Still Here

School has started again. And with Ma Natures usual sense of humor we are finally experiencing the summer we missed in June, July and August. On the weekends we take our walks early, in the cool of the day. Having this heat wave in September isn't so bad, at least it cools down at night, gives the house a chance to cool off. Much easier to sleep at night. We close the house up mid morning to keep the cool in. It works for the most part. Very busy at work. Lots of projects going on and lots of demands from customers. As the quality guy I get to be right in the middle of most of them, especially the problems. Some of the sights on our walks

This guy was very industrious Labor Day morning.

Sunny days

We visited with T and her boyfriend last Sunday. They were finishing up brewing 5 gallons of beer when we arrived. I helped cap the last of the bottles. We sat out side for a while. I sat in the sun too long, over 20 minutes before P had me move into the shade. I paid for it later. My nose is starting to peel. And I discovered another problem with being a red-head besides fair skin: thinning hair. I'm working on a nice male pattern bald spot, just like the new Duke of Cambridge, but the hair on top is thinning to the point that I burned the scalp on the top of my head too. Very tender! I discovered that Monday morning in the shower. Now, that will be fun when it starts to peel...

We're suppose to get our 2nd 70+ degree day today. Smack dab in the middle of the work week. Figures.

Happy Easter

Boy, what a difference a day makes. It was dry with lots of sunshine yesterday, temp just over 70 (for the first time this year). The sound of lawnmowers was everywhere during the day and the smell of bbqs wafted over the neighborhood in the early evening. I char'ed burgers for dinner. It was a nice day. This morning? We woke up to cool gray skies with sprinkles off and on throughout the day. They were 'on' during our walk this morning. It still smell like wet dog around here.

Ma Nature has been trying her darndest to spruce things up around here

The trees are just about to break out the leafs and of course there are plenty of dandelions to go around

My back is still sore from pulling weeds yesterday.

I've been plenty busy at work. I was a little concerned what I would be doing to fill my days once we finished the SSQA audit but it certainly hasn't been a problem. Lot's of changes to follow through on, details to take care of and problems to resolve. We had some excitement several weeks ago: a small roof fire caused by the afterburner on the new kiln. It turns out we have a wooden roof on the building! The heat insulators have been sufficient for all the others up until now. Unfortunately the fire started right at the roof, above the sprinkler system. It happened around 5 am. The fire was out and the fire trucks all gone by the time I got to work by 8. All the kilns got shut down when it happened, as you might expect. Luckily all but one were at a firing process stage where it didn't hurt to turn them off. Even still, it caused a glitch in the manufacturing pipeline that we've just about smoothed out. Lets put it this way: we were still able to meet revenue goals for the month and quarter. The wheels of commerce keep rolling on regardless of the difficulties.

T was over yesterday. She had some jeans to be altered. It was a good visit. Tyfini is ending up her time at U of Idaho this semester. She is still waiting to hear if she has been accepted into any of the programs she's applied to. Surprisingly (to us at least) there are a number of schools the offer dental hygienist programs around here. T is starting to get used to the idea that her daughter will be back home for more than a visit or school break. A reverse "empty nest"? The grandson has been busy with sports and church activities recently. No driving lessons from me lately. Ah, to be young and have that kind of energy... Heck! Just to have that kind of energy!

Welcome to Spring

We hit 60 for the time this year today AND it didn't rain! The neighbors celebrated by bbq'ing this evening. It smelled wonderful. I had a colonoscopy Wednesday. My last solid food meal was Sunday evening. I was empty from stem to stern. The doc found 4 small polyps, nothing serious. Now I'm working on refilling my system. So many choices. That bbq made me hungry all over again even though I'd eaten an hour earlier. This weekend I'll crank up ours: burgers, maybe a pork tenderloin. Yum!

The SSQA audit it over. We hit our goal of 5.0 according to the auditors. They've turned their report into Applied Materials who have to review it, approve it and flip the switch in their database changing us from "Conditional" to "Approved". Only then do I get to stop filling out first article reports on a sampling of every shipment we send them. I've had to do it so often that it's almost routine. A routine Chinese fire drill every couple of weeks, more often towards the end of the month. Lots of extra paperwork.

