ancona
Praying Mantis
It’s been a couple of weeks since my last missive, so I have more aggravation than usual built up. Well, my retard neighbors have been up to their usual stupidity, and I’m more than just a little bit pissed off about their goddamned dogs running loose with neither shots nor a fucking collar. Now usually, I would simply call the dog catcher [again] but I think it may be time to just take the fuckers for a little ride. They are both pit bulls from a local puppy mill someone probably has set up in a back yard, and they have been crapping all over the neighborhood, pissing on car wheels, knocking over trash cans and digging up flower beds. Enough is enough. Talking to these people is like talking to brick anymore, so I will take the matter in to my own hands.
In addition to the dogs, Jethro “lost” his job, so he haunts the streets looking for scrap metal, not really trying to find a job, and his skank of a wife just sits around all day doing little or nothing as well. They say idle hands are the devils workshop and I find it to be largely true. While Jethro knows all too well not to fuck with me or mine, he stands accused of breaking in to several sheds around the neighborhood and stealing small tools. This is worrisome on several levels, not the least of which is the fact that a hungry man will ultimately do just about anything to get something to eat, so eventually he may decide to chance it and have a look see at my house while we’re gone someday. The house is alarmed, but he local cops are not famous for their rapid response to burglar alarms. Add to all of that the fact these idiots were renting their damned furniture from Rent-A-Center and had it all repossessed and you have the perfect recipe for desperation.
If the neighbortards were my only problem I would probably be able to just suck it up and deal with it, but I am never that lucky……ever. I recently had an employee who was pretty seriously injured as a direct result of violating two extremely important safety protocols on a 40,000 psi water rifle, and now we’re not only facing a huge jump in our work comp rates and the accompanying jump in our EMR as a result, but this dude is claiming WE instructed him to bypass the safeties and that it was common knowledge that we did. Although the claim is patently false, it opens us up to a serious lawsuit, which is going to cost no less twenty large to fight. So now, some scumbag ambulance chaser is going to suck our blood for a while. I just can’t catch a fucking break.
The sprinkles on top of the shit sundae was discovering that my demolition subcontractor found out the reinforced concrete walls on the launch bunker we’re demolishing at Launch Complex 13 are twelve feet thick. Twelve fucking feet! What the hell were these guys thinking about when they built this monster? The whole thing is/was covered in twenty feet of stabilized sand and capped with a foot thick cover. You could have probably ridden out a nuke blast in this thing. Of course there were no as-built drawings on this monster, and at the pre-bid meeting we were told the walls were only three feet thick, but the prime contractor is so far refusing to chase down a change order. If ever we had grounds to get more money, this is the time man…..this is definitely the time.
Imagine a concrete igloo about a hundred feet across and forty five feet tall on the inside. Now imagine this igloo has twelve foot thick concrete walls with twenty four mats of reinforcing steel going in both directions, and alternating between three quarters of an inch thick rods and two and a half inch thick rods. Now cover the whole thing with twenty feet of stabilized sand and pour another foot thick, steel reinforced concrete shell on top of the whole thing to absorb the harmonic tremors induced when a rocket is launched. I swear to God I think the concrete was only poured on this thing to keep the rain out. I have never in my entire life seen this much steel rod in concrete……ever. This fucker is absolutely unbelievable and I have no choice to continue on because we have been directed to proceed with compensation TBD at a later date. This means that when you contract with Uncle Sugar, you can be directed to proceed with nearly anything they want and you have to do so or be in breach of contract. This means I will probably be taking it in the ass on this thing and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. Even though the Government did not direct us, and we have no privity of contract with them, the prime contractor does and as a result he can invoke any or all of the terms of his own contract with the Government, which he is doing to me right now. Again, I can’t seem to catch a fucking break.
Now, everyone knows that in addition to sprinkles and cream on top of a shit sundae there has to be a cherry…….right? Well the cherry on top came in the form of an asshole demolition contractor on another job we’re performing that involves not only asbestos abatement and lead abatement, but removal of around 450,000 lineal feet of dozens of types of wire containing varying amounts of copper. I wrangled this deal in exchange for a very low price on the abatement work, and as a direct result of an asbestos survey, using outdated information which identified some areas which were purported to contain wires with the old school asbestos cloth insulation. What they didn’t know at bid time was that I was the contractor who removed said wire fifteen years ago, but never mind that, they didn’t need that information. I got the wire put in my contract, and so far we have recovered and stripped around 85,000 pounds of wire from the Merritt Island Tracking Station [MILA] which is being demolished as I write this, and have another 60,000 pounds of big ass feeder cable to strip yet. Anyway, the demolition contractor, Cleveland Wrecking, is extremely pissed about this revelation because it represented a significant bonus for them and they no longer held title, so they have been busting my balls ever since they showed up around two weeks ago.
Now, the fun began on Wednesday when the track hoe operator, who is a major dickweed, decides to make my field superintendent miserable by cracking his nuts every chance he gets. This fucktard took around 5,000 feet of wire we had separated by grade and type, wadded it all up with the track hoe and pushed a half a load of garbage and dirt in to what was now a big ball of fuck. In retaliation, my Super put a big old milk snake in the cab of his machine at lunch time the next day and scared the shit out of him. It went back and forth until the wrecking super decided he needed to dig a four foot deep and ten foot wide trench across the access road, forcing my guys to hump out the remaining wire and cable by hand, a three hundred and fifty foot trek that they were none too happy to make. We finished out on Friday, abandoning several thousand feet of wire and copper wave guide tubes from Radar #2 and a number of really fat com wire bundles. But hey, what the hell, why be greedy……..right?
