February 12, 2005

• News and Notes

  

  The workweek has been incredibly busy. The electrical industry never knows how to pace itself. Either there’s a massive slowdown, and orders flow to a trickle, or the phone won’t stop ringing.  It’s a panel jungle out there!

  

  I went to the production board to check our lead time on Friday, and it was still at 3 weeks. (Lowered lead times because it wasn’t too busy in mid January.) I asked our production manager if he was still comfortable with three weeks. “Sure” he said confidently. “Well”, I replied, don’t come expecting drawings from me if we’re quoting three weeks, because there’s too many orders coming in and I won’t be able to finish all of them. The production manager then told me to quote what was “comfortable” for me. Back up to 4-6 weeks.

  The company I work for is pretty small, family owned, and pretty understaffed now that we’ve downsized. I have what I call “quote light” and “quote heavy” months. January was a “quote heavy” month, and I logged 67 individual quotes for that month alone. Usually those quotes will generate February’s sales. Since there was a lot, the orders are coming in one on top of the other. In the old days, I would “insure” that panels were made on time, because I used to build them too. At night. On weekends. At home on the kitchen table. I don’t do that any more. Now our production is “scheduled” and it takes four people to do the sales order entry, purchasing of parts, entering work orders, and performing of merchandise transfers. I used to do all of this at one time prior to starting a “job”.

  I’ve always quoted the control panels. When the panel shop became the “tail that wagged the dog”, and the company started selling more panels than components, the quote ratio for me increased considerably. Now I not only quote the panels, but design them and create the “master documents”, which consist of spreadsheets, kit lists, schematics, and dimensional drawings created with a CAD program.

  The image on this post is a relay panel. (I composited the foliage and the lake water.) It controls the drip systems, lighting, and sprinkler system in a nursery. I used to take many photos of all the panels the shop would build. I built a lot of them myself, and probably constructed my last complete panel about 7 years ago. Now we don’t take many photos, because of the “documents” which I “draw” on the CAD program that tells the technician how to build and wire them.

  In other news, I have modified my new Xanga Profile picture for insertion in my Blogger Profile, which I just created. I added the photo of me in the sixth grade, and made the background kinda kinky. The latest webendeavor is the revival of the ElectricMovies Diary. I plan to modify the ElectricMovies site, and the Diary was the first blog I really kept updated, although nobody read it, and the Blogger blogs didn’t have comments. I like their new “dashboard” and the way they list interests allows for links to other “members” who have the same interest. I never see comments on mine, nor on a lot of other Blogger Blogs I visit. I don’t know if I want to “visit” a whole bunch of sites on Blogger now that I’m going to be wiritng the ElectricMovies Diary again, just to gain readership, but I probably will. I’ve been in “internet mode” these past couple of months, fueled by the interaction on Xanga. Xanga members can comment on my Blogger blogs, by the way, like the Diary. (The initiating post is a “rerun” of my “Widescreen Movies” entry this past Tuesday, because I didn’t feel like writing anything “new” but wanted to test the new format with images as well as text. I created a new “logo” of the site as well.

  I pondered posting a news story with commentary about the North Korean announcement that they do have nuclear arms, and are not going to talk about getting rid of them. The U.S. Government has sort of downplayed the announcment, but it comes at a rather interesting time, what with the U.S. Armed forces busy in Iraq and the Gulf. All I could think of when I read the news story on Yahoo was “Duck and Cover”. Why does it seem that I’m reliving events I’ve already lived through in one form or another.

  To conclude: Here’s a new poem. Most of these Xanga blogs can feature one poem or one photo, but I usually feature five or six poems or photos in any one poetry or photo post. This is a News and Notes, and I’m slumming a bit, having spent a lot of time constructing the video on the last post. I should feature a “coming attractions” banner on WhenWordsCollide. Each post (with the exception of these “News and Notes” posts) are pretty much planned in advance, sometimes for  over a month, like the Toonces comedy post. There was another composite planned but I couldn’t do what I wanted. So, enough of this, here’s the poem, and wait till you see my next installment! Coming Soon, on a WhenWordsCollide post near you, the frightening truth about Robotics!

   

  “Poet, Philosopher, Fool”
  Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
  Feb. 9th 2005, 4:47 p.m. pst

  
  Life’s book grows weightier with time,
  My poems are the pages
  They mirror my thoughts with unsullied honesty
  Documenting memory and circumstance
  Freeing the mind for eventual self actualization

  The journey through this life exhibits signposts
  But they are sometimes unmarked or impossible to read,
  Or are trampled, face first, in the murky quagmire.
  Imbued with self actualization and realization,
  My words will elucidate humankind

  I distill existence and time,
  Purpose and insanity
  History has buffered our basest urges,
  Yet those urges still cause the extermination
  Of reason in an age where information
  Is available to all

  I can swim through the rising waters of inconsequence,
  Taking wrong turns and learning from these mistakes
  When I arrive at the eventual destination, this will be
  inconsequential
  it will have been the journey
  that matters, enhanced with experience,
  And it will be remembered, as history should.

  There are times I let my heart convince me
  that pure emotion and perception
  are the instincts of innocent implausibility

  At times I don’t think very well
  And at those times I realize
  that I am merely human in this stead, and
  privy to the same misapprehensions as
  all of humanity
  A fool I act,
  At times

  But in the end, by realizing this foolishness
  By the luminous light of what I know, understand and maintain,
  I will gain wisdom
  and enlightenment

   

  • 10:28 am
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