The Best Laid Plans

I just realized that my last post was my 500th. 500 posts covering about 6 years. Wow, I've been doing this thing for quite awhiles already. I feel like patting myself on the back.

Anyways, to the post proper. It seems like a great number of buttons have been pressed and a significant number of phone calls were made to ensure that all the vendors for this particular job that I'm working on will go down onsite tomorrow to troubleshoot the equipment. Apparently the jobsite still has intermittent issues with the equipment which I feel is not really related to things under our control. Admittedly we can fine tune it some more and we need to fix some bad parts, but most of the problems seem to be issues that involve the electronics and communications of the equipment. Which is not my company's area of expertise nor scope of supply. But when your stuff doesn't work, regardless of reasons, you have to fight for your own reputation and have to show you are willing to go the extra mile for the client.

But it's also something akin to extortion I guess, since we are working WAY beyond our contracted hours for this job. And we will not get compensated for it. We might be able to offset it with the backcharges for changes to our equipment done onsite but who knows. All I know is the global headquarters called our company to say 'Git 'er Done'. Perhaps it's pandering to power but when the bigshots call, you listen. I find it a bit distasteful, but we are a small business so we need to make them happy. I want to explore this idea in a future blog. But I'll leave it like this for now.

It's just that it seems that the next couple of months will be a busy busy period for us. There are an estimated 5 startups from now till next Mar/Apr. Which makes me really really glad that I'm going on a long vacation this X'mas. Cos I don't know when I will get a chance next year. Feast or famine I guess, that's the rhythm of the business. 就是因为这一点我想尽快拿到绿卡，过后箬想走就能走。

Also, just so I can boost my ego, I'm posting here for posterity some of the comments people have made about my guitar playing. I did a collaboration with my friend for Extreme's More Than Words, with her singing and me playing the guitar. For the record, I don't think the praise is warranted, but I'll accept it anyways. Haha.

(10:20:09 PM) J: my sister thought i'm using a background song because the guitar was so good
(10:20:11 PM) J: OMG......

Observations from a Job Site

So I'm currently in the Mid-west doing a start-up. I have spent 30 of the last 36 days here onsite at the Holiday Inn Express. And these are just a couple of things I have observed in that time.

1. When you spend 30 days in the same hotel, the staff knows your name. I asked to extend my stay twice this week and both times, the staff just set things up in the computer without asking for my name or room #. I guess they know my name and face very well now.

2. I have finished 2 tubes of travel sized toothpaste. So 1 travel sized toothpaste will last on average 2 weeks.

3. When things go bad, they might go bad in a hilariously tragic way. My equipment was running the last couple of days without incident but yesterday was a looong day. First of all, there are 2 sets of equipment here on-site. We had to shut one (called set 2) down due to a lack of feed yesterday morning. In the process of shutting set 2 down, there was a crash due to a mis-timing of the sequence. This inadvertently caused set 1 to crash as there was a programming error that caused set 1 to monitor the status of set 2. Since we only needed 1 set of equipment, we restarted set 1. We were trying to clean up the mess that crashing set 2 caused and so we went to lock out the equipment to be safe. The operator who was helping me then turned off the wrong set of equipment. So set 1 went down again. We then restarted set 1 and resumed cleaning up set 2's mess after we locked out the correct set. Then when we wanted to restart set 2 to check if we had cleaned everything up, we discovered the cross-referenced programming as set 2's equipment crashed again and led to another crash on set 1. Again, we restarted set 1 and then it was running fine for another hour when the discharge equipment that collects product from my equipment crashed. This led to yet another crash on set 1. All these crashes occured in a 6 hour period. I was sooo ready for a beer by the end of the day.

4. The Colts rock.

5. There are really some unpleasant people in the world who think that they can bully everyone else who is more 'junior' than them. I am not looking forward to working with that person again. 真是个自以为是的王八.

6. Bringing a guitar on-site was a good idea. At least I get to practice a couple of songs on the good days.

7. I cannot wait for vacation next month! Looking forward to happy times and Success!

当你的公司要被卖的时候应该怎么做？

今天我的上司确定了公司要被卖的谣言。最近几个月我们总公司决定要卖我们北美部门。

听说我们的竞争者想买我们的公司。如果真的被他们买了的话，我觉得公司会有超大的改变。我们公司文化，风俗一定会换。我对这个件事有点不安。不知道我绿卡的申请程序会不会受影响。加上会不会被逼搬到新的城市。Sianz.

Oh well, only time will tell how it goes. I should just aim to get out of this start-up as soon as possible. It's already been 4+ weeks and counting. Ugh. Hopefully I will get out soon.