Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Happy Friday!

That is something you often hear quite genuinely around my work on a Friday morning. However, by Friday afternoon, it often turns into a VERY sarcastic phrase.

For instance, here is what happened to me this past Friday afternoon.

First let me give a little background...
My current situation at work is that my team consists of 2 people, me and my co-worker (we'll call her K). K and I are responsible for 5 machines. That means if any hardware problems occur on any of these 5 machines, we are responsible for making sure that it gets fixed. Not neccesarily know how to fix it, but know who to contact to get it fixed.

Well, in the last year, K moved to another city. Which means I personally have to make sure the hardware for all 5 machines is in a happy state, this is fine, but it is a fact and component to the story.

This was the week I had been out for jury duty the last 3 days. Well, one of our machines (the biggest and most obnoxious one) was having some power problems. So since I was on jury duty, I told her to make do, and see if she could figure it out. Well, eventually she found out that multiple parts on the machine are were having failures, so after contacting the developer (the expert who would know) the assumption was that the sensor part that connects to the other multiple parts, is indeed the bad part. So she asked another co-worker to help out with the maintenance on this machine, since she is in another state.

So, this co-worker finds the person who knows how to do this maintenance, we'll call him J, and J is available to fix this on Friday. Well, I make it back to work, and Mr. Helper Co-worker has a meeting, so he says,"Can you help oversee the repair/maintenance process?" I think, Sure, how hard could it be?

HA! So, I show up at the machine and J comes to join me with the correct part and the needed tools. Excellent, we're off to a good start. So he gets on the machine and asks," What repair do I need to run?" How do I know, I've been in court for 3 days? And of course there are like 10 to choose from. So I instant message K. Within a few minutes, we figure out what repair event to run, and THINK we know what part number it is that we need to replace. So we start the repair. Then the instructions to remove the part come up. Ummm... these are not the instructions to remove the part that J brought over. Uh-oh. So we start hunting around. This process ends up taking so long to run, the Mr. Helper Co-worker's meeting finishes, and he comes to ask us if we are doing ok. Yeah, right! I have no idea what is going on with this machine or what the CORRECT part number is.

So, we start down the path of finding out the correct part number. Mr. Helper Co-worker is able to show us the error of our ways, and 1 hour after starting this process, we are finally beginning the correct repair process.

Of course the bad part is in the middle of some bigger part. So we have to take off what feels like every cable on this machine. And then, the part is on the bottom half of the machine, so it is between 2ft and 4 ft above the ground. Now, I'm not 9 months pregnant yet, I definitely am less limber, and cannot get up off the ground as quickly as I used to. But the height of 2-4ft requires, some hunching over, kneeling on the ground, or limber strength to unscrew bolts that are in hard to reach places. So clearly, I am NOT the ideal candidate for this project. But the thing is, J is a very nice gentleman, however he also has a limp and an issue with his knee or hip (I did not ask, just pure observation, as he walks with a bit of a hobble).

Normally, I am all for respecting my elders, and offering to get down on the floor, get dirty, and pull this machine apart. But frankly... 3 days in court made my back hurt really bad. Plus not to mention the round ligament pain had been a real killer that week, so standing is less than comfortable.

So there we are, pregnant me and inflexible J trying to hover over this machine, that requires pulling every last piece out to get the dumb part out. (Nevermind that Mr. Co-worker Helper man is not only strong, and limber, he is in fantastic shape for a mid-late 30's man) But I digress.... which is worse, prego me or hobble him? I was feeling like those pathetic women who complain about every little thing when they are pregnant (inspite of my determination to continue normal life as much as possible during pregnancy). I just wanted to go whine to someone and tell them to do the hard labor themselves!

Well, another hour has passed, the bad part still had not been completely removed, and I was really thinking, we might be better off with having bad hardware. But alas, J was able to remove the part, and put the new one in. He miraculously remembered where everything went, and put the machine back together in half the time it took to take it apart. So, almost 3 hours later, the new part is in and the machine is powering it on. J excuses himself, while I sit and watch power do its job. Over 3 hours later, my co-worker, K, runs the scan on the machine to find.... OH YES! Remember, those multiple parts that were complaining, which made us think that we needed to replace the sensor? They are reporting BAD... AGAIN! UGH!

