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The length of my commute has increased by about 5 minutes over the years.  Stop signs, traffic lights, and other control devices have slowly lengthened it.  The most recent addition was a traffic light near a farm.  There are no visibility problems; the area is flat and the nearby trees are well trimmed.  I don’t know why it was added, but regardless, it’s there.  So far, I’ve not actually been stopped by the light yet so I’ve not complained, although it’s been close.  I’m fine as long as it stays that way.

Today, the light was red as I approached it at 4 AM.  There were no other headlights, no signs of cars, no joggers, and no cyclists near the intersection as I blew through it.  There were no lights as I checked my rear-view mirrors.  The lengths I go to preserve tradition.  Also, that’s a tradition I probably shouldn’t try to keep.

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The firm for which I work was holding an all-day seminar about changing work place culture and to make the environment more welcoming, the front of our building was decked out with large bowls of fruit including pears, which I rarely see at work functions.  Pears may be my favorite fruit, and if not favorite, they’re at least top shelf along with bananas, Granny Smith apples, and clementine oranges.  I enjoy them more than most people and it’s also the only fruit I like overripe.  I’ll eat a banana when it has the consistency of a plantain but pears need to be tender to the point where they’re bruised by light pokes and braising insults.  Each time I walked by the lobby two more pears disappeared into my lab coat and I racked up about 16 by the end of the day.  After the seminar series was over, I talked to my coworkers who, on the whole, thought the event went better than expected and “didn’t involve falling asleep too much”.  The visit probably cost us in the mid-six figures from what I gather but to me it was entirely worth it because of new pear stockpile.  The rest of my firm got life-affirming advice and the tools to become the best person they could be.  They can keep that.  I have pears.

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Coworker: I need to get data out of this system built on top of an Access database, what’s the best way to do it?
Me: Open the Access database and do a dump.
Coworker: We can’t do that.  It’s a regulated system and is locked down beyond what anyone but the creators would be able to undo.

I was skeptical, so I asked her to ask Joe, a seasoned Access warrior and see what he could do if it.

Me:  Were you able to get it?
Joe:  Yes.
Me:  Was it hard?
Joe: Two mouse clicks.

I sometimes don’t know how we’d get our jobs done if our predecessors had known what they were doing.

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Methodological naturalism states that when considering the causes of things only natural laws and principles should be reviewed.  Experimentation has yet to produce compelling evidence that things traditionally called psi or ESP exist and most claimed cases have pedestrian causes like fraud or experimental errors.  I do, on the other hand, think it’s perfectly reasonable that sometimes we put together bits of data and come to correct, almost oracular, conclusions but this is usually a case of remembering the hits and not giving our brains enough credit for its deductive powers.

Today, a coworker indicated that they needed to see someone in marketing and I blurted out “she’s gone”, a claim for which I had no apparent data and  he looked at me quizzically after he returned and relayed that the person in question had indeed either been fired or relocated.  She’s not someone with which I regularly interact and I’d go so far as to say I can’t even name anyone in her department besides her.  This revelation had me off my game until about 2 PM when I had my 3rd can of Pepsi Max for the day and learned what I think was the source of my Delphic moment:  The fridge seemed to be more luminous.  The yogurt lady was the missing person in question, and her yogurt was gone.

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I don’t want to quite say I hate my work’s sales teams, but when R&D launches a multimillion dollar product, we get a nice lunch, when a sales team beats their sales goal, they’re flown to an exotic local and any paraphernalia of such trips serves as a building-wide emetic.  Apparently, in 2010 some arbitrary goal was met so bars of white chocolate were minted to celebrate a trip to Maui and they were made in such quantity that there were enough that the proles could have some.  It’s a nice idea, except for it’s white chocolate, which technically isn’t chocolate, and I spent much of the day reminding people.

Coworker: Terry, did you catch the chocolate outside the office row?
Me: No, there’s no chocolate there.
Coworker: It’s white chocolate.
Me: Which isn’t chocolate.  It cocoa butter, sugar, and cream.
Coworker: That’s basically chocolate.
Me: Nope, no cocoa solids, not chocolate.  That’s like dropping an olive into a bottle of vermouth and saying “it’s basically a martini”.
Coworker: That’d be a crime.
Me: You know what else is a crime?
Coworker: Murder?
Me: That too… and calling white chocolate chocolate.
Coworker: The world must be told.

