It is currently close to 02:00 and I find myself thinking of all of my interactions with my apprentice, how absolutely cruel I may seem to an outsider who doesn’t know of us snarking at each other in good fun.
“You’re delightfully evil, but that’s what I like about you!”, he has proclaimed more than once.
“You’re sarcastic when you can’t be arsed to be evil”, is another thing he tends to say.
We occasionally have snark battles and so far, I reign supreme.
They generally start whenever he accidentally leaves an opening for me to exploit, in the end he ends up utterly roasted. Burnt, really. Even if I am the one leaving an opening, I still manage to turn it around in my favour.
It isn’t all that often he dares to initiate a battle, knowing full well that there’s a high possibility of me winning.
My apprentice and I even have this running joke that everyone else lifts him up with encouragements and compliments, while I proceed to kick him back down to floor level again and stomps a bit for good measure.
A lot of our coworkers who have yet to get used to me snarking are continuously floored whenever I make a snide comment, while others laugh their arses off.
Can you tell that I used to be known as a nice and quiet person before my apprentice stepped into the picture? But that was because they never heard my thoughts.
__
A small sample of our conversations (and I am being kind in these);
Apprentice: “This is the first time I’ve gotten a Finnish woman down on her knees!”
Me (deadpan): “Yeah, well, I wanted to see how you see the world.”
JI and JL laughed their arses off, my apprentice conceded my point (I’m taller than him) and I allowed myself to smirk.
Apprentice walking around on his knees in front of his machine to avoid having to get up and back down on his knees.
Me: “I don’t see much difference.”
Apprentice pouts.
Me: “So... I heard you gave him compliments when I was sick.”
JL: “Yeah. Good cop/bad cop, you know!”
Apprentice: “Bad cop?! She’s the whole fucking Miami Vice!”
Apprentice: “You’ll need to help me after lunch break with the program I’m making.”
Me: “You? Making a program? On your own? From scratch?”
Apprentice: “Don’t be so shocked!”
Apprentice: “You’re so meeeaan.”
Me: “I never said I was nice.”
Apprentice: “... True, but that’s what I like about you!”
Apprentice: “I don’t know if I’m just stupid, but this program doesn’t want to work.”
Me: “Dumb question, of course you’re stupid.”
Apprentice (hides face behind hands): “Why do I keep giving you these openings.”
Me: “Because you forget that I always exploit them.”
Apprentice: “You have to admit that we’re having at least a little fun!”
Me (smirks at him): “At least I do.”
Apprentice (nods sagely): “Yeah, kicking me down and stomping for good measure.”
Apprentice: “You have to admit that I have learned plenty of things during these two months! Or at least a little bit.”
Me: “Yeah, before you were below floor level, now you might be on floor level.”
Apprentice: “Oh, you are so kind!”
Apprentice: “Can you help me?”
Me: “Yes, but I don’t want to.”
Apprentice: “Will you help me?”
Me: “No.”
Apprentice: “Please, help me.”
Me: “Only because I have to.”
Apprentice: “Ah! Thank you little sweetie--! No! Not little sweetie! I’m so sorry! Please don’t murder me.”
Me: “You can’t stop me.”
Apprentice: “My wife will!”
Me: “I will murder you in your sleep and no one will know it was me.”
Apprentice: “... True, my wife wouldn’t wake even if there was an earthquake.”
Apprentice: “Oh thank you! You’re so pretty and nice!”
Me: “I heard two lies in one sentence.”
Tfw you’re going back to work on Monday after four weeks of vacation, unsure how much you still remember about the machines.
Granted, one of my machines needs to have its engine refurbished (it makes terrible noise), but I still have the other that I need to remember.
EVEN BETTER.
I’m the only one who truly knows the machines.
Guys, wtf, get your shit together and learn them too so that it won’t be super panicky when I get sick and can’t work.
Seriously, the Biesse machines have several guys who knows them without a problem.
Homag and Weeke? Pretty much only me, AYY. My boss and another guy knows a teeny tiny bit and neither really knows much about the edgebanding feature in it.
Rewatching PotC 1-3 made me realise exactly how disappointed I was with Salazar’s Revenge (wasn’t too happy with On Stranger Tides either for that matter, but it wasn’t as bad as PotC 5).
