My first 8 days brings travel and meaning

Now that I have worked a full 8 days, I am ready to take my expertise on the road (according to my boss anyway). I was informed on my first day of work that I would have to take a trip out to the mysterious West Coast to meet our customers that I will be working with and to see their operations. That trip will likely be planned for sometime in September. I have since learned that by "West Coast" they mean Los Angeles (Long Beach, specifically). There are about 7 companies in the Long Beach area that we will visit. The Long Beach area, by the way, is the birth place of the American jet engine industry and it remains a very important region in the aerospace business.

Because this trip isn't until September, I haven't worried too much about having to travel. I figured that would be my first trip. I was wrong. Next week I am flying to Houston for two days to observe some corrosion experiments. I began to overhear these plans around lunch time today. I was sitting at my cubicle trying to stay busy when I heard a familiar voice talking to someone via speaker phone. I didn't hear what they were talking about except for a brief statement that went something like this, "well we have a new engineer that is still in training, we could send him. It would be a good experience for him..." Since I am the only new engineer, I guess he meant me. I then became very busy with a rush project and didn't think about it for a while. At about quarter to 5 I finished what I was working on and was starting to wrap things up for the day when my boss walked up. How would you like to go to Texas? (basically). I can't get into specifics, but basically I need to go along and observe, take notes, take pictures, and generally act like I know what's going on so that the experiments are run correctly. I will fly out early in the morning, visit the customer site and watch the experiment, have dinner, sleep, then visit another customer facility and have a tour, then fly out that afternoon. I should only be gone for one night.

And now for the meaning part of my post. So everyone has asked at one point or another what the name Allvac means (ie. where did it come from?). I finally learned the meaning of the name from a man that has worked at the company for 26 years (more on him later). My dear "friends" all like to make fun of me by saying Allvac must mean "All Vacuum". They like to joke that it is a vacuum cleaner company. Sadly, they are only half wrong. Allvac does not sell vacuums. And the name did originally come from All Vacuum. Officially, in 1957 the company name was Allvac (All Vacuum) Metals. Vacuum melting was a new technology and the founders of Allvac took a chance on starting a premium grade metal company. Now, Allvac is one of the top three US companies (only has 2 real competitors in the US) and are continuing to build business and grow.

Finally, I find this interesting and encouraging. Going through school (as early as middle school, believe it or not) I have always been told that people don't go to a company and stay there for their entire career like many people did a couple decades ago. I've been trained to expect that most people will bounce from company to company with about 5-10 years being the longest they will stay at any one in particular. At work today I met a man that has worked there for 26 years. That in itself is nice, but not completely unexpected. What surprised me is that there are roughly 200 active employees that have worked longer (including another guy I met today that is on year 36). I have yet to hear anything bad about how people are treated by the company, which makes me happy.