The Drop, February 16, 2024

West County Wastewater's Drop podcast is celebrating its one-year anniversary. The podcast was created to reach more people who work in different ways, like those in the field or commuting. To celebrate, they are having a raffle and giving away a $50 Amazon gift card. To enter, listeners need to jot down the first song played on the podcast each Friday in February and send in their list by March 1st. The podcast also mentions upcoming projects and improvements. In other news, they talk about the rainy weather, Black History Month, and the celebration of Otis Boykin, who invented the control unit for the artificial cardiac pacemaker. The podcast also mentions upcoming events, such as President's Day and an HR huddle. They highlight a new self-service tool for resetting Windows passwords and recent training for CSO crews on line locating technology. Finally, they mention a milestone celebration for the Cleaning Green Project and recent presentations at the North Bay Engineers Club. Hello, and welcome to this week's audio version of The Drop, West County Wastewater's weekly podcast. Today is Friday, February 16th, 2024. Happy Friday, everyone. So today's the day, West County Wastewater's Drop podcast. This podcast you're listening to right now is turned one today, so we are celebrating. The Drop podcast was created last year with the intent of reaching more of you, so we recorded it. We put it at the bottom of the Drop newsletter, way at the bottom, because, you know, we were pretty green, maybe a little bit shy about it, and it was new, so there it was. We've been bringing it to you every week now for one year, thanks to all of you who tune in. And, really, the reason behind the podcast was the realization that we all work in different ways. You know, not all of us sit in front of a desk all day or in front of a computer. Instead, many of you are working out in the field. You might be in a truck most of the day or commuting back and forth from home or working around the plant. So the podcast is an audio version of the weekly newsletter, of course, but we're hoping that it reaches more of you and it's convenient. So in celebration of our anniversary, our one-year anniversary, we're having a raffle and giving away a $50 Amazon gift card. So here's what you need to do to win the gift card. Get yourself 50 bucks. So every Friday in February, check out the first song that we play on the podcast. Jot it down, and by March 1st, send all of those songs in to communications at WPWD.org. We will then put your name in a drawing to win a $50 Amazon gift card. So it's our anniversary, but you get the gift. Congratulations to us, and good luck to you. We hope you win the card. We continue to encourage you to send your stories, projects you're working on, any photos, song requests to communications at WPWD.org. And yeah, we love to hear from you. We continue to work on the content and on the audio. We are recording today, for example, using a new app, so we're hoping that the sound is a little smoother. And we've got some other ideas coming in the near future, so stay tuned. Keep coming back to the podcast, and you'll see some new projects we're working on, ways to be a little bit more inclusive, get more voices, and we're excited about that, and hope you are too. Now for the weekly news. So we're preparing again for a weekend of rainy weather. So hopefully you've got those umbrellas out, you've got a hood on your coat, you've got your windshield wipers all in good shape. We've got some rain on the way that's going to see us through the middle of next week, it looks like. Valentine's Day was this past Wednesday. Happy belated Wednesday to all who celebrate. Meanwhile, West County Wastewater does continue to celebrate Black History Month. This week we're celebrating the life and genius of Otis Boykin. Otis was born in 1920 in Dallas, Texas, and attended Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas, where he was valedictorian when he graduated in 1938. So what's the big deal about Boykin? Well, he patented 28 electronic devices in his life. That's a lot. One of his early inventions was an improved wire resistor, which had reduced inductance and reactance due to the physical arrangement of the wire. Other notable inventions that Boykin came up with included a variable resistor, which was used in guided missiles, and small component thick film resistors for computers. But Boykin's most famous invention, one you'll probably be familiar with, is the control unit for the artificial cardiac pacemaker, as we call it a pacemaker. We know there's some people that need these. If you are in the newsletter today, you can click and read a little bit more about that pacemaker. There's also a photograph of it. This device essentially uses electrical impulses to maintain a regular heartbeat. So of course, we love a good theme here at the Drop Podcast, so we saved Otis Boykin for today since we are celebrating Valentine's Day, and he did his part in helping keep many hearts beating. This coming Monday, February 19th, West County Wastewater celebrates President's Day, and our administrative offices will be closed. But we want to give a big shout out, thanks to our operations and on-call maintenance and CSO staff, who do work on the weekends, and they also work on these holidays. So we see you out there, we appreciate it. You know, if we had a Mount Rushmore of staff who worked on holidays, we'd