Rowen's Job

Here in northern Colorado, as perhaps in other places in the world, especially in the summer and fall, many people take Friday off of work, and so it is very quiet today. My work is such that I have nothing at all to do if nothing goes wrong – for the factory, or for the customers that use our products. The thing is, things are almost always going wrong – I think that it has to do with “Murphy’s Law”. . .

I am the only person in my company strictly responsible for “analytical microscopy”, which just means that I use several light microscopes and related equipment to analyze almost anything that people can get through my lab door. I work on almost nothing routine, but only when there is a problem, real or perceived. I comfortably live in a microscopic world, where otherwise very tiny things can seem very big. I spend a lot of my time studying various materials at 100X – 1,300X magnification; sometimes looking through nearly transparent materials and sometimes studying the surface of solid materials or objects. Overall, it is a fascinating job, and quite rewarding when my detective work can provide the key to unlock someone's problem.

I work at a factory that makes XRAY film (and all of the components that go into making it), color paper for consumers and for professionals, some graphic arts film, some color display film, and some inkjet paper and film. Our customers are all over the world, and so I get customer complaints from everywhere that people live on the planet.

I started in this job with Eastman Kodak Company, and worked for them for almost 29 years. May 1, 2007 a company called ONEX bought all of the Kodak XRAY film manufacturing and marketing organizations and facilities in the world. A new company was formed to be self-managed and is called Carestream Health, Inc.; this is who I now work for here in Windsor, CO, just 12 miles from our house in Johnstown. I work from 7:00 am – 3:30 pm MST Monday –Friday in a lab that is designed for 4-6 people, and now I work here all alone.

I'm looking forward to the weekend, though we aren't doing anything too exciting. I have many home maintenance jobs to do, which I am anxious to get done. At our house, I keep a list of what some might call "honey-do jobs". I make my own list, so that I don't feel like others in the family have to nag me to get them done. Also, I keep the list posted in plain site, so that EVERYONE knows that I do accomplish things around there. I boldly check off completed items ;-). Have a great weekend!