Dream Silently

The color blue use to be one of my more preferred colors. But, after talking until I was “blue in the face” today and the last few days… I don’t think its a favorite anymore. Crimson is more my color…

I realize that I am inexperienced. But, I’m not stupid and I would think 3 and a half months into a project that I have busted my ass on you would think that I would of proved myself capable in making a decision. The thing that has been irking me is that I’m not going to tell the client, “Yeah, we can make that material work.” I know my soils. I’m passionate about my soils. And when I say that something is crap… its crap. And I have been proven right over and over and over again. Maybe that’s why the Colonel likes working with me so much and doesn’t like it when I leave and he has to work with someone else. (Yeah, that blew me away… he fucking fooled me because I thought he was getting irritated with me because of my inexperience.)

Like the other day, I was down looking at where the mine will be hauling material to build up the embankment with two individuals from Mine Engineering. The mine had hauled some down feeling a hole that’s being referred to as the basin footprint. Well, they did a half assed job of placing the fill. So we were down there on Monday and I’m explaining to them how I understood things, how we needed to look at placing fill, what we should do to improve our ability to get compaction, etc. The Colonel happens to be passing us up on the fill the contractor has been placing, spots us, and decides to join.

He repeats everything that I’ve already said.

Do you know how that makes me feel? If he insists that he has to work with me on the project, then why does he show up and undermine my authority? He should be pleased that I’m taking the proper steps to get the project built correctly. He should be pleased that I am communicating and doing what I can to have a successful project, which includes talking to contacts he clearly doesn’t have in his own lists.

Like today, Santa and I were defending Little Helper. It has been raining the last few days and add in the fact that we are now in 50 degree weather, the stuff that we are digging out of one of the cuts is soaking wet and not drying out very well. We were 17% over optimum and as a result couldn’t reach our compaction requirements. I may not like working with Little Helper, but I know he knows how to do his job properly, so I’m not going to doubt what he told me last night (I had to go to another project in the afternoon and left site early). And there’s more than just these two has witnesses to what was going on. So, now we’ve dug down and grabbed samples to weigh back. I could of proved the moisture content of what we’ve been digging out by showing the paper and calcs we do out by hand at the lab. But apparently that’s not enough and neither is using a straight nuke gauge which is one of the most accurate devices to be used in verifying compaction and moisture.

And I proved I was right about material that the Colonel was trying to insist we could use as pipe backfill! It’s too fine grained and too high in plasticity. I told him to go and look at the flipping tables he requested that I attach to the end of the week daily report I do if he doesn’t believe me. And if he understands nothing about soil then to accept what I’m saying.

KL tried to support him and I showed him the files and he figured out that I was right.

GAW!

Maybe that’s why the Colonel likes working with me… no matter how he tries to punch holes in my reasoning, I always end up right in the end. And I don’t bull shit him or beat around the bush about something… not the way that KL does. He wants my opinion, I’m going to give it straight up.

Did I mention nobody likes working with him? And if it weren’t for me, we probably wouldn’t be getting half of the stuff we need from the other departments?