Closet Extremist

Good Day/Bad Day

So today was pretty frickin' okay. I got to work at about a quarter 'til seven in the morning, and Ed showed up at a quarter after. I woke up with a very mild headache, and was able to completely obliterate it with 800mg of Ibuprofen, so the start was quite bitchin'. Once work actually started, it went pretty smooth. We squared up the cab, and got rid of a problem with some seismic guides that were scraping on the rails. (Seismic's are there to provide a certain protection in the event of an earthquake. Regular guide shoes on a hydraulic elevator are made of cast aluminum, and have a plastic runner that actually makes contact with the rail. Cast aluminum, while being quite light, is also very brittle, so if the forces of an earthquake are exerted upon it, it will break at an unopportune point, and the car can fall off of the rails, damage itself and the people inside it, and get itself stuck in the hoistway where any survivors cannot be extracted. Seismic guides are merely a 1/8" piece of formed steel that has a "U" shape cut into them, that runs perpindicular to the rail. It is there to hold the elevator in line wioth the rails if the regualr shoes fail. Yeah, it's overkill, but welcome to the elevator trade.)

Then we dealt with a popping sound that was coming from one of the twin jacks. As the car came down, one of the horns that are attached to the stiles was making a bad noise. The bolt that goes up through the mhole in the horn was the source of the noise, telling us that the jack was slightly out of plumb, and some adjustment was needed. With some judicious use of a hammer, the problem was soon solved.

Then there was lunch. The truck driver showed up to haul away our gang-box, and we used him to help us out with setting one of the car doors. That process took beter than an hour, when it should have taken fifteen minutes. Too much gossip and kibbitzing was going on, and my Ire began to rise. I got the door hung and Ed was left to adjust it out while I got into wiring the traveler into the Car Operating Panel. I landed around 60 wires while Ed did the door, and I'm very disappointed in his performance. He should have been able to beat me by a country mile, but I was able to outdo him by twenty minutes. I am absolutely certain that my shit is right, but whatevr else happened is still suspect.

Did I mention that my "MyBrain" headache came back at around 1:00 PM? Didn't think so. By the time that "quitting time" rolled around, I was in complete misery. My frustration with the progress of the job was in the stratosphere, and the second car door had not yet been hung. All I wanted to do was to down some more medicine, and stare at the wall for awhile. All I did was read blogs, and that was enough to get me back in the game. Hopefully it'll last until the morning.