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TheTome /
YetiBesNewerOldStuffYou are on the archive wiki. The new wiki is here. This be an another archive.For older old stuff see YetiBesOldStuff. 17/05/04 Oh my God! Our telephone exchange has a groovy feature, if the call comes from inside Finsch mine it sounds like this: "riiiing riiiing". If it comes from outside the mine it sounds like this: "ring ring ring ring". So anyway the phone rings, a ""riiiing riiiing" ring, and when I answer it I hear: "hello Dale speaking". Now I'm wondering who the hell Dale is, I haven't met a Dale on Finsch. Turns out its my uncle! He lives in Pretoria. Now he is pretty much up the with Barbara Streisand as the last people I would expect to call me from inside Finsch mine. Apparenly he is out here to look at some concrete underground. So I am having dinner with him and his cronies tonight. Freaky! 13/05/04 This is ridiculous. I have been at work since 6:30 and this is the first time I have had a chance to sit in front of my desk without 6 foremen in front of me. I don't know how people cope with this many meetings. I had an experience this morning... Its called 'Tender Board'. Tender board is a big scary meeting attended by a bunch of old, bald people who I am told are the managers. It is at this meeting that decisions are made regarding any purchase or project bigger than R100 000. To give you an idea of what they think of it the agenda is marked "confidential, to be shredded after meeting". I am rebelling and keeping it as a souvenir. :) Anyway, lowly EITs? are not allowed to attend such meetings and so the above is all I knew about it when I opened above mentioned agenda that arrived in my inbox at 6:30 this morning. Needless to say I was rather surprised to find my name next to items 1 & 2 of 6! To make matters worse they were next to items that I had absolutely no knowledge of. Best of all the meeting is scheduled to start at 7:30 Fortunately the foreman responsible was standing right in front of me so he filled me in on the details and off I ran. Even more fortunately this was the final approval stage so I wasn't going to have to make any speeches or do any heavy justification. My morning meeting finished at 7:25 and I sprinted across the mine, arriving at the venue with 1 minute to spare. As I arrived they closed the door and told me to go to the next room and wait. In the next room I found the 4 other guys presenting their cases. So there we were, 5 engineers, some pretty senior, standing in a row waiting to be called in like a bunch of naughty school boys. It was rather humbling at the time, but in retrospect very funny. It was almost as if we would get into trouble for talking and we sat with a mouth full of teeth nervous as all hell. The actual meeting was fine. I was asking for spares we need and have capital available for, there is only one supplier and the price is right. I pretty much sat down, told them what it was about and walked out smiling. Weird 07/05/04 Ah, finally at the end of my first day of acting. So far I've had to "please explain" why we are 40 000 tons down for the month, organise an expansion for the change house to accommodate 300 odd new contractors, deal with the closure of one R500 000 project and the starting of a new one. On top of this one of my compressors exploded last night, well one of my compressor's bearings anyway and when I say exploded I it was more like burned out... but it still really sucks. I have perfected my "I'm sorry, but we're doing everything we can" face. Its a lot of fun to send off people who are usually my superiors. Apparently the corporate look, sitting behind a big desk covered in paper with a cup of coffee in one hand, a phone in the other and an authoritive expression on my face, suits me. I was told so by three people. Now all I need is the bald spot, which to my father's disgust is progressing rather slowly. :) 04/05/04 An advantage of not working underground that I forgot to mention last time is that the times improve dramatically. In general the sections I have been working with take the 6:30 cage underground. This means that you have to be in your overalls etc and at the foreman?s office by 5:45 for the morning meeting. In short work starts at 5:30. I don?t think I need to mention that this really bites. Fortunately as an engineer your day starts at the princely time of 7:00, which I?m loving. Of course this has the disadvantage that you can only leave at 16:00 and the last hour is always hell, but I would be sleeping then anyway, so it doesn?t make much difference. I started my hand over yesterday and it is progressing smoothly. I have discovered that the majority of a day in