February 14, 2025
I woke up today pretty sore. Yesterday when I arrived at work, I grabbed my water container and lunch bag and put my left shoe on the pavement. My shoe only touched the pavement for a moment. I pretty rapidly discovered the building in front of me appearing at a 45 degree angle. So either the Earths magnetic poles dramatically shifted or I was not upright anymore. Well as you may have just predicted, in an instant my left foot was under my Jeep Wrangler. Some of my right leg was still in the jeep. Somehow I did not spill or dump out my Yeti Cup. My entire left side of my body was in full contact with the pavement and my right Id assume appearing to make snow angles in the air. So it is no shock to you the reader to discover that I am on some Ibuprofen today. Nothing is broke, so bruising and soreness is not enough to make me skip work.
Two coworkers and myself rebuilt a rotating table on one of my CNC Horizontals at work. We replaced all the O-ring seals and put it back together only to find it still leaking hydraulic fluid. Once tore back down and a further detailed examination was complete, we found a small scratch on and inside and outside of a radius. that radius gets put under pressure during operation which actually creates a small through crack where we only saw a scratch initially. That was rewelded and then once we reinstalled everything again it finally worked as it should. Being down on that critical production machine for a couple weeks would normally be a very stressful event however I have pushed productivity to a point where I was almost a month ahead of deliveries. So today is a day of running my other 2 machines normally and pretending all parts coming off the rebuilt CNC are new. Every part needed to go back to QC to verify all the angles and tolerances are still correct. Everything came back to less than a sheet of paper difference, so I modified the program parameters and proceeded to manufacture excellent aerospace parts again.
Throughout the workday I received a number of phone calls. Tonight is the annual Valentines Day Dinner at the Murpah Shrine Club. We had a RSVP list with a cut off a week ago but quite a few men decided to make plans last minute for their special someone. We bought almost thirty extra steaks and a dozen extra chicken to cover walk-ins.
Last years President tried to add the band costs on top of the food prices. Turn out was find but with me making the decisions this year I had a different take on it. I decided to remove the markup on the meals and cut the costs of those who only wanting to listen to the band. A number of our officers gave up their RSVP food orders so we could try and fulfill orders from all the people who showed up. Our turnout was so large that we had to turn multiple people away who wanted to make food orders.
Two of my officers made claims to me for weeks that the club would lose a large amount of money due to me cutting the fees since we had to pay the Band, buy the food, and pay for the tablecloths used during the event to be cleaned. We ended up with possibly the largest sales report on a Friday that we have had in years.
I tried to promote the events better than we have in the past through use of social media, our own website, and flyers in the club to help push the awareness of it. All those steps helped, but I want to give the credit to GOD. I have tried to pray before every event that we have. I have asked for it be profitable and be pleasing to him. I firmly believe we have been given the favor of GOD.
My supportive wife and daughter left after I locked up the building. They have helped me run the events as well as clean up after all of the events. No man can achieve amazing success without a supportive team. My team is the family that GOD has gifted me.
This supportive team got to go to bed after 1:30AM and then wake up in the morning and get to Muncie Central Fieldhouse by 8AM for a “Walk a Mile in My Shoes” for the Muncie Mission. We raised a few hundred dollars and were able to donate it for their cause that supports the local homeless. We were able to have ten members in physical participation during the walk. We had a number of members who had issues come up which caused a time conflict so I assume next year will be an even larger turnout.