15,000 Calories

Miss me?

Spent last week in Matthews/Mint Hill, NC “learning” how to program our new Mori Seki NTX100-SZ to turn, literally, raw steel into parts that in turn go into valves which make the world go round. I was not alone in this endeavor, thank goodness, a real CNC programer (Hi, Mark!) and 2 guys that are going to be the machine’s operators came along with me.

We drove up early Monday morning and spent the next 5 days in class soaking up all we could about how to use a CAM program called Esprit. We can only hope it was enough…

Between all that learnin’ we did a whole lot of eating. There were four breakfast buffets at the hotel and you know me and buffets, I eat a lot at them to make sure I get my money’s worth, even though Uncle ASCO was paying. The school provided all 5 lunches from local places and they were very good and all of them were larger than I normally eat. Of the four evening meals, two of them were at Razzoo’s, where it is impossible to stop eating once you start in on their over-sized plates of food. Plus there were Rat Toes to consume as an appetizer.

Somewhere just north of Columbia, SC the Purple Whale passed the 15,000 mile mark.