Man vs. Machine. . .
Have no fear of perfection. You'll never reach it. -- Salvador Dali
In the famous words of Buckwheat, "Here I is!"
I apologize for the long delay in returning to the blog contraption. My penance for being a bright, hardworking man has been paid and now I can go back to being a lazy slacker which I much prefer.
The recent weeks have been filled with many long days, some 14 hours or longer in length, slogging through mud and mire, dust and blistering sunshine, yet we have achieved our goal.
Here is a photo of my nemeses:
These are deep foundation drilling machines used to install under-reamed or "bell" piling for large buildings. In my hometown, we are blessed to have some of the most expansive and useless clays on the planet and about 40 feet or so down beneath these highly expansive clays lay a strata of unweathered blue clay in which these deep pilings are founded.
So, for a month, I've been monitoring the installation of these pilings and all assorted ignorance, hijinks, foolishness and chicanery that goes with it. I'll simplify it as such: if an architect draws a straight line on a piece of paper, then several dozen men can find a way to turn that straight line into a rhombus, hendecagon or worse even, an irregular icosagon.
Construction is a matter of inches, tenths of an inch, hundredths of an inch and each one counts. Don't get your initial elevations or benchmarks correct and the whole building with either be to high or too low, too far left or right or worse even, not square. Enter me. I am the straightener. I am the predominator. I am the "decider." And I decided and decided and decided until I was blue in the face, but no amount of deciding can stop a dozen hard-working Mexicans, 4 Cajuns and a handful dopey white guys from screwing some shit up.
Alas, in the end, it all worked out. Construction people are pretty smart, maybe not individually, but collectively and if all else fails, you can always get the architects or engineers stirred up with an RFI (Request For Information). In other words, we screwed the pooch with a stale donut, a #9 rebar, two gallons of axle grease and need some help.
Kinda makes me miss the hardcore days of the professional kitchen. The stress, the anger, the lunatics with sharp utensils within arm's reach. Only difference is, the food is better.
Greetings all. I have returned.
