June 28, 2020

2020.06.22

The day yesterday went as planned, editing my journal entries and podcast episode. I reorganized the podcast conversation, so Trevor is not talking for the last thirty minutes straight. Since I am three hours ahead of my family and two hours ahead of Trevor, our phone call was interesting.

My father-in-law called, and we caught up. I told him about my new position. When Jessica called yesterday, she was concerned about me, serving the sacrament to myself, but I communicated with my bishop, confirming my practice is correct.

I woke up for the first time with my Apple Watch. My app wakes me up at a natural time between my REM cycles. I woke up a two hours before work, eating my breakfast quickly, and I was able to do my laundry. I did not ring them out well. Jessica did not want me to do laundry yesterday, asking me to rest from that labor.

My drive to work was good until I forgot to address the obvious. Google was going to lead me to a random field. When I arrived, I pulled up my project coordinator's pinned location, which supposed to be the job site trailers, and it helped somewhat. It still led me to a random location, but I drove down, looking for a place to park and seek guidance. I stopped at a stop sign to call my Quality Control Manager, when I saw a sign, pointing the way to a new construction for a solar power plant. I followed the signs, finding the job site.

My day was odd on my first day of quality control training. It was not a fire hose as expected. It was quite slow because the general contractor will not let me go into the field; unless, I have an OSHA 10 card. My OSHA 30 card is too old.

I started working on completing it in the afternoon. The quality control guy onsite talks a lot, so I was unable to complete much of it.

I am an hour ahead of the project in Texas, so they finish later then us in Virginia, forcing me to do my daily reports later.

The QC guy showed me the way home, since my drive to the site was roundabout. It turned out that I only had to drive about a hundred meters from the point that I turned around to reach the job site.

I learned a lot from the quality control people, but it was not full speed ahead, since I don't have a current OSHA 10. One disappointing thing is that I suppose to train with Frank, but I have not seen him yet.

When I got home, I went to a grocery store to get food for the week. Walking around for about ten minutes, the best thing that I found is peanuts for lunch tomorrow. No eating utensils or plates are provided for me in my hotel. I have to drink cereal for breakfast out of provided cups.

After dinner, I completed my daily construction report late last night. My dinner was so filling, or maybe I was snacking too much that I have dinner for tomorrow. I ordered an eggplant mamatini at Rosa's Italian Ristorante Pizzeria in Hopewell. I never tried it before. I only ate a few bites today. I will eat the rest tomorrow.

2020.06.23

I was able to do my daily laundry this morning.

My drive to work went well.

My progress on my OSHA 10 has been disappointing from the distracting work environment to the website not saving my progress twice. Each page requires a minimum of fifteen seconds of review. The rework made the second module take more than three times as long as it should, which is probably more than four hours.

I was able to complete the third module in the afternoon. I have to do my course outside to be able to concentrate.

Trevor wanted to play Final Fantasy tonight, but I have to work on my OSHA 10. I was able to complete the fourth module while I did my daily reports during my late dinner, but in the morning the next day, the course would not load. I hope that the course is not corrupted because I did work on it on a insecure internet. I should be able to be escorted around without concern of upper management. I have nine more modules to do. This is worse than the doing the 15 orientation courses in one day.

2020.06.24

My quality control training is not going well. It is more like a construction safety training. I tried to complete another module of the OSHA 10 course this morning, but the website would not let me. I am not confident in my reading skills, so I listen to the course material. I am blocked from the course for the second time today. The first time was about lunch, and I could not continue until about 2 PM, and the course put me on about hour break. I can't continue until 5:17 PM.

2020.06.25

The stress is over, completing my OSHA 10 as quick as possible late last night. I did not listen to all the words of the material. I think that it is a good thing because I was blocked from completing the course even after passing the exam and completing the final survey. I got an email, saying that I need to do something to get access to my certificate, but I am blocked until 9:00 AM today. I was able to find my certificate though, so I hope that it works.

I did my daily laundry today, and I am realizing that my recently developed "efficient" method of washing clothes is aggravating the skin on my forearm. I pull the length of the sock, sleeves, and clothes up my arm, which is rubbing and messing with my skin, when I wash my clothes.

When I got into the office, I almost missed orientation because our spit drug tests were making an error. I had to give a third sample. I was lucky that they let me in. I got out of orientation just before lunch, and I was able to get my daily report for yesterday to management.

The afternoon was good. A BYUI intern took me for a drive, sharing with me everything that he learned so far. It was chill and very muddy. I still need to write down notes for my experience with him.

My drive home was a little crazy. I drove in probably the worst storm that I ever have. Driving in the left lane, I drive into a flooded lane, splashing so much water that I could not see, and I bumped into the sidewalk.

I got a stir fry pizza for dinner, which sounds interesting. I basically grew up on stir fry.