So now here we are, Friday night, the weekend taunting me as I watch the errors on the machine continually come up. As if they are laughing at me one by one, telling me I can never go home.

And you would think this is a one time thing? NO! Computers know when its Friday, and they KNOW when you want to go home. And they KNOW when to break!

So thus HAPPY STINKING FRIDAY is anything but at this point! And either you go home in PURE frustration, and take it out on your spouse, kids, dogs, etc. Or you stay at work all night, fix the problem, and go home to a frustrated 'spouse, kids, dogs, etc.'!


Happy Friday, INDEED!



(there have been numerous times I have needed an air bag)

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Valentine's Day

Our Valentine's Day was wonderful...

We started the day separately... Matt took Cleo up the mountain and hung out with friends that were rock climbing. I spent the morning with one of the youth group girls from church, helping her study math.

After I took her home, Matt came home with a dozen red roses! Now, I know it's silly. And I know that roses are like a million times more expensive at Valentine's Day. But I really always want to have a flower on Valentine's Day. Whether it's one or a dozen, or whatever, I really want to have that flower. It really just makes me happy.

This is one of those many silly times that I sit there and think, why do I care? But alas, the reality is... no matter how much of logical engineer I am, I still have that girl side of me that wants things for no logical reason.

Anyways, we had a wonderful rest of the day, dropped off our dogs at our friends, went to a super early dinner at Gavi's (the yummiest italian food ever) and filled up on dinner and dessert, and then went furniture shopping. Found lots of things we want but don't need yet. But its still fun to look sometimes.

Hope everyone else had great day!

Friday, February 13, 2009

Happy 1234567890 Day!

Sorry, we've been side-tracked with babies and other things...
Here's a geek update!

"As of 6:31:30PM ET this afternoon it will officially be 1234567890 Unix time, which started at zero and has been counting seconds since the stroke of midnight on January 1, 1970." - Engadget

http://www.coolepochcountdown.com/

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

We found out....


Ok, so this is 2 major things....
1 - We are having a BOY! (Totally excited!)
2 - I am becoming a digital scrapbooker! Here's my first page to show everyone. (keep in mind, I didn't spend much time on this... I just wanted to get it on the blog quickly)

credits:
Sweet Dreams kit by Megan Turnidge at Elemental Scraps
Moody Blues kit at Shabby Princess

Friday, February 6, 2009

Jury Duty

So, everyone says that when you get called to Jury Duty, it often is boring and to bring your book. But, I have a different story to tell....


I got called to the kind where you have to be 'on-call' for a week. You may or may not even need to go downtown. Well, Sunday morning I got a voicemail saying, Alas, I need to go down Tuesday morning.

So Tuesday I headed down, and learned that if you get called down... there is a trial that you need to sit in on the jury selection. So, they randomly give you a number, and you sit in order of your number. Well, we all know it takes 12 for a jury, and I got number 11! So I pretty much knew I'd be considered for the jury.

Well, this was a sensitive case, it involved topics that many could not handle, and I understand that. But seriously, losing 35 out of 67 jurors on 1 question! That's kinda ridiculous. I am sure some of them (particularly the women) couldn't handle it, but wow, lots of people took that out.

As I sat there debating, keeping in mind my CRAZY emotional mood swings, and my sensitivity to visual pictures, my bladder control abilities (or lack thereof), and just the pure sensitive subject... I tried to logically decipher if that meant that I couldn't be "fair and impartial". But ultimately, I decided I could be as "fair and impartial" as anyone else could.

So, by 2pm the first day, we were out of jurors and didn't have enough for the lawyers to pick from. So, we had to come back the next day at 10:30am after they had called more people to jury duty. After being sent out again for a recess, we came back in, and they jumped from juror number 1 to number 6 to number 10! Ah! That means that all those people in front of me had some reason that the lawyers didn't want them. Each lawyer only gets 6 rejections, so I knew that chances were not good. And thus, it is true, I was selected, inspite of me mentioning my child advocacy and community service.... shoot! not opinionated enough! And not that I mind being on a jury, but UGH what an inconvience during pregnancy!

I spent the next day and a half listening to a sad story that no one could prove. All in all, it was a very interesting experience and I learned a lot. But it was hard and exhausting. So pretty much the best news that came out of this is, that Wednesday night I got the best night's sleep I have had in months! I only got up to pee once in the middle of the night! Amazing!