09 August 2007

Its kinda like my effort to not pass on arachophobia.
I'm extremely modest, pee in stalls (shy), wear a shirtwhen swimming, never took a shower after gym, and I've chosen to not pass on suchintensity of modesty. Its possible I was too casualbecause I'm not personally perturbed by his nekkidness.
Then again, once you've changed a few hundred diapers and seen him squat in the hallwayto poop because he couldn't make it to the toilet(when learning how to do so) you might get a blindspot.
Today at work I found what the lead EE was lookingfor in a document. He had the same document on his desk but hadn't seen what he was looking for. Documentblindness, like code blindness [you can't see obviouserrors in stuff you've been reviewing all day].That made me feel good. I'm navigating througha dense forest of arcane PC architecture stuff thatI avoided from the 80s to the present. Some kind of bad karma.
But we are starting on the electrosurgery generator.
And the boss brought a puppy to work. Sorta pugfaced apple headed companion small dog, inbred but healthy, cute as possible though fairly dependant. His kids are off to college, his wife is sick, so he got her the dog.He's 52, fucking brilliant & self made, races vintage sports cars he builds, andstill works in the lab. He never throws anything away,technical hoarding syndrome. But we have lots of great toys. We have $40K sweet equiptment bought from ebay for a quarter of that. Lots of equiptment -and we'regrowing. They're having a hard time finding new people.Turns out I'm the second youngest, there's a guy(a serious amateur astronmer) who's 42. Several ofthem are children of (Italian, Polish) immigrants.[In 2007!!] The Italian guy lived with his parentsover a deli all the way through college. I thought he was 20 years younger
than he is. The guy my age I thought as 20 years older.
Its interesting there are certain roles --regulatorywhiz, amazo electromech techs, EE geniouses-- that are common in small medical device design companies. People who do stuff you couldn't do.
My role is also common, that of making it workwith software. Its particularly tricky when the device you're programming is new, ie, buggy, so you can't trust anything. Is the cable inright? The jumpers set correctly? The rightBIOS? Is the socket good? The power supply sagging?
Is the cable good? Did the chip get zapped?

But there are senses of humor and deep intelligencesI can learn from, so its good. I figured out a relaxing and efficient drive (vs. a tour of thebarrio) and got my car smogged 20m away, it
being a car-industrial area. There'sa Sube dealer nearby I will soon check out too which would
be way too convenient. And there's a Kaiser nearby so I can get my eyeschecked out readily. [Not sure if I should pic a 'personal' doc there, near work, or near home, butit doesn't matter, they seem to provide generic doctorservices if you're willing to retell your story tosomeone who has to review your charts. Their copays are very good, too; will evaluate their service soon.]
Convenient if a little farther and more locallyindustrial --but hey, its cheap. Some of the unitsare slept in by folks, but they're friendlyand it probably helps avoid crime.

I wear sandals and shorts, and the lab *still* gets too warm in the afternoon in August.
(Do you know how warm a SCSI drive gets? My stirling engine races when I put it on
the thing for yucks.)

The boss is very fond of Hawaiin shirts, much like the senior senior engineer at my
last company.