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.

The PEECC 2 (the inside)

Notice the funny looking guy, he's hard to miss.

-Jr.

The PEECC

Well, since we have been getting tons of questions about what the heck the PEECC is (none actually), the boss decided to take a couple pictures...No, it is not a bunker in Baghdad, and yes, we are 5 miles from Hollywood....who woulda thunk it....We'll let you guess what PEECC stands for ;)

-Jr.

4th of July and still stuck in the PEECC

Once again the boss and I are stuck here in the PEECC. It is a beautiful day in SoCal, sun out, temps in the mid 80s and we should be enjoying some with our families. Instead, we are stuck in the PEECC. And in case we forgot that it was the 4th, some guy in his airplane made a 4 in the sky, just for our benefit (see pic).

And btw, we were unsuccessful again today ;)

Another Day, Another Dollar (or 25 cents in my case)

Here we are again, it is the Sunday before the 4th of July, and instead of getting drunk at a BBQ, the boss and I are stuck in the PEECC again. It feels like this building is my home, I have been stuck in here seemingly forever. Once again, we are back to where we were yesterday and it doesn't seem like we are going to be getting any further. Once again, the rest of the plant is not really ready to support what we need to do.

On another note, I have had a lot of time to think over the past couple days. I realized that when I went to Alaska the people that I met working on the North Slope (Prudhoe Bay on the map) fell mostly into two groups.
The first group is the people that just need the money (for various reasons, but usually because of divorce/family issues). They have a pretty sweet deal up there, where all of your food and housing is taken care of, and you get 6 months off per year (2 weeks on, 2 weeks off). The pay up there is high, mostly above 6 figures...
The 2nd group is the people that are just trying to get away from the rest of the world (or at least the people that know them). These guys love to work long shifts (16+ hours) and they don't really care if they get their 2 weeks off or not. It is easy to get away from things in a state that is over 500k sq miles with less then 650k people!

After thinking about these two groups of people, I realized that most of the people that I work with all fall into the above two groups as well. However, with my company, there is also a small 3rd group that is just trying to use this job as a stepping stone. Deep thoughts....

-Jr.

Another unsuccessful start

Another day, another problem with the rest of the plant. For over a month now, we have been trying to run our portion of the plant. We have had little to no problems. However, the rest of the plant is not ready to support our run, and we continue to have to shutdown for various reasons. Today is another perfect example of this. Everything on our end is running perfectly, but they once again requested for us to shut the unit down...

When will I finally get to leave this site? Your guess is as good as mine...

-Jr.

Another day in PEECC paradise

So the boss and I decided that we have spent too much wasted time in the peecc, so we might as well setup a blog. I doubt it will be very interesting, but we will see what happens. I just got back from a trip to the north slope of Alaska. I saw lots of caribou and oil pipelines and that was about it. Oh yea, and the sun never went down since it is north of the artic circle. I then got to spend one day at home before coming back to the peecc...ah, what a life!

-Jr.