the life of a De Beers engineer is spent in meetings. It is ridiculous. They all contain 80% of the same people. The same topics are discussed at each. The only things that change are the venues and the originators. The best part is that they all overlap. So picture it at quarter to the room starts to get nervous, at 10 to restless and at 5 to everyone excuses themselves and walks across the mine together to the next appointment. The best meeting I?ve attended so far was called to rectify the toilet situation underground... It was great fun, I spent most of the time sniggering under my breath and trying to look professional. The last of the artisans that I spent time with before starting handover was the mine?s self proclaimed HT expert. HT is a ?technical term? for bloody high voltage. Exactly what qualifies as high differs from place to place but it is always dangerous. This dude is currently without assistant and the rumour is that its because everyone is too afraid to work with him. His method of testing if a wire is live is chucking a hammer at it and seeing if it sparks. I can understand his unwillingness to be close to such a thing, but still. What I did have the pleasure of watching was some 11kV switching. The problem is these things can sometimes explode and that is not plesent, I know a number of ex electricians who changed jobs after unfortunate incidents. These days it is done remotely with a ?chicken button? on the end of a long cable, but we have some old breakers that still have local switching. Switching takes two people. One to press the button, he generally wears a suit that can withstand 15 000 deg C, and one standing outside, holding a long rope attached to the guys belt to drag him out if there is a problem... scary! 29/04/04 Excuse last weeks outburst, I was a little pissed at being left out of the loop. Things are going well on my side. I have finally finished with the underground workshops and so never have to go down every day for weeks on end ever again... Well, lets hope. I could be given a temporary underground position or project, but that isn't too likely. This doesn't mean that I'll never go down again. The workshops I'm with at the moment are based on surface but work bellow as well. I've just been with the guys that do the headgear and winders. This means I've been spending most of my time 80m above ground rather than 620 bellow. It is a really cool place to be. I get on well with the people and they have the best coffee on the mine. Apparently only top management is supposed to get filter but they have managed somehow... they won't tell me how though. Another perk is you get to spy on the rest of the mine. From 80m up you get a really good view and it is interesting to see everybody coming and going. I am actually surprised how easy it is to recognise people from that height. It is all in the hair and the walk. I had a lot of fun freaking my friends out asking them about their movements during the day. :) It would be a really great cleavage cam, but you would need quite a zoom lens... and of course there isn't that much cleavage around Finsch. Typically it was frikkin freezing on cleavage day and so what little there was was well covered. I have discovered that the most productive time of the day is between 10:30 and 11:30. This is based on the fact that during this period almost nobody is walking around. What do you mean "do I ever do any work"? In other news I am going to be acting for the shaft engineer while he is away on leave during May. I will be in his post for 4 weeks and to be honest I am quietly shitting myself. He is the guy who takes legal responsibility for the shaft, all 3 of the winders, the entire ventilation system, the water and air reticulation system and most of the underground workings. While he's away that responsibility falls on me! Coupled with this there is currently a big fight between management and workforce about last years bonus, not to mention many other issues, and the engineer is the prime target from both sides. All in all it should be great experience and will definitely stand me in good stead etc. etc. bullshit bullshit. I have been met with comments of "welcome to hell" and "enjoy the hotseat". On the plus side I have had an opportunity to spend time with all of the guys who will be under me and in general we get on well. I have asked for written guarantees that they won't give me trouble but they didn't like that idea. My hand over starts next Monday and I am on my own the week after that. Hold thumbs. 22/04/04 Thanks to everyone for letting me know about the change in address. Has anybody bothered to notify any other people who don't have regular access to #claws?
