Work

Work related sillyness

The year was 1987.  I had just completed my degree in Electronics Engineering Technology.  I got a job across the street from the school at a vending company as a tech/mechanic.  We worked on anything coin operated.

era

One of my favorite things to work on were pinball games. The late 80’s and early 90’s were a great time to work on games.  The industry was changing.  Games, especially pinballs, were becoming more advanced. Digital Processors, Stereo Audio, Matrix Displays that could run graphics, as well as, scores brought new life to the aging pinball.  A new thing also started appearing… Multi-ball.  The games would throw multiple balls on the playfield at one time.
Pinballs had always been themed.  Elvis, Evil Knievel, Kiss, Star Trek and 6 Million Dollar Man were big hits in early electronic pinballs of the 70’s. The late 80’s upgrades to digital processing brought more fun and increased tie-ins to popular movies and tv shows.  Games like Fire, F14 Tomcat, Road Kings, and others began to evolve and bring high speed multi-ball play to arcades and bars.
Then it happened.  A game came out that was one of the first true Digital Stereo games my company had bought.  It sat in the shop on a quiet evening.  We had just assembled it.  The attract mode music was playing its happy circus/carnival theme.  The new digital games came with the volume turned up nearly all the way.  Their internal amplifiers were now capable of reproducing much more than the simple bells and burps of old.  And they were LOUD!
cycloneOut of the eerie quiet of the shop came a loud shout “HEY! YOU!  WITH THE FACE!”  We broke up laughing.  How long was this game going to last in a bar?  Sure enough, we had requests to turn off the attract mode sound and turn down the game volume.  These requests usually came in fairly quickly after the game was set.  One of the requests came from a bar where the cleaning person nearly had a heart attack after hearing the voices on the game.  Apparently, she thought there was someone in the establishment that wasn’t supposed to be there.  These machines were THAT much cleaner and clearer in the audio quality they put out.
Another innovation, that started making its way into pinballs, was animated parts.  The late 70’s and early 80’s era pinballs had spinners, bumpers and ramps.  Late 80’s machines brought in opening and closing doors. Ramps that moved.  Ferris Wheels that picked up the ball and dumped it on another playfield level.  Funhouse Pinball even had a talking dummy that would choke when you got the ball in his mouth.  Adam’s Family Pinball had “Thing” lend a hand.  Thing would pop out of a box on the upper right hand corner of the playing field and capture your ball with a magnet.
thing
The gaming industry kept you on your toes as a technician.  Games advanced rapidly as better gaming systems moved into the home.  Family fun centers and arcades had to have equipment that could compete.  Technology had to change to keep up.
f-14_tomcat1 I sometimes miss the days of working on those machines.  It was fun.  Sometimes, it was dangerous.  The outside of the machines, especially pinballs, were made to be as safe as possible for the player.  Inside was home to a multitude of sharp objects, high voltage and pinch points.  I got shocked more than once by folks who thought it would be funny to push the flipper buttons while I had the playfield raised to troubleshoot.  In test mode, all switches and coils are live so that you can adjust switches and check operation.
I don’t miss working late nights in bars.  Back then, smoking was permitted just about everywhere.  I didn’t drink or smoke.  I came home every night smelling like cigarette smoke and stale beer.  There were several incidents where a drunk or group of drunks didn’t want me to fix a machine and got mad at me.  A couple other times, I was on the receiving end of a bar stool or other object thrown at someone else by someone who was overly intoxicated.
fire1I managed a game room in the local mall, several years later.  My experience working on machines in what I will call “Less than optimal conditions” made me well suited for a clean and easy environment such as a mall.  I met some interesting folks along the way.  I learned a lot about people and about the crazy things companies do to save a penny.  I wouldn’t mind doing vending/games again, but I know I can’t contort myself like I used to, to work inside some of those cabinets.  It was nice to take a stroll back through those years and see the difference between when I started, when I left and compare it to the machines out there today.
Game rooms don’t exist like they used to.  You can even play most of these games that I mentioned on your computer now… I might add that they are fairly realistic.  I’m glad that I went through this stage of my life.  I currently am looking for the next door to walk through.  I wonder what I will do next.  Time will tell.
~Cappy

They Mean Well…

… but it might have been better if they had kept their mouth shut.

