"Mr. Ray,
Since you are sailing at this particular time you should state it ashore.
Best Regards,
MARAD GRADUATE"
What??? If I'm sailing, how am I ashore? Don't ships float, in the water? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
Or maybe it's just that I'm dealing with the WORST GOVERNMENT AGENCY EVER.
I've got to prove to these crazies that I worked in the maritime industry during 2006. I hope they believe me, because if they don't, I get to be active duty or pay the Maritime Administration some where in the neighborhood of 180,000 dollars. Like I've got 180,000 dollars. I haven't gotten a paycheck since mid 2005.
Sorry about the rant. I think that is was just a tyop... I mean, typo. I hate those.
27 February 2007
26 February 2007
Ship Update
Saturday I started writing support letters to send back to the States, since I am virtually out of money. During this attempt, I decided that it would probably be best if I just started staying at work a hour longer each day and working on letters and updating ye ole blog with ship related information.
The ship is coming along nicely. A couple of weekends ago, we ran the main engines and clutched in. Everything went really well. It was nice to feel the ship vibrating. Last Monday, I had a company come in with 34 tons of weights, two tirfors, two come alongs and two load cells to run a test on the container system. It was a success and the containers moved with very close to the amount of force that my calculations showed. A decisive victory.
Friday we finish installing a new oily water separator and I made a drawing of it and sent it to Bureau Veritas for approval. I've sent a few other drawings this past week to Bureau Veritas. The biggest item we have to overcome before we can leave the yard is certification. All of the mechanical systems have to be certified as well as all of the machinery. Much of this is already taken care of, but there are still some lingering anomalies to be resolved. One of those is my newest task.
The sprinkler system needs a bigger pump. That means it needs a bigger motor. That means it uses more power. That shouldn't be a problem, except that our emergency generator is now too small and we have to provide a new means of emergency power for this pump. One pump. So I'm working on figuring out all of the regulations for the enclosure of a second emergency generator up on the weather deck of the ship (the top part). I spent all day looking through classification society books and writing notes about what we need and determining what kind of boundaries we have to have in the event of a fire. It's really tedious work.
There are only a few big issues remaining before we can leave for Africa. The fire detection system still needs some work. They thought that they had finished it last week, but this weekend a few faults showed up, so they have to sort that out. Once that happens the ship yard will remove their fire alarm system, which is a few thousand meters of cabling running throughout all of the passage ways, and we will be able to close all of the doors.
Another big thing that's in progress is vacuum system. I organized a test of this system two weeks ago and we found major problems. The vacuum system is the system that makes the toilets flush and operates the sinks, showers, and drains. Serv Vac, the company that installed the system, has run some tests and they think that they have fixed the problem. We are going to test the system a few more times and hopefully agree with them that the toilets do, in fact, flush.
Other than those problems, we're ready to head out to sea. I hope that they get sorted in a timely manner...
The ship is coming along nicely. A couple of weekends ago, we ran the main engines and clutched in. Everything went really well. It was nice to feel the ship vibrating. Last Monday, I had a company come in with 34 tons of weights, two tirfors, two come alongs and two load cells to run a test on the container system. It was a success and the containers moved with very close to the amount of force that my calculations showed. A decisive victory.
Friday we finish installing a new oily water separator and I made a drawing of it and sent it to Bureau Veritas for approval. I've sent a few other drawings this past week to Bureau Veritas. The biggest item we have to overcome before we can leave the yard is certification. All of the mechanical systems have to be certified as well as all of the machinery. Much of this is already taken care of, but there are still some lingering anomalies to be resolved. One of those is my newest task.
The sprinkler system needs a bigger pump. That means it needs a bigger motor. That means it uses more power. That shouldn't be a problem, except that our emergency generator is now too small and we have to provide a new means of emergency power for this pump. One pump. So I'm working on figuring out all of the regulations for the enclosure of a second emergency generator up on the weather deck of the ship (the top part). I spent all day looking through classification society books and writing notes about what we need and determining what kind of boundaries we have to have in the event of a fire. It's really tedious work.