So now it’s Saturday, and I’m sitting here with a cold can of suds at 4:30 bitching about it all and getting it off my chest. Maybe Monday brings better times and better luck……but I doubt it. We’ll see.
Fuck ‘em and feed’ em fish heads I say. That’s always the best way!
Sorry about the rant.
In addition to the dogs, Jethro “lost” his job, so he haunts the streets looking for scrap metal, not really trying to find a job, and his skank of a wife just sits around all day doing little or nothing as well. They say idle hands are the devils workshop and I find it to be largely true. While Jethro knows all too well not to fuck with me or mine, he stands accused of breaking in to several sheds around the neighborhood and stealing small tools. This is worrisome on several levels, not the least of which is the fact that a hungry man will ultimately do just about anything to get something to eat, so eventually he may decide to chance it and have a look see at my house while we’re gone someday. The house is alarmed, but he local cops are not famous for their rapid response to burglar alarms. Add to all of that the fact these idiots were renting their damned furniture from Rent-A-Center and had it all repossessed and you have the perfect recipe for desperation.
If the neighbortards were my only problem I would probably be able to just suck it up and deal with it, but I am never that lucky……ever. I recently had an employee who was pretty seriously injured as a direct result of violating two extremely important safety protocols on a 40,000 psi water rifle, and now we’re not only facing a huge jump in our work comp rates and the accompanying jump in our EMR as a result, but this dude is claiming WE instructed him to bypass the safeties and that it was common knowledge that we did. Although the claim is patently false, it opens us up to a serious lawsuit, which is going to cost no less twenty large to fight. So now, some scumbag ambulance chaser is going to suck our blood for a while. I just can’t catch a fucking break.
The sprinkles on top of the shit sundae was discovering that my demolition subcontractor found out the reinforced concrete walls on the launch bunker we’re demolishing at Launch Complex 13 are twelve feet thick. Twelve fucking feet! What the hell were these guys thinking about when they built this monster? The whole thing is/was covered in twenty feet of stabilized sand and capped with a foot thick cover. You could have probably ridden out a nuke blast in this thing. Of course there were no as-built drawings on this monster, and at the pre-bid meeting we were told the walls were only three feet thick, but the prime contractor is so far refusing to chase down a change order. If ever we had grounds to get more money, this is the time man…..this is definitely the time.
Imagine a concrete igloo about a hundred feet across and forty five feet tall on the inside. Now imagine this igloo has twelve foot thick concrete walls with twenty four mats of reinforcing steel going in both directions, and alternating between three quarters of an inch thick rods and two and a half inch thick rods. Now cover the whole thing with twenty feet of stabilized sand and pour another foot thick, steel reinforced concrete shell on top of the whole thing to absorb the harmonic tremors induced when a rocket is launched. I swear to God I think the concrete was only poured on this thing to keep the rain out. I have never in my entire life seen this much steel rod in concrete……ever. This fucker is absolutely unbelievable and I have no choice to continue on because we have been directed to proceed with compensation TBD at a later date. This means that when you contract with Uncle Sugar, you can be directed to proceed with nearly anything they want and you have to do so or be in breach of contract. This means I will probably be taking it in the ass on this thing and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. Even though the Government did not direct us, and we have no privity of contract with them, the prime contractor does and as a result he can invoke any or all of the terms of his own contract with the Government, which he is doing to me right now. Again, I can’t seem to catch a fucking break.
Now, everyone knows that in addition to sprinkles and cream on top of a shit sundae there has to be a cherry…….right? Well the cherry on top came in the form of an asshole demolition contractor on another job we’re performing that involves not only asbestos abatement and lead abatement, but removal of around 450,000 lineal feet of dozens of types of wire containing varying amounts of copper. I wrangled this deal in exchange for a very low price on the abatement work, and as a direct result of an asbestos survey, using outdated information which identified some areas which were purported to contain wires with the old school asbestos cloth insulation. What they didn’t know at bid time was that I was the contractor who removed said wire fifteen years ago, but never mind that, they didn’t need that information. I got the wire put in my contract, and so far we have recovered and stripped around 85,000 pounds of wire from the Merritt Island Tracking Station [MILA] which is being demolished as I write this, and have another 60,000 pounds of big ass feeder cable to strip yet. Anyway, the demolition contractor, Cleveland Wrecking, is extremely pissed about this revelation because it represented a significant bonus for them and they no longer held title, so they have been busting my balls ever since they showed up around two weeks ago.
Now, the fun began on Wednesday when the track hoe operator, who is a major dickweed, decides to make my field superintendent miserable by cracking his nuts every chance he gets. This fucktard took around 5,000 feet of wire we had separated by grade and type, wadded it all up with the track hoe and pushed a half a load of garbage and dirt in to what was now a big ball of fuck. In retaliation, my Super put a big old milk snake in the cab of his machine at lunch time the next day and scared the shit out of him. It went back and forth until the wrecking super decided he needed to dig a four foot deep and ten foot wide trench across the access road, forcing my guys to hump out the remaining wire and cable by hand, a three hundred and fifty foot trek that they were none too happy to make. We finished out on Friday, abandoning several thousand feet of wire and copper wave guide tubes from Radar #2 and a number of really fat com wire bundles. But hey, what the hell, why be greedy……..right?
So now it’s Saturday, and I’m sitting here with a cold can of suds at 4:30 bitching about it all and getting it off my chest. Maybe Monday brings better times and better luck……but I doubt it. We’ll see.
Fuck ‘em and feed’ em fish heads I say. That’s always the best way!
Sorry about the rant.
