Idea.

It doesn't matter how you feel. That always goes up and down. What matters is what you do.

The inside story at Nevis Labs, Part 4.

Before I accepted the NuSTAR job, Carl warned me that pressure levels would rise as the project neared completion. Not only was the schedule tight, but also there was competition for funds between the different project groups. NuSTAR had started once before and then been abruptly canceled, with the project manager learning about the cancellation at a press conference. Government and warm fuzzy feelings really don't go together. There was tension also because of the precision required in the assembly of the optics. Any lapse in concentration could result in broken glass, contamination, or misaligned mirrors.

I didn't have to wait until the end of the project to see emotions arise. My very first day inside the lab, when I was at Nevis during my interview trip, Tom snapped briefly at Iliya over some minor problem. I really didn't think much about it. During my interview the next day, though, Bill told me that Iliya had quit. I was flabbergasted. Quit? Iliya came back, of course, but during my time in NY everyone who worked in the optics lab (except Ken - he might have quit, but I didn't hear about it and he doesn't seem like the type) quit at one time or another but then came right back. Not me, of course. When I quit, I'm gone.

I was responsible for an entirely new level of tension in the lab. There were two components to that. One was that at first no-one was really happy that I was there. They'd made the decision that they needed someone to do my job, but naturally they weren't excited about someone new being in intimate contact with $4M worth of extremely fragile optics. The other component was my personality, however one might view it.

The first disaster occurred when I emailed Todd my timecard on July 24, just 3 weeks into the job. I added a note saying I felt he didn't trust me because of my background as a software engineer, then proceeded to outline my non-software experience. I ended the note with: "Anyway, I do know how to do mechanical things, I'm not a cowboy, and I'll only do what I'm told to do. So relax a little and have some fun!"

Well, that didn't go over very well. Todd (who was in California at the time) wrote back:

"hmmm.....What concerned me is that you said you could run the routine of dressing the wheel and finding it's position. These machines are very unforgiving. I don't doubt that you could find the right program to run but I don't know if you know how to touch off a grinding wheel with the dressing tool, dress the wheel with the diamond tool, null the lvdt, knowing what speed and settings we use to gentle position the spindle, touch off on sacrificial which is a very friable material and know that you are not grinding it while touching off, all the while there is a 2M$ optics sitting there that we are trying hold micron position from layer to layer. The absolute most critical step is finding the grinding radius of the wheel. No one should feel comfortable doing that and that goes for me as well. It Tom more than a month to get used to the controls on the pendant and he is still un-nerved. Ken will not even attempt to dress or find the wheel even though he has seen it dozens of times.

So it bothers me that you think you can do that when I've haven't let you, much less, trained you to do those tasks. Believe me, it is not as easy as it looks and it surprised me that you thought you could do it.

I hope I've explained myself clearly and when these optics are in the hands of the spacecraft contractor, I will relax. Until then, I take this production of the optics extremely seriously and I expect the same from those working for me."

Both Todd and Tom had both given me lessons in dressing and finding the wheel, which somehow had given me the idea that I was expected to do it at some time. Apparently that was not a universal view. It really isn't a complicated job, but I had taken copious notes and paid close attention. I had no doubt then and I have no doubt now that I could have done it as well as anyone.

Todd and I had established a hostile relationship, and there proved to be no way to fully recover.

Skipping a beat.

This issue came up in a post in "TwiDurf in NYC". Many (many, many) thanks to Carl, resident Master Researcher, for the link!

The inside story at Nevis Labs, Part 3.

Tom and Iliya are the technicians who glued the optics together. They were both extremely competent and dedicated to their jobs, but personally they were as different as night and oranges.

"Glued the optics together" is a very minimal description of a much more complex activity. The epoxy, for example, had to be mixed under vacuum, to reduce air bubbles. Its linear density had to be tracked and the amount on each spacer recorded. Each pane of glass and each spacer had to be precisely located on the optics. Even though much of their jobs was as routine as mine, their days were longer and no doubt much more stressful.

Tom was the senior tech in the lab. He had helped build the optics for HEFT (High Energy Focusing Telescope), a balloon-launched telescope that preceded NuSTAR. He understood the lathes and the process and was a truly indispensable member of the team. He was really devoted to the project - he told me that he felt like it was his optic. He never failed, that I could see, to work hard and steadily.

