a day in the life

6:47 a.m.  Driving to work

 

The company provided smart phone rings.  I answer it.  Yep, this is the Emperor.  What?  There is a noise coming from Lab 1484!  What kind of noise?  A buzzer kind of sound?  Was it a sound or a noise?

Oh, a sound, Call Joe, he is in charge of sounds.  I am in charge of both sounds and noises but he is better with sounds.  No, of course I am kidding but I will be there in about twenty minutes so,   if the SOUND is bothering you, call Joe and he can look into it.  Yep, OK, later.

Jeezo Peezo, I am not even at work yet and the calls are starting.  Maybe I should turn around and go home, then call in sick or at least get some more coffee?  I wonder if I can charge overtime for that?

 

This is just a really average day in the life of the Life Science support personnel tucked away in the Space Station Processing Facility.  Our equipment hick-ups and squelches in all manner of contortions.  Our CO2 Incubators emit a dull beep when they are hungry for more Carbon Dioxide.  The ISSES (International Space Station Environment Simulator) chambers send out stealth messages all night long notifying us of status, anomalies and failures.  We have monitors for refrigerators, freezers, water purification system, humidity, room temperature and many other possibilities.  All of this equipment funnels electronic email and texts to our smart phones giving us a never ending stream of data to compile and worry about.  The phone customizes the sounds so I know if it is a notification from the chamber or a warning from the ISSES controller.  I have a separate ring tone for emails and phone alerts.  My ring tone for chamber high temp alarm is "Smoke on the Water".  The tone for "Everything is OK" in the growth chambers is "Lazy". 

 

7:30 a.m.  Walking in the building

 

The facility manager is walking past me and says, "Did you take care of that alarm thing in you Central Lab?"  What alarm, the noise or the sound?  I don't know, it is your alarm.   I only have two possible answers here.   I could say, I took care of it and he might say, Well, it is still buzzing.  I would then say, I thought it was an alarm now it is a buzzing?  The facility manager disappeared down one of the many hallways.  I loudly emphasized that "I would take care of it".  My first major decision of the day is whether to take the elevator or the stairs.  My office is on the second floor but I have to climb two flights of stairs.  Since I am on the first floor, would that not make it the third floor?  Sometimes it is just easier to take the elevator.  Someone joins me in the elevator and I punch the button for the third floor and the second floor.    As the door opens my phone rings again.  It is the Children asking if I brought donuts.  The Children is what I call the people that I work with.  They have a youthful attitude and I appreciate it. 

 

Once I reach my desk I have the second major decision of the day.  I have to remember my password, not that password, but the other password.  It is criminal to write a password down which would allow the Chinese or some Crimean slave trader to break into my system.  Interestingly enough and soon there will be approximately forty foreign nationals in the off line labs in support of the next SpaceX launch.  I guess I will have to throw away all my password notes before they arrive.  Not bad, I got in the system on my second try.  I click to my mail appointment book.  This marginally friendly tool runs my day.  I see that I have a Safety Training class at 9 a.m. Damn it, I knew I should have gotten more caffeine.   I meet with the electricians at ten, and there is a 45 percent construction review of the new lab at 2 p.m. at the north end.  I may just make it through the day.  I need to keep my mouth shut at the Safety meeting, no volunteering for anything and I will be OK.  I think I need to find Joe before it gets too far along.  

 

The phone rings and it is Procurement, they want to know if my need date is good or can they have a few more days.  I explain that I do not pad my due dates and I need it in my hand on "that day".    I was surprise when she said, "OK, thanks".  I may have padded that due date but I was not listening all that carefully.  Note to self:  I need to work on that, Listening more carefully I mean.  As I was walking to find Joe I remembered that he was going to be testing a system for a CoFR. (Certificate of Flight Readiness)  As his backup on many things, I should be there to watch him.  Wait, Safety meeting.

 

9 a.m.  Safety Meeting

 Even though I kept my mouth shut, I was volunteered as the new hurricane coordinator for the lab operations.  So much for keeping quiet.

 

10:30 a.m.

Third major decision of the day is what is up for lunch.  It is an hour from now and I want to keep my options open.  I left my soup on the kitchen table so I do not have anything to eat.  I thought there were some cookies left over from the Sam's Club guy but someone beat me to them.  I finally found the electrician and we discussed the corrective action on some voltage issues in the labs.  He claims there is no problem and I assured him there was a problem.  He keeps saying, "no problem".   I asked if running new wires would help, he did not answer me.  My phone is ringing and I can tell it is a freezer monitor telling me it is too warm.  I go to check on it and it is a defrost cycle, no critical science is in this freezer and I will check it after lunch to see if it cooled down as it should.

