The joy of engineering

As I sit here tonight I ache all over as I've had the day from hell in so far as my normal occupation goes. I've spent the majority of a 12 hour shift sitting on top of a 100 foot crane trying to replace the rope pulley after the bearings had collapsed in it. It's normally a 3 man job, there were only 2 of us and the design leaves a lot to be desired with the pulley being held in a blind socket through a welded frame. Getting it out required that the pin be drilled and tapped so battery drills it is, flat battery drills at that, charger being 100 foot below in the workshop and not a quick charger either, still we managed though it was not as deep a hole as I'd normally like, by that time we were going for it.
So we extracted the pin, quite easily, only to discover there were two spacers front and back, not only front and back but 100 foot below us on the floor too.
A not so quick trip to the ground to get the replacement bearings, a new pin, new spacers (God knows where the others landed) and back up the crane to fit them, this was supposed to be the easy bit, but would the pin go back in the damned socket? No, it bloody wouldn't! At first we thought it was the spacers dropping a tad, but no, industrial strength sellotape held them in place, hitting the damned pin with a large copper mallet didn't help either, it was only by running a fingertip along the socket that we discovered a ridge had built up. Normally you'd use a small grinding wheel to remove these. No power. I just spent 2 hours with a needle file removing this ridge. The pin the went home thank God! And the next shift said they'd tidy up and put the ropes back on the drums.

I managed 1 cup of lukewarm coffee and 2 ham sandwiches in 12 hours. To top it all off I think I'm getting a case of piles from sitting/standing around on cold metal.

I love my job, just not today.