Personally, probably the best word to describe Tom is 'incurious'. He lived in Elmsford (near Tarrytown) for about 16 months and had only been in New York City twice in his life - by his own description, he spent most of his non-work time in his apartment, smoking cigarettes and drinking Bud Light. He didn't own a computer and had little interest in them. His only interests, actually, seemed to be NuSTAR and himself. If I walked in and said, "Hey, Tom, I bought a new car last weekend!", his likely response would be something like, "Really? Well, I don't like having a car here because…." One other oddity - he has a long-term girlfriend, and every time he mentioned her he also told me, "I don't love her." Although I didn't feel a connection to Tom, we got along well until the end.

Iliya didn't have Tom's experience, but he was a really good worker and very competent. Personally, he was friendly and outgoing. He was as happy to listen to stories about my life as he was to glowingly describe his family to me. He is a very nice person whom I like.

When I first began to go to the lab early in the morning, Tom and Iliya were there for a half hour or so before I left. It was good to see them and hear what was going on on their side of the project. When the school year started at the end of the summer, though, a problem arose. There are two schools in the same location just a couple of miles from the lab, and the traffic backup became horrendous. There was usually a policeman there trying to make things smoother, but the road could only handle so much traffic. I started going into the lab a half hour earlier, so I didn't see the guys as much.

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.

The inside story at Nevis Labs, Part 1.

I've decided to write a NYC memoir, my tell-all book about what it really was like at Nevis Labs. A couple of the key NuSTAR people know about this blog, but I have nothing negative to say about anyone. I'm just going to describe what happened from my perspective.

Trish, Carl's wife, told me about the NuSTAR opportunity. The first person at the lab I had contact was Bill, a scientist who had apparently been demoted into a management position. Carl, who is one of the most intelligent people I have ever known, told me that Bill is far more intelligent than he, which is an amazing compliment that I have no reason to doubt. It has always amazed me, however, that management is somehow considered superior, and that exceptionally skilled people are "promoted" there, where their skills are dulled, if not lost entirely.

When Twila and I flew to NY to look things over, the first person I met was Todd, the Assembly Engineer. He had invented the process used to build the optics. When we met in the lobby of his hotel that first night, he didn't smile, which I noticed. And now, thinking back, I don't think I ever saw Todd smile. He just isn't that kind of guy. He is very intense and serious. He is also the one person who understood everything, the one we needed when anything went wrong. Twila and I went to dinner with him that first night and learned some things about his life.

I met Bill the next day for my interview. It wasn't really much of an interview, actually. Bill had originally wanted to get a student to do my job, but was dissuaded of that by whatever powers there were. By June the assembly of the flight optics modules was fast approaching, and Bill was desperate to find someone willing to do a relatively mindless job at a very early hour, but who would be diligent and precise. I qualified easily, so my interview was mostly Bill selling the job to me. He told me that he thought I might be able to make improvements in the process, including upgrading the software that controls the lathes. It sounded intriguing and exciting, so I accepted.

Bill was very friendly that day. He and his wife were staying in an apartment in Manhattan, and he suggested that we might get together sometime. I think he was hoping that his wife and Twila might get together to do some exploring, but that didn't work out. Twila was willing, but she's very independent and she didn't want to get tied down. I eventually decided not to pursue the concept further.

Twila and I flew back to Colorado and began the madcap process of preparing to move to NYC for six months. It was a stressful but exciting time.

Climbing Round Mountain.

Twila said, "Let's go climb Round Mountain."

"What's this?", I wondered. "Why is she using the words 'climb' and 'mountain' in the same sentence while speaking to me?"

So we put on our hiking clothes and boots and headed to the Round Mountain trailhead. There were several things that sounded more appealing to me at the time, but Twila wants to climb Pikes Peak in July, and I knew I had to start getting in shape sometime. Besides, how hard could it be? It's a Rocky Mountain, sure, but only 30 minutes from our house, and it doesn't look that big.

Our first act after parking at the trailhead was to start removing clothes. We'd dressed for moderate cold, but it was sunny and 70 degrees. Then off we went.

My exercise routine since last year when we went to NY has consisted entirely of climbing the stairs to my Tarrytown office. Unless you count walking to and from the car. I didn't feel like I was in really bad shape, though, because I went up and down those stairs a lot, and I survived the hike we took a couple of weeks ago while staying at the Stanley Hotel.