I ain’t gonna start ranting about it now, it is far too late for that and I gotta head off to sleep.
So... yesterday my work day started of nicely.
In other words; it didn’t. It started off annoying. It took us almost one and a half hour to get the damned machine working again.
This morning I told my mum; “I hope today won’t start as annoying as yesterday.”
Turned out I jinxed myself, but at least it just took us a half hour to get the machine working again.
Ugh... I am decidedly not looking forward to tomorrow.
Back on Friday, one of my machines bugged and that resulted in it smacking right into the tool changer.
There’s this unit called Flex5, which makes my machine a 5 axis machine. The problem is that sometimes it bugs and even though the tool inserted in the unit is angled, it might think it’s pointing straight down. Which happened on Friday.
I wasn’t so lucky that it was at a 90 degree angle, nope, of course not. It was at a 45 degree angle. Which thus resulted in it smacking right into the tool changer, damaging the plastic holder (fortunately we have an extra). The tool itself seems to have survived without having been bent.
However. The Flex5 unit was damaged. It refused to let go of the tool it held, even though we - using codes - tried to make it let go of it. We tried a lot of angles (0-90 degrees), but it was only in the 0 degree angle that it let go of it a bit but not completely. Finally we tried to go past 0 degrees and then it let go. So, yeah, something in the Flex5 unit was definitely damaged. Fortunately we had an old unit that had been refurbished after it had been damaged a few years ago.
We thought it was the end of that.
However... the milling spindle had moved off center and I didn’t notice. In hindsight, the impact hadn’t been mild.
I did try out the new Flex5 unit to see that it worked before going on to do what I was supposed to do. It just needed some tweaking, I thought at least.
4 damned millimeters off center.
I probably ruined the boards. One side looks okay, the other... looks like shit.
I can only hope they can be salvaged somehow. We don’t have more of those boards and we are on a tight ass time schedule, we can’t afford mistakes.
To make matters worse, the guy who has been charged with teaching me is quitting after next week. Which means that I have to manage two machines on my own; setting up one for another worker and setting up the other one for myself.
To make matters yet even worse, I’ll be the only one who actually can set those machines up. I’ll be the “expert” on the Homag Group machines, while there are four who knows the Biesse machines.
I’m in deep shit, I need help.
I find it quite interesting how much one of my dogs, Bamse, trusts me.
I can carry/hold him like he’s some kind of a baby, lying on his back in my arms and he’s content. It’s so clear that he’s relaxed and is enjoying it.
Meanwhile, if anyone else tries it he might lie still for a very short moment before he starts to struggle and wants to turn around.
I can sit slumped down and have him sleeping on me on his back, without him wanting to move until he feels it’s too warm to remain.
If anyone else tries, he turns to lie on his side and lies there so long as he is being pet (and it’s not too warm). Other times he turns around and sits up.
It’s just so amazing how I’ve managed to gain his trust and respect, when he once trusted and respected no one at all. It’s been lots of hard work, but no one else seems to get it.
They think that because he respects me, he must respect everyone else too.
I want to take him with me the day when I finally find my own place to live, I don’t want to watch from a distance and see all my hard work be undone.
I love my dogs a lot and when I make the mistake of thinking that I can’t love them more than I already do... they go and do something or give me a certain look that makes me realise that, yeah, I can love them more.
@tree-of-time replied to your post: One of my dogs, Bamse, is… rather interesting. As...
Advice for barking? Get between him and what he’s barking at, snap at him with your fingers and say firmly “no” and move when he tries to go around you, meet his eyes and just be dominant, show if he stops barking he get rewarded
I do try to get between him and whatever he’s barking at unless someone else is there to interfere with that action or him deciding to try and keep away from me.
Though, I don’t always use words to command him to be quiet. I have a lot of movements or certain clapping of my hands (or even sounds) that he knows the meaning of and obeys accordingly - unless it’s one of the times he decides to be a rebel.
His reward for obeying/listening is often “good boy!”, petting or cuddling. Occasionally he gets a treat (the others in my family give the dogs treats for everything and nothing despite my protests).