happily be chipping away at that, and thanks to all of you. So stay tuned later in the podcast, we will be giving more details about our first HR huddle that will be taking place down at the plant this coming Thursday, February 22nd. We hope to see you there, more on that later. We got Alicia Keys playing now. Alicia made her appearance during last week's Super Bowl halftime performance. This song, and all the songs played on today's podcast, are in honor of Black History and Her Story Month, and they can be found on West County Wastewater's latest Spotify playlist. Please turn to page 2024. There is a direct link in today's Drop. Just find that graphic there, click anywhere on, and it will take you straight to Spotify. Spotify is a free music streaming service. It's free, we have our own channel. Baby Love, congratulations! Oh, this is a good one. Congratulations going out to shift supervisor Roy Castillo and the Castillo family, who, on the birth of baby Nico. So that's right, there is an adorable picture of Roy's new baby boy in today's newsletter. We hope you check that out. He is beautiful, Roy. Congratulations to you and your family. Here's another reminder that our friendly and helpful IT service provider, Apex, has implemented a self-service tool which allows you to reset your Windows password independently. This means that you will not have to wait for assistance from the help desk for password resets. That's a big time saver. So the Apex help desk is always available, and I'll give you their number so you can jot it down. The Apex help desk number is 530-248-1041. You can get more information about this new feature in today's newsletter, read a little bit more about it, but generally this just is. The enhancement will give you greater control over your account access while maintaining the highest security standards, and you know how we feel about security standards here. We love them. We love to keep them high. Locating the lines. Well, here's something. Recently, our line locator training for CSO took place with classroom and hands-on demonstrations. So traditionally, West County Wastewater CSO crews have been able to locate any issues, cracks, and leaks in sewer lines, but this newest technology gives a more precise and accurate read which allows our crew members to pinpoint specific problem areas. The line locating technology does work with our CCTV or closed caption television system, and it allows for less disruption and demolition, like the digging up of concrete and other difficult tasks. So thanks to our CSO crews. We appreciate your continued education. We know that this particular training happened on a particularly rainy day last week. It was cold out there. They did do the training outdoors, so we see you. We appreciate you. And your hard work. Please be on the lookout for an Outlook invitation coming your way next week for the Cleaning Green Project Milestone Celebration that we are planning for March 14th down at the plant. Please mark your calendars. Come on out and hear the latest news on the Cleaning Green Project and explore the new solids handling building and enjoy a catered lunch. We'll all be down there. Come on down. Hang out with your colleagues if your schedule permits. Have a laugh. Have a conversation. Get some information. Get some food. We are working on having some cool new swag down there to give out. You know, the stuff we all get. Hope to see you. Speaking of the Cleaning Green Project, the Cleaning Green Project was highlighted at North Bay Engineers Club recent event this past week. So West County Wastewater staff were on hand on Monday, February 12th down at Eagle Vines Golf Club, which is in American Canyon, to give a presentation of the Cleaning Green Project to a room full of engineers. So both city employees and staff from private construction companies were in attendance for the lunch and an in-depth presentation from West County Wastewater's Senior Project Manager, Keith Reynolds. Keith presented alongside HDR partner, Guyton Dernan, and Guyton explained some of the challenges and workarounds that staff have had to negotiate throughout this Cleaning Green Project construction. And also he talked about the importance of communication. It was a really good presentation. We saw folks there from the city of Pittsburgh, the city of Benicia was there, the city of American Canyon. So thanks to both Keith and Guyton for leading an interesting and thought-provoking presentation this past Monday. Also, West County Wastewater's General Manager, Andrew Clout, Capital Portfolio Manager, Angela Andrews, and Communications Manager, Kate Gibbs, were all in attendance to support the team. Supporting the green team. If you're interested in learning more about that presentation or seeing it, there's a link in today's newsletter that will take you directly to the PowerPoint presentation. So thanks to Guyton and Keith for sharing that. We'll share that all with you. There's also a quick link in today's newsletter that will take you directly to our latest Spotify playlist. Please turn to page 2024. So get in there and listen to Tracy Chapman and Beyoncé. A little Otis Redding. We'll sneak some Otis Redding in there as well. Well, here's one of our favorite features. It's time for anniversaries. Our February anniversaries are at hand. Not just the Drop Podcast anniversary, but we've got some stuff as well. We're super excited to help our very own senior CSO