Thursday, March 10, 2016

I Live in Iowa: Week 245

It was a nice week up in Timmins, Ontario, for the most part. I managed to "run" 60 miles, if you include the 10 I cross country skied on Thursday afternoon, because at least up there they still have snow. I also got in a workout on the treadmill and a 1 mile indoor track race, in 4:54.92 thank you very much!

Work is always hard to talk about, because it's not really my intellectual property. So why was I up in Timmins, aside from being there for work, which is mildly obvious. Although, they do have really nice cross country ski trails, and I hear the ice fishing is really good. Well, I was up there because we had a machine with an issue we had to trouble shoot. It's interesting as I spend more and more time in the field I learn about all sorts of corner conditions that in the grand scheme of things are small, but when you are there in person looking at it, oh my it becomes so much more than a corner condition.

You can't test something to infinity. At some point you say, 'we've tested enough, we're going to production!' However, there are very interesting things to learn after you go to production, things you didn't learn during testing. Things that I think you might never learn during testing. For example, on prototypes, someone watches every bolt being tightened, but in production there is a range of new tools and far less supervision, so each bolt gets less attention. How much attention does every bolt need? It's a good question, and not a simple answer because some bolts are more important than other bolts.

Other than the trip to Timmins, and the race Friday night, I had a pretty quiet week. I have spent much of the last few days just catching up on sleep. 5:30 AM flights... no thank you.

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