Thanksgoating – Day seventeen. Other duties as assigned
20I had a really long day yesterday so today I’ve got nothing planned. So, I’ll keep this short.
Today I am thankful for a career that throws me curve balls from time to time. And sometimes they’re kind of fun 
I typically spend my day with switches and firewalls and virtual machines, bits and bytes and all the geekery. We needed to put in a redundant fiber connection for business continuity. The internet provider was able to get the fiber to the street, but we were responsible for getting the fiber to the building from there. We hired a crew for the task. They showed up with everything necessary including a Bobcat with a trenching tool. I spoke with the foreman and jokingly asked if I could drive the Bobcat. He said, ‘if you get my guys a pizza, you can drive whatever you want’. 15 minutes later there was a pizza and I got to drive the Bobcat
Some days are better than others
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Sweet! I especially like the image of you in the IT uniform sitting in the muddy machine. (Clearly wearing a shit-eating-grin under the mask.
)
While I was in college (in the late 70’s), my summer job was working for a guy who did excavation and logging. His method for job training was: hop on the machine and go to it, so I essentially taught myself to operate a bulldozer, backhoe and log skidder. Miraculously I survived, with minimal damage to coworkers and surroundings. Kid-in-a-candy-store fun for a while at first, then it eventually became routine.
Years later, while we were building our house, I needed about 150 feet of trench dug for the main electric feed. I had some difficulty finding someone to do the job, so I rented a backhoe to do it myself. To my surprise, after 20 intervening years spending my days sitting in front of a screen writing and debugging code, when I sat on the machine it all came back to me and I got the job done without incident. And it was fun again!
@macromeh Very cool. Life skills are important.
/giphy jealous
Not what I was looking for, but too funny to change
Here’s what I wanted:
Several weeks ago I took a trip to Vegas with my wife. She was in charge of planning stuff to do and she found a company called Dig It. So I got to drive a fairly large excavator for an hour with a trainer. The time went by very fast, I could have easily done 3 hours.
Also, I interned at Caterpillar in college, and never got to drive anything while I worked there.
@fibrs86 That sounds like every kid’s dream. I’m going to see if there is something like that around here. Or book a flight to Vegas
@capnjb Speaking of kids, this place had little excavators setup for kids as young 2 years old. They said that the tracks are locked out and they use chains to keep the kids from damaging things.
@capnjb @fibrs86 I think you are both overlooking the most critical component. By a large margin.
I need to see if there is something like your wife around here
I said this in a different thread not long ago, but I learned to drive a forklift before I learned to drive a car (didn’t get my DL until I was in my 20s.) I worked briefly at Celestial Seasonings and got to move pallets loaded with herb barrels around in a warehouse. Fun!
Many years later, I went to a printing company that was closing one branch down, to buy some presses. The guy offered me a free forklift - I was so tempted! But I don’t really have anywhere to store one.
@Kyeh On the other hand, if your driving a forklift, pretty much any parking spot you want can be yours.
@Kyeh I learned to drive a car before I learned to drive a tractor. Lol.
One summer they were like “can you just drive this tractor back 10 miles to the office” which had absolutely nothing to do with my job. The whole double pedal thing and it had a sprayer attached hanging off it’s ass.
I drove it to the end of the field and was like… You want me to take this on a public road!!! In traffic!!!
Are you taking off the sprayer? Nope. Hard pass. This is a very bad idea.
Apparently meh translates interrobang to multiple !
@unksol So … what did you do?
@Kyeh I drove it down to the end of the field. Stopped not quiet straight. And said nope someone is gonna die
@unksol
Sounds like a wise decision!
Just sayin.
@blaineg Fact #1: I’m married to a patient woman. Fact #2: Not that patient.
@blaineg @capnjb
It is VERY important to be able to recognize one’s limits
@capnjb @chienfou Or someone else’s?
@blaineg @chienfou Yeah, that’s my wife’s job