Tuesday, April 19, 2011

THE SHIFT WORKERS BLUES

I'll bet Mr. LaHood has never worked a day of shift twork. Well I did for 25 years in various hydo power plants around the country.. and yes I have fell asleep on watch, especially on Graveyard. Have you ever stopped to think how the 12 to 8 shift got that name.. Days on end you can't sleep when you are supposed, you drink, you take drugs, you blacken your room, your family tip toes around to keep from waking you..

Shift schedules vary place to place. The most popular when I was working was 10 days on 4 days off...Sounds pretty good (on the surface) When and if you ever got the 4 days off they were nice, enabling family trips, mini vacations by adding a day or two of leave... The when you got them was the problem.. I have never in all my years operated anywhere where we had a full crew for more than a couple of months.. Somebody was always going somewhere else... My bosses believed you couldn't turn down the overtime , they were wrong, but we were our own worst enemies.. Turn down a double time day, not likely. So more often than not we worked 3 of our 4 days off. Probably only took the 4th off because the wife was oiling the shotgun up and looking at me in a threatening way. That still put you working 13 out of 14. grueling.

Yep, we made damn good money , but when it was over , you looked around and wondered where it all went..

Now for the good part. A sailor, or an operator pick up some really bad habits because of the long hours and tension filled jobs.. To a man , most drank 3 or more pots of coffee, smoked 3 or more packs of cigsa day, drank more than 1 beer in an effort to sleep at least a little . At age 50 I had a heart attack and a quad bypass, not because of the job , but because of the habits picked up along the way..

Now Mr LaHood, thinks he fixed the ATC problem by mandating an extra hour off between shifts.. Whoopeee, you couldn't sleep the first 9 so that extra hour is heaven...Last I checked they couldn't drink 8 hours before shift., man you gotta be able to chug em down to be an air traffic controller.. Most operators figure out pretty quickly when they report to a new station what period during graveyard is best suited for a quick nap... if you going to deliberately take one , that's the time.. Not comes the real ball buster , Most of these naps are not planned, one minute you are bright eyed and bushy tailed , the next sound asleep.. and the next minute scared shitless.. also very good on the heart.

This is just another problem where you have to tell the bean counters to take a hike, and do everything you can to make the work environment safe. If you have to spend money , so be it. Any job involving shift work that has long periods of beautifully silent time, with nothing going on can be considered nap time.. not because you want to , just because it happens...

Thursday, April 7, 2011

800 HORSEPOWER OR 273 MPG

American manufacturers are totally bonkers. While VW has in production an 8.5 horsepower car that gets 273 miles per gallon Detroit is messing around with a 800 horsepower Mustang.. the VW will sell for $600 . With gasoline topping 4 bucks which one are you interested in?

My problem with this is the wasted engineering time and talent building cars a few hundred of us can buy.. They could be working on stuff like the VW which we are all going to need and from the looks of things damn soon..


Tuesday, April 5, 2011

WE ALREADY ATE THE BONE!

Just listen to the bullshit coming from the right wing, driven by crazies some of you put in office.. Budget cutting is like sex to these pukes, they think more has to be better.. but .. it ain't true in sex or budget cutting. Quality is what counts..

Ryan's big 6 trillion cut package over 10 years will accomplish what the republicans have been trying to do for 80 years , kill the social programs. His plan will certainly do that. The destruction of Medicare, Medicaid, Pensions , Education will happen if this plan is enacted.

So before you jump on the bandwagon I beg you to stop , do a little research, and for Christ sake think for a change. I know it's tough , you might have to stop watching Dancing With the Stars, or What's it Like in Folsom Prison, but you better.

Just for fun, find out what it would cost you to buy health insurance at age 65, that is if you could even buy it with all the preexisting conditions they put on their policies.. Even the worse insurance you can buy at age 50 cost $800/mo and that's with a $10,000 deductible and no drug coverage. There are not many who reach 65 without some major health problems. Medicare by every reliable study is the only way to fiscal solvency and good health coverage.. Don't believe the magic republican graphs showing fiscal catastrophic resultsif we keep current Medicare coverage, it's total lies..

Any of you who have watched your Grandparents, or your parents reach old age and require nursing home care that unless your filthy rich you can't afford.. $4000 or $5000 a month for just average care. Who of you can afford that.. Your two other choices are one: take care of then in your home, or two let them die in the street.. Under the current Medicaid program, nursing home care is provided after all their personal assets are spent (there goes your inheritance) but comfort in their final years is your most important goals. (isn't it?) All the hard hearted rhetoric goes out the window for these mouthy republican pukes if it's their parents we are talking about (wait , Gingrich , handed his wife divorce papers in her bed where she was dying of cancer) so shit, anything is possible with these hard hearted bastards.

I close with asking you a simple question "Do you want to be in the same class with Gingrich and the rest of the right wing" HELL NO you say, then you better get off your ass and fight to save the social security blanket, or I will point my finger and call you nasty names...