My First Sign Job Completed

These are pictures of my first official job as a sign maker!. These were done for the Swamp Machine Shop in Townsend, DE. This gentleman and his wife have a very impressive shop set up. I did the door logos for his truck, mini chopper and the little red wagon, talk about a cool toy, I think I may want one of these someday. I made up a bunch of small logos so he can add them to all of his existing toys, equipment & etc.

When he was telling me about his small machine shop operation I just figured a small end mill, surfacing machine, you know the basics. I was totally blown away that this shop is set up better than most machine shops you will ever visit. It is definitely a class act.

My day was great! The end of a three day weekend and I was able to get ahead on some of the work I have coming in. I was also contacted by a friend of mine and his partner.

Dave & Phil asked me if I would be a partner in the new sign business they are starting up and I thought what the hell! The niche they are going after is different from what I am targeting on and I have a little more experience with the equipment, I have owned mine for just under a year now, and understand what we need to do to get the ball rolling. Besides the entire goal I have is not to have to go back to Detroit! This is just another avenue to make that goal a reality.

I bought my machine and the related graphics for doing custom painting, well if I can make money with it doing the sign thing I might as well take advantage of it.

Debs mom is still hanging in there. Her brothers are starting to act a bit strange though. They threatened to kick the youngest brother out of mom's house because, I guess, the police have been there on numerous occasions. Her older brother decided that Bob needs to go, my wife stepped up, with her red hair blazing, and let them all know that she calls the shots!

I was proud of her for finally asserting herself. She has been able to climb out of the major funk she was in and start to take control of the situation. It still takes a lot out of her and for that I get concerned. She did not get home from the hospital until after 11:00 PM last night and she has been crashed on the couch since I woke up at 8:00AM this morning, it is 8:00Pm at the time of this post.

I went to BJ's and picked up a bunch of junk food along with a bunch of those ready made meals so we at least won't starve to death as we pass each other during our days. She is trying to spend as much time with her mom as possible, mom is still on the ventilater and every time they try to wean her from it she goes into a breathing failure. Not a good thing at all.

Well I have got to get up early and hit my real job in the morning. God has blessed my in finding something I truly enjoy doing and has also expanded it so I can travel in another direction with a couple of friends. For this I am truly grateful.

God Bless Everyone,
Mike

In Memory of Decals(My new Sign Business)

The "In Memory Of" decals are what I would like to Focus on. Looks pretty good don't you think? I have thousands of fonts and over 1 million clips, vectors & other images so what ever you can think of I most likely have it! Yes I did do this, it is a picture of my wife's car window. I guess she had a very young friend named Beloved Name Here. What ever happened to Jack or Frank? Just kidding, I did remove it after I took the picture!

I put this on the back of my truck today.






I have been very busy lately with everything going on around here. I made a new logo for my sign business. Please, let me know what you think of it!

I have also received my first job! I was commissioned by this customer to do his business's truck doors along with a bunch of various decals for him. Hopefully I can get my name out there so I can drum up additional business. Not as easy as it sounds because my customer supplied his business card with his logo and I had to scan it, adjust it, rastorize and vector it before I could plot it. It took a little while but it is done. I will show you the finished product when I get the door logos installed.

I am also 100% legal with this business in Delaware, 10 minutes on the computer and $75.00 later, I had a business license in my hand. Sometimes you have got to love the State of Delaware. I had to change the name to Signs by MFC as Signs by Mike was already registered.

I also made up a couple hundred business cards to pass out to anyone and everyone. Tried my hand at putting my logo on a couple of coffee cups and am fairly impressed with the outcome. I still have to set up the company bank account and get the accounting system up and running.

As you can see I have a couple of irons in the fire, I worked on my first job yesterday and have everything ready to go with the exception for the door logos. I am waiting for the green material to arrive.

I am thinking about a website to display the items I offer and allow for an interactive customer experience. Customers will be able to order the decal of their choice and personalize it so they get what they want and not a stock item that we may have on hand. I have a lot of ideas for this.
Like I said in the past I am not going back to Detroit without a fight!