The guidebook says the first 0.1 mile of the hike is "moderate". They should change that to "inhumanly grueling", IMO. It felt like walking up a wall, and it was unrelenting. We'd been on the trail for 10 minutes and I was already regretting it. After a while there were some level sections, though, and I managed to keep plodding along. Twila remained chipper.

I was glad I'd taken off my fleece vest. By then I'd unzipped my jacket all the way and was still perspiring. It felt like a mild summer day.

On a fairly level part of the trail I heard a grasshopper, but when I looked it was actually a rattlesnake. It's a good thing rattlesnakes have rattles, because if they were silentsnakes, a lot more people would be bitten. I jumped back. We had to figure out how to get by the medium-sized snake, who was right on the edge of the trail, and apparently not in a very good mood. On the other side of the trail was a drop-off. We threw a couple of sticks in the snake's direction, but it just ducked. Fortunately, though, the sticks blocked part of its view of the trail, so we scampered by on the edge of the drop-off.

We continued to climb, climb, climb. I told Twila that my cellphone was in my jacket pocket, in case she had to call 911. She thought I told her because of rattlesnakes, but I wanted her to know in case I went down like a sack of beans. Climbing a mountain after almost a year of inactivity sounded risky to me, considering everything.

We'd started at 5600'. When we'd gone 2.5 miles and our altimeter read 7250' we Googlized Round Mountain to see how long the trail was. It's 4.9 miles to the top, so we decided to turn back.

It was chillier going down. I zipped my jacket again. The sky got gray. Then it started to snow. Colorado - a surprise a second.

On the way back we didn't see the sticks we'd thrown at the rattler. On the plus side, we didn't see the rattler, either.

What to blog?

Okay, you guys, get a room, would you?

Twila and I have been brainstorming ("YOU think of something!" "No, YOU think of something!") what kind of blog to create. I noticed, though, that Twila's maxim that a blog needs a post every day was falling through the ginormous cracks, here on oui-sez. So I was thinking about blogging about being a guy wearing earrings - probably not interesting, but at least somewhat unusual.

Then last night I was watching the NFL draft, which is *extremely* interesting if you have no life. The top 5 or so picks in the draft were manly studs with muscles bulging even in their eyeballs, and I don't want to imagine the rest. And they all had a bunch of friends or something with them, their posses. Those guys were 98% or 102% as studly as the draft picks, and possibly a lot meaner.

Well, what I noticed is that at least 75% of those guys had diamond stud earrings. My idea for an unusual post slowly slithered down the drain, and this is what you get.

Thanks, Baby

Ok, I want to use my first post on this blog to say "Thanks, Baby" to my wonderful wife Merlene. How many other women out there would send their husband alone to the Big Island of Hawaii for nine days to go play with telescopes on Mauna Kea? I'm helping with the public star gazing tonight and tomorrow night. They have ten telescopes of various size for the public to use. Sunday I'll be going to the summit for a tour of one of the big telescopes... Hopefully Keck. Also hoping to talk myself into a job here, they do have a couple of openings for what I do.

The other reason she sent me here was to look at retirement homes to buy. I looked at one today... Six years old, 3br/2ba, 1150 sq ft, quarter acre lot, 119K. Less than a mile to the ocean. Lots of good deals in Puna right now. Maybe I'll post some pics when I figure out how.

The pork lau-lau and spam misubi was good today too. It only takes one day to go local.

More to come....

Earl

Blog begone?

This blog has hit a lull, it seems. My own brain doesn't have a lot of ideas, and Twila hasn't gotten back into the idea of blogging. There is one thread I want to wrap up, though - driving.

I probably implied that I think of myself as a good driver, so I'll comment briefly on that. While in Tarrytown I made a list of qualifications that I think a good driver has, which boil down to knowledge, experience, and attention. As for myself, I think I was a good driver most of my life, but that Geezer Gobbler has taken that away. Nowadays I become distracted too easily, for one thing. The other is that my eyesight, especially depth perception, has fallen below adequate. Even though I used to be able to parallel park with my eyes closed, so to speak, I now find it difficult with my eyes open. So, no, I don't think I'm a good driver.

As for this blog, we'll see what happens.