Catching up

Hello everyone! Here it is, the long awaited blog that I promised to set up about a million years ago. I'll try to give a brief update of everyone but not sure how brief I can be. I will try to post a family picture as soon as we get one. Usually one of us is taking the photo! Our contact information has it's own post (easier to find later). Please email our new address so we can add you to our address book. We also have Skype for video calls if anyone is interested.

Michael:
Adam Aircraft shut its doors down in mid Feb. Michael has taken a contract job in Illinois to earn a quick buck while looking for other jobs. He found a job in Australia which prompted our early move. I will post his new job details at the end.

Blake:
Blake seems happy with the move. He’s doing great in school, though I think he’s too smart because he has enough time to get good grades and still get into trouble! He’s doing well on his Swim Team, landing a 3rd and 5th at the last meet. We will have to find a team in Australia for him to continue. He’s been Mom’s big helper getting ready for the move. He helped me pack up and store everything we wanted to take in the Garage for the movers, and store everything for a garage sale down in my now empty room. He has also taken up sewing and is working on his first latch hook project. We’ll post pictures when it’s done.

Me:
I seem to be very busy, but most of it isn’t worth writing about. The movers took everything for the boat April 15th so our house is pretty empty. I have all the little stuff ready for the garage sale and all the large stuff I’ve posted online so they have to come move it themselves… I was told I couldn’t lift anything. All the large furniture is gone, just have a few items that I would like to get more than garage sale price for, but will sell them there if they don’t sell sooner. For work I am starting to train my temp, who will fill in for me while moving and on maternity leave. I will be off work from June 1st to around Oct 1st. What a nice break! I find that I have lots more to do in Colorado before I leave, such as visiting places I’ve never been yet! How can you live somewhere 5 years and not have done everything?

Baby:
The baby will now be born in Australia, due date August 19th. For those of you that can’t count, I hit the 6 months mark next Monday April 28th. The last ultrasound went well and I got to video it for Michael. We will get to have one more before we leave. We are not going to find out the sex so don’t ask! I thought we had names picked out but Michael keeps changing his mind so I gave up even trying.

Upcoming Events that you can expect updates from:
May 4th – Blake’s last swim meet, with a surprise visit from Dad.
May 8th – 13th – Visit to SD to see Sister visiting from London
May 16th and 17th – Garage sale
May 23rd – 26th - Visit from Grammy and Leah and Jon
May 30th – Dad comes home
May 31st – June 4th – Last visit to SD to say goodbye
June 4th – 7th – Lori’s wedding in Vegas
June 8th – Good bye party at 1pm
June 10th – Plane leaves for Australia!
June 23rd – Michael’s first day of work
July 11th – Blake’s first day of school

Michael’s New Job:
Our section is called Reliability Improvement Section and we have essentially 5 teams - Reliability Engineering, Design, Project Management, Asset Management and Engineering Innovations as follows -
* Reliability Engineering comprises a manager, 3 engineers (1 x Design and analysis, 1 x Reliability and 1 x vacant CM) and 2 technical officers.
* Design comprises a manager, 1 x electronics engineer, 1 x vacant electrical engineer, 1 x technician
* Project Manager is Jadd
* Asset Manager is 1 engineer
* Engineering Innovations is manager, 2 x mech design draftsmen, and 8 trades based mech fitters.

This role is for the vacant CM role in the RE team. We look after a fleet of mail processing equipment that processes letters and parcels. The letters machinery have lots of electric motors, fast moving belts, rollers, bearings etc, computer control equipment. The parcels equipment is similar except much slower moving. The CM role is to explore all different opportunities for introducing condition monitoring techniques and technologies to 'predictively' maintain the equipment. Whilst we run scheduled Preventive Maintenance programs on all the equipment, preventive maintenance can be intrusive and unnecessary. Predictive maintenance is about understanding all the different signals that the equipment gives off and then try to identify the 'onset of failure' - just like hearing a bearing whine. The bearing can then be scheduled for replacement at the next maintenance window before there is a total failure of the bearing leading to a breakdown. The ideas and programs that you would develop would then be rolled out around the country as standard practices.

Also, being part of a diverse engineering team, you would be getting thrown into all sorts of other projects along the way which can help to provide variety and learning opportunities.