craftsmen.......beed could watch 'em work all day
beed loves to watch anyone that is good at their craft. back in the day when beed did honest work for a living as an electronics technician, he was very good at his craft.
he had spent most of his adult life working on electronics and mail sorting machines. in reality, electronics fail rarely. they do fail but it is usually the mechanical things that break. and beed was good. he could just as easily change out bearings, rebuild a feed section or pull out an oscilloscope and perform an alignment on a greyscale camera.
he does miss the old troubleshooting days at times. it was always a feeling of satisfaction when night shift would write up a work order on a piece of equipment that was acting hinky during the run shift and beed would go out there with his schematics and flowcharts and find out what was causing a problem.
we had a problem on a machine that lifts the image of a mailpiece. beed had aligned the camera and tried everything he could to fix it. it was occasionally stretching and bending an image. it didn't happen all the time. those are the toughest ones to fix. if it would just break it would be much easier to find.
we had a helpdesk we could escalate a problem we could not solve to. they would get some super-et to call you back and he would suggest you look at this board or that board or this power supply or that power supply. beed would never call until he had exhausted everything.
on this particular problem the super-et kept axing beed if he had checked out this. "yup" did you check out that? "yup". after about 30 minutes of this the super-et told beed "hell, man, you've tried everything i would have done, if you find out what is causing it, make sure you call me back and tell me what it was, so i can file it away for the future".
beed is competitive as hell and hates for any machine to whip his ass. so he was driving down lovers lane and was still trying to figure out what in the hell could be causing only occasional images to bend. all of our machines have a bunch of digital tachometers on them so the machine can keep track of where a mailpiece is at all times.
beed had hooked up an o'scope to every tach on the machine and every single one of them were shooting out a beautiful 5 volt square wave. but driving down lovers lane beed knew it had to be one of the tachs acting up. the next morning beed went straight out to the machine and went to the tach associated with the camera.
the tachs are coupled to a roller above by a small rubber tube that looks like lawn mower gas line. beed put a good light on the coupling and turned the roller by hand. sure enough, the tube had dry rotted and had developed a small diagonal crack in it that would occasionally open up when being spinned. that would jack the square wave up momentarily and cause the image to bend. beed was elated. he changed out the coupling and it fixed the machine.
enough about beed. he wants to talk about a craftsman he met yesterday. beed needed new gutters for his casa. he called two in the phone book and the first one was out of business and the second one said we don't do gutters anymore. so beed looked in services offered in the want ad section of the daily news and found someone that would come out and shoot beed an estimate.
this kid looked to be in his late twenties and told beed he could do them for 2.50 a running foot (as opposed to a walking foot?). beed said, "do it homie". he promised beed he would be out his casa around 5 on monday evening.
homie didn't make it until around 5:45 but got right to work after beed showed him where he wanted the downspouts. beed watched the kid work as beed was still doing some yardwork himself. he watched just how meticulous that this kid was.
beed knew that there was no way in hell he could finish the job up last night. the boy was starting to lose his light and beed watched to see if he was gonna get in a hurry and try to cram at the end and finish up. but he didn't. he stayed meticulous as hell.....measuring it once, measuring it twice and installing it with care and precision.
this impressed the shit out of beed as so many contractors these days are just there to make the quick buck and move on to the next job. not this kid. he finally knocked on the front door and said "i'm sorry but i'm going to have to come back to finish these last two. it's just too dark and i don't want them to be hung poorly".
he only had a little bit left so beed said "well go ahead and give me the total and i'll go ahead a pay you now, i trust you to come back, i've watched your work and i know you'll do right".
he would have none of it. "no sir, i won't take anything until i have the job finished right". so beed thanked him for what he had done and axed him if he had any cards so beed could put 'em on the bulletin boards at work. he was all to happy to oblige as a lot of these guys get a lot of their business by word of mouth and reccomendations.
so if you need some gutter work done around b.g. you just axe beed and he will put you on to a kid that really does a good job.
