A day in the life of.......

[thatbloke]

Whats a champaign socialist?

Edit - just googled it.

Champagne socialist is a pejorative political term originating in the United Kingdom. The phrase is used to describe self identifying socialists who disregard ideals of socialism in their daily life. The term is used by opposing politicians to portray and ridicule their opponents as hypocritical

I still dont understand though what has that got to do with me needing new windows? And what makes you think I'm a socialist?

 

[crank39]

Whats everybody done today? I've had a shocker really.

Drove 2 hrs from Derby to Worcester to (so i was lead to believe) double up with another engineer and carry out (i assumed) an all day job. Arrived with no one on site, rang said engineer who was on another totally different site working .

Rang office only to be told it was a mistake on their part and it was in fact just a 1 man job, thing is the other engineer had the parts on his van , had to drive 1hr 10 mins back up north to Coventry to collect the parts and then back 1hr 10mins to Worcester, completed the job and then drove back 2hrs back to Derby.

Once home i fired up me laptop to check tomorrows diary and its worse than today.

Set off from home, pick up 11 DG units from glass shop, 1 hr 30mins to doncaster and fit 1 dgu, drive 30mins to other job in Donny and fit 4 more, from there go to Grimsby which is probably an hour and fit another dgu, this is just the AM jobs, after Grimsby i drive to Mablethorpe to complete an insurance report on some rotten window frames, after that while still in Mablethorpe go and fit the remaining 5 dgu's, then while on the way home to Derby i need to stop in Lincoln and measure 5 blown dgu's and look at a leaking conservatory roof..........oh and complete the report for the insurance company before a 2hr + drive from there.

Im fecked just writing it

You dont fancy driving out to Suffolk to build and fit some oak windows for me do ya?

Don't mind the fitting, its the making i'd struggle with

Just got in by the way, bladdy starvin too, don't want many more days like that

 

[misterdubya]

Well, today was in-inspiring.

Repaired a F75 fault on a Vailliant (new pump).

Did a CP12 on 2 properties for a regular customer.

Priced up a new Temcana for a local school, and already got the job by email, and a faxed quotation signed.

Replaced a PCB in a local salon - the new PCB's are as bad as the old ones. (Potty Suprima) and put 2 Immersion Heaters in one of the tanks as they were blowing fuses.

Hardly rock n' roll, but just another day.

Mr. W.

 

[Space cat]

Today was mostly boring paperwork (which takes longer than the real work these days ) so I'll go back a bit.

Get in at 7:45 to be greeted by a worried radiographer. "We've got a water flow fault."

A quick look at the machine's cooling system shows that the water pressure is well down and the pump sounds terrible. First thought: "It was working fine yesterday so what's changed?"

Answer: Overnight, this particular machine was moved onto a different distribution board to make room for a new CT scanner. Out comes the meter to check the voltages but all three phases show normal.

Have you figured it out yet? Well done - but I wasn't that quick.

The resident mechanical expert, who is also a deputy manager, turns up and declares that the pump is "running like a bag of hammers". Next thing I know, there's a new pump on order and it'll arrive tomorrow. The machine stands idle for the rest of the day.

Next day the new pump arrives and is fitted - but it's no better than the old one. A lot of head scratching follows. We check all around the cooling system for blockages but find nothing. By now the whole radiotherapy technology department is in on the act but nobody can explain it. Time for a tea break.

Half way through a cuppa, I almost jump out my seat as the light bulb comes on. Three phase centrifugal pump with the outlet coming off at a tangent -----"IT'S RUNNING BACKWARDS!"

We track down the electrician who did the DB swap but he swears blind that he never mixed the phases up.

"Red to red, yellow to yellow and blue to blue. No mistakes."
"But did you check the phase rotation."
"I would have but somebody nicked my meter."

At this point our oldest technologist wakes up and dredges up an ancient memory about a DB being put in wrong. It's all making sense now. There's nothing else inside an accelerator that cares about phase rotation; only that pump. We whip the lid off the machine's isolation transformer and the evidence is staring us in the face. Two wires are clearly not the right length for the terminals they're on; they've been swapped over. Instead of getting the faulty DB sorted out, the installation engineers frigged the transformer to compensate.

Now there's something about a transformer that size that makes everybody keep there distance - even though we all know it's been isolated - so muggins gets the job. With one hand behind my back I transfer the wires to the correct terminals, we switch on and the pump comes to life. Result: a bunch of happy radiographers and a nice big tin of sweeties for our trouble.

But that isn't the end of it. I ring up the head of department and inform him that the CT installation guys have a faulty DB on their hands. "It's OK", he replies. "There's nothing in that scanner that cares about phase rotation."

In due course the new CT scanner is switched on for the first time and - you guessed it - it doesn't work. The installation engineers are completely baffled ---