With Proper Training…

Remember that show back in the 80s called “Simon & Simon”? Well I do, I used to watch it every once and a while. I think one of them had a mustache.

Anyway, it’s the only thing I could think of where two people had the same name. So I was browsing my internet news and found out that Paris Hilton is engaged to Paris Latsis. How weird is that? Paris doesn’t seem like it would be that common of a name and definitely not a male name, but I guess I was just wrong.

Here’s to the next reality TV show covering the marriage of famous people we shouldn’t care about, “Paris & Paris”.

A couple of weeks ago I, along with just about everyone else I work with had what seemed to be a ridiculously bad week. Considering that the pictures below represent what I got to see and deal with within the first hour of work I should have known that things just weren’t going to go that well.

When people ask me where I work or what I do, I’m not sure they fully understand what I’m talking about when I say the company I work for does sales and warehousing for a manufacturer of irrigation/water meter boxes. I wouldn’t either if I didn’t have to deal with them every day. It still baffles my mind that pallets of these things ship out all the time. Where are they putting these things? Everywhere I go already seems to have a good supply already in the ground. Actually, I never even looked at them until I started working here and that was because it seemed like a fun game to see if the box in the ground came from the manufacturer we rep. Anyway, we rep for some other types of products as well, but this line just happens to be the one with the crappily loaded trucks.

Once again, you can click on the image for the full-sized one via Flickr.

Here’s a shot of the full scene viewed from the loading dock. If you look closely at the utility pole on the left border of the image, you’ll notice that the gray tube running next to it has a slight bend. Some drivers find it difficult to navigate into our loading dock and that bend is the result of one of those drivers.

Now a closer view from a side angle. One of the only things I was thankful for is that it wasn’t raining. Could you imagine having to help clean all this stuff up in the rain? Let me tell you, it sucks.

Here’s a shot that also shows another pallet that is ready to happily fall as soon as we pull out the gray vault box. I think we were actually able to save that one though so not all was lost.

Now this one is actually from a different day. I think some of the blame on this one could go to the driver. The pallets were probably already sideways due to a bent load bar, but his backing in wasn’t so smooth and the rough braking caused a few to slide out all over the loading dock. You can see some boxes stuck between the truck and dock in this image.

HOLY CRAP!!! I just won on Blingo again! This time I got an even better prize - $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com. But wait! It gets better! I actually had the option of just taking the cash so really I just won $25! Also, I did a search right after claiming my prize was able to have the joy of seeing my name in the upper righthand corner as the last winner. Woo hoo!

Note: This is my first photo blog post using Flickr. You should be able to click on the pictures in the blog to go to my Flickr page and check out the image in a variety of sizes.

Those of you that knew me in college may remember my rather unreliable van that I drove around. While I enjoyed driving Daisy around, I have to admit that I am happy to have a car that gets more than 12-13 mpg these days. Anyway, my parents have been having really really bad luck with cars the past few years.

First, my Dad got into an accident with our old reliable Dodge Dakota truck (I think it had around 250,000 miles on it) and it was totalled. Then when I got home for Christmas last year I found out that my mom got in an accident with the short bus. When I first saw the van, it was from the angle below. I thought to myself, “Wow, my Dad was totally exaggerating the amount of damage to the van. It just looks like some bumper damage.”

Then I got a little big closer and realized that there was some definite bumper damage.

Then I decided that I should try a different angle and thought, “Holy crap! That is some serious damage!”

The van still runs, but it is a bit drafty with the lack of rear windows. I would suggest that it would help cooling during the summer, but I found out early on that driving with the rear windows open just sucks in exhaust and leads to big headaches and nausea. The important thing though is that no one was hurt. At least that’s what my parents would say to me whenever I got into an accident. Not that I really made a habit of getting into accidents and Yaeka, no references to stupid accidents I had in high school in the comments please.

So last night I discovered this new search service called Blingo. It actually isn’t a new search engine, it just adds a layer of fun and games on top of the google search engine.

Basically, every time you search using Blingo, you have a chance of winning a variety of prizes. In less than 24 hours I already won some movie tickets! Actually, Matt won the tickets, but since he signed up through my link that I sent him, I also won!

So please sign up to use Blingo using my link! I’ll let you know when the movie tickets actually show up, but it’s pretty damn exciting to win something for doing nothing. It’s easier than FreeiPods.com which also isn’t a scam since I use the free one Yaeka got like everyday. (Images of the excitment of opening a free iPod to be posted soon.