As I left work today, I was talking to one of the other guys.  He and I were the last ones to leave the department.  He told me how much he appreciated the organization and time I had put into the power transfer project.  He said he had submitted me for an ‘E Reward’ (special 1 time bonus your fellow employees elect you to get).  The boss told him he cancelled it because he wanted to do something for the whole department.  Great!? Not really!  This all took place almost two months ago.

I really didn’t need to hear that.  I have some issues with how my boss does certain things when it comes to my position as it is.  This is just another ember burning under my skin.  I won’t mention that I have had my fill of the bigotry and sexism from certain members of my department.  I also won’t mention that I’m to the point where I put my headphones on and turn the volume up when they start ranting about all the problems that go on within our company. 

Yes, there are problems.  I won’t dispute that.  However, they are minute in comparison to problems I’ve seen at other company’s I’ve worked for in the past.  When you go to the bank and the teller laughs when you pull up because she knows there is no money in the company account to pay you with, there’s a problem!  When you call up the boss to tell them the bank won’t cash your paycheck and you leave the office with two-weeks pay in quarters (yes, the little silver shiney things that you put in the vending machine), THERE’S A PROBLEM. 

Having the name of your department or division changed because they are moving bigshots around in the corporate office is NOT a problem.  That is an inconvenience.  You might actually have to look up someone in the directory because their phone number changed, oooOOOOOOoooo.

The last month or so has been really up beat for my personal life.  I have finally started feeling good about myself.  I’ve started to become more annoyed with the petty whining, no petty BITCHING, that goes on all day long in our office.  I just don’t understand why some people are never happy that they are working full-time and have a better than average paying job for this area. Oh well.

That is the end of my rant for tonight.  I’ll go back to being my happy-go-lucky self for the rest of the evening I guess.  Thanks for reading.

Friends

Friends by Michael W. Smith

This goes out to all of those people that come into our lives and find a special place. Whether it be the coworker, the spouse, the neighbor or that special someone, these folks brighten our lives and make us stronger by just being near.

Keep these friends close to your heart. Guard them with your love because they don’t always stay at our side. They are sometimes called upon to move on in their lives and leave us behind. We can rest assured, however, that they have become a part of the fabric of our lives. Even though they may now be somewhere else, they have helped form us to the be the person we are today.

We can not number the ways in which our friends touch our lives from day to day. We CAN cherrish them while they are here and remember the experiences they have shared even when they are far away and out of touch.

To Ron, Dave, Vince, Jess, Deb, Chell, Gert and the many many others who have touched my life along the way, I say “Thank You for helping me be the man I am today.”.

-Cheers

Fridays where I work are rather unique.  Our department supports all the servers for our organization.  Friday’s are the days when server updates and other forms of maintenance are completed.  This is handled between the hours of 3 am and 7 am so as not to disrupt workflow.  The fun part about all this is that by about 2:30 in the afternoon, I’m the only one left.  The Project Manager doesn’t have a whole he can do during the maintenance time frame.  I usually crank up the tunes after everyone leaves and do whatever little tasks my heart desires.

Today, as the last to Network Admins were leaving, the boss called out “Well, if all you Assholes are leaving.. So am I!”  A quick thought later, I responded “Well that must mean I’m not an Asshole cause I’m staying here!”  Everyone cracked up.

There are days when my boss is tough to deal with and then there are days like today.  He was easy going and openly joking around with everyone.  I guess its not such a bad way to end the work week.  Its usually nice and quiet.  Well, except for those days when some goofball in one of the other departments calls at 4 o’clock wanting some emergency fix or something done.  Most of the time its stuff that they ‘forgot’ to have done before the weekend.  Its not like they don’t know its maintenance day.  After all, they call every week and get the same answer from me, “Nope, they’ve all gone home.”

As its now 4 pm, let’s see who calls today and asks for some sillyness.