Thursday, January 22, 2009

Another Business Trip

It looks as if I'll be spending at least Tuesday next week on the road (maybe Wednesday as well). As part of our trip to Atlanta last month, GE asked us (more like me) to provide them with a documented procedure for controlling our sub-tier suppliers. This particular supplier is in Minnesota just north of Minneapolis. So that means road trip. Air fare for a round trip would have been almost $1800, so I get to drive instead. That means a 6.5 hour drive one way. Hopefully I'll be able to stay awake and make it back the same day, but I'm not holding my breath.

Sleep is Over Rated

As I have said, I have been very busy at work. Getting the people I work with to buy into the manufacturing world of the 1990s is like pulling teeth. The "we've been doing this for 30 years without any problems" attitude is finally starting to crack. I just hope that it isn't too late.

I was notified today that the audit I was expecting from GE is finally about to be scheduled. We have to get back to them with some info regarding paying for it and then they'll be contacting us. Well, i think I am pretty set for it, though I can't guarantee it. The sad thin is that if my "bosses" had listened to me three years ago when I started pointing out all this to them, we would have never gotten to this point. That is the hard thing about working for a small, family owned company. they have their one way of doing things and aren't open to/receptive of change very easily.

So I have been getting about 4 hours of sleep a night for the last week or so. I feel like I am in college again. Hopefully when this is all over, I'll be able to sleep for a day.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Basement Furniture

This past weekend we finally got rid of a piece of our past... our first furniture. We had a couch and love seat in our basement that we have had since before Kris and I were married. I remember buying it from the Boston Store back in 1993. We had it in our apartment, then moved it into the house 10 years ago. five year ago it got moved into the basement to serve as the "recreational" furniture for the girls. Well, it never really worked down there since we couldn't get it arranged just right because the room is so long and narrow. So this weekend, Kris and I moved it out.

One of Kris's co-workers is either fresh out of college, or in her final year, I forget which, and she and her roommate have a futon in their apartment, and that's it. So Kris told her we had a couch she could have if she could come and get it. Then after talking it over we decided that if she could fit it in her apartment, she could have the love seat too. The pattern is sort of old and out of date so we had them covered, and the upholstery was a bit strained, but that is why we had the furniture cover on them. I remember when I was that age in college, we were happy just to have furniture. In fact, we had a couch that didn't even have legs, we used empty returnable beer bottle cases as legs for it. So we were glad that we could help out. In fact, when Kris and I first moved in together in West Bend, we had people Kris worked with give us some of their old basement furniture until we could get by, so hopefully this will serve as a start to help her get going.

It only took us about a half an hour to get it out of the basement, which is about an hour less than it took us to get it down. I didn't think we would be able to get it (the big couch) up since getting it down we were scraping the walls when we moved it down there, and since then we have dry walled which loses us about 5-6 inches of room. And it took us two tries getting it up. We got it to the top and couldn't get it around the corner, so we had to take it back down, turn it around and then go back up. Even then we ended up scraping the woodwork so the I now have to sand and re-stain it. Just add it to the list of things to do.

So now we have a couple of end tables for the TV, and a couple of beanbag chairs down there for the girls and that is it, well except for the treadmill and the girls' computer. So any help with suggestions for decorating are welcome. We think we may have found something we can decorate around, but then again we thought we'd be able decorate around the old furniture.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Snow Days

Today (the 15th) and presumably tomorrow, the girls had off of school. It wasn’t a planned day off, rather it was a snow day. Well not exactly a snow day, school was canceled because it was too cold outside. However, the teachers were still at school today, and as I spoke with the secretary today regarding some PTA stuff, there will at least be some people at school tomorrow as well. I don’t know if the teachers will be required to report to school, but I know the doors will be open.

So the question becomes this… Why was school canceled? The last time I checked, I think that we still heat the school buildings. It isn’t as if they will be having class in a room that is -5°. The children aren’t let outside for recess, and I would think that the older kids (Jr. high and HS students) have sense enough to know how cold it is outside. I find it absolutely ridiculous that class has to be canceled because it is “too cold”. When Sarah came home yesterday she apparently told Kris that they were being told that they were looking out for the children. What would happen if the bus broke down in this cold? The kids would be put in danger because of the cold. My response to that would be that the bus company should have better buses.

The kicker is that after I got home, Kris had the 6:00 news on and they showed a mom and a bunch of kids enjoying a day at the Country Springs Hotel (Indoor Water Park). When asked why they came out today they said because they were tired of staying inside and wanted to get out. Yeah, you can't get out and go to school, but you can drag your kids out in the cold to go to a hotel/water park. Yet this is the first person who cries when school is kept open on a day like today.

So now the school year will end up being extended until June 12th, but I will guarantee that nothing will get done on those make up days!

