I Live in Iowa: Week 197

The rise, and fall, and rise again. I'll start off talking about work, just when I think that everything is calmed down, the factory can handle it by themselves, I end up spending four days in the factory, working overtime and going into the office on Saturday. Thus is life. The truth is, my stuff is going really well. The normal quality issues are issues, but the big designed in interferences are designed out finally. Already some of the updates I have worked on in the last few weeks are not really necessary, but will simply smooth the manufacturing process. It's really nice. I mean when I modify a profile to allow a little more access to a bolt on the machining fixture, they could do it with a wrench before, but now they will be able to do with with a battery socket drill instead of a wrench, in other words, much faster.

The other side of it, is the transition in "ownership" from the designers to the manufacturers. It's slow and painful, but then again we have been staring at this for four years in design, and they are only just really getting a good look now over the last three months. It's a lot to take in. It's a good lesson for me to learn hands on, seeing the group that feels ownership for the problems (design) work on transitioning that to the group that does not yet feel ownership for the product (manufacturing). It's kind of like coaching, you want to win the championship, but you need the athletes to want to win as well. So we're not quite there yet, but the process is transitioning.

Running, well I more than doubled my mileage this past week, from 6.4 to 13.5 miles. That's only in two runs, so I'm certainly headed in the right direction. My legs have been feeling quite strong. I'm getting ready later this week to go for a medium long run, which will basically be the only workout I will run in the lead up to the world championships. Only 12 days to race day from today.

What else is going on? Not much, I've been sleeping a lot. I passed 4000 points in Duolingo for learning German, which I can say, is quite a few points over the last four months. My guess is around 10,000 points will be about when I feel rather comfortable in German. Not fluent, and barely conversational, but sufficient to order food, find bathrooms, get a hotel room, get directions, and even read most signs. Maybe sometime this summer or fall.

I did spend a little time tightening screws and putting a rivet on my Insight because some of the pieces had fallen out over the last 13 years and I was just making it a little more aerodynamic.