2020.06.26

I learned something about nature and human relations on my drive to work today. My dad use to like to calculate his gas mileage, and my Jeep Wrangler does it for me in real time. I was proud to break 28 miles per gallon, and I arrived at work with it saying 28.3 miles per gallon. As I was conservatively driving, I was approached from behind by a person that drives fast. I sped up to try to accommodate this speed; however, less than a minute later I saw a bird, flying passed my windshield. It realized that it would not make it across without me hitting it, so it turned to make a last second U turn. The small bird's U turn failed, and I hit it, driving about 60 miles an hour. I expect that the bird saw me coming, but I sped up slightly because the car behind me. I learned that nature has its flow and everyone contributes to it. I can't say that the fast car behind me disrupted the flow of nature; however, my reaction to the fast car acted against the flow of nature. People contribute to nature, and nature compensates for everyone. I think that a person's reaction of a person's contribution to nature may be hard for nature to compensate. I may be overthinking it. Be careful of unnatural reactions to people. I think that bullying is a disruption to people's lives because unhealthy reaction to people.                          

                                                                               

2020.06.27

Yesterday was so busy that I forgot to write in my journal. The stir fry pizza was odd. It was my first reception of Americanized stir fry. All the ingredients of the stir fry were fried to an unrecognizable state. I did recognize meat was an ingredient. I have been bringing leftovers to work for lunch, eating half of the pizza for dinner, but I forgot to bring my second half for breakfast before my flights today. Last night I got a four season white pizza. It is probably the best pizza that I tasted, having a unique cheese and artichoke.

My quality control training was a little disappointing. The QC manager spoke to me about quality control for less than thirty seconds. He had the two BYU-Idaho interns, who have been there and in the industry for less than a few months, take me out to the field to teach me the system. The interns said that he hasn't taught them much either. He depends a lot on his assistant. The assistant makes the QC program what it is.

The assistant took us out to do a Fall off Potential grounding test. We attached the Earth ground sensor at three locations. One is the grounding rod. The second is staked a distance away; then, the distance is divided by ten, where ten tests are performed with the third point, measuring the resistance of the Earth. It should be an exponential curve. This determines how well the Earth is a grounding system at these coordinates of the Earth. Our first test went well, but the results of the second test were off. It was probably because we were not as careful, choosing the location.

The assistant has become a good friend. We have had good conversations about life and interests like virtual reality and inferiority complexes. I actually tried to give him a copy of the Book of Mormon because he is a sincere good person, but he refuse the book, since it was my special edition that Thomas gave me. I lost my extra copy. He was receptive. We will see if I follow up well. It will probably not go well, knowing how difficult life is.

I am very tired. I stayed up late to pack. I spoke to Trevor for a long time last night.

My current flight from Charlotte, Virginia to San Antonio is a little awkward because I am stuck between two very large people.

I play video games mainly for Trevor, but most of my day today was devoted to playing Pokémon and napping. It feels like a waste, but I am happy that I am catching up on my journal.

Using Apples ecosystem has served me well today mostly. Apple maps led me to a random location, when I was driving to the airport. I like how Apple maps works well with the watch. I wouldn't use the app without it. I put my boarding pass on my watch with the wallet app. I impressed the person behind me when I tried it.

Returning my rental car was interesting I have never done that before. Driving around yesterday, I almost got my average miles per gallon up to 29. I got up to 29.1 miles per gallon. I was in a rush this morning, so I was unable to attempt get an average of 29 miles per gallon as I hoped.

2020.06.28

My project manager picked me up at the airport. He asked me about my experience. I was honest with him about my disappointment. He sympathized. We spoke about the theories of electricity because no one could explain them to me in Virginia. My interest and memory of physics inspired the conversation, crediting it to my physics teacher. We spoke about transformers, semiconductors, and one & three phase.

I learned that transformers are used in one and three phase implementation to create electrical fields to induce effective transmission of the current with increased voltage. It is like a booster field to help propel the current to its destination. I recalled that transformers can modify voltage by wrapping a conductor with wire.

We spoke about semiconductors because there is a layer of it in medium voltage wire. Medium voltage wire has a very thick conductor surrounded by a thick wax like layer of insulation. My terminology may be wrong, but it has another layer of insulation that normal people would recognize; then, there is a semiconductor layer between the grounding wiring layer within the wire. There is probably another thin insulation layer between the semiconductor and grounding layer, but I remembered from physics that semiconductors can temporarily hold a charge like a battery. The semiconductor layer of a medium voltage wire serves to protect the conductor of excessive current of itself and other MV cables nearby with their electric fields by absorbing it, making a buffer to aid the grounding of the faults. MV cables are used to deliver the alternating current to substations after the direct current from the solar arrays is converted to AC current in an inverter.

When I got home at my hotel in Range, Texas, (Hopewell, Virginia was miserable.) I unpacked my technology, and prepared for my podcast after dinner. Maybe I should edit my podcast before posting this entry.

I didn't do much today, which is a Sunday, other than write. I listened to a chapter of Saints, describing the trials they encountered with the Safety Society in Kirkland, Ohio. It was not a flawed business, but the pride of the people on top of the difficult economic times limited its prosperity.

Fresh n' lean breakfast today