Day 2 of looking for a job: Soybeans, Long Walks, and Bright Orange Milk

Okay, you'll never believe this, but I found BRIGHT ORANGE MILK for sale at the grocery store yesterday. If you don't believe me look at this.

Orange cream! A Halloween special! (It's actually pretty good.)

Long walks are no fun, especially in the heat of summer. For some reason, even though fall has already started, the place where I'm at feels like summer in Louisiana. It's not as humid, no, but it has the same feeling of sweaty heat that I've actually been told is rather a rarity in the state of Wisconsin. So leave it to the weather to make it seem like home.

I walked past some soybeans on the way to the doctor's office today!

I've never actually lived in an area that produces food. They grew pine trees back in Ruston, but those don't really "look" like farms, even with all the trucks piled high with logs. But here! Here is an indication of the process that feeds us all!

I found myself wondering how many people this field can feed. If it is for feeding people at all. It could be for cattle feed or even to make industrial chemicals. But whatever the case, I thought it was interesting and even took a little clipping of soybeans to keep as a keepsake.

Still looking for a job. I have an interview tomorrow with a live-in elderly care business, which I'm going to have to take an Uber to. They have jobs all over the county and I'm pretty sure I'll be assigned jobs close to where I'm at.

I applied to the Walgreens here and in the town over--I actually have most of a license to practice as a pharmacy tech. All I need is hours on the job and then I'll be a fully licensed pharmacy tech. Making use of that fact would be a great boon for me!

Walking around town filling out applications and giving out resumes is, of course, a hard thing to do in the heat.

But with my bright orange creamsicle milk, I will overcome!

Postscript: An Honest Talk about What I Think about this Situation

I think, for one, that I'll keep posting stuff on this blog because, for the most part, I want to keep writing at least something every day. For another, I want to see how far I can take this project and if it will bring me any opportunities. I want to write for a living--I love doing it--and at the moment I don't have anything in particular that I can do. This is about to change as I move into the local job market (which is actually very manufacturing-focused) but, for now, I have a free will to push towards whatever goal I deem appropriate.

This will no longer be a blog where I focus blow by blow on what happens during my day (unless the new job I find is as interesting as the instrument repair shop I left). Instead, I will be writing about stuff that I think other people will find interesting. I think I have a lot to say about the world that I haven't said yet (or hasn't been heard by anyone yet.) And since I have a couple of dedicated readers--mostly people who I know and am close with--I don't want to leave them hanging simply because I lost the opportunity that I was pursuing here in Wisconsin.

I guess this blog has been therapeutic for me. Certainly it has helped other people understand what I am doing and why I am doing it. Without this blog, I don't think anyone would have really understood why I got let go from the repair school like I was. I think this is a good outcome. If you read my whole backlog you can feel and go through what I went through as I gradually realized my own capabilities and the things that were demanded from me by the people in charge.

Now that I'm on the lookout for a job in the local market, I have a new challenge to overcome.

The place that seems most likely at this point is a trumpet manufacturing company called Getzen. I don't think I've heard of their instruments before (I don't remember ever seeing a Getzen trumpet) it seems like they are an established "small" brand.

The problem is that it seems the only open jobs are in the buffing department and the shipping department. On the one hand, I really don't like buffing. I'll do it, but it's the wrong combination of tedious and involved that makes it impossible to forget yourself in your work (as with more complex jobs) and yet impossible to turn your mind off (as with very simple jobs.) It sits in that little space where you have to pay attention just enough to make it hard to daydream but you also do the same thing over and over again without anything to stimulate your mind. Thus, I don't like doing it and don't see how I could do it forty hours a week.

On the other hand, though I've never worked in a shipping department before, it looks to me like that would be a lot less boring and perhaps even a little bit rewarding.

It works like this: I'd rather bag groceries than buff the same dongle over and over again. But packaging and managing a shipping department would be a little bit better than bagging groceries.

Though, ultimately, I want to find a job where my talents at the written word will come into play. For one, I like the ability to control my own schedule and work at my own pace without thinking about what other people see in me. As long as I complete my jobs on time and to the standard that is needed, that is all that matters. I can take a half-hour break whenever I want par the necessity to hit deadlines. If I work faster and more efficiently, I get to reap the rewards in the vein of more results and more free time. I will be judged based on what I produce, not how I appear to be while producing it.

And, I'm just good at writing. I think. At the very least I type fast and am articulate.