 

I just received some emails on my phone giving me part numbers and vendors for some chemicals needed for the SVT (Science Verification Test) next month.  I will try to get them in the procurement ordering process before lunch.  At least I can finally sit down.  

 

11:30 a.m  Lunch.

I found a packet or Ramen Noodles in the back of my desk.  Two minutes in the microwave and I can savor lunch.  I take my first bite of noodles and the phone rings.  It is my boss asking me if I sent him the spreadsheet with the budget purchases for last year.  I said, I think so, last year but I would send him new estimates for next year if he wanted that.  He said, OK what are they?  I said, "Oh, same as last year."  I love doing that to him.  I emailed the spreadsheet to him with updates also.  I think as crazy as my job gets, his is worse because he gets it from the top and the bottom.   The noodles hit the spot.

 

 

11:45 a.m. 

There are some people wanting to get into the labs to check out back flow preventers.  Now this is the first time I ever heard of anyone wanting to check them.  I was impressed.  They had a list of rooms that had these back flow preventers in them and they had this device in a briefcase that could tell you if one was "bad".  All of my preventers were "OK".  Great, that can go in my weekly report.  My preventers are preventing nominally.  

 

12:30 p.m.

Catching up with Joe on the CoFR.  

 

1:30 p.m.

I have to check on the status of the vacuum pump I ordered a month ago.  It was not time critical but the other pump we have is getting squirrelly so I should check on it.  My computer refreshed itself so now I have to use my super-secret password and badge to log in.  What was that password again?  It has something to do with the Beatles.  The third try was a charm, I am in.  Crap, I have to see if a car is available to drive to the north end for the 45% review. 

 

2:00 p.m.  45 %  Construction Review

Everyone but me is late to the meeting.  It was a very informal meeting so it lasted almost an hour and a half.  Everybody at this meeting seems to know everyone else.  I am the new guy.  There are engineers, electricians, plumbers and QA/QE people.  It is a big ole family gathering like Sunday afternoon at your Aunt's house.  There is a guy that sounds like my aunt warning my mom not to put so much pepper in the coleslaw.  There is a man telling a story that reminded me of my uncle Cooter talking about hunting quail with a Labradoodle.  I never know when those kinds of meetings are finished or when I can leave?  The meeting unofficially adjourned and it really just moved out into the hallway.  I snuck away down the stairs.

 

3:45 p.m.

Ah, finally, do the time sheet, review the calendar for tomorrow, turn off the Lava Lamp.  Say good evening to the Children.  I just got an email asking me about some power outage in a building I have nothing to do with and do not even know where it is.  I asked to be informed of outages in my area but I guess I get them all now.  I just got another email from the Center Director saying what a good year we are having.  

 

4:00 p.m.

I am walking to the car and the phone beeps, chimes, rings and buzzes.  Those are my "end of the day everything is OK" notifications.   I have to check them before I leave the parking lot in case one of the buzzes is an anomaly.  I get three more chirps from my smart phone before I get home.  I walk in the house, the dog seems happy to see me; the cat is spinning by her bowl which means she is out of food.  The rest of the family is nowhere to be found.  There is a note on the stove precariously close to the burner that tells me dinner is ready except for the rice.  Sweet basmati, the rice will be done in about five minutes.  I eat dinner in silence and alone.  The quiet is calming. I lie down on the bed and start thinking about sleep.

You cannot know everything!

There used to be a TV show called "High Chaparral" and it was a western similar to Bonanza.  I was never really sure what a chaparral was although I assumed it was a desert or mesa type land formation.  The show always featured desert, rocks, lizards and stuff.  There was always some Apache type Indian hiding behind a rock or a cactus.  This is another show I am embarrass to admit to watching.  I would quickly change to Rockford Files if someone came in.  I did the same thing with Little House on the Prairie. This was before TV controllers (clickers) as we called them back then.  They literally clicked when you pushed the buttons.

Anyway, I asked my brother, by far the smartest person I knew about the chaparral.  I am not sure he was a genius but between me and Bobby and Brian, he was a clear winner.  So I asked him.  Hey, what exactly is a chaparral anyway?  Without looking up from his physics book on space and time, he said, it is a race car.  I quickly scanned my memory of the tv show and not only did they not have a car, there was no race tracks and it may have been before they even  trains were invented.  At that moment I remembered the Don McLean song, "bye bye miss american pie" with the line "drove my chevy (a car) to the Levee but the Levee was dry".  I thought a levee was a rock formation like a mesa but there is a connection of a car and chaparral blinking through my brain.  So I looked up the definition to levee and it said "dyke" and Mary Poppins just came out with Dick Van Dyke covered in soot so basically I gave up.

