-fuck issues . Gay marriage, et al. ITs a good thing to see people spend so much time focusing on such important issues. Jesus totally spent so much time railing against gay marriage. This is a cool comic.


I don't know but it just strikes me as a bunch of humans trying to impress a bunch of other humans. Talk and talk and talk and shell out money and buy people's christian/religious shit. But its good though, its good that you go to religious darien lake day and that you have 50 crappy religious CDs and have a bookcase half full of phoney religious claptrap. Just as long as other people know where you stand.

God, the dude that got the universe going, set up the solar system, the motions of planets, the intricacies of atoms and the first professor of electro-chemistry. The guy that invented the orgasm, the light bulb, and saw fit to sprinkle some consiousness into the grey gloop in our domes.

Yeah I think he's great! Lets make the shittiest music we can think of! We can emasculate ourselves and play on tamborines!
Lets write newsletters and judge other people and project our self-hate onto the WORLD!!!


I don't know: this isn't the whole scoop on what I think about this stuff. Mostly its none of my business.

In Orchard Park

I'm thinking about going