TECHNOLOGY FOCUS

Metalworking FLUID Certificate Course
 

Day Two

By

John Fischer

November 2007:

Day TWO:  As I went to bed last night, I knew I would have trouble waking up.  I requested a wake-up call, I set the alarm, and then I set my cell phone alarm.  When I finally woke-up, it was 7:30 and all three were going off.  Crap.  Too late for Denny's.  I had to eat the hotel "complimentary" breakfast again.   The word has more than one definition.  No one was praising the cook, so you know it was a freebee.  This morning it was sterile little slices of what looked like hot dog.  They were pretty tasty.  I tired not to eat too many of them.  By now I was getting to know some of the folks in the class, so getting a ride with one of them was no problem.   

If I didn't explain this before, the class is divided into modules.  We had eight modules on Day one.  Today's morning session started with Mist and Health effects, before going into failure of MWF's, controlling MWF's and condition monitoring.  Each section was interesting, but I enjoyed the failure and control modules the most.  Finally lunch. Chicken today.  Not bad, but again, not enough.  Today I was smart enough to bring along my own diet coke.  Apparently they only drink the old fashion, classic, full-monty, four ounces of sugar stuff here.

This was, The Longest Day.  It has been said that the mind can only absorb what the ass can endure. They must have known this was a problem, because they spiced-up the end of the day with a quiz game.  Just in time.  They divided us into teams and played an unsophisticated version of the jeopardy type game, asking MWF related questions.  So this was the first quiz they were talking about.  Everybody was shouting and arguing and really having a good time.  The winning teams got some sort of gift which, had I been given smarter teammates, I could be enjoying and describing for you right now.

Thankfully the day ended.  Tomorrow is the test.  I am beginning to worry about the test.  I have seen hundreds of slides flash across the screen and the idea that my book spent the night in the trunk of a car is starting to sound like fate.  I wish I could have studied some last night.  Frankly, I don't trust a bunch of PhD's to prepare a test for ordinary human beings like myself.  I'm sure I'd feel differently about that if I had a PhD.

That night, we head off to dinner and I'm riding in a car with another guy.  I assumed we were eating locally, but we were all in a caravan following the local guy.  He wants something new, so he's headed for a different city.  We drove for miles in heavy traffic.  I started telling him about the pass rate of the certification exam - which he was signed-up to take two days later.  - - Accident on the freeway. - -  We're just sitting there missing valuable study time.  I told him we were taking a slow ride to Flunksville on Humiliation Highway.  I reminded him that after only 3 beers the night before we waved goodbye to a car that had our books in the trunk, and everybody else probably studied all night.  I finally managed to totally stress him out.  We aborted the dinner, made a u-turn in front of everybody and we headed back to the hotel to review the material.  We did stop for a fantastic power meal at the Chophouse 47 in Greenville.  That was the great food we had been looking for.  

Back at the hotel, we started reviewing the hundreds of slides.  We only managed to review the Monday stuff before we ran out of steam.  ARGGGHH.  To get back the day we lost!  We'll get up early.  ----