The ultimate outcome here would be if I were able to write fiction and sell my books online to keep myself fed and housed. I don't want to make millions or become famous. I just want to perpetuate my love of writing. As long as I make enough to keep myself alive and continuing to write, I will be fine.

The only problem is that no one reads my stuff. I haven't sold a book online in a year, and I've sold maybe a total of ten books online in my entire career. Though I have sold a lot of physical copies at events and festivals, those events only happen once or twice a year, and I don't make nearly enough from them to make it feasible to support myself through that avenue.

I can lose myself in writing for hours. I can take breaks whenever I want for as long as I want as long as I meet the deadlines and quality requirements. This is the perfect scenario for me. Nobody to judge me for being "fidgety" and "not paying attention." A job where I am rewarded for doing the thing I love doing most. This is my ultimate outcome.

Of course, I like repairing instruments as well. That is something that I can see myself doing. But, because of my own incompatibility with the school that I was supposed to train at, I am sitting in a void where I can't chase that outcome.

Even if I were to promise to write ten thousand words every workday (which is about eight hours of writing) I don't think my parents would support that. Maybe they would, but my thinking is that simply writing for writing's sake while hoping to sell what I've written one day doesn't constitute an acceptable job.

Here would be my proposal in that situation: I  produce a certain number of words of a novel or book every day, and that can be a replacement for working full time at some other job, like Getzen or the local grocery store. Would that be acceptable?

I don't know. That path is a strange one.

I could also be a freelance writer. I've done freelance writing jobs before, and have made a little bit of money from it--though I also have been scammed. Will this be enough to support me? I don't know.

The only thing I know is that I'd rather do a job that takes skill and allows me to forget the clock to the point where I don't feel the hours drag by. That's the feeling I hate most. Dragging hours. That's why I don't like working jobs where I'm acutely aware of passing time. Any job where I don't experience the phenomena of dragging hours is one that I would love.

Whatever the case, I will try my best.

Quid pro quo, as the saying goes. You get out what you put in.

Final day: Going, Going, Gone.

Thanks for hanging with me these past couple of weeks. It looks like my story here is over. Not to say all my stories are over, just this one. I couldn't make it mainly because I was, well, for lack of a better term, misinterpreted. I'm not being self-pitying here. I'm just saying that I know for a fact I was paying attention even though, apparently, it seemed that I wasn't. You all know by now that I am very fidgety and like to mess with stuff in my hands or dance around or tap things. For example, while tapping out dents in the dent department I had to force myself to not play music with the hammer. Just one of the many quirks I have.

Ed said that I had everything but the attention span. I was punctual, obedient, didn't talk, and had the skills. The only thing I didn't have was a calm and steady body.

I honestly don't know what to do now. My family went to considerable expense to get me out here, and now the reason I came is no more.

I could get an ordinary job and figure out a way to go forward. I guess that's it. The only choice is to go forward. I tried, and I failed. Maybe it was my fault. I don't want it to be, but that's that.

Maybe Adderall would have helped. Maybe I need a diagnosis. I've heard that being unfocused and jittery and ADHD-like (which is the reason why I was let go) is what Adderall treats. The only problem is that it doesn't jive with my mental illness.

Having multiple problems that interfere with each other is no joke.

Maybe I'm just making excuses. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. But whatever the case, this part of my life, that was just beginning, is now over.

Now I have to take the next step and hopefully make the best of this.

Thanks!

Day 21: Two Days Left

This may go wrong, or it may go right. I honestly can't tell which at this point. I have two more days before Ed makes the judgement to keep me or toss me.

But let's not get bogged down with the unfun stuff. Let's talk about this beastie here.

It's a little hard to make out over the desk and everything on it, but it's the device that is secured in the clamp. 

I have absolutely no idea what this thing is called. It must have a name, but I don't know it. That piece at the far right end is a springy device that resembles plumber's arms. It conforms to the shape of the trumpet's hardest to get valve. 

That's right! This is a device that is designed to remove dents from the hard-to-reach portions of brass instruments, the curves and arcs that have no good entry point with which one can insert a straight rod. 

This device takes little balls called "Dent Balls" (A very inventive name) that are arranged, about a hundred of them, in sizes that increment in millimeters or their Customary counterpart. I wish I had a picture of them but I'll probably come up with one sooner or later. 

The balls have a small hole threaded through them that allows one to insert them onto a steel wire, which is contained in the spool at the top left and runs through the length of the device's arm. Every time you switch balls, you must clip a little bit off before and then, once you've switched them, add a U in the wire with pliers to keep it in place. Lots of little wire clippings get everywhere, as you need to switch balls constantly to conform to the taper of the brass piping. 