And the fun never stops: we have another customer audit the beginning of May. This is the one that hit us shortly after the last SSQA audit in August. He ended up writing us up saying in effect "what ever they have to do for SSQA, that goes for us too". He was happy with the copy of the roadmap we were using to track all the things we were doing for SSQA. He should be happy with the state of our Quality Systems too. All we have to do is keep all the things we started going strong. It gets me up in the mornings and makes the days go quick.

On the weekends I've been giving driving lessons to the grandson. He's moved from practicing in my truck (an automatic) to learning to drive a stick shift in the Rav4. It's surprisingly forgiving. He's got the basics down. Now it's a matter of practice, practice and more practice. He's a freshman in high school and made the baseball team as a "swing" player between the varsity and the Freshman or "B" teams. That means he get's to travel and suit up for the varsity games and even play some if and when they get 20 runs ahead. Don't laugh, it happened this week. He got to play a little first base. I'll hear all about it when we're out on the road Saturday morning. Troy visits with P while we're out driving around. It's a good time to hash out the problems of the world.

It smells like "wet dog" around here

It was drizzling for both dog walks this weekend. Now that I'm working again the boys really look forward to the weekend, probably more so than I do. The official start of spring is just around the corner and the temperature has finally climbed back to normal: low 50's. A very humid low 50's. The cold weather (and extra rain) has been great up on the mountain. There will be skiing until May, perhaps even June this year. Too bad I'm not one who enjoys that sort of thing. Much too cold for my blood.

We had our ISO audit last week. It went well. The auditor has been auditing the company for the last 1o years or so. He knew more about some aspects of the company that I or my boss did. Between the two of us we have less than a years experience at this company. The auditor found a couple minor things in the procedures for us to fix. Not bad at all. The real challenge starts tomorrow: two auditor will spend the next three days looking over everything we've been doing since they were here six months ago. They left a list of 41 "Opportunities for Improvement" we've been working on since then. The audit is based on about 120 questions in a 15 categories. They score us on a 10 point scale in 4 aspects of each category. Last time we scored just over a 3 in the key areas and 3.6 overall. We have to get that up to a 5 overall. Right now we are a "Conditionally Approved" supplier that has to submit first article samples tested by a third party every time we ship them parts. A lot of extra time, effort and paperwork. We move to "Approved" when we achieve a 5 over all. We have come a long way in the last four months. The question is: have we come far enough? Even if we have, they will be back in a year to do it again. By then we'll have to get our overall score up to at least 5.5. All this for less than 20% of our business. Don't get me wrong, all this is a good thing for our operation, it is something we should do/ would have done sooner or later. It helps with other customer audits too. The SSQA (Standardized Supplier Quality Assessment) audit usually cover 90% or more of what other customer look for in a supplier quality system. It's just that having to do it in a crash effort in six months is pretty stressful.

Once we get past the audit, I'm scheduled for a routine colonoscopy at the end of the month. The fun just never stops around here...

Inclement Weather

While not unheard of, it is unusual to get snow this late in February. It will make for an interesting day. I believe it's suppose to stick around until tomorrow and then it's going to get cold for a few days. The weatherman is calling for temperatures in the teen's over the weekend. Brrrrrrrr!

Frosty Morning

Just above freezing this morning for the walk with the boys. It was raining when we went to bed last night. A cold front moved in overnight and made pretty ice patterns on the cars.

You can't see it very well but the pattern on the truck canopy has little hairs of ice crystals standing up, making the patterns. Mini stalagmites!

It's going to be a beautiful sunny day. First is a driving lesson for grandson E. Time to try a short drive on the freeway in my truck and then some more practice with the stick shift in P's car. P get's to visit with Troy while we're out terrorizing the other drivers.

At work it's two weeks to the two day ISO audit and a week after we get hit with a three day SSQA (Standardized Supplier Quality Assurance) audit. It's the second one that has us worried.

Signs of Spring?

Saw these on our walk this morning along with a flight of geese heading in a northernly direction.

Spring can't be far behind.

Superbowl

Go Packers!