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Wednesday, Nov. 05, 2003 - 7:43 p.m.

Bad winter inspection? Who really cares (besides a few people in London)?�plus- the last photo of something from my garden this year (I think)

Yeah, we did shitty on the winter truck inspection today. One of the people from London even said he had never seen our trucks looking worse than they did today.

Now, you might think this is copping a bad attitude, but- who cares?

The complains were about such "major" things as the insides of the truck beds not being spotless, low air inflation in a tire, and a marker light not functioning.

Here�s why I don�t care what the folks at the home office think- our fleet of trucks is the oldest in the district (over half of the trucks are over 12 years old), possibly the oldest in any county in North Dakota. We are presently without our trained mechanic (off, waiting for rotator cuff surgery), leaving us at the mercy of the local International dealership. They have some of the worst mechanics you could imagine working on the company�s $80,000 and up (new) vehicles.

How bad are they? They took at total of 3 times to fix a bad driveshaft on one of our trucks last month. The driveshaft even fell out on our driver while he was bringing the truck back to our storage, AFTER they said it was fixed. And this was the second trip, not the first.

Pathetic.

We still have temporary lead workers. They rotate in and out every month, leaving whatever is wrong for the next guy.

We are trying to get the vehicles ready with about 14 employees who weren�t even State of North Dakota employees 18 months ago (about 2/3rds of the total head count).

So, if our trucks didn�t appease the royalty from London, they can bite each and every one of us�.


Oh yeah- when the snow starts falling (sooner than later), these trucks will be out there, making the roads safe for the traveling public.

Even if they have a little dirt in the corners of the bed, or a marker light not working on the front bumper�


Had to have my eyes examined today. This is done by a flunky from London who has no medical training whatsoever.

Passed.

Yeah.

Also had my yearly flu shot today. Arm hurts like a mutha right now, too.

No, the flunky didn�t give us the shot. We went to the county health department for that.

Flunky did also gave his fork truck operator training today, but I was able to skip the classroom portion (I already have my certification).

He bugged me until I gave in and went outside for the driving part of the training. He wanted me to run his slalom course with both the end-loader and the fork tractor.

I ran over one of the cones with the loader. He yelled at me to stop, and said �You are running over an old lady with your forks!�.

I lifted the loader�s arms, backed up about a foot, and then dropped the forks (holding a pallet full of cones) on top of the �old lady�.

He didn�t think that was funny.

I ran the course with the fork tractor without any problems, and then, as a parting shot for the �instructor�, I did one last smart-assed thing:

Instead of putting the loaded pallet back in the starting area. I gently lowered the load onto one of the cones marking the beginning of his course. I left the pallet resting on the cone- not enough to bend it, but enough so that you couldn�t move it without a struggle.

I don�t think he was amused.

Cracked me up, anyway�


Tonight�s low is supposed to be 27�.

They have been wrong many times this fall, but I believe them this time. It�s 36� as I am typing this, and it�s only 7:30.

I thought I should take a shot of my last remaining pepper plant (and Sprout, who is under the weather today- don�t ask), before I haul it to work tomorrow:

I brought it in the other nights when it was supposed to frost or freeze, and it has just kept on growing with all of these warm days we have had here recently.

It�ll probably die at work, but I will try to keep it alive a little longer anyway�

Antique - Futuristic


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