hoo boy....
So, second day of work down.
It's a little intimidating the sheer size of this operation... the building could easily house a(n American) football field. I've walked the whole of it countless times today and yesterday. And since this is still an operation in construction mode, there's contractors and crates all over the place. In fact, today I helped uncrate the rest of one "tool" that I'm going to be working on. I think there were 12 boxes, but I only helped with 8 before going off to lunch. Tomorrow, we get in the rest of the units... 60 crates that I'll be helping tear into. I brought in a mallet since we had a hard time finding proper tools today. Gotta find my gardening gloves too, the ones I was given are (of course) too big.
My "tool"? The Laminator. And the Lightsoakers and the current/voltage test station. And when we get the rest of our equipment, I get to maintain the little robot carts that carry the nearly completed panels from the chemical deposition unit to the furnace where it gets its final layer of photovoltaic chemicals too. I also have secondary and tertiary "tool" responsibilities which pretty much cover every other thing in the plant.
At least now they have AC in the main plant. Apparently I missed the fun of installing equipment in the horrible heat. It's still hot and sweaty work, but at least if you find an open ceiling vent (2 stories up), you get a nice cool blast of air. The uncrating though is done on the shipping dock with no AC and apparently no water nearby... I'm surprised I didn't have to wring the sweat from my shirt today. I may get to accomplish that tomorrow because there's going to be a lot of us uncrating which will drive up the temperature. Wearing the hard hat doesn't help at all either.
Ah well, at least Sunday I'll be on my way to California and three weeks of training. However, according to the guys that have already been out there, it's rather useless. Sounds a lot like my advanced training in the Army - learn a bunch of stuff that you'll never use because they're phasing out this system and you'll never see any of it again.
So tl;dr.... I are tired. Looking forward to California.
It's a little intimidating the sheer size of this operation... the building could easily house a(n American) football field. I've walked the whole of it countless times today and yesterday. And since this is still an operation in construction mode, there's contractors and crates all over the place. In fact, today I helped uncrate the rest of one "tool" that I'm going to be working on. I think there were 12 boxes, but I only helped with 8 before going off to lunch. Tomorrow, we get in the rest of the units... 60 crates that I'll be helping tear into. I brought in a mallet since we had a hard time finding proper tools today. Gotta find my gardening gloves too, the ones I was given are (of course) too big.
My "tool"? The Laminator. And the Lightsoakers and the current/voltage test station. And when we get the rest of our equipment, I get to maintain the little robot carts that carry the nearly completed panels from the chemical deposition unit to the furnace where it gets its final layer of photovoltaic chemicals too. I also have secondary and tertiary "tool" responsibilities which pretty much cover every other thing in the plant.
At least now they have AC in the main plant. Apparently I missed the fun of installing equipment in the horrible heat. It's still hot and sweaty work, but at least if you find an open ceiling vent (2 stories up), you get a nice cool blast of air. The uncrating though is done on the shipping dock with no AC and apparently no water nearby... I'm surprised I didn't have to wring the sweat from my shirt today. I may get to accomplish that tomorrow because there's going to be a lot of us uncrating which will drive up the temperature. Wearing the hard hat doesn't help at all either.
Ah well, at least Sunday I'll be on my way to California and three weeks of training. However, according to the guys that have already been out there, it's rather useless. Sounds a lot like my advanced training in the Army - learn a bunch of stuff that you'll never use because they're phasing out this system and you'll never see any of it again.
So tl;dr.... I are tired. Looking forward to California.