Roborant: entry

Wow, you think, Liam has stooped to using lyrics right off of the radio. How crass!

Well, it’s true. But just to reassure you that I haven’t really changed, I’ll now explain that I’m forced to listen to Kool FM (that’s ‘cool’ with a ‘K’) every day at work. And, while their agreement to only play the same song once every day is certainly progressive for a popular radio station, it just tends to mean that every day blends into the rest. I mean, obviously every day I’m going to hear Doughtry, Fallout Boy (the donors of the above lyric in case you were wondering),  the Trews, 3 Doors Down, and other people whose latest hits I now know off by heart. But do they need to recycle the same older songs day by day? I mean, Born in the USA was released 24 years ago. I’ll wager that no one who will ever read this post was even born  (let alone in the USA) then. Why would I need to hear that 2 days in a row, even if it’s only once? I mean, I’ve got nothing against the Boss, but let’s get real here.

If it’s really pissing you off, you can just imagine that the title was “All I Need is a TV Show, that and the Radio, Down on My Luck Again, Down on My Luck Again” (And then listen to that song if you don’t know what it is. It’s on Yootoobe, yoo’ve got no excuse).

Anyway, I’m sure you’d rather hear more about my supposed job than about what I listen to whilst performing it.

And here let me momentarily digress and say that I am so happy that I’ve been fortunate enough in the last 6 months to land 2 jobs worth making dirty jokes about.

Basically, I went from being an Erection Specialist over the summer, to being a Professional Shaft Handler here in the Royal City.

An average day will see me work about 10 work orders with anywhere from 5 to 120 shafts per order, depending on complexity. I’m pretty sure I topped out about 2 weeks into the job after handling roughly 600 shafts in one day. Those were the good old days, when the shaft handling was simple:

-Pull the required number of shafts and other parts. The shafts are long, hard, cylinders of steel.

-I then pull the secondary shafts. These, while hard, are made of quartz glass, and come in a protective casing which has to be gently peeled back. It’s also imperative that I wear protection, in the form of gloves and safety goggles while handling these secondary shafts.

-Insert the secondaries into the primaries. Gently.

-Lube up some O-rings and slide them onto the glass shafts so that they can stay inside longer.

-After adding some ancillary parts, I have to suck the shaft out. Given the volume of shafts which I (and my coworkers) handle in one day, it is out of simple necessity that we accomplish this task with a vacuum machine. Also, protocols are in place which prohibit me from attempting to suck the shaft without a properly fitting ‘rubber’ between the machine and the shaft.

-Now, if the shaft can hold its air,  my job is done. The shaft has been handled and is added to a bin. However, if the machine detects fluctuations in pressure (naughty behaviour on the part of the shaft), I must do things the old fashioned way: by making the shaft spray liquid everywhere.

-I first have to tie the shaft up. My material of choice is teflon tape (pink, of course), and I must wrap it tightly around all the drain ports on the shaft. Then I attach some fittings and a spigot, which I then attach to a long, smooth hose. The hose is connected to a pump, and thence to the main water supply. After filling the shaft and sealing the valves on all the other ports, I turn on the pump. The presussure starts low… But as my hand gently, slowly, caresses the worn knob of the pump, it starts to get a little higher.

-And then a little higher. All my co-workers, as well as several prominent engineers within the company, have stressed the importance of really taking my time with this. Aparently you just can’t get really satisfactory results if you rush it. Anyway, it just takes time. Whether its at 20psi or 200, eventually things just get to be too much for the shaft, and it’ll start leaking. Maybe just a trickle, maybe a surging stream, but I always get the job done.

That’s it, basically. I mean, I have to talk to people and listen to the radio and eat, but those are sort of tangential. Let me give you an example:

Me: (While attaching a number of fittings to allow a particular shaft to interface with the water pump) This is so damned convoluted!

Coworker: (Thick with Newfie) What’s convoluted?

Me: (Pointing sharply at the fittings) The damn number of fittings I have to use!

Coworker: No, what’s convoluted?

Me: (Shooting him a quizzical look) This, man! This right here!

Coworker: (Now with some annoyance) No, what the fuck is convoluted? What the fuck is that?

Me: Oh… It means complicated. Sorry for yelling.

I was going to write some more, but it’s no longer topical. I hope everyone’s doing well in this new year!