My brother noticed that I was stuck in some other world and he asked me if I was ok.  I said, probably not but there is this tv show similar to Bonaza called the High Chaparral and they only have Mexicans, Indians, dirty white people and horses, no cars. He made a face and said, there is a race car called the Chaparral and they race Formula 1 and shit like that.  I should have know it had something to do with sports.  I tried to explain the dyke thing to him but he was off calculating batting averages again.  "Matt, did you know that in 1966 Carl Yastrzemski hit twelve less home runs but his average was 43 points higher?  I said, I still do not care and did you know his name has four consonants in a row and that is a little creepy?  He said something about a green monster and I had to leave the room.

At work the other day someone asked me if I knew why the centrifuge was not working.  I said," the damn thing is broke" which seems like a perfectly good answer.  As they walked away down the hall, I said to myself, you cannot know everything!

Pile of Bones

I know I am being selfish, and for me that feels like I am taking the wrong position, making a mistake, it seems like the wrong choice.  If I die a slow death today I will have a heap of regrets, only a few of them will be related to “not doing for my children”.  I am in a protracted unsatisfied time and I am not sure what to do about it.  I am sure that continuing to do what I have done for fifty five years is not the solution.  I was clueless the first thirty five years and I have no excuse for the last seven thousand three hundred and ten days.

I am throwing a tantrum and that fact by itself leads me to believe, again that  I am making a mistake but as with a tantrum, I just do not care and I am not going to change my mind.  I cannot give any more concrete reasons for my feelings or my choices and the only other good thing about a tantrum besides the feeling of “I just threw up something that did not suite me” is that logic and decorum are not required. 

 

I am making a choice and there are many or even most that will not like it.  I too will have to live with it as they will.  It may end up as a bone on my pile of regrets but I doubt it will keep me out of heaven.

Sometimes it is so clear!

 Sometimes there is a voice in the wilderness that burns through the fog and slaps you in the face.

(Unlike my last post which I am still trying to figure out what the hell I was thinking.)


“I would go to war with words, not weapons. I would die talking before I lifted a weapon.  I think that’s the answer to peace in the Middle East.  Peace in the Middle East isn’t going to be created by another war or violent act on the other side. It’s going to be created by someone like yourself and someone like me, two individuals who have a belief and who can talk to another group of individuals and people start changing their minds. It’s not a magic trick.”

Mandy Patinkin

If our government would take one third of the money we spend on war efforts and use it to encourage waring people to find a common ground and workable solutions not only would a bunch of politicians be cut out of the money but most of government would no longer be needed.

To say anything more would degrade this blog into utter udderness.

Fire Ants and Other Blessings

For those of you who do not live south of the Mason Dixon, we have this vile creature called a "fire ant" or probably Solenopsis invicta.    A simple walk to the car causes these Olympic caliber athletes to leap up to your waist and inject you with venom resulting in "unvanquished" fire on your crotch.  I have written about this before but not as a blessing.  I am talking about the totally awesome blessing of a disastrous family camping trip where it rains sideways for two days and then the temperature goes up to ninety eight degrees in the shade. This can only rival the blessing of four children with chicken pox at the same time you are on a road trip to Wisconsin with a dog that gets car sick every few miles in a 58 Ford wagon with bad tires.  What do these three events have in common.  The expectation of death, maybe.  The desire to do something criminal, probably but I was referring to the planting the seed of contentment and love.

So, blessings.  I know family trials usually and eventually make the family bond stronger and wiser.  We found out that on road trips, do not leave the rear window down.  My dad thought we were just quiet and sleeping  for most of the trip.  Actually we were suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning and hypoxia (some kind of poxia anyway).  Kids sleep better the closer they are to death.  The rains cleaned the entire tent inside and out and the 98 degrees dried the tent and the blankets awsomely fast.  Scorpions and rattle snakes moved in for shelter but pets are good.  The only good thing about fire ants are the welts they leave on your ankles.  Not the ones between your toes, those are not a blessing.  They make an incredible popping sound when scratched and cause such a relief of endorphins that all is forgotten and forgiven. 

Ok, so I was wrong.