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A coworker was taking apart his Roomba today at work and marveling at its complexity as he removed great tufts of dog hair from it.  “It’s not amazing, but it’s mediocre daily, which is better than me vacuuming well once a week” he said to another fellow skeptical of its effectiveness.  “Show me how it works” asked the second guy, so the Roomba was placed on the floor and started.

Coworker 2: I see that it navigates around, but how well does it pick up things?
Coworker 1: Let’s see.  *scatters hole punch detritus on the floor, starts Roomba*
Coworker 2: It doesn’t really pick it up.
Coworker 1: It works on the assumption that it’ll go over the same area multiple times, it’ll get it eventually.

So we waited a bit and none of the pieces appeared to be picked up.  A pen was made around the paper leavings with boxes and the Roomba was placed inside so it could go no where else and still the paper bits stayed.  Eventually, the demonstrator said “I guess paper is hard to pick up” and it was left at that.

Later, a member of housekeeping came by with a dustpan and brush and cleaned up the bits as part of his rounds.  Quieter, faster, and without much fanfare, a von Neumann machine did what was necessary to provide for itself.

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My firm had fired and hired an entire department’s worth of people in one of the areas to which I don’t pay attention.  Any large turnover brings a change to the tenor of the building and the make-up of the fridge.  There’s more Eastern music emanating from cubes and there is much less yogurt in the fridge to the point where one can again make out the bottom shelf.  This last bit led to either a revelation or coincidence that one of my coworkers has a Batman lunch box.

Not actual box, but looks like it

This single accessory makes its owner more interesting than most people in my building combined.  I must find him or her and see which category this person falls into: new friend, or the greatest of let-downs, a hipster.

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My split-timing has led me to want to take out years of annoyance about lab quirks on their unsuspecting possessors.  One fellow has a sign on his fume hood sash that reads “Please keep closed when not in use.  THIS MEANS YOU.”  I asked my boss what would happen if I added a “Don’t post passive aggressive notes in the viewing area of fume heads.  THIS MEANS YOU” sign next to it.  Response:  You’d have a lot more free time.

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Someone at work asked me to fix their printer as it was a legacy from our previous owners that someone had pulled from the garbage.  The power outage reset the print servers and the device was no longer showing up properly so I set to work.  One of the fellows told me I had it set up to print through the locally connected computer but I didn’t see that as the settings.  After dicking around I was asked:

Bob: Don’t you remember what you did?
Me: Nope, not a clue.
Bob: But you seemed so confident last time.
Me: Well, I have one of four methods of dealing with it.  I’m not sure which will work.
Bob: You mean you don’t diagnose it and then fix that?
Me: No, not at all.  I guess until something works.
Bob: YOU FOOL!
Me: What?
Bob: NEVER GIVE AWAY A SECRET LIKE THAT.
Me: What are you talking about?
Bob: If you had said “yes” and said there was a technical issue, we would have never known.  Now we know you’re bumbling through it like the rest of us.
Bob #2 (there are two Bobs in the machine shop):  *nodding head* We never would have known.
Bob:  You bake a lot, so I’ll keep your secret.
Me: Thank you (?)

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I’m an unabashed time-user at work.  If I have no task, and no value-added ancillary task, I will happily occupy myself with chatting or doing Scout stuff until something more pressing pops up.  If something that I think is both important and has a deadline appears, I can turn into a robot.  A coworker asked me to look at the specs of a PC he wished to buy, and the following ensued:

Him: Terry, do you think you’ll get to the… thing today?
Me: Nope.  I have work to do.
Him: Oh, I get it, what kind of work?
Me: The kind you’re watching me do.
Him: Ok, and then?
Me: And then I’m going to go home.
Him: Will you do it there?
Me: No, I’m going to go to bed so I can wake up early.
Him: To do it then?
Me: No, so I can drive back in and finish what I’m doing now.
Him: You’re serious.
Me: Yes.
Him: You’ve changed.

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Today was the company Christmas party which followed some sort of high level meeting meaning many of the higher ups were in suits with stupid Christmas ties resulting in a look appropriate for what I’ll call “execu-caroling”.  My fellow technicians and I walked to the cafeteria and were buffeted with mediocre singing from a volunteer choir and one of their voices cut through the air like a knife.   He was a fellow with whom I worked many years ago who had fast-tracked through the company and many of us felt he lost his humanity along the way, it appears he also lost his singing ability.

The food itself was presentable and last year’s “Foods of the World” served by executives in a heated outdoor tent was replaced with chicken fingers and questionable seafood that was self-served inside our cafeteria.  A somber and half-cheerful speech was delivered by our executive and we tooled around after.  The party really got started when I started losing vision in my let eye and became very sweaty and lost some fine muscle control.  I’m pretty sure it was the shrimp but I hope this doesn’t portent a future tactic of using food-borne illness to winnow the weak from the company.  If so, I’m willing to go to Taco Bell for however long it takes to build up immunity.  Carpe chalupum.

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Method development is usually a dull exercise is formulating rigorous text excised of cliche, figure of speech, or even simple terms as “paper towel” is replaced with “highly bibulous sopping paper”.  Recently, methods have been adding pictures to instruct the operator who may or may not speak English and I’ve jumped on the opportunity to do shoots, having been victim to ambiguous photos myself, and as a way to practice.

Two days ago, someone notified me that he would like pictures taken the next day so I packed my camera and shooting equipment into work and set up a tiny studio consisting of a backdrop, camera, tripod,  c-stand, flash, umbrella, flash adapter, and a jig to avoid keystoning.  Yesterday I took pictures and today a coworker approached me:

Coworker: Where did you stow the camera equipment, I need to use it?
Me: At home.
Coworker: What did you take it home for?
Me: So I could use it.
Coworker: Why did you do that?
Me: Because it’s mine.
Coworker: Oh.  Well, do you think we could get a setup like that for under a few hundred dollars?

He didn’t like my laughter, but I think it answered his question.

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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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A coworker’s wife received a call regarding several thousand dollars being sent to her from an American ex-pat in China that would be hers if she’d pay the escrow fees so he could sneak the rest of his fortune out of the middle kingdom; a standard Nigerian 419 scam.  She was unsure of what to do so she transferred the call to her husband who immediately recognized what was going on and transferred the call to a coworker that has a certain way with telemarketers.  By the time he was done:

  • The caller had spent 45 minutes on the phone, of which 20 were while the coworker went to the bathroom and got some coffee.
  • The caller promised to cover the medical bills for his wife’s car accident (which happened) and his daughter’s nose job (which didn’t).
  • The caller agreed to send the details of the transaction to “ima.crook@fbi.gov”.

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We went out for pizza to celebrate my final departure.  This is the sixth such luncheon of which 4 were deemed to be “final”.  I had no parting wisdom, the well-wishes were dull, and the pizza was copious; all in all, the overwhelming feeling was relief.  This was driven home with last interaction with one coworker:

Him: Hey, you’ve been a lot of help around here and there’s been something I’ve been meaning to ask you.
Me: Yes?
Him: Can I have your iPod dock?