The inside story at Nevis Labs, Part 2.

Twila and I had exactly two weeks to get ready to move to New York. We had to arrange for people to take care of our house. I had to find someone to maintain the lawn so it wouldn't be obvious we were away, and prepare my truck and our power yard tools for a year of idleness. A bit of paranoia enticed me to buy a 4-camera security system - I spent an unconscionable and highly frustrating amount of time trying to get it to transmit over the web, as it was supposed to do, but failed. Twila had to take care of all her business concerns. I'd made an arrangement with NuSTAR that they would pay higher rent if I would use my own car, so we had to put everything we needed, or thought we'd need, in my Prius. I bought a manual describing the operating system that Bill said I'd be programming in, and started to study it. Somehow we did all of that and left Loveland for Tarrytown on June 24. We arrived on the 26th and I started work on the Monday the 28th.

Todd met me that morning at Nevis Labs and began to teach me what I'd be doing. I was still wired from all the activity and anxious to prove that I was the right person for the job. I wanted to make a difference. I diligently made copious notes of almost everything Todd said. Based on what Bill had told me, I was looking for ways to improve the process.

After a couple of days of training, Todd asked me to write up what my procedure would be. That's when I made my first mistake by deciding that a little humor wouldn't hurt. Even though my written procedure was accurate in every way, it was, as it turned out, a bit too much in a humorless environment.

For example, there is a characteristic sound during grinds. I was supposed to abort a grind if the sound was much louder than usual or if there were any unusual sounds. I wrote, "Abort the grind if it is unusually noisy or if there is the sound of shattering glass." (Which, as it happened, I would hear more than once.) I had failed to recognize that a person who never smiles is unlikely to have a sense of humor.

A larger problem was my idea that I was supposed to get involved, work on software, make improvements. After hiring me Bill had pretty much disappeared - I only saw him a half-dozen more times, during which he was cordial and professional, but not friendly. I wrote him a couple of emails to which he didn't respond, so I assumed he was too busy to mix with the hoi polloi. Todd wasn't comfortable with me being there at all, much less with my doing anything other than the minimum necessary. It wasn't long before everything exploded.