When the ball is secure in the tube, one takes a small metal hammer and flattens the brass so that it conforms to the ball. Thus, the dent is removed. 

This is a difficult process to master and I've only successfully finished one unit even though I've been doing this for more than a day. 

What fun. 

This blog will most likely only keep going if I am allowed to stay. Let's hope that happens and I don't have to fall onto plan B, mostly because I'm not sure that there is a plan B. 

Day 20: Bleh ...

I've got, what, three days until the hammer falls? 

I was looking forward to Friday off too ...

But if this is how it's going to be, then that's it. I tried my best, stumbled a few times, and proved to the people in charge one way or another whether this is something for me. I just have to push through the last little bit. 

If I fail here, what now? There has been a considerable investment in time, money, and energy to bring me up here so I could attend this school. What happens if it is all for nothing? What are we going to do with the year-long lease? Are we going to pack up the stuff in my room a month after unpacking it? 

I don't know. It's going to be hard one way or another. Either the path of getting up at five every morning to train as an instrument repairman or the path where I go home and do who knows what with the rest of my life. 

There are some things I am not looking forward to. There are some things I must do. But in the end, it all boils down to a decision.

I struggle with the idea that there is someone in charge of this whole thing. If God exists, then I certainly haven't heard him speak--and I've had a live mic for quite some time that has picked up a lot of other stuff, stuff that contradicts the very essence of the idea that there is one being who controls everything. I'm not going to go into detail about that but I believe that if God existed then I would have heard him by now. There is nothing that I have experienced that points in that direction. My life is as much the product of chance as it is anything else.

When you need something to happen, it doesn't. When you want something, whether or not you get it is entirely up to Newtonian mechanics. 

The whole "There's a plan!" idea just doesn't seem to fit well with me. 

But I want there to be a bigger plan! I want to know, not just believe, that everything is going to work out in the end! 

Everyone wants that. That's probably why people are religious in the first place. Life without a plan is difficult for us humans to accept and live by unconditionally. The rules created by biology and sociology and physics leave a lot to be desired when viewed through the human need to have foresight. 

Sometimes I feel like I can see the future. At one point I actively believed that I could. But it's always vague, and the things that I want to happen usually don't. Thus, I have learned that it's best to just not ask. 

While the work I am doing here at the instrument repair school I am attending is usually interesting, it is the atmosphere around it that is stifling to me. I am expected to perform at a level that I am, to be honest, not entirely capable of. I thought I was handy with objects and tools, but for some reason,I seem to be lacking when it comes to working at the level demanded of me by my instructors. They demand perfection. I am capable of perhaps seventy percent of that at this moment. 

The one thing that just gets me down is when my teacher makes a big deal about how bad of a job I did. I bring it to him, and he just goes "Holy shit, you screwed up!" and I think to myself: "oh ... Okay." And then I take it back and review it a couple of times and make sure that it works and then he just takes it and sighs and reworks it without another word, implying that what took me half an hour to get right was a bad job. 

I am putting in 99.5 percent effort here. To put in 100 will probably hurt me on a physical level at the rate I'm going at. I just really don't like it when my teacher looks at what I have done and says without cushioning "you did a really bad job, like most people would do better than you, I can do better than you can in half a minute and without any effort whatsoever."

Yes, I am trying! Yes, I have a few failures and pitfalls, like being sleepy in the mornings! I try my damndest but when I'm falling asleep on my feet while trying my hardest to stay awake, and someone assumes it's because I don't want to be there, it just makes me, well, not want to be there. I am pretty sure that most of my sleepiness is due to my meds. But every time I tell someone that yes, it is my meds, they think I am making excuses and not only chalk me up as a person who sleeps on the job but someone who sleeps on the job and makes excuses about it. Bonus points for using medication as the excuse, because everyone knows only sick people take meds and you don't seem sick at all. 

Well, fuck you, I am sick. I have a disease that can literally destroy my life if I stop taking the meds. I have to take them--there is no other choice. If you have an infection, sure, you could chance it without meds and you wouldn't be crazy. The same for pretty much any non-life-threatening disease. 

But me? I have to take them! I'm not making lazy excuses when I say I fall asleep because of medication! It's the honest to goodness truth! 

And then when I get told that my handiwork is sloppy, amateur, and actively bad, even though I am trying my best, all I can say is ... 

