Wally was right all along! The world of work is just set up to make you fail, or in the best case scenario piss your life away on meaningless paper-pushing. Usually the best bet is to keep your head down, look busy, and avoid getting anything substantial pinned on you. But how to do that?
This easy, three-step tip will keep you “working faithfully” while freeing you to have a good time. Well, if you’re literate anyway.
Steps to do at home:
Just a small tip for tax return season, that’s saved me a lot of grief. Whether you are doing taxes by yourself, by computer, or giving it all to a tax agent, make annotated copies.
Make a paper photocopy of your tax package in case you are audited. Scan it into your computer in case you lose the paper files. Include any notes to yourself in these packages. If you missed something until the last minute, if it took you an hour to figure out the arcane secrets of a tax deduction, if you made a weird deduction this year that you cannot repeat it next year, note it down.
Personally, I do tax returns myself. I use Excel to do the calculations and double-check by hand. Each year I keep my rough copies and my re-use Excel sheets, making minor updates every year. By now, my spreadsheets and tax returns have enough notes in the margins that I no longer forget to wait for forms from bank AAA or make a deduction for item BBB.
This will save you a lot of time, particularly if you experience no changes in your tax situation year to year.
Edit March 27th: If you use your own calculation tool (like Excel), be careful of rounding. If you multiply a number by a percentage, round it to the nearest cent.
Also, sleep on the return one night and double-check your math before you hand it in.
Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&IDs) are not just for designing a plant; they are kept up to date through all the modifications, redesigns, and revamps of the plant. It’s called a “living document” – the drawings always reflect reality in the plant.
Ideally. Hahaha…
When planning a revamp or modification of an existing plant, you are going to alter a set of drawings to add “what will be” onto what is already there. You need a way to keep track of where changes are being made on the drawing: what lines are being cut, what equipment added or replaced. The tie point is a tool for that. Normally a hexagon symbol with a “tie point number” in it, the tie point shows where a change is being made. Alongside it, the tie point list explains the details of each tie point on the drawings, and where to find them.
That way, when it comes time to do the actual work, there’s a practical list of what needs doing where.
Have you ever been frustrated at a young hire in your office? “Kids these days! Schools don’t teach them anything! How can they keep making such stupid and obvious mistakes?”
Or maybe instead, you are a person new and inexperienced in your career. Have you ever been frustrated by the impatience and lack of guidance from your supposed “mentors,” who seem to assume you can magically think of everything and catch every problem? Or maybe you’ve ever gotten angry at yourself for being “so stupid” and despairing that you will never get it right, never become a master? It seems impossible and out of reach that you will ever succeed.
This post might help both sides see the situation through a new light. I have a real “holy cow!” realization that I want to get out there. It is a perspective on life that gave me great comfort in my first shakey year of working, and everyone I have shared it with has been appreciative.
But to share this insight, I first need to introduce a concept, the eight-hour year. Or ehy for short. An ehy is when you’ve been doing something for roughly eight hours a day, every day, for the entire year. Since there are 24 hours in a day, each year of life contains 3 ehys. Simple, right?
In addition to defining the ehy, let’s make a “cartoon” model of the life of a modern human being who goes to school. Assume that this typical person gets a higher education after high school, and then goes to work in a career. In our model, the typical person spends eight hours a day sleeping, eight hours a day working or going to school, and eight hours a day on everything else, like playing, housework, taxes, raising the kids, etc. Therefore, after one year of life, the person has spent 1 ehy on sleeping, 1 ehy on work and/or school, and 1 ehy on everything else.
Now true, that person probably had weekends and vacations off from work/school, but they probably spent some extra time working late on a deadline, or cramming for exams, or reading articles about their job, whatever. Children do get summer vacation but they also get plenty of homework at older ages. Plus, we’re keeping things simple.
With our new unit of measurement and our simple model of life, let’s take a look at an average junior worker. They are just joining a knowledge profession that requires four years of training after highschool. e.g. a graduate in finance or Russian or teaching or anything else like that. Let’s assume they just graduated and are about 20 years old. (If you don’t like that, assume they are 24, and do not count the “experience” of living from ages 0-4 towards getting job skills).
What level of experience can this new hire possibly bring to their first job? They have: Continue reading
I found some great tips on designing machined metal parts. How to design parts that are cheaper and easier to produce. How to provide clear, helpful drawings and instructions to the machinist shop. How to avoid making costly mistakes.
I found it pretty interesting even though I’m not in the business myself.
CAD model and CNC machined part
Read it here: http://www.omwcorp.com/how-to-design-machined-parts.html
Read below if you want an interesting, rambling side story from my past:
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