Deb's mom is still stable with no significant changes since earlier in the week. Deb on the other hand is driving herself into the ground. She has been sleeping for the past 17 hours, only waking up to use the bathroom.

I feel for her and I know first hand what she is going though, I had exhausted myself when she was in the hospital for a couple of weeks and I still had to work and at that time take care of our daughter along with going to the hospital as many times each day that I possibly could. It takes quite a bit out of you after the first couple of days!

Last Friday she was really pissed off at me when she had to take her car in for service at 7:30 am. I have been telling her about this for the past three months and all she ever said was that she would take care of it. Well I got a call from corporate on Thursday telling me that this vehicle needed to be done by the end of the week. So I set up the appointment for Friday morning at the dealer.

I woke her up on Friday morning before I left for work. She started to complain immediately and kept asking why I could not just drop it off? Well I explained to her that I had a mandatory meeting I needed to attend that morning and that I don't drive the car so why should I have to take it in.

At 7:25am my cell phone rings and when I answered it my wife began, almost screaming, that she talked to some guy outside the dealer and they didn't open until 8:00. I calmed her down and let her know that this gut was incorrect and that the service department will be open at 7:30. While she was talking to me on the phone the big service door magically opened nad another gentleman waived my wife into the service area.

Well I thought this was all over when my phone rang again and this time my wife was bitching that they will not be done with the car until later that afternoon, and she was not going to sit there all day long! I guess she had a list of little issues that needed to be addressed.

I had to miss my mandatory meeting and take her home, she was apologizing all the way to the house for getting so upset about things. I guess it was my fault she kept putting this off in the first place!

Well that is all I've got for today. If you are interested in any decals for you car, boat, trailer, & ect. just send an e-mail to signsbymfc@comcast.net.

God Bless us all,

Mike

Wednesday 1/9/08

I received the repair parts for the RC Helicopter I crashed on Christmas morning. I like this ones performance as it acts just like 6 channel heli but is great for beginners to learn on before moving up to the big boys. A single crash can cost a whole lot of money.

I know what you all thinking! "This guy must be nuts to be playing with this thing in his living room!" Well just to ease all of your minds I am not nuts I'm just plain crazy! Pretty cool though, at least I think so.

Sorry for not posting recently. We have been sort of busy here.

Deb's mom took a major turn for the worse on Monday. They believe she suffered a couple of strokes and she was put back on the ventilator to reduce her O2 content. She was not able to properly expel this gas in her system and was basically poisoning herself to the point of knocking herself out.

Deb was very shaken up to say the least. When we arrived at the hospital mom was not in very good shape at all. Deb finally decided to sign the papers that will not have the hospital staff to revive her mom if she should take another bad turn.

I was very happy when Debbie told her mom that is was finally all right to stop fighting. Debbie has decided that this is really no way too live! She has been in a pretty deep depression lately and she takes anti-depressants every day because of her own medical issues.

I know how she feels, even though she thinks I'm a cold hearted son of bitch. My whole outlook on life stems from a simple fact that life goes on! You can't change it for anything and it is what it is. However, you do have the option of facing life with your head held high and dealing with it as it comes. You may not be able to change it, but at least you can change how you look at and deal with life.

I no longer attempt to drown my sorrows or my accomplishments for that matter. I have finally come to understand, albeit the hard way, that there is no problem so bad that drinking will not make worse. On that same token, there is no accomplishment so good that drinking can make better!

With that I have to get up at 4:00AM so good night!

God Bless,

Mike

Thursday 1/3/08

Well I hope everyone is getting back into the work routine? My last couple of days have had some major ups and downs.

I have a couple of employees that work at the far end of our line, they are supposed inspect and take care the issues of the rear portion of the units as they moved down the line.

Every time you speak to them about stepping up some more you get flam bayed about "they don't have the time or there is just too much to get and so on and so on".

We work for a large automotive company and we face cut back challenges every day to keep competitive. We have been told about these two, from people outside of our department, who just happen to be passing through on their way to another area.

Well, we have been working with these employees for a couple of weeks now and we still do not get anywhere! They know the Union has their backs and they just don't care. They will keep their job even though someone who most likely deserves to, and wants to work, will lose theirs!

