work was wonderful this week!! the plant is in the middle of a 2-week shutdown, so it has definitely been quieter. most of the workers have the time off or take vacation (because these 2 weeks aren't paid). many of them had the option of helping with the plant-wide inventory, so probably about 75 of the ~800 plant workers are doing that. the maintenance department and IT have a bunch of projects to work on that can only be completed during this "break." it's been a wonderful change of pace. for one, i'm not constantly interrupted by pleas for help with pc issues. and for two, i'm working on alot of projects that can't be worked on while the plant is in production. one afternoon my boss and i replaced a 144-port switch and cleaned up its cabinet. i've learned to take pride in a well-kept wiring cabinet (so has my boss, as his photos suggest). also this week, i helped a dell technician replace the motherboards in two of our dell servers. it always amazes me how compact everything is in those boxes - the sticks of ram lay at a ~30-degree angle and the rows of little processor and hard-drive fans line the front of the case. everytime we open one up, i'm also astounded by the cumulation of fine weld dust. this stuff is everywhere! the server room (where my desk is) is really secluded from the plant floor, but even there the dust is everywhere. someone in the office area downstairs mentioned that one evening she left a syrofoam cup on her desk and the next morning there was a layer of dust on it. i don't want to think about what our lungs look like...

speaking of the air in the plant...i've spent a fair amount of time on the plant floor this week and have been amazed at how clean it is. building frames is a messy business - oils on the steel, weld fumes filling the air, slag scattered on the floor, metal shavings everywhere. but this week, the air is clean and i barely need my earplugs (which are required while on the floor). i don't exactly miss the mess in the plant...kinda like how campus is really earie in summer - it's nice having a break from the craziness of having people everywhere, but i don't mind it when they all come rushing back in august.

< / bunny trail >

back to my projects...i was also put in charge of rebuilding the terminal server, which keeps track of the data received from our time clocks. sometime in the last few months the keyboard and monitor drivers became corrupted. we could reach it using remote desktop, but sometimes it's alot easier to work at the server locally. so on wednesday, i backed up its data, recorded the ip address, etc, and reinstalled win 2k advanced server. i don't think i've rebuilt a server since my novell and win nt 4.0 days before i came to letourneau...i must say that microsoft has come a long way. :) after a few configuration changes, i called up the guy who installs the terminal software (which allows coordinators to log into the system to approve their employees' time, record vacation requests, etc). he completed this after a few hours. on thursday morning, i called the guy who installs the actual time & attendance software. as luck would have it, one of the companies he supports had lightning mess up a bunch of equipment, so he spent most of the day frantically working on that. this morning the 3 of us had a conference call to install this software and work out the kinks in the system that always seem to pop up. the call lasted 2.5 hrs...i don't ever want to spend that long on the phone again.