Sure. Whatever. Maybe I'm not cut out to be an instrument repair tech. Maybe I'm not cut out to work at all. I wanted to do this at the beginning because I actively enjoy repairing instruments. But when I get told that I'm bad at it, when I have to do my best just to score slightly below-average marks, when I have to make an investment of waking up at five every morning just to meet the status quo, I just ...

I don't know what to do. I don't want to go to work tomorrow because I'll screw something up and my instructor will say "holy shit you fucked up" again like I'm some sort of mega failure even when I've tried my best. 

I guess in this world it doesn't matter if you've tried your best. I really wanted to be an author, writing books for a living, but I took the second best option because it was better than the alternative. I enjoy repairing instruments about as much as someone can enjoy carrots. While I love writing--I can do it all day and it's what I really want to do with my life--repairing instruments comes in like a solid plan to follow until I make my big break. Which I hope is soon. 

But the point is that I am comfortable repairing instruments forty hours a week for an indefinite period of time. 

It's just that, in this program, I am being shown directly how mediocre I am. I remember this feeling well from when I dropped out of the engineering program in college. I just wasn't good enough for it. I remember sitting in front of that Circuits I test, taking a look at the first problem, and being all "nope." I handed in the test without making a mark. I had done all the homework. I had attended every lecture and taken notes. There just was something missing from me. I couldn't do it. 

And now I have to do this. Work with this program. Because there is no alternative. I'm here in Wisconsin with a year-long lease and all these plans and I have to pass this final exam to even start on my journey. 

It's going to be difficult. I know this. But it just makes me feel, well, horrible, when someone who is teaching you takes a look at your handiwork and says "whoa, dude, you fucked up. You're no good at this." Or takes personal offense at the fact that I am tottering on my feet during the mornings. 

I don't know what's going to happen at this point. All I can hope is that, whatever happens, it will be for my own good. If that's how things work around here. 

Day 19: Lots of Screwups (And an interesting YouTube Video)

Dent removal is hard. I heard through the grapevine that it's the part of the probation process that most people struggle with, but I guess I just didn't believe them when they said it. But truth be told, it is difficult. A lot of force is necessary to do anything, and sometimes the pesky little dents just won't go away no matter how much you rub the thing with a dent ball.

Dents are removed in two ways. Number one is with a metal rod with a ball at the end which is secured with a vice. There are many lengths and sizes and available curvatures. The next is with a set of dent balls. These are a series of cylinders of increasing size that one drops into the tube that one wishes to remove a dent from, hitting it with a hammer to make the brass conform to the shape of the ball. It's a difficult process that requires a lot of finesse.

Plus, my current instructor is kind of intimidating. He has a big beard and has a habit of making it seem like my screwups are really big. I hate screwing up because I know it reflects bad on my abilities (of course) and I'm walking a tightrope here, and sometimes I hesitate for quite a while before bringing his attention to one of my problems. I guess I just don't deal well with grumpy old guys who make a big deal out of my mistakes.

I watched an interesting video by Kurzegast that is an animation of a short story by Andy Weir (the guy who wrote The Martian.) Both of these names are big-time mass-market normie-known ones. Everyone knows Andy Weir and Kurzegast has almost ten million subs.

The thing is this: the story is about a special brand of reincarnation, one where every single living human is just the same individual going through every single life ever lived. I have ... Well ... felt this to be true, and have seen into the, well, the past of who I am ...

Nevermind. I have just had some weird dreams and visions that express sort of the same sentiment that this video expresses. I won't get into strange-crazy-schizophrenic territory here but I just thought it was cool that this impression that I got from my unique visions is being broadcast like this.

I have seen so many cool things, some crazy, some scary, but for the most part I only think about them when prompted by an external notion. Here's the link to the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI

Day 18: Mole', Dents, and the Impossible Whopper

Today I tried Burger King's Impossible Whopper. It was almost exactly the same as an ordinary Whopper except for a slight plant-reminiscent aftertaste. They say in the advertisements that it's 100% Whopper. I'd go so far as to say that it's 98% Whopper, no more, no less.

What is weird though is the feeling of "no guilt." I guess I'm buying into the marketing, but everyone knows in the back of their mind that meat is created by killing a living animal, most often after a life of misery if said animal lived on a factory farm. Now, I'm about as far from vegan as one can get, but this is something that I have to mention because it feels a little ... Strange. Like now society sees me a bit differently because I forwent the meat and paid an extra dollar for a no-meat meat sandwich.