There are only a few big issues remaining before we can leave for Africa. The fire detection system still needs some work. They thought that they had finished it last week, but this weekend a few faults showed up, so they have to sort that out. Once that happens the ship yard will remove their fire alarm system, which is a few thousand meters of cabling running throughout all of the passage ways, and we will be able to close all of the doors.
Another big thing that's in progress is vacuum system. I organized a test of this system two weeks ago and we found major problems. The vacuum system is the system that makes the toilets flush and operates the sinks, showers, and drains. Serv Vac, the company that installed the system, has run some tests and they think that they have fixed the problem. We are going to test the system a few more times and hopefully agree with them that the toilets do, in fact, flush.
Other than those problems, we're ready to head out to sea. I hope that they get sorted in a timely manner...
02 February 2007
3 Things to Learn from Loosing Your Wallet
Well, I dropped the ball. I didn't take a picture of Dom and Amy when we had dinner together. Sorry. But they were awesome. We went to Panis and had a nice meal with a nice bottle of red wine and some great conversation. Dom just finished university and is starting with a law firm in a few months. These two awesome people are going to go on a long holiday soon.
Reflecting on the lost wallet saga, I can say that I have learned a few things about myself and life in general.
1. Some things just don't bother me.
2. Some things don't bother me until people start worrying about them for me.
3. Credit cards are for your wallet, cash is for your pocket. I accidentally lucked out on this one. I just happened to stuff all of my money into my pocket instead of my wallet in the guitar store just a few hours before ditching my wallet under a bench at a train station. Not that it would have mattered, Dom and Amy would have found it and all would have been well, mostly because they rock and are super awesome and because they are honest and would have returned my wallet with all contents undisturbed.
Another thing that I learned from this experience is that most people are good people.
Really.
It's true. I think...
I mean, Dom and Amy were perfectly random people. They could have been anybody. They were as perfectly honest as anyone I could have hoped for. They actually went through a fair bit of trouble to find me (they must have, because I still can't find this blog on Google) so that I could have my wallet back, which didn't have any money in it, so it wasn't really worth much. If I never got it back, it wouldn't have been a big deal. Not that I'm not unbelievable happy to have it back, but I'm more happy to have lost it and had this experience than to have found it again.
I don't really feel like I'm conveying what I mean to say very well. Dom and Amy are a perfectly random selection of human beings. They are extraordinary people, for sure, but are they really better than the average person?
Not to be a media-basher, but I think that my perception of people as individuals has been tainted by what I read about on www.cnn.com and www.drudgereport.com. I was reading a Bill O'Reilly column this morning about Hillary Clinton. He was asking why is it that people hate her so much? He also asked why people hate George Bush so much. I think it's because we are so dominated by our fears. We live, day after day, with this false perception that there are a whole load of people out there that just hate everyone.
Why?
What makes us think that most people are any different than we are? Maybe the thing is, we know how we are, and we don't trust ourselves.
The thing about that is we all love ourselves. Well, all of us that aren't suicidal love ourselves. We might not like ourselves, but we do love ourselves.
---break---
Some of you may be thinking at this point that I'm going to be making some revolutionist's claim that we should all start acting radically different like a bunch of crazy cult people. Life might be a little better if we did act different, but I want to know why we do what we do. You can't fix anything if you don't know why it isn't working. A lot of our "solutions" are remedies for the symptoms of the real problem.
---Resume---
So if we all love ourselves, and if we don't think that most people are worse than us, why aren't we more open? I think it's fear. Of what? Of putting ourselves out there and getting rejected. I tried something the other day, I said "hi" to like 30 or 40 people on the street, almost everyone of them completely ignored me. People don't even interact with one another anymore. I think it's because we're afraid of being rejected and you can't be rejected if you don't give anyone anything to reject.
I realized shortly ago that I have not posted virtually anything about the Africa Mercy or Mercy Ships, so I'm going to take a few lines to do just that.
Work on the subcontractor and ship yard side is going quite slow. We are making stead progress in the engine room (we had an engine test this past Saturday, I'll write about it more later). My other big responsibility, the container hold, is going forward for the first time in years (big cheer). We are going to have a company deliver weights and test the nylon slides at some point in the next couple of weeks (I'll write a post about that as well). Moral hasn't been so great among the crew the past few weeks. It's because of the rumor of bad news on the way. We got part one of the bad news talk last week at our community meeting. The jest of it was that Ken isn't going to be our executive director when we get to Africa. I'm not totally sure of the effect that will have on me or my work. But part two of the bad news saga is coming on Wednesday, and I suspect that the climax will be in that segment.
