Portage Campus

I’ve been working at Pfizer in Kalamazoo since March of 2003.  It’s been a great place to work, and certainly the largest facility I’ve ever been employed at.  The picture here is of the Portage Campus, which is 56 acres and includes an Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) plant to the left and a Drug Processing (DP) plant (the large building on the right).  I work in DP as a Quality Operations Specialist, responsible for evaluation analytical test data, supporting production deviations through investigation, and releasing the production lots, among other duties. 

From the media consumption perspective, I have won back some time to read and work through Netflix again, so those will continue to be updated.  I have some reviews in me, and maybe I’ll get some time to put those together.

And if you made a habit of checking here over the past month of nothing, many thanks from me.

Truth is, I just don’t have the time for it right now.  AudioMonk.com just ‘re-launched’ with a new look, and I’ve been swamped in work up until today.   I certainly can’t complain, but it has been more successful than I had thought possible.  Maybe I’ll be giving up that pizza job soon.

Spring is here, without a doubt.

She looks like she is up to something.  It’ll probably be bad for me.

I’ve plowed through a lot of books in the idle moments I manage to shoe-horn in between three different jobs and the occasional sleep.  Charles Stoss is currently wowing me with Glasshouse, Singularity Sky, and Iron Sunrise.  Glasshouse in particular is a book I’d like to heavily endorse.  As usual with Stross, there are more ideas per page than most writers pack into a single book.

On the DVD front, I’ve been slowly picking my way through HBO’s Deadwood.  What a great f*&#ing series if you can f*&#ing all of the f*&#ing swearing.  Seriously, it is great, but the language is some of the most vile stuff I’ve ever heard.  There is a YouTube clip out there (no, I’m not linking) where someone strung together every curse word from one episode.  It runs about 4 minutes and you can almost make out the plotline.

Have fun, and thanks for stopping in.

Update – Link added.  Go say nice things about me.  Bonus are accrued if people read and comment.

I’m not going to quit blogging, but you’re probably better off sticking this blog in your RSS reader rather than stopping back every day.  I’ll shout when I return.

Now back to transcribing…

“This isn’t good,” I mutter.

At a stately slide of ten miles per hour, I watch a couple of mailboxes and two newspaper boxes vanish under the passenger side as I execute a perfect reverse T-bone, applying my car sideways to the aforementioned obstacles.

Bummer.

The car is just a beater Mazda MPV, so I’m not so much worried about the damage there (minimal, really), but I’ve done quite a number on the mailboxes.  The posts were sheared off at ground level, and the metal stakes of the newspaper boxes are bent completely over.

So I spent a few minutes knocking on doors, writing down my contact information, and pledging my resources to correcting this unfortunate error.

Great start to the weekend.

And no, I was NOT blogging at the time of the incident!

I can only wish.

I’ve been busy.  And sick.  The sick part is essentially dull to anyone other than me.  (As I’m sure most of my posts are as well…but let’s ignore that for a moment).  I love my children, but once kids start going to school, they tend to bring home whatever aggressive pathogen that hitched a ride to school with some other kid.  Germs all around.

When I haven’t been coughing up my lungs, I’ve been toiling away at a second job.  For this, I blame Dave Ramsey.  The guy just makes too much sense about financial freedom and wealth building, so I swallowed the Kool-Aid and am now running pizza for Papa Johns, three nights a week.  I’ve never delivered food before, so imagine my surprise when I learn I actually enjoy the work.  The time passes quickly, I pocket an extra $12-$15 per hour, and I get to listen to my Dave Ramsey CDs (encouraging the Kool-Aid effect even more).

It really is interesting work.  For one, just about everyone is happy to see a guy show up with food.  Every delivery is a bit of a puzzle as I have to figure out the best way to the location, and then try to find a poorly illuminated address in a driving snowstorm.  Then there is the Great Tip Mystery.

People, it is okay to tip the pizza guy.  He’s out in horrid weather, delivering high-calorie food to the willfully immobile.  There are places in the world where people can’t get food at all, yet you can have a hot meal in a half hour with no more effort than a phone call or a log-on to a web site.  Isn’t that worth an extra couple of bucks to the driver?

It’s a good job.  Even if I am about twice as old as everyone else at the store.  Even if I am using a GPS enabled PDA that is worth more than a couple of the other driver’s vehicles.

And yeah, I’m being safe about it.  Fortunately, I chose a store that services the more affluent regions of town.  I carry the pepper spray, just in case.

At a minimum, the job will give me some interesting stories to relate here.  I’ve already seen some fascinating things.

So tip your driver.  They remember addresses, and it’ll make a difference the next time you want hot food without having to stir yourself from the couch.

Strange to see it on CNN.