I’m on it, buddy.

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Boss stops me while I walking around the building wearing a pair of bluetooth headphones like these:

My phat cans

Boss: Terry, did you ever see Episode 5?
Me: Empire Strikes Back?  The scientifically best movie of the series?  The one where story-telling is brought to a high art and the idea of not telling the audience everything builds a richness that compels us through as everything breaks down for the heroes.
Boss: The ones with Billy D Williams.
Me: As Lando Calrissian, former swashbuckler now turncoat who operates Cloud City, a Bespin gas mining operation.
Boss: And that guy who was with him.
Me: Lobot, chief administrator and computer-liason officer for Cloud City played by John Hollis.
Boss: You look like that guy.  So you’ve seen the movie?
Me: Once or twice.

 

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The refrigerator at work currently contains 14 containers of yogurt which I thought was so 14 people could have 14 snacks generating 14 smiles, but today, a chronic yogurt bringer was browsing through the canisters:

Me: It’s tough to figure out which one is yours with so many, no?
Coworker: Nah, they’re all mine, I’m just not sure what flavor I want.
Me: All yours?
Coworker: Well, all the Dannon ones, the Yo-Plait ones are some other woman’s.

This means, of the 14 yogurt containers in the fridge, 12 are from 2 people meaning a total of 4 people  at work consume yogurt in my area.  I felt bad putting in 2 cans of soda, but now I think this is just the start.  I’m going to clean out the bottom row, bring in a 24-pack of Pepsi Max to put there, and slap a sticky note on there that just says “Your move, Marketing Lady.”

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My work umbrella was recently taken and not returned, and today it was again raining so I steeled myself for more work inconsideration as I folded my new umbrella and prepared to place it in the umbrella rack.  Again, the rack was a field of courtesy umbrellas into which mine would disappear, possibly for ever.  I glanced at the secretary who wouldn’t notice, the man in the lobby who wouldn’t care, and the gaggle of laughing employee’s who would become impromptu thieves were I to leave my new 44″ gustbuster with a rubber grip umbrella, nay, rain shield with the rabble of other folding rain domes.  There, I decided that I would not let myself be a victim and walked back to my car, folded up my umbrella and walked back in the rain with a dedication unknown to my normal walks into the building.

I felt good in my dampness until I realized 3 things:
1) I could have stored my umbrella in my cube.
2) I could have brought a courtesy umbrella with me to my car so I wouldn’t have to walk in the rain.
3) I could have filled the walk in the rain in slow motion with a brooding guitar line playing in the background to highlight my new status as a weather protection iconoclast.

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Troubleshooting a particular work device has been complicated by the fact that there is no documentation for the many valves, manifolds, redirection paths, and flow meters within the device and proper flow is impossible to determine as a T-intersection may have lateral flow either because it’s supposed to or because the base of the T is blocked off.  Today, I found the website for one of the valve manufacturers who had been bought and now operated under a different name but no valve diagram existed.  After googling the firm, I found out they had a youtube channel and on a lark played one of the vidoes where I was astonished to find that the diagram I needed flashed by in the background during the closing.  By screencapping the movie when the needed frame appeared I was able to get the basic flow information for at least one of the valves.

Getting the right screen cap took a few tries and I’m pretty sure my coworkers thought I was playing a game as they heard catchy music and me yelling “damn it!” repeatedly.

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Hydrogen sulfide is a common challenge gas to see how well something will resist or absorb odors and the device that does such hasn’t been working as it should so I’ve been troubleshooting it for the past two weeks.  The innards of the device has around 200 connections and my current method of passing nitrogen through the fitting and using a leak detection solution has proven both tedious and soapy.  Today I tried passing H2S through the fittings and seeing if I could smell it.

Me: I haven’t found any leaks yet.
Boss: Well, if you don’t find any after going through switch back to the leak solution.
*20 minutes later*
Coworker #1: Ghaaa…
Coworker #2: It smells like an out house is on fire.
Boss: What happened?
Me: I found a leak.

This looks like a leak detection method I can only use once a day.  I’m glad it worked.