Long Hours

I have been putting in long hours at work lately trying to get caught up in some deficient areas. Because of some high profile errors with some important customers of OUR biggest customer, we have been held to task to make some serious improvements to our quality systems. The upper management here is now beginning to wake up to the fact that it isn’t 1979 anymore (and not just in terms of clothes and hair styles). Since I took over as the QA manager almost 4 years ago, I have been saying how we needed to do some different things in order to prevent nonconforming product from going out the door. But I was told that wasn’t a priority, or it wasn’t important because we have been doing this for 25 years without any problems. Everyone here was focused on how much money it would cost, and since it wasn’t considered “value added” work, why do we need to do it? I guess they are finding out now why.

So now I am being tasked with fixing everything over the course of the next 3-4 weeks, and I actually have some things due at the end of this week. God I hate the people I work for, but I have to at least be thankful that I have a job right now and I am going to do what I can to keep it.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Refinancing

Last week Kris and I went to refinance the house. I had been watching rates for a while and they have been slowly creeping up since mid Dec. There was a day back before Christmas where the rate for a 15 year mortgage was 4.5%. What a drag that I missed that!

We were able to drop a full percentage point. Although, if we could have got in a week before, we would have been able to drop 1.25%. In fact, when we sat down the guy looked up the current rates, and by the time we had finished, he came back and had to redo the good faith estimate because the rate had jumped an eighth of a point while we were completing the application. That totally sucked!

Kris had heard something, I think it was on Fox, how some anylists were predicting rates would drop to in the neighborhood of 4%. We'll just have to keep an eye on it later this year, and if it does drop that low, we can always refinance again.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Time For Braces

We had our treatment consultation yesterday with Sarah’s orthodontist. We got good news, and bad news. The good news is that proportionally, Sarah’s profile and facial structure is great (but then again we already knew that she is a beautiful little girl didn’t we?). Also, her arc structure of her teeth is VERY good. The bad news is that her upper teeth are shifted slightly forward, and is going to need braces to correct the alignment. Not the worst thing in the world. The orthodontist said that he has had children with much worse teeth.

So within the next couple of months we’ll be trying to figure out when to start her on her “treatment”. Te overall total time she’ll have to have braces (braces and retainer) looks like about 4 years (2 years with braces and 2 years with a retainer). The faster we can start her on them, the faster she can be done with them. We were also told that getting started now is the best way to assure that her teeth will be stabilized by the time she is done growing. Sarah is gradually warming up to the idea. A couple of her friends already have them, so that helps too.

Cookie Kick Off

Last Saturday night was the Girl Scout cookie kick off. The GS Council had a night at the Admirals game planned where the girls could do activities, work toward cookie badges, get an activity patch, try cookies, and to top it off, Disney actress Meaghan Martin (Tess from Camp Rock for those of you who aren’t Disney honks) an appearance signing autographs.

What a night! We got there early (or so we thought) so that Alison could work toward (2) cookie try-its (Sarah had earned her cookie badge last year). The event kicked off at 4:00, and the game started at 7:30. The doors didn’t open to the public until 6:30 so we had two and a half hours to roam around. Well it was CROWDED at 3:50 when we got there, and it only got worse. Who would have guessed there were so many girl scouts? After all the activities were done, they had a sort of a pep-rally with (3) women from the UW Badgers female hockey team (2007-2008 NCAA National Champions) who had also been girl scouts firing up the girls.

Then they brought out Meaghan Martin. She gave a quick talk (2 or 3 minutes) and then she was supposed to go sign autographs from 6:00 – 8:00. The organizers (or Radio Disney people) were supposed to announce what concourse she would in for her appearance, but they didn’t, so there were little girls scrambling all over the running, trying to find where she would be. We ran into a couple of girls from Sarah’s troop and hung with them until we found out where we needed to be. What a hassle!


By the time we found out where the line was, we were almost half way around the concourse. Luckily we found the rest of the girls from Sarah’s troop, so we jumped into line with them. This was at about 6:05. The picture above is about an hour into the wait. If you can see the Pick 'n' Save sign, that is where she is. By the time we reached the front of the line (and for a time we didn’t think we would make it) it was 7:35. We were lucky enough to get our autographs and get back to our seats for the opening puck drop.

The girls had fun at the game, Alison got bored after about two periods. Sarah really seemed to like hockey, and even asked if they showed it on TV. Maybe if the NHL figured out how to get on a real cable channel, they would get themselves another young fan. Plus, the Admirals won, 2-0! It was a really good game, lots of action. The Admirals killed off 7 Peoria power plays, and got lucky with having a late goal by Peoria waved off because of a gaff by the referee. I thought a couple of the Peoria players were actually going to try and throw down against the ref they were so hot. If you didn’t realize, Peoria is one of the more “hated” teams in terms of Admirals rivalries.



Overall it was a pretty good night except for the chaos of getting in line to see Meaghan Martin.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Happy New Year

As is tradition, New Year's Day was spend taking down all the Christmas decorations, and more specifically, the Christmas tree. Sadly, while taking the tree down this year, the top was damaged beyond repair. It was actually broken for the last year and a half, and I had it wired up but this year was the last one. All the plastic rings holding the branches on the top part of the tree broke, resulting in branches falling off on each row. So next year we'll be searching for a new tree. I hope we can find one that was similar to this one. Both Kris and I like the skinny trees since they take up less room, and in a small house, space is everything.