31/03/04 I didn't make it underground today, which isn't really a bad thing. What is a bad thing is the reason that Im not underground. The laundry managed to lose my last overalls... again! This time however I have been unable to track them down and my supervisor isnt around so I cant get any more. What makes this really annoying is that I put my towel into the wash with them and that has disappeared too. The rumour going around the change house is that contractors are stealing the overalls (bum bum baaaaaa!). Apparently some guys are too lazy to find their own overalls and just take the top lot from the pile, make sure they fit and go. Once of my fellow victims of overall theft declared that he was going to find himself a bright pink overall (he used a very descriptive term for exactly what shade of pink it would be). This way no one would want to steal his overall. To further discourage the theft of the garment he intends to write ek is a poes in large black letters on the back... I think this method might prove successful. lol :P Nice title. Pity about the overalls tho. How is crime overall? Or is it just overalls that are targetted? -- SynKronos
don't feel the trolls, just don't react, nice norman, arahghghghar ... how is crime ov...ll -- NurmRas
30/03/04 Ah, it was a good weekend, just too short. Hmm, come to think of it if a weekend was too short, chances are youll describe it as good. But anyway, I took Friday and Monday off and used the weekend to visit Kim in Durban. Now many people have asked and I dont expect the population of the wiki to be any different so Ill answer. I didnt go over the official long weekend because I wanted to be there for her birthday, which happened to be on Saturday. For the official celebration we went to the Aubergine with her family and a few friends. Very nice place, pretty arty with excellent food. Sunday saw my first game of risk... ever. It was so much fun. Kim and I were playing on a team and were knocked out very soon in the game due to bad placement, poor strategy and taking the second last turn of the sick. Still the game was very interesting and a lot of fun to watch. I must get this game. At the end of the last turn the blue player controlled every square in play but one, which was controlled by one yellow cavalry unit... blue then surrendered. This was largely because in the previous turn yellow had wiped out two players and was about to place 168 new units on the board. I am very new to the game, but Im sure this cant happen too often. I just came out of a presentation by a vendor trying to sell us asset management software. I thought that telecoms were bad for TLAs?. We have FMEA, FMECA, RCM RBI, RCMII, eRCM, RCA, HAZOP, SAP, etc. They all stand for something different but all lead to exactly the same thing. Same car different colour. I want to end with a brief thanks to the anonymous white Toyota bakkie and blue BMW for the early warnings. Driving on the highway with the windows down and good music playing loudly can be very bad for the bank balance. 25/03/04 - Payday :) ARG! We in the mining field are fortunate enough to be controlled by the DME (Department of Minerals and Energy) who are... well lets just say they are a government department. If I started to gripe about them I could be here for ages. I could mention the gross incompetence of their inspectors, the redundant, equipment damaging, time wasting safety precautions we have to install, the apathy of the administration staff and many other items on my personal bitch list... but I wont. I am going to talk about the GCC (Government Certificate of Competency). The GCC is a qualification that an engineer needs to be able to practice on a mine (that either has a man winder or consumes more than 2500kW). The minimum requirements for writing are an engineering degree, an engineering diploma or a trade + N6 (or something like that) plus at least 2 years of experience on a mine at least 6 months of which must be spent on an South African underground mine. After you have this you are able to apply to write. Watch this space in about a years time and Im sure youll see a substantial rant on the application process. Anyway, the exam itself consists of 2 papers, the plant paper testing your application of technical knowledge in practice (or so they claim) and the law paper - testing your legal knowledge (oddly enough). The pass rate of the law paper has remained fixed at around 30% for a long time now, which they seem to be reasonably happy with. The pass rate of the plant paper has been dropping steadily and hit a new low last November at 3%... Yes 3%, I have not left off a digit. Needless to say neither the DME, nor the mines are particularly happy about this state of affairs and so they called a meeting for all who were involved. We just got the feedback from the meeting and the results were predictable. Blame was levelled heavily at the level of applicant readiness and their lack of experience and preparation. They made a special point of stressing that applicants do not read the questions properly and tend to waffle irrelevant rubbish. They scorned any suggestion that the paper was anything less than perfect the reason being that the pass rate was never so bad in the past so obviously it is the current generation of wippersnappers. What they forget is that 4 years ago (about the same time as the results started to drop) they decided to change the style of questions they asked from pure calculation to scenario questions... very interesting indeed. They also rejected out of hand all requests for solutions to be