I came up with this new idea for posts. I'm going to start doing a study for myself on how Jesus interacts with other people and groups and start posting my findings. I'm excited to do this study because Christians are supposed to be "little Christs" so we should treat people like he did...so we should know how he treated people right?
Reflecting on the lost wallet saga, I can say that I have learned a few things about myself and life in general.
1. Some things just don't bother me.
2. Some things don't bother me until people start worrying about them for me.
3. Credit cards are for your wallet, cash is for your pocket. I accidentally lucked out on this one. I just happened to stuff all of my money into my pocket instead of my wallet in the guitar store just a few hours before ditching my wallet under a bench at a train station. Not that it would have mattered, Dom and Amy would have found it and all would have been well, mostly because they rock and are super awesome and because they are honest and would have returned my wallet with all contents undisturbed.
Another thing that I learned from this experience is that most people are good people.
Really.
It's true. I think...
I mean, Dom and Amy were perfectly random people. They could have been anybody. They were as perfectly honest as anyone I could have hoped for. They actually went through a fair bit of trouble to find me (they must have, because I still can't find this blog on Google) so that I could have my wallet back, which didn't have any money in it, so it wasn't really worth much. If I never got it back, it wouldn't have been a big deal. Not that I'm not unbelievable happy to have it back, but I'm more happy to have lost it and had this experience than to have found it again.
I don't really feel like I'm conveying what I mean to say very well. Dom and Amy are a perfectly random selection of human beings. They are extraordinary people, for sure, but are they really better than the average person?
Not to be a media-basher, but I think that my perception of people as individuals has been tainted by what I read about on www.cnn.com and www.drudgereport.com. I was reading a Bill O'Reilly column this morning about Hillary Clinton. He was asking why is it that people hate her so much? He also asked why people hate George Bush so much. I think it's because we are so dominated by our fears. We live, day after day, with this false perception that there are a whole load of people out there that just hate everyone.
Why?
What makes us think that most people are any different than we are? Maybe the thing is, we know how we are, and we don't trust ourselves.
The thing about that is we all love ourselves. Well, all of us that aren't suicidal love ourselves. We might not like ourselves, but we do love ourselves.
---break---
Some of you may be thinking at this point that I'm going to be making some revolutionist's claim that we should all start acting radically different like a bunch of crazy cult people. Life might be a little better if we did act different, but I want to know why we do what we do. You can't fix anything if you don't know why it isn't working. A lot of our "solutions" are remedies for the symptoms of the real problem.
---Resume---
So if we all love ourselves, and if we don't think that most people are worse than us, why aren't we more open? I think it's fear. Of what? Of putting ourselves out there and getting rejected. I tried something the other day, I said "hi" to like 30 or 40 people on the street, almost everyone of them completely ignored me. People don't even interact with one another anymore. I think it's because we're afraid of being rejected and you can't be rejected if you don't give anyone anything to reject.
I realized shortly ago that I have not posted virtually anything about the Africa Mercy or Mercy Ships, so I'm going to take a few lines to do just that.
Work on the subcontractor and ship yard side is going quite slow. We are making stead progress in the engine room (we had an engine test this past Saturday, I'll write about it more later). My other big responsibility, the container hold, is going forward for the first time in years (big cheer). We are going to have a company deliver weights and test the nylon slides at some point in the next couple of weeks (I'll write a post about that as well). Moral hasn't been so great among the crew the past few weeks. It's because of the rumor of bad news on the way. We got part one of the bad news talk last week at our community meeting. The jest of it was that Ken isn't going to be our executive director when we get to Africa. I'm not totally sure of the effect that will have on me or my work. But part two of the bad news saga is coming on Wednesday, and I suspect that the climax will be in that segment.
I came up with this new idea for posts. I'm going to start doing a study for myself on how Jesus interacts with other people and groups and start posting my findings. I'm excited to do this study because Christians are supposed to be "little Christs" so we should treat people like he did...so we should know how he treated people right?
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