Yesterday our Plant manager was in our area and he just happened to watch these employees for about an hour, well the feed back I got was that I will be most likely be cutting 2 jobs from my area as these two employees only happened to work on about 5 of the 70 units that passed them during this time.

I do not like to discipline people but these two leave me little choice, now I have to document everything they don't do, so that when I do start this multiple step process I have everything in order. This takes weeks and months to complete and when the labor relations people finally put them out of the facility the union has them back in just a couple of days. It makes this whole process kind of a joke don't you think?

My philosophy at work is: "It is my job to keep upper management off my employees back and their job is to keep upper management off of my back! My employees can accomplish this simple task by just doing their job!" No more no less! A pretty simple concept when you look at it, don't you think? It makes me wonder to think about all of the times that I have stood up to my management for my employees! I keep my end of my philosophy all of the time. Now I just had this slapped into my face by the very top of the management food chain in the plant! Man do I look like an asshole right now! And we are only into day 2 of the new year!

Please do not get me wrong I am not anti-union at all!!! The unions of this world did their job and they did it well! The representatives at our facility do wish to work together, but it is their job also to defend the work force. We all have benefited from their work in the past with just the wage base we have in this country! We all share some type of job security and benefits, but at what costs?

Unfortunately the world has changed and we need to change with it! The big companies are moving out of the US and setting back up in another country so they can produce the same products at a much lower cost, due to the wages and benefits.

The republicans have not done the middle class any good at all, in this country, when President Reagan began this down slide with the open trade initiative with Mexico, now Bush too, has opened the door for quite a few other countries and now all their republican buddies are moving out, making bigger profits because they sell it for the same prices and it costs them much, much less to produce it now. The government does not care that this is putting people out on the street!

Now we have competition here in the USA with all of the foreign auto manufacturers. They are able to hire workers at a very good wage and benefits. They seem to be able to keep the employees happy. These employees have a great incentive to do their job! They get to share in the companies profits, when the company does good they all get compensated. They must perform at a certain level all of the time or they will be terminated, period. No two week vacation, no benefits, no nothing, nada, zip! No union working in the background getting them their job back!

I am a management employee. I have no representation. I have a yearly review and if I do not perform to certain standards then my job, my lively hood, is on the line!

One of the main reasons I left a union job, back in the 80's, was the simple fact that the only time I ever saw a union representative was when they were around to take care of the guy who did not do a damn thing to begin with! The rest of us were picking up the slack for this guy because most of us have a good work ethic that was instilled in us while we were growing up! And it just seems to make the day go by a little quicker when you stay occupied.

Unfortunately the we no longer have the luxury that our parents once had with a guaranteed income and job. We need to protect our jobs, not think that they are going to be there until we decide to retire!

Our facility has already gone through the major reduction pains that the rest of the corporation is facing and will be experiencing in the very near future. We have gone from an hourly work force in excess of 3,000 employees down to just over 700, in just over 2 to 3 years, and we still seem to produce the same vehicle. Yes there are issues with it but it is still being done! Not at the same production rate, but it is getting done! We as a plant have made great strides in both management and union to reduce the man hours it takes to produce a unit and the overall quality we deliver to our customers, but the reality is, we need to do more!

The plant I work at is slated to close in the next couple of years. The thinking of some of these people that work here is that by that time they will be ready to retire or they will get absorbed into another facility. There are only so many jobs and there are more cuts to be done at the other facilities. So where do they think they are going to go? And when the overall work force has been cut by more than 50% who is going to pay them the retirement? Just take a look at the business news section and you can see that retirement and health care expenses are the biggest issues facing corporations as a whole!

It is just a select few employees that can bring the entire organization down, that meager 20% of the work force! That does not sound that bad until you do the math and you see that approximately 140 out of 700 people don't really give a shit! This equates to at least 140 operations that are not being done properly, at 320 units a day off the shipping line there are at least half that have some sort of issue that could potentially affect the customer in some way. The best thing we have in place is the quality control at the end of the assembly process, they randomly pull units out of the system and these are gone over with a fine tooth comb. The results are then discussed with all the pertinent people so that the issues found can be brought under control.