published after the exams... although they didnt even try to give a reason for that. I guess they figured they never needed them in the past. I am now going to bring you back to one of their findings: candidates do not read the questions properly . This is one of particular interest to me. Take a look at a couple of these questions. June 2003 Question 3 November 2003 Question 3 These are just two on the paper sitting in front of me... an the candidates are not reading the questions properly? Tell me, how are we supposed to read them, is there a special code we are supposed to know about? On a lighter note we have a contractor working for us called BTS :) 15/03/04 (Later that day) This is the post that I wrote at about 13:00 last Monday just before the wiki crashed but didn't get time to post... so here it is. Well the day has picked up considerably. I have had some food, in the form of a pie and coke... the lunch of kings, and several cups of coffee. I also decided to come up early from underground to "work on a presentation" for Wednesday. I think I've pretty much managed to get it postponed for a week, so I can delay the panic till next Monday. Anyway, the Artapple en Wild Fees last weekend was a lot of fun. I got to:
All in all a vastly entertaining weekend and honestly one that I would repeat. I did have to speak a lot of Afrikaans though and endure the patient looks of those around me. I was described as "diep Engels" and I can't say I'm too upset about that. There was one fairly notable moment which saw the town gay guy flattened by a 6'5 boer. Apparently when he came out he got a lot of slack from the generally conservative community but he stuck to his tail guns and soon became fairy well liked and respected, I met him myself and he's a nice guy. For this I have all the respect in the world and I wish him strength, but I have one bit of advice: If you are in such a situation where you get a little over confident after a few, then don't drink! The poor guy found this out to his detriment when he approached the above mentioned rugby player and said "Ai, skattie maar jy lyk sexy vanaand"... Fairy well liked, huh? i hope it wasn't intentional...it just makes it funnier :) MoonFlake 15/03/04 I opened my cupboard at 5:00 this morning to find something to eat. The previous evening I had taken a lift back down from JHB, which is good. Unfortunately my lift decided to leave late and subsequently got lost. So I only got in around 12. So I was tired and really didn't feel like going underground in an hour's time. I knew the only thing that could console me was a large bowl of muesli... or even a slice of toast. To my horror, when I open my cupboard I found it bare. The only thing I currently own that doesn't take half an hour of preparation and then taste like fish is a tomato. Needless to say I skipped breakfast. I then came to the mine. I got out of my car, walked to the gate, stood in the line, got to the gate, turned around and went home to get my access card. Right, so I've missed the early cage. Not a problem I'll go down later. At least this will give me a chance to get some coffee. This I did. I even decided to take two sugars for a change. I sat back at my desk to check mail and enjoy my warm-and-tasty-brown-liquid-nourishment. It was cold. Someone had turned the water heater off and now I was stuck with an ice cold cup. Now I have turned the heater on and I am waiting. You have to love Mondays! 05/03/04 So much has happened since I last posted. So many interesting and exciting things... most which I can't remember. Of all the things that I can remember there are a few that stand out. Most notably I've just experienced the joy of annual leave. This has been one of the things that has taken the most getting used to in the working world. Throughout my life time off has been abundant. The first few years were simple bliss, then school with 3 months (or so) of holiday per year, then varsity with around 4. Now I have 25 working days. Now admittedly I am doing less work than I have done since STD 3 and my stress levels are insignificant to non-existent, but that's not the point. It takes quite some adjustment. Anyway I recently took my two weeks of mandatory annual leave. Anyway I recently took my two weeks of mandatory annual leave. It was really cool, I think that the work imposed abstinence makes holidays even better. I spent the first week generally lounging around home in JHB. I haven't had a chance to do that in ages. My father is a recent retiree (a fact that scares us both) so we got plenty of time to 'bond'. After I week of sampling it I must say those pensioners have the life! Other than that I saw a few friends, a movie or two and plenty of my brothers. With the exception of the incident with my second car (which I'll come to later) it was pretty uneventful. The second week was a lot more interesting. Kim and my self went with Norman and Caroline to the Pilgrim's Rest area in Mpumulanga. Thanks to Norman's grandparents for giving him their RCI points and to N & C for inviting us. Unfortunately it pretty much rained for the entire week, except for a very sunny afternoon at Burke's luck potholes that left us burnt and drained, but that didn't stop us from having a good time and seeing some stunning sites. Most noticeable was our trip to God's window. The cloud was right down and you can understand why the dude in The Gods must be crazy thought it was the end of the earth. We were graced by a brief parting of the clouds and could see the spectacular view for a couple of minutes before the curtains were once