Though I am interested in lab grown meat for an entirely different reason. (The Impossible Whopper is not lab grown meat, it's a plant-based meat substitute.) I like the idea of science creating food that would have been impossible for my great grandparents to have eaten. What can I say?

Today one of my coworkers shared some of his mole (the Mexican sauce) with me. It was not exactly what I would consider "to my taste," but I was forced to eat it all due to the fact that he gave it to me out of his goodwill (and I like him, he's cool.) So I forced it down and chased it with an energy drink. I guess that makes me mature?

Dent work is difficult. Apparently it's the hardest part of the probationary period. You just have to use so much force to get those pesky little dents out. I got several blisters on my hands because I was pushing too hard in the wrong way.

But that aside, the weekend is here and I'm happy about that. I've been counting down to it all week. It's annoying, but it's also rewarding. I just hope that I'm still around to count those days down after my probation period ends.

Day 17: Soldering is hot

Today I did battle with the "perfect soldering seam." There is a technique to it, a sort of special touch that my very inexperienced hands seem almost incapable of. You have to touch it at exactly the right temperature, at exactly the right angle, for exactly the right amount of time.

There is this kind of suction-esque thing that happens when the flux grabs the solder and spreads it through the joint you are trying to attach. A bead of solder will form at the edge and just deflate like a balloon, as long as you hold the flame on it and keep the tube tilted tight. It will slip through the crack and evenly distribute, just like magic.

Here, let me show you. This is what a good seam looks like versus a bad seam.

It's a little bit blurry but bear with me.

^^ This is a good seam ^^

This is a bad seam^^

See the difference? That's about fifteen minutes of work between all the seams on a well-done pipe versus a poorly done one. 

Tomorrow is my first day in the dent department. Apparently, it's the hardest part of the probationary period. If I prove myself to be exemplary here--which I will try my best to do--I will probably make it. I am hoping that with enough effort and willpower I will be able to conquer this. 

And then, after that, on Friday, I will be able to sleep in. Finally!

Day 16: Burns and Molten Lead

I've always had a little bit of a fear of lead. I know what it can do to a person, even in small amounts, and I don't want that to happen to me. Imagine the icky feeling I get when I realize that the solder that I have been working with for the last couple of days contains a significant amount of lead.

I know it's mostly an irrational fear--as long as I don't ingest it I'm fine--but I still feel myself needing to wash my hands every time I touch it with my bare skin.

Lead is just one of those things that give me the heebie-jeebies. "No amount of lead in the bloodstream is acceptable," I remember one medical YouTuber (a real doctor) saying. Eugh.

Lead plays havoc with your body in so many ways, from destroying your neurons to killing your liver. It's scary. I don't know why.

But hey, I have to do my job, and working with lead solder isn't very dangerous if you do it right.

On another note, I took a picture of the biggest burn blister I have acquired so far, and decided not to post it for reasons of public mental health. Trust me, it's a scary image.

This job has occupational hazards! Heh. Whatever. If I do seriously hurt myself I can just sue for compensation. Hah. Oh how the world works.

Reaching the level of perfection that my instructors want from my work is difficult, but rewarding, and I know I will eventually get the hang of doing things perfectly the first time. It's just going to take a little while.

I'm counting down the days to the weekend!

Day 15: Judgement Day is Coming. Will I survive?

Every day I feel the impending doom hanging over my head in the form of the end of the probationary period. I was given five weeks to prove that I was a good fit for the school I am attending, and so far I feel like I am not getting anywhere. I am two-thirds of the way through with that period. I still don't know if I'll make it.

My parents went to considerable lengths to bring me to Wisconsin. I don't know what I would do if all that were to be for naught. There are always other schools that would be kinder on me, but they aren't close. I would have to repeat the leaps and bounds it took to move to Wisconsin again, having lost everything I put into this adventure. We signed a year-long lease on the apartment, and to break it after only a month would really suck. I don't even know if my parents would support moving me to another school if I failed this one. I'm afraid of coming home after having achieved nothing.

I am trying my hardest at this job, but sometimes I slip up. Sometimes I just can't achieve the quality of workmanship that is required of me, no matter how much I agonize over the details.

Today was a good day, at least. I worked on soldering more mouth pipes and managed to finish a good number. The soldering jobs weren't the best, but I did what I could. I'll be doing this for a little while longer.

