O

There is sort of a joking rivalry at my office between the designers and the engineers. We don't actually dislike each other. Most of the engineers I work with are very nice people and I'm sure they feel the same about most of my design group. But after we designers review and approve our work, we give it to the engineers for a final look, and they always come back to us with comments. Always.

So the designers joke that the engineers must need an ego boost, and that they just love to feel "superior" to us. Because a lot of their "corrections" are not technical. It's often stuff like, "I think it would look nicer if this text was underlined," or "I would prefer if you moved these notes down another inch," or "Instead of abbreviating the word drawing as 'dwg' I'd like you to spell the whole word out."

This morning I was away from my desk grabbing stuff off the printer when I got paged. Jeez. Someone needs me urgently enough that they can't wait for me to return a missed call. This must be important.

It was one of our engineers who is out on site. We are about 80% complete with the worst project I've ever worked on (I would take CREFS any day compared to this!)....

H: I have a comment for you on those 8 drawings you sent me.

Me: Okay. I've got them in front of me. What's the problem?

H: Where you specified that part number...it's supposed to be the letter O, but you typed the number zero. I need you to correct all those, re-sign them, and PDF the corrected drawings back to me.

Me: (are you effing kidding me???)...........um.............I understand what you're saying; that it should be the letter, not the number, but...........I mean.........I'm not really sure I see the problem.......the O and the zero look exactly the same.

H: Well I noticed it (with his bionic eyes???). And it would cause confusion down here if it's not fixed.



Yeah, Dude. I'm sure this is how it would go:

Installer 1: This part number says SB zero 2. That part number doesn't exist.

Installer 2: And certainly they would not have meant it to be SB letter O 2. Even though that's a valid part number, and the zero and the O's look exactly the same, but that can't possibly have been what they meant.

Installer 1: Yeah. We better report this horribly wrong design to the NRC and then initiate a brand new contract to fix the drawings to specify the actual part number that they meant it to be.



So great catch, H. I don't know what we'd have done without your insight......

Amateur Sketchin'

If you've never seen this youtube clip before, please take a couple minutes to watch it.
1) It's hilarious, and
2) it's relevant to the story I'm about to tell.

Pay close attention to the Amateur Sketch....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt-F5lMtdjA


So at work, I'm making changes to a drawing that was sent out a couple years ago. We use AutoCAD at my office, but a lot of our plant drawings are so old (dating back to the pre-computer days) that we often use scanned images of hand-drawn plans.

Some of us more advanced CAD users quickly realized that when you try to rescale these scanned images, they get distorted and very pixelated. We know that it's much better to scale our CAD border to fit around the image vs. scaling our image to fit inside the border.

But not everyone is an advanced CAD user. This is what happens to a triangle when you scale your image...

It gets all zig-zaggy and crappy looking.

And....

this is what happens when you're a dumb-ass and trace an amateur sketch version of that triangle....

QUALITY!

Know-it-All

There is a guy I work with, V, who thinks he knows everything about everything. He's always very quick to offer his unsolicited advice about any topic that comes up.

Last year when Jim and I had to get our water heater replaced, this guy called me stupid for paying someone to do it. He said I would have been much smarter to ask him for advice (since he's apparently replaced not just one...but TWO water heaters and is, therefore, apparently even more of an expert than the professional that we paid). He started going though all the "simple" steps of pipe cutting and welding that I'd have to make, all the while with this cocky grin on his face like he's God's gift to home maintenance.

A few weeks ago, the kid who sits next to me was texting, and V started asking him questions about his cell phone plan. And it seems that S is really stupid too...signing up for the plan he did. V's plan was SO much cheaper and had SUCH better phone clarity and MANY more features. To my knowledge, V doesn't have a 2nd job at Verizon, but the way he talks, you'd sure think he does.

And another guy on our team bought a new car a few months ago. And sure enough, V started listing all the problems that had been reported with that particular car model. Why didn't C know better than to ask V what kind of car he drove? Because of course V's car has never had ANY recalls, it has the BEST fuel efficiency of ANY car EVER available, it has the MOST standard features, he got a MUCH cheaper deal on his car than C had gotten. V was laughing to himself all afternoon about how stupid C had been to buy a car without consulting with him first.

So today, V asked me a work-related question. I answered. Then he started going on and on and on about how much better his previous company was about providing detailed check lists which would have prevented him from having to ask questions. V NEVER made ANY errors because of those check lists. So he made a bunch of copies before coming to work here. He thinks he still has some copies at home and would be happy to bring me one so that I could be (almost) as good at my job as V is.

And while he was droning on about it, I was thinking about that Seinfeld episode where George drags Jerry and Elaine to a party so he can spend time with a woman that he's interested in. Jerry and Elaine fear that they will get trapped in boring conversations with strangers, so they come up with a signal...if one of them starts patting their head, it's a sign for the other friend to come bail them out of the situation. And I was wondering if any of my other coworkers would notice if I started patting my head during this V conversation, and if any of my coworkers who did notice my head patting would be familiar with that Seinfeld episode to recognize the signal I was sending.

So I mentioned it to S already, and should probably pass the message on to a few of my other friends around the office, before it's too late and I get sucked into switching cell phone carriers.

Unsure

It's recently been somewhat common that I forget to take my daily Singulair pill for allergies. My husband suggested to me that I set an alarm on my phone to remind me everyday, which has been working really well. Great. Problem solved...I thought...until today...

It was 3:00.
My alarm went off.
I took the pill out of my purse.
Into my right palm.
I tossed it in the direction of my open mouth.
I took a drink of water.
I didn't feel myself swallow anything.

Hmmm. Thinking back a few moments, I don't really remember anything hitting my tongue either. Hmmm.

I looked on the floor.
No pill.
I looked on my desk.
No pill.
My chair.
No pill.
I shook my shirt.
Nothing fell.

I checked my pockets--on the rare chance that the Singulair would have neatly rolled down my body, landing safely in my pocket. But no pill was there either.

So I guess it seems like the evidence is all for me unknowingly, yet successfully, swallowing it. Maybe the pill is just so small compared to the amount of water I drank that the pill was just easily washed down in a flood of Aquafina.

Or maybe my husband will tiredly inform me tomorrow morning that I was a snore machine all night....