again drawn. A note to anyone who goes that area: go to a place called Harry's in Graskop. They make the most spectacular pancakes and unlike Gideon's in Franshoek their prices are reasonable. But now I'm back at work and life is returning to normal. This weekend I am going to an 'artapple fees'; in Peetrusburg. I figure when in Rome... I am staying with a friend of mine at his sister's place and I'm told that she doesn't speak a word of English so it might be interesting. The event itself promises to be quite entertaining. It is one of the biggest agricultural events in the Freestate and people come from far and wide to attend it. The guesthouses and campsites have been booked for months. There are all sorts of demonstrations and shows during the day, including fire eating for some bizarre reason. This will be followed by a 'langarm sokkie' in the evening. One of the really big Afrikaans singers will be performing and then SA's (i.e. the world's) best 'boere orkes' will play until the wee hours. Unfortunately we will be missing all the tractor races because they are happening this afternoon and we are still at work. Oh well, I guess there's always next year. I suspect that the trip won't do much good for my "diet", chances are there will be some pretty good 'plaas' cuisine. Okay, I'm sick of typing now. I really should update more often. Oh and thank to WhorDoeuvre? for his comment a few weeks back. - Bastard, 25 days leave, and you think you have a job! Admittedly, you in f'ing door-en-gone. So I guess you need all the compensation you can get. BTW, sorted that punctuation issue... - LothrielPixie - Well they have to do somthing to keep us here. What punctuation issue? - YetiBe -All your ' characters had been replaced with an incomprehensible series of other characters. It happens sometimes (especially when you paste from Word...) - LothrielPixie
- Interesting I'll watch for that. I think I've noticed it before but didn't know what it was. Thanks -YetiBe 12/02/04 Fortunately I was the second person in the queue so I was only there for 3 hours. I bet there are still people there now. So, while I was sitting in the waiting room I had the pleasure of being talked at by Janie "baie praat" Theron (pronounced Tron for some reason). I have experienced his company on several occasions and each time he has suggested rather forcefully that I should join the Proto team. These are the mine super heroes. They abseil down passes and blast out blockages, they go down into mine disaster areas and save people and do all those other good things you'd rather leave for someone else. Well, this time he actually had me interested and was describing the camaraderie and sense of satisfaction. Then he starts telling stories about his experiences. He starts by telling me about drilling in a pass and having rocks the size of soccer balls fly past your head. Then he moves on to a rescue he made when a stoap collapsed and he had to leopard crawl for 2 hours through a tunnel so low that you can't turn your head. Apparently he eventually got there and found three guys dead and one with his leg so badly stuck it had to be amputated to get him free, which of course he did! For his grand finale he mentioned a time when he helped to clean out the debris of an underground explosion in the gold mine. I won't go into details but I was beginning to feel quite ill. Thankfully the doctor called me before he could start the next chapter. Now, I don't know about you, but if I want someone to join me in something I don't start by telling him about the personal peril, the huge discomfort or the gory deaths. No wonder they are battling to find new recruits! 05/02/04 I just read Tuesday's post and damn, that has to be the worst piece of writing I've ever had the shame of putting my name to. I guess I wasn't able conduct two conversations and write a decent post at the same time. Well it's back underground for me again today, Yippee! Although being down there isn't so bad, I am currently learning the ground handling section and spend most of my day sitting in the tea room with a bunch of artisans talking shit. Now while I have no problem with the concept of talking shit I'd like a) not to have to do it in Afrikaans and b) not to repeat a topic every half an hour. I suppose it is better than the alternative, i.e. actually working. That usually involves tight spaces, heavy lifting and way too much grease. Oh, and I'm glad that you all enjoyed yourselves so much, all I can say is I should be so lucky. Tune in next week when we venture into an open pit and confront a draglion 03/02/04 Well, today marks the anniversary of my first day on Finsch Mine. That's one year down and three to go... So far it hasn't been too bad, lets hope it keeps on going well. Today was also the first day that I went back underground in about 5 months. It isn't actually so bad down there once you get past the fact that there are several hundred meters of rock above you. Today I almost walked into a 50ton dump truck. Fortunately it was stopped at the time but the dust was so think that I didn't see it until it was half a meter away... and it had lights on! Actually I really enjoy being underground it is always cool, the tunnels are nice and large and there are plenty of places to sleep. Actually it is an experience I would recommend to anyone. That being said, I can't wait to get out of here. gosh, these mine-based dungeons don't sound terribly interesting - where're the kobolds? - are you playing this by email, wiki or what? :D - d@vid Feb 04 2004 For older stuff see YetiBesOldStuff |