You Don't Know Where I've been

 ...because I haven't been writing. 

 I'm at work, here on the HQ, just haven't been inspired to write. Also, my computer wasn't working right. For some reason the wifi adapter on my laptop stopped working. I thought it burnt out, but I did a whole lot of digging, and found that my particular PC, an Asus ROG Strix, now approaching middle age at 3 years old, got fucked up en masse  along with it's cohorts from an update a few weeks ago, where some  scumbag leftist enabled a feature whereby it would shut off the wifi 'to save power' at times, but forgot to allow it to turn itself back on. 

 Nice of the green weenies to do that. OOh, saved almost 3 watts of power drain! We going green all up in this bitch. 

 Anyhow, no.  So as of this morning, I believe I saved myself the need to get a new PC. 

       The reason it had to wait over a week to see what was up with my PC is that we're pretty busy this tour. And it's annoying busy, not balls to the wall busy. 

 Annoying busy means we're getting cargoes at the last minute, CONSTANTLY, which is not how things worked before. Before we had time to look up the orders, write up a load plan, debate changing it, set things up, and do maintenance and shit while waiting for the loading time to arrive. Instead, we're pumping off a cargo, and getting notified that we'll be loading again in 6 hours... which is fine, except that 20 minutes later, no, it's 12 hours, then 10 minutes later, it's immediately on completing discharge of the current cargo.  So then we have to scramble, beg the people doing this to us to provide information on the cargo, like it's density, because we can't plan a load without certain numbers, and they don't give us those numbers unless we beg. Everyone likes having their ass cheeks polished to a high gloss I suppose. 

 But you know what's really fun? You arrive at the loading terminal, connect cargo hoses, work out a final loading plan with the cargo surveyor, have the pre-transfer conference with the dockman, start loading, and the office calls and says "hey, change of plans, the charterer is changing the volume now. You haven't started yet, have you?"  So then, basically, everything starts over, but you have minutes to correct the numbers, change the volumes, and sometimes change the tanks you'll be using. And you're expected to do this without shutting down the oil flow if you can. 

 So this has been happening, like, a lot, lately. Constant. So when we do get hours of down time, we're more likely to want to just sit at the table and go 'well, fuck me, wow.' than get proactive work done. 

 Ah, I bitch, but it's within tolerances of what we can live with. 'specially 'cus I have good shipmates around me, when I do get to see them, guys of an age with me, so we commiserate together. And nothing, but nothing, makes a tankerman happier than an audience to listen to his many, many complaints.

         My kid flies out this week to meet with corporate HQ and start as a deckhand trainee. Gonna be an interesting week.