The lady who is teaching me during the soldering portion is nice. Several times, after I hurt myself, she was concerned enough to try and help me. I guess it's just the difference between guys and girls, but when my other instructors (all men) saw me get hurt they just said something along the lines of "deal with it, it builds character." The mysteries of gender are obtuse.

I really hope that I don't lose. I don't know what else I could be doing, but in the end, it's all up to the big guy in the sky to determine if this is the path for me.

Day 14: Soldering and Spaghetti

This is like a crafting game. Three small dongles turn into one big dongle. What is it for? Mouthpieces, I've heard. Is it strange that I spent all day and produced fifty of these things? Do we really have so much throughput here that we can put together FIFTY pieces that are at a 1:1 ratio with the instrument? And these are sousaphones too! They're huge and rather expensive!

But I digress.

Soldering is something that you can only get good at with practice and much patience. Eight straight hours of soldering, with half that time spent cleaning the extra solder off, really teaches one how to do things right the first time.

I like my instructor, though. She's a friendly older woman who is really short. Less than five feet if I can judge correctly. I'm constantly feeling like I'm towering over her. She has to use a block to reach the bench when I have to stoop to use it.

But she's really good at soldering. It's all she does and she's been doing it for decades. She's probably got those ten thousand hours in!

On another note, I'm making spaghetti the old fashioned Italian way. Simmer it for hours! Cook it with sausage! Stir every five minutes!

I hope it will be yummy. I'm trying to recreate what my stepmother made, and I'm estranged from her so I can't ask her the recipe. I heard it once, I hope my memory is good enough!

I have time to experiment. Details on how it worked later.

Day 13: Professionals have Standards

Professionals have standards. I did not understand the meaning of this phrase until I started my schooling at [repair shop in Wisconsin]. All of my teachers so far have demonstrated a level of pickiness that I would not have thought possible before going in. The amount of play a clarinet mechanism can have, how straight your cork is cut, the shine on the brass dongles I am buffing. Everything is ridiculously stringent. Sometimes, it frustrates me because at the level I'm at I can't even tell whether or not what I have done is good enough until I pass it through the eyes of my instructor several times. This, of course, docks me points when it comes to my review. 

The tiniest amount of play, the smallest rough patch, none of it slides. I have to be perfect! And, I feel like being expected to be extraordinary in order to earn extraordinary marks is something that is foreign to most people who have grown up in the American education system. There is no grade inflation where I'm working. 

It may seem like a simple idea: make someone be extraordinary to get extraordinary marks. However, after simply coasting through school, finally being made to get down and perfect something is creating in me a feeling of frustration. I don't know how I'm supposed to be better at this! What am I supposed to do? Will I even make it past the first five weeks?

I don't deal too well with stringent conditions. I have known this for a while. But being faced with conditions that I must overcome, I have realized that I need to change. 

Besides that. Today was my last day in the buffing room for a while. After this I'm going to the soldering department, where I will solder the pieces that I buffed. 

I hope I will rise to the challenge and overcome this. There is the distinct possibility that I will not; I'm not dealing too well with that idea. There is still the very real possibility that I will have to go home in three weeks and will have to find some other way to learn the profession I want to learn. 

Sigh. It's all up to fate. I'll see you tomorrow. 

Day 12: Friction and the buffing wheel

I wake up in the middle of the night with buffing wheels spinning behind my tired, sleepy eyes. The sound of brass being worn down by a spinning cloth wheel echoes behind my ears at irregular intervals. I am becoming one with the buffing wheel. 

Eight solid hours, almost non-stop, of buffing the same god damned dongle two hundred and sixty times. I have the process down to a science. 

I also go through a whole bunch of gloves. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but the gloves wear through annoyingly fast. I need to get my own. 

I'm thinking of plopping down for some heavy-duty industrial gloves but I'm worried that even the tough stuff will curdle under the blast of the wheel. Why spend twenty bucks on a single pair of gloves when that amount can get you ten pairs of gloves that will wear out fast but last longer in the end? 

I hope I switch out of this hellhole of a division before my mind gets overwhelmed and I dream of buffing wheels forever. 

Buffing wheels get hot. There is a lot of friction involved. Sometimes I burn myself with the wheel, and most of the time the metal bit that I am buffing is too hot to touch bare-handed. 

Switching topics: I discovered a barrel labeled "Potassium Cyanide" in the shop and its scary name made me want to talk about it. It's used in the electroplating process, which this shop does. 

Dangerous stuff indeed! I'll see you tomorrow.