Our plant still has the best numbers in the corporation and if everyone just did what they get paid for, all of the time, there is a chance we can keep our plant open!

In my department we need to get our through-put back up. Yes we have equipment issues and yes the areas that feed us have their own issues, but if we all just did our job, on every unit, our numbers would increase. If this select few would spend as much time just doing the job as they spend on figuring out how not to do it, we would be the best in the world. Then the chances of keeping our facility open will greatly increase.

The equipment issues most of the employees constantly bitch about only account for 10% of the through-put issue. If we are currently running at 70% correcting the equipment issues will only get us to 80%. We need to be at 85 to 90% efficient just to maintain!

So where then are we lacking in the big picture here? Where can we get this additional 10% we need to stay alive? We need to stop losing a unit because someone didn't wipe off the sealer they dropped on it. I didn't see that spot because I was too busy talking to someone outside of my area. Oh shit, I really don't feel like bending over to spray that lower section of the truck, the guy up the line will get it! I didn't sand that spot because I was too busy doing my home work! I was talking to my friend on my cell phone! Do you get the idea? If we did our jobs and made sure the unit was ready for the next operation we would be at the 85% we need to be at and even better. Then we would be able to absorb the equipment issues when they arise.

The money needed to fix the equipment issues would be there because we are not wasting it by working overtime to make up for losses, having to reprocess units that could have been saved the first time around, if only pride and the desire of: I need to do whatever I can, on my portion of this vehicle, to make it right. Just this one unit that is directly in front of me at this moment! This is what I get paid to do, and my job depends on just this one unit! I really don't care about anyone else I only care that my job is done right and I take great pride in what I do. I know it is a direct reflection on me as a person, it enhances my character along with my dignity! If only this kind of mind set could be instilled in everyone our whole world would be a much better place to live.

However, we don't live in this fairy tale world. Life sucks! But when you deal with it the right way, it really isn't that bad after all! It can make you feel good about yourself and your accomplishments, no matter how insignificant they may seem to other people! To you, they are greatest accomplishment there is!

A human being can only control what is happening at this moment in time! We cannot, as much as we would like too, change the future, nor the past for this fact. We are only able to influence life and the world around us one moment at a time. The only moment in time when life really matters and that moment is right NOW! The real fact of the matter is your job does depend on this! Life basically sucks and it is going to start sucking a lot harder! So you better figure out how you will be dealing with it!

Thanks for letting me get this off my chest.

God Bless,

Mike

This is the market I want to start going for and will hopefully develop an online market place so I can ship anywhere. This is a template I made up yesterday for a car window memorial. I have thousands of Fonts and tons of graphics to start with. I can also take and convert bitmap images to SVG so I can create just about any size you need.

This is my new logo! It is small and sweet and I can put it on all the signs I make so I can be advertising all the time. The e-mail address is signsbymfc@comcast.net. Drop me line about what you may be interested in and we can work together to come up with something that you will satisfy your needs. I will be setting up catalogs of all the graphic designs I have and it is pretty good sized now and I still have a couple thousand more on my big system in the office, I am not moving to Detroit when the plant closes next year without a fight.

Well, we had to go back to work today. It was definitely Ground Hog Day! Started with the same issues we had when the plant shutdown. We struggled through the first 3 hours of the day and finally got some good units out with the help of my good friend Niel Skibicki. It was a long day, 12 hours total, but that is to be expected when you idle all this automation for 12 days. And 3:00am came around way to early today, I only got about an hours sleep last night.

Debbie's mom is being moved to the rehabilitation center tomorrow morning. The good news is she has been weened from the respirator and she can now talk softly when the traich tube is capped. She said her first words on New Years Eve. So that let us start the new year off on a good note!

With my wife constantly going up to the hospital and no kids around I have been able to catch up on a lot of things with my online stuff and this new business start up. She thinks I'm addicted to the computer now and I think she might be a little jealous.

I do everything right in front of her and it is mostly artistic in nature and absolutely no porn. Not really that much fun but it keeps me busy.

Hope all enjoyed their New Years celebrations and everyone is safe and sound.

God Bless,

Mike