Working from home: the "not really" version
Today is day 35 of the town’s work from home order. I’ve been able to stay home more than Amazon Engineer or Assistant Town Engineer, but less than the people working from the wastewater plant. I’ve stayed home all day on four work days. The The Streets and Wastewater crews are business as usual, and I go in only as required to deal with traffic signal failures and to maintain compliance with state and federal requirements, and with established best practices that ensure traffic control devices work. The consensus amongst the town's front-line workers and the pharmacists, grocers, and Amazon delivery people I interact with is that the more able one is to work from home, the less important one’s job actually is. As a former middle manager, I’m inclined to agree with the caveat “in the short term”. In the long term, senior management and the invisible finance, legal, planning and zoning folks start to matter.
I spent this week doing preventative maintenance on traffic signals with Engineering Aide, since I’m a month behind schedule. Every battery backup system we’ve inspected has one or more problems. Batteries take a beating in the desert heat, and many of the battery banks have batteries that are swollen or leaking acid. We replaced a dozen 120-pound batteries in the past two days, and I’m a little sore (and running out of money in my battery fund, since the batteries are $275 each). One power inverter - the device that converts the battery’s 48 volts DC to the 120 volt AC traffic signals require - had failed since I tested it in early December. One of the transfer switches that automatically transfers to battery power when the power grid goes dark had welded itself in place and needs immediate replacement, but I don’t have one in stock.
I shifted my work hours back, and now start at 6 AM. It’s dancing on the verge of 100 degrees by noon, and is only going to get hotter. I suspect that I’ll shift to a 5 AM start time in another month. It will be light enough to see, and my tools will still be cool enough to handle without gloves.
I spent this week doing preventative maintenance on traffic signals with Engineering Aide, since I’m a month behind schedule. Every battery backup system we’ve inspected has one or more problems. Batteries take a beating in the desert heat, and many of the battery banks have batteries that are swollen or leaking acid. We replaced a dozen 120-pound batteries in the past two days, and I’m a little sore (and running out of money in my battery fund, since the batteries are $275 each). One power inverter - the device that converts the battery’s 48 volts DC to the 120 volt AC traffic signals require - had failed since I tested it in early December. One of the transfer switches that automatically transfers to battery power when the power grid goes dark had welded itself in place and needs immediate replacement, but I don’t have one in stock.
I shifted my work hours back, and now start at 6 AM. It’s dancing on the verge of 100 degrees by noon, and is only going to get hotter. I suspect that I’ll shift to a 5 AM start time in another month. It will be light enough to see, and my tools will still be cool enough to handle without gloves.