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Not in the PEECC

Since I am not in the PEECC anymore and I am on a totally new jobsite, I will start a new blog...

bye-bye Hollywood

Yesterday was my last day at the project. Although I am happy to finally be outta of here, I did make a lot of good friends over the past 9 months and in some ways my apartment in LA felt a lot like home. Another frustrating thing is that the project itself (my portion of it included) is not yet finished. It will be at least a month till it is done, and if things keep going as they have been, it my be even longer then that.

The rest of the week I get to relax and hang out at home with my wife (yay!). Then on Sunday I am traveling to Alaska for 10 days, which will be quite an interesting trip. I will take lots of pics and try to add them to the blog if I have a chance.

-Jr.

Not in the peecc

Today, I did not have to go to the peecc. Although I do enjoy the fact that I did not have to sit in my little box, the reasons for this really sux. Yesterday, when we were about to complete all of my work here onsite, we ran into another huge problem. This site must be jinxed, I think that it was built on an old Indian (I guess I should say Native American) burial ground or something. Literally, everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong.

On another side note, the boss took some excellent pictures of what it is like living near hollywood. We have this casting agency right next to the jobsite. There are always lots of good looking people going in and out that place, with scripts in hand and what not. Occasionally, we find them doing some pretty wierd modeling shoots in the dumpy area around our plant, especially over this drainage canal (which is incidently called the LA river). Check out the facial expressions (and the shoes) on this girl in the picture...

Back in the PEECC

It has been a week since I have been in the PEECC. I had some time at home with my wife and then I was sent to another site in Northern Cali. I actually feel quite refreshed being away from this site for a week and they made some good progress without me, so that was great.

Today I am stuck in the PEECC by myself. The boss has gone home for good, he has no plans to come back (lucky guy) but then again, I only have one more week until I am out of here too (I have to go back to Alaska). I hope for some more progress today so that the whole crew can get outta here by the end of this month.

Here is a great picture of the boss in usual position huddled in the peecc...

Success (almost)

Today I was again stuck in the peecc alone. The boss is still home with his wife, although he has to travel back to site tomorrow. After some problems early this morning, everything seemed to be working well today, we even got the unit to its full output. Then you hear someone over the radio asking the control room to shut down some fan...he keeps calling and his voice is getting more and more urgent. Then all of a sudden all my computers go dead. The plant has tripped.

Turns out that the plants ups (uninterruptible power supply) had lost power. What the heck, does that make any sense to anyone? That is the system that is supposed to stay ON when everything else trips off. Later I find out that in fact that ups was never fully operational and was basically just running as a junction box. We were SO close, and then our curse struck again!

On the bright side, they decided to paint the peecc today and since I spent a good 12 hours in there today, I had the pleasure of getting high off the fumes....

Just another day in the peecc...

I dug up this cool pic that I took onsite 4 months ago when some yellow jackets decided to make their nest on some pipe-fitters equipment...

-Jr.

Alone in the PEECC

Although today I actually had to travel to another jobsite (it was only 5 miles away), I had to spend the rest of my time alone in the peecc. The boss took the proactive move to get the heck outta dodge and visit his wife while we have some downtime. Meanwhile, after issueing an official schedule yesterday that told us we were not going to start the unit again until Friday, the contractor asked this morning if we would be okay to start this afternoon...like we have ever been the hold up....

It shows us what a great group of planners/managers are trying to run this project. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed and we were able to delay a start till at least tomorrow (in hopes that they actually fixed the rest of their problems). I was glad to be at a more normal (aka working) site today...

Good times,

-Jr.