crew member, Anthony Jackson, celebrate 17 years with West County Wastewater. Anthony came to work for West County Wastewater on February 5th of 2007. So what was happening in the world when Anthony was a newbie down at CSO? We checked into it and here's what we found out. Well, in 2007, Netflix began streaming. So before then, remember you had to check your mailbox to see when the DVDs were coming. Remember those days. So Netflix began streaming in 2007. Also, NASA landed a spacecraft on Mars. And Steve Jobs, R.I.P. Steve, introduced the first iPhone. Can you believe that? And Tesla unveiled the Tesla Roadster. So we've got a couple of pictures in today's Droplet. Pictures of the first iPhone and that Tesla Roadster. So check those out. I've got to say that Tesla Roadster, yeah, it's aged well. It's a good looking car still. Also, MySpace was the preferred social media platform. It valued 65 times more than Facebook. So back in 2007, when Anthony was just a baby coming to CSO at West County Wastewater, well, Facebook was just a baby too. MySpace was more popular. In sports, because we know Anthony loves sports, the Indiana Colts beat the Chicago Bears in heavy rains during the Super Bowl that year. And the San Antonio Spurs won the 2007 NBA Championships under Coach Pop, that's Coach Greg Popovich. The Boston Red Sox beat the Colorado Rockies in the 2007 World Series. Also, Beyonce's ski-replaceable topped the charts that year. To the left, we'll hear from Beyonce in just a little bit. Other anniversaries will lead operator Janelle Garabetti and hit the ground running when she came to us in 2020. Janelle came to work for West County Wastewater on February 10th of 2020, and has been working and studying and achieving big goals since then. So congratulations to her on her anniversary and all of her success. Janelle, we love watching you shine and succeed. Glad you're with us. Speaking of Valentine's Day, West County Wastewater had two sweet additions to the Operations and Maintenance staff on February 14th of 2022, two years ago, when Maintenance Field Supervisors Man San Lam, or as we like to call him, Sonny and Russell Maxey, joined the team. So we appreciate the hard work, participation, good ideas, and leadership that both Sonny and Russell bring to work. We're so glad that you all chose us. We're so glad that we're celebrating the Drop Podcast anniversary with all of you. Congratulations to all of our February anniversary celebrants. A repeat, news from HR, employment verifications. If you're buying a home or refinancing, or are you renting a property, maybe buying a new vehicle, or maybe you're applying for a loan or credit, if you answered yes to any of the above, then the lender does need to verify your employment income. You just need to direct them to theworknumber.com. That's theworknumber.com. Just provide that name, website, to your lender, and you should be all set. That's all you need to do. If you need additional information or have questions for the work number, here's their telephone number. Just call 866-604-6572. And of course, that number is repeated in today's newsletter. And we mentioned earlier we were going to talk about these HR huddles. Well, HR has announced in 2024 they're going to be offering staff all drop-in office hours every month, twice a month, so you can bring your HR-related questions and thoughts to them. The very first HR huddle is happening this coming week on Thursday. So Thursday, February 22nd, members of our HR crew will be setting up shop in the plant classroom. And they'll be there from 2.30 in the afternoon to 7 o'clock p.m. So hopefully that accommodates a lot of your schedules. If you need to talk to them, have some one-on-one time with HR, get to know them, bring your questions, and they'll be there. So hope to see a lot of you down there on Thursday. So that's it for the drop news this week. We hope you join us online through any of our social media channels. You can find West County Wastewater on Facebook, Twitter, Nextdoor, and LinkedIn. If you want to know an easy way to find us, just scroll down to the bottom of every drop newsletter and there are icons for Facebook, Twitter, Nextdoor, and LinkedIn. You just click on them and they take you directly to those pages. The more you follow and like and share, the more the story of the work we do gets out into our community. And we love that. So we currently have 117 followers on our Twitter account. Our latest follower is San Jose Water. So we know they can't hear us, but we're still excited to have them join in our Twitter fun and information. And we hope you do, too. So think about that. Check it out if you don't already. We're always on there having some fun, sharing information. All music played on today's podcast, of course, can be found on West County Wastewater's latest Spotify playlist. And a link to it can be found in today's drop. So like we mentioned before, there are clouds and lots of rain in the forecast for this weekend. We hope you stay safe. And the rain goes into early next week. Temperatures will be in the high 50s to low 60s. So stay warm. Cuddle up, settle down, and enjoy the upcoming holiday weekend. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, how about this? Leave nothing for tomorrow which can be done today. Yes, Abe said that. He must not have been much of a procrastinator, but there you have it. The drop wishes you a safe and happy weekend. Goodbye, everyone.