your friend,
the tradesman (formerly),
dahbeed.
he had spent most of his adult life working on electronics and mail sorting machines. in reality, electronics fail rarely. they do fail but it is usually the mechanical things that break. and beed was good. he could just as easily change out bearings, rebuild a feed section or pull out an oscilloscope and perform an alignment on a greyscale camera.
he does miss the old troubleshooting days at times. it was always a feeling of satisfaction when night shift would write up a work order on a piece of equipment that was acting hinky during the run shift and beed would go out there with his schematics and flowcharts and find out what was causing a problem.
we had a problem on a machine that lifts the image of a mailpiece. beed had aligned the camera and tried everything he could to fix it. it was occasionally stretching and bending an image. it didn't happen all the time. those are the toughest ones to fix. if it would just break it would be much easier to find.
we had a helpdesk we could escalate a problem we could not solve to. they would get some super-et to call you back and he would suggest you look at this board or that board or this power supply or that power supply. beed would never call until he had exhausted everything.
on this particular problem the super-et kept axing beed if he had checked out this. "yup" did you check out that? "yup". after about 30 minutes of this the super-et told beed "hell, man, you've tried everything i would have done, if you find out what is causing it, make sure you call me back and tell me what it was, so i can file it away for the future".
beed is competitive as hell and hates for any machine to whip his ass. so he was driving down lovers lane and was still trying to figure out what in the hell could be causing only occasional images to bend. all of our machines have a bunch of digital tachometers on them so the machine can keep track of where a mailpiece is at all times.
beed had hooked up an o'scope to every tach on the machine and every single one of them were shooting out a beautiful 5 volt square wave. but driving down lovers lane beed knew it had to be one of the tachs acting up. the next morning beed went straight out to the machine and went to the tach associated with the camera.
the tachs are coupled to a roller above by a small rubber tube that looks like lawn mower gas line. beed put a good light on the coupling and turned the roller by hand. sure enough, the tube had dry rotted and had developed a small diagonal crack in it that would occasionally open up when being spinned. that would jack the square wave up momentarily and cause the image to bend. beed was elated. he changed out the coupling and it fixed the machine.
enough about beed. he wants to talk about a craftsman he met yesterday. beed needed new gutters for his casa. he called two in the phone book and the first one was out of business and the second one said we don't do gutters anymore. so beed looked in services offered in the want ad section of the daily news and found someone that would come out and shoot beed an estimate.
this kid looked to be in his late twenties and told beed he could do them for 2.50 a running foot (as opposed to a walking foot?). beed said, "do it homie". he promised beed he would be out his casa around 5 on monday evening.
homie didn't make it until around 5:45 but got right to work after beed showed him where he wanted the downspouts. beed watched the kid work as beed was still doing some yardwork himself. he watched just how meticulous that this kid was.
beed knew that there was no way in hell he could finish the job up last night. the boy was starting to lose his light and beed watched to see if he was gonna get in a hurry and try to cram at the end and finish up. but he didn't. he stayed meticulous as hell.....measuring it once, measuring it twice and installing it with care and precision.
this impressed the shit out of beed as so many contractors these days are just there to make the quick buck and move on to the next job. not this kid. he finally knocked on the front door and said "i'm sorry but i'm going to have to come back to finish these last two. it's just too dark and i don't want them to be hung poorly".
he only had a little bit left so beed said "well go ahead and give me the total and i'll go ahead a pay you now, i trust you to come back, i've watched your work and i know you'll do right".
he would have none of it. "no sir, i won't take anything until i have the job finished right". so beed thanked him for what he had done and axed him if he had any cards so beed could put 'em on the bulletin boards at work. he was all to happy to oblige as a lot of these guys get a lot of their business by word of mouth and reccomendations.
so if you need some gutter work done around b.g. you just axe beed and he will put you on to a kid that really does a good job.
your friend,
the tradesman (formerly),
dahbeed.
posted by dahbeed at 9:14 AM
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