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We turned off the radio in the pilot plant and I got permission to bring in my iPod dock to play something and  I offered music or a book on tape and the group selected the latter having the further options of:

1) A 45-part history of the United States that can put a cup of coffee to sleep
2) An 8-hour book on an alternate theory of how the universe can have infinitely increasing entropy in both directions on the axis of time

The history of the US won out.  I don’t think I’d be so angry if I weren’t already 1/2 way through it so now I get to hear the riveting tale of why the Zwingli church never caught on in the US all over again!

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The current set of tasks my technical team is doing could be relegated to second graders (assuming they had GMP certification) as it largely consists using the industrial analogs of masking tape, construction paper, paste, cling wrap and wax paper to make a product so one’d assume it’d be easy.  Hell no. There’s something hypnotic about such simple materials that drive men and women with advanced degrees and experiencing fashioning turbine blades and heart valves to madness and every 20 minutes we managed to find a new way to cock up our current 4 step process.  People got pieces stuck to themselves, applied the same step twice, put stuff on backwards, and in a particularly inspired moment never actually adhered the layers of the product together.

I requested that we contact my elementary school art teacher, Mr. Fell, to come in and give us a primer on the latest in felt, pipe cleaner, and glue stick technology before we start the next phase of the project.

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Since I returned to work I’ve been obstinate in my right to have autonomy of sound.  I turn off radios, wear headphones where allowed, or just start singing or humming if there’s a machine generating a constant pitch but the Process Development Lab’s strict “No Headphones” policy coupled with its multi-room radio system has proven a challenge.  The multi-ton extrusion and industrial press machines both generate respectable Ds so I usually hum tunes with my monotone partner but today I ran into another technician and found him wearing headphones:

Me: I didn’t think you were allowed to wear headphones.
Him: We’re not, but no one’s ever directly told me and I’ve never been caught.
Me: How long have you been doing this?
Him: Since July.
Me: What’s your secret?
Him: Use white earbuds, they blend in with the lab coats and when wearing a hear net, thread the earbud near the back of your neck and then around to your ear.

Sadly his boss came back from a meeting early and he was discovered.  He lost the battle, but we shall win the war.

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I’ve gone through three four client logins at work and today I received a fifth but which didn’t have admin privileges on my local machine.  I called the help desk and had this conversation:

Tech Agent: What do you need admin access for?
Me: So I can control programs that were installed for all users.   I also need to make some registry changes.
Tech Agent: You seem to know what you’re talking about.  There are two ways to do this, first I could walk over and do the install.
Me: Or?
Tech Agent: I could just give you my username and password.  Just don’t tell anyone.
Me: Ok.

I can in no way see how me having a global admin login could be a problem and I consider this karma for getting a new login every darn time I return to work.

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Someone in our marketing department was having trouble formatting something for the web and she came by to ask us for advice.  I happened to be in the room when they were talking and I gave my point of view that to save space in simpler images she should use PNG with custom palettes instead of jpegs.  She didn’t seem swayed and we went back and forth until finally a coworker burst out with “Mary, listen to the kid.  He may not have formal computer training but he has a blog”.  That is apparently a standard of some note and she departed without any more questions.

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I’ve commented before on Canada’s signage, but by far my favorite are the penalty signs for going 50 KPH over the speed limit.  They include notes like “10 year loss of license”, “$15,000 fine”, “1 year in prison”, which all seem reasonable but I think one could capture a more visceral fear with ones that say “Go 50 KPH over the speed limit and your name is Peaches”, “Go 50 KPH over the speed limit and you’ll learn what a black bear in estrus can do”, and “Go 50 KPH over the speed limit and you will be hit by a cruise missile”.

Ambiguous signs combined with a few other strange map moments lead me to drive straight to work and where I arrived at 9 AM as I had told someone that I’d have something done by 10 AM and I had no intention of failing.  I hadn’t shaved, I was wearing day old clothing and my eyes were a spot red but I got the task done after which I triumphantly reported to my boss:

Me: I had a rough weekend and only came in to take care of a quick thing for a requester, do you mind if I leave now?
Him: Can you take care of just one thing before you go?
Me: Sure.
Him: Could you test fluid infiltration on these three different pouches, with two different challenge fluids at these 5 different conditions?
Me: That’s 90 pouches if you assume 3 per condition and that would take… many hours.
Him: I’d get started, then.

Lesson Learned: Old Boss – Analog, could match task to ability to do them.  New Boss – Digital, you are either present and working, or not.

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Boss: Hey, please go to the product lab and make a few wafers on the setup there.
Me: You mean the setup that entirely consists of an aluminum slab held in place with duct tape using a die for a different product set with dimensions that may not be physically possible to weld?
Boss: Yeah, think you can do that?
Me: Yes, just let me get my physics gun to blow a hole in thermodynamics and it’ll be fine.
Boss: Thanks.

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I want to be able to work on my team’s dedicated server from work but was thwarted by the fact that there are restrictions on remote desktop.  I asked what it’d take to get by this restriction and I was told “it couldn’t be done from your PC”, really?  So my desktop had off-site remote desktop access turned off, but not on site.  So, I wound up remoting to another desktop, so I could remote home, so I could remote to the server.  Simple.

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I brought some lamps into work so that I could better illuminate some work I was doing which required the big beefy bulbs I put in them.  I came back to them today and couldn’t find them:

Me: Did you seem my lamps?
Boss: Yes, I put them in the drawer by your desk.  You know, you really shouldn’t leave those out, otherwise someone may bump into them, knock them over, and then have to find a way to clean up the shattered bulbs without leaving a trace.
Me: Thanks for the concern.

I found the lamps where he said they were but the bulbs were gone.  Hm…..

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Me: I can’t use this material, it’s expired.
Coworker: Not necessarily…
Me: It’s clearly passed the date, I’m going to throw it out.
Coworker: It’s clearly unused, so it’s probably better than something that’s newer.
Me: Ok, that statement is so dumb, I’m going to ask you to repeat it in 30 seconds.  If you can with a straight face, I’ll use it.
*30 seconds later*
Coworker: Can’t do it.
Me: Good.