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Feb. 22nd, 2019 07:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
randomdreamsOne of my favorite coworkers announced he is quitting yesterday. He said he'd work until it wasn't fun anymore. Soon after he got assigned to work for my manager, he stopped smiling as much, and apparently this week he got to some Social Security magic age, so he's done. I truly liked working with him, even if we were quite different socially and politically, because he's kind, generous, and sympathetic.
I had a professional development discussion with my manager yesterday. He's not changing my job functions: I still get to do 30% hardware development, 60% software development, and 10% dealing with random emergencies, and that's fine. What's not as fine is that the problems that led to him being so frustrated last year are probably going to be worse this year. The unspoken premise is that I need to work more like 55 hours a week from April to August, and then I'd have the time to finish everything by his deadlines, and I'm not going to do that. Instead I'm going to rush things and make mistakes. Oh and go find another job.
There are bald eagles all over the place lately. That's been nice.
The spring that makes the Spitfire seatbelt retract and stay tight across the driver's chest failed. Actually a little plastic bit failed. I ordered some replacements off The Internets and they totally don't work, because I have to heavily modify the mounting points to match the original Spitfire mounting points, and there's not enough metal on these to safely modify. I could in theory remanufacture the spring-to-roller mechanism that failed, but everything online says once you open that and the spring tension changes, it's not fixable. Presumably breaking qualifies under the same proviso. I could easily machine the part, but I don't think I'd ever trust it. (Hm. I have another one just like it on the other side. I could measure the spring tension and adjust this side until it had the same tension...) So it looks like I have to order another one of the same make/model as the one that failed, which is precisely the wrong incentive for improvements in quality. Plus I'm about 1/3 of the way through reupholstering the seats and am stalled because of a logistics issue: all the instructions say "take one seat apart and leave the other mostly together so you can figure out how to put it back together because it is really not obvious" but the frames are so rusty and what I really want to do is take them both out, strip them down, and have them sandblasted and powdercoated, because, like the seatbelt, I really don't want to have weak seats. Everything on that car is dangerous, but those are exceptionally dangerous. I replaced the old (rusted to dust) seat mounting bolts with the strongest bolts you can buy, and added reinforcements under the seat pan because I've seen seat bolts rip through and result in a loose car seat thrashing around in the car. (I suspect this may have been what caused my dad's death, but I don't have proof.)
It's snowing madly. The roads are simultaneously really slick and icy, and covered in halfway-to-my-knee snow, at least in my neighborhood. Cars off the road on either side the whole way home, and lots of crashes. By the time I was halfway home it was foul enough there weren't too many cars on the road anymore, so I got to drift sideways through turns, which I enjoy (when there's nobody else around.)
One of my coworkers is doing a ski trek from Nederland to Winter Park tomorrow, and back the next day. It's kinda cool because the driving distance on roads is over 100km but his route is only ("only") 20km. In total wilderness, over the Continental Divide. He kept asking if some of the rest of us wanted to come along. I'm all I'd be glad to do that on a bike in August when it's above body temperature. (In fact, I once got hypothermia on that pass, in August, because of a surprise blizzard, so maybe not even then.)
I had a professional development discussion with my manager yesterday. He's not changing my job functions: I still get to do 30% hardware development, 60% software development, and 10% dealing with random emergencies, and that's fine. What's not as fine is that the problems that led to him being so frustrated last year are probably going to be worse this year. The unspoken premise is that I need to work more like 55 hours a week from April to August, and then I'd have the time to finish everything by his deadlines, and I'm not going to do that. Instead I'm going to rush things and make mistakes. Oh and go find another job.
There are bald eagles all over the place lately. That's been nice.
The spring that makes the Spitfire seatbelt retract and stay tight across the driver's chest failed. Actually a little plastic bit failed. I ordered some replacements off The Internets and they totally don't work, because I have to heavily modify the mounting points to match the original Spitfire mounting points, and there's not enough metal on these to safely modify. I could in theory remanufacture the spring-to-roller mechanism that failed, but everything online says once you open that and the spring tension changes, it's not fixable. Presumably breaking qualifies under the same proviso. I could easily machine the part, but I don't think I'd ever trust it. (Hm. I have another one just like it on the other side. I could measure the spring tension and adjust this side until it had the same tension...) So it looks like I have to order another one of the same make/model as the one that failed, which is precisely the wrong incentive for improvements in quality. Plus I'm about 1/3 of the way through reupholstering the seats and am stalled because of a logistics issue: all the instructions say "take one seat apart and leave the other mostly together so you can figure out how to put it back together because it is really not obvious" but the frames are so rusty and what I really want to do is take them both out, strip them down, and have them sandblasted and powdercoated, because, like the seatbelt, I really don't want to have weak seats. Everything on that car is dangerous, but those are exceptionally dangerous. I replaced the old (rusted to dust) seat mounting bolts with the strongest bolts you can buy, and added reinforcements under the seat pan because I've seen seat bolts rip through and result in a loose car seat thrashing around in the car. (I suspect this may have been what caused my dad's death, but I don't have proof.)
It's snowing madly. The roads are simultaneously really slick and icy, and covered in halfway-to-my-knee snow, at least in my neighborhood. Cars off the road on either side the whole way home, and lots of crashes. By the time I was halfway home it was foul enough there weren't too many cars on the road anymore, so I got to drift sideways through turns, which I enjoy (when there's nobody else around.)
One of my coworkers is doing a ski trek from Nederland to Winter Park tomorrow, and back the next day. It's kinda cool because the driving distance on roads is over 100km but his route is only ("only") 20km. In total wilderness, over the Continental Divide. He kept asking if some of the rest of us wanted to come along. I'm all I'd be glad to do that on a bike in August when it's above body temperature. (In fact, I once got hypothermia on that pass, in August, because of a surprise blizzard, so maybe not even then.)
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Date: 2019-02-23 05:47 am (UTC)My dad and his wife are on their annual Colorado trip. She was having trouble breathing at Beaver Creek doing half-runs, and another 1000+ feet at Breckenridge has had her in bed all week (guess that's what stage 4 lung cancer will do ya?). They're returning to Beaver Creek tomorrow. I was like "... maybe get some bottled oxygen?" but they're just soldiering through. I.... don't get people sometimes.
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Date: 2019-02-23 01:45 pm (UTC)It's pretty impressive if even the seats of your car are dangerous.
And I am just so awfully sorry about your work turning into Purgatory. :(
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Date: 2019-02-24 05:44 am (UTC)yeah, the spitfire's a neat car but everything about it is dangerous. Modern cars are marvels of safety engineering. (And the Spitfire was at the time held up as a big advance in safety over cars that preceded it. It had seatbelts as standard equipment!)
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Date: 2019-02-24 11:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-23 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-24 05:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-24 12:18 am (UTC)> "In total wilderness"
I read that as "In total winterness", which also seems to be accurate.
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Date: 2019-02-24 05:39 am (UTC)