Kara-Moon Forum

Well here we go, once again up to my eyeballs in a major project at work. Remember me telling you about a job Christmas before last where everyone said the system needs replacing instead of just patching up.

Well, guess what? To our great surprise, the people mulled over this quietly for something like 9 months, then out of the blue asked us to provide a spec and estimate! Furthermore, after a month of too-ing and fro-ing there is an agreed spec. We actually now know exactly what the system is supposed to do... in writing, and yours truly has been lumbered with the design and programming.

This is good news, bad news and fun. The good is that myself and their own engineer have put together a scheme that is expandable, repairable and hopefully fault-tolerant - remember this has to run 24-7.

The bad is that the intensity of programming thought, tends to wipe out any other creative thinking. Unfortunately your mind doesn't just stop working on a problem when it's time to go home. I keep getting odd bits of ideas surfacing at all sorts of times, and if I don't at least scribble them down they are lost.

The fun is that, the other engineers have been told to help out with bench work to free up my time as much as possible.  Coinciding with this is a surprising upturn in the amount of repair work we are getting from one of our customers who gets us to sort out all their broken cables. Cries of 'How the f*%$ are you supposed to solder these' echo round the office on a regular basis :)

Currently, I'm swapping between loving the challenge and hating the work. Projected completion time is mid July, which actually isn't too bad. The hardware side is almost complete and the programming is well under way.

Stimulating  :; This, and your increased family interaction, means that tinkering with music and shits-and-giggles computer action is temporarily on hold, but every day must be intense and rewarding. You are valued by your family and peers - revel in it!