The inside story at Nevis Labs, Part 6.

I suppose I should mention something else that made my first couple of months uncomfortable - a UTI, urinary tract infection. For those of you who have never had one, here is some good advice - don't get one. Apparently I'd contracted mine sometime before leaving Colorado, possibly because of a long bike ride, and it caused a lot of discomfort on our drive to NY. The primary symptom was a sudden and almost-impossible-to-control urge to micturate. I'll omit the messy details, lest I be accused of yellow journalism, but a UTI is not recommended when working in a cleanroom in a bunny suit.

The UTI symptoms would go away for a week or two and then come back, and I kept hoping they would just go away for good, especially since the nearest Kaiser was in Washington, D.C. Finally my doctor talked me into going to the local Urgent Care Center, which gave me antibiotics. The medicine failed, so I went back to the UCC. Besides the $100 co-pay, Kaiser said they would only pay once for each condition. Fortunately, the people at the UCC were sympathetic and called the second visit something related, but sufficiently different. I saw a doctor who gave me different antibiotics and warned me that if I didn't get better that time, I would have to visit a urologist to see if I had a tumor in my bladder. Needless to say, I was much relieved when the second course of antibiotics was successful.

Shortly after the blowup with Todd, he changed my procedure to incorporate adding a calculated variable to the grind parameters. A couple of days after I started doing that, Todd came roaring in early and immediately inspected the machines. That made me uncomfortable. He asked me for the values I'd input, which, fortunately, I remembered. I couldn't escape the feeling that he was trying to trap me, since it would have been much easier for Tom and Iliya to enter the variables themselves. A couple of days later Todd did give that responsibility to the guys.

Going to the relatively isolated lab building at 3:30 AM had the potential for creepiness, especially if one of the outside lights were out. That didn't bother me, though, until I started wondering whether Todd had a firm grip on sanity. During our dinner with him, Todd had bragged to Twila and me about teaching his wife to handle a pistol. It's embarrassing now, but I became frightened. I wrote to Trish and told her that I was afraid of Todd. She asked if I wanted her to speak to Bill, but I declined to go that far. I just wanted it on record whom to question first if I ended up lateral in the vicinity of the lab. After expressing my fear I got over it.

A very nice woman named Nicola had some quality control responsibilities. One of her tasks was to enter the lab every day and expect the fillets, which was the distribution of the cured epoxy between the spacers and the glass. One day Tom came in and began loudly complaining that Nicola was slowing his work, and that he wanted her kept out of the lab. It turned into a big brouhaha. When I asked Iliya about it, he shook his head disgustedly. Faced with the reality that Nicola would continue to come into the lab, Tom threatened to quit. I don't know how that was resolved. A short time later Nicola found a problem with a fillet, which saved bigger problems later. I mentioned to someone (name withheld) that maybe now Tom would be happy that Nicola was doing her job. The person said that with Tom it was an emotional issue that probably had no practical solution. I laughed, not imagining that I would be in Nicola's shoes, so to speak, before long.

The inside story at Nevis Labs, Part 5.

A couple of weeks after I started working at Nevis, I met Ken, the Cognizant Engineer of the project. Eventually it was explained to me that NASA has a "Cognizant Engineer" on every project, and that was the best explanation I could get. Todd and Ken both live in California, and they rotated being onsite at Nevis, with Todd staying two weeks and Ken staying one.

I liked Ken right away. It is my impression that he is uncomfortable initially in social situations, but he can be the life of the party once he relaxes. He is smart and interesting. He was kind of the worrywart of the project, always afraid that something might go wrong. That was a little funny sometimes, but he made many improvements to ensure that nothing *would* go wrong. I always looked forward to his being there, and not just because it meant that Todd wouldn't be there.

Todd and I both tried to establish a professional relationship. I was still hoping that the initial flareup was an aberration. I bought two musical DVDs from Amazon that I planned to give him when the times were right and I was as friendly as I could be under the circumstances. Things seemed to be getting better, but that didn't last long.

We had started building FM1, the first flight module, about a week before. To add strength, the spacers for the first five layers are a bit chunkier - 1.6 mm x 1.5 mm (0.1 mm = 0.004"). The regular spacers are 1.5 mm x 1.2 mm. When picking up a regular spacer, it is rather easy to see which side is wider, but for the 1.6 mm x 1.5 mm spacers the procedure was to measure each one with calipers before inserting it in a strongback. That's what I did, but I soon realized that I could see which was the wide side by rotating it in my fingers. That amazed me, because my eyesight is hardly what it used to be, but I was wearing 2.0x reading glasses and the transition between the long and short sides was not especially difficult to see. I began to choose the long side visually, then check with the calipers. After I'd correctly oriented about 100 spacers without making a mistake, I announced that I could do it visually and didn't need to use the calipers. That didn't go over well, because no-one believed that I could do it, but I was allowed to continue without the calipers. Todd and Tom and Iliya all warned me that there had been problems in the past with visual alignment, but I thought it was cool that I, who has increasingly become Mr. Magoo with the passage of time, could do it.

That all blew up in a spectacular way. The morning of August 11 I checked my email when I got to the lab and found a message that Todd had sent the night before. He said: "Tom and Illiya had some problems while laying glass due to the spacers not installed properly. Two of them fell out of the shoes as Tom was loading them. They had already been epoxied and it makes quite a mess on the glass not to mention the loss in spacers and time to clean it up. After those two were discovered, they went and measured the orientation of the remaining spacers and found 5 more that were not properly oriented. Tom mentioned that he has to measure them to orient them properly where you didn't think you needed to. For 1.2 mm spacers, from this point forward use calipers and find the correct orientation during installation. Tom and Illiya will check the orientation before laying epoxy." [Notes: Todd always spelled Iliya's name with two L's, for some reason. Also, he probably meant 1.6 mm spacers, not 1.2 mm.]

I was willing to accept that I might have made one mistake, but I knew there was no way I'd made seven. I responded: "With all due respect, that's BS. It is easy for me to see which way the spacers go in, and I've double-checked 50 times and never been wrong. Nevertheless, I'll use the calipers... This would be a good time for you to find someone else for this job, if you don't think I can do it."

It had been one thing after another and I was really upset. When I finished work I went home and pondered what possibly could have gone wrong. Suddenly I had an "OOPS" moment. I sent an email to Todd asking, "1.6 mm is the height of the spacers, right?" He wrote back and said that the height of all the spacers is 1.5 mm, that 1.6 mm is the width. That was the only thing I'd been able to come up with, and, unfortunately, it was true: I'd inserted *all* of the 1.6 mm spacers incorrectly. As well as I can remember, no-one had ever actually told me which way they go in, and I'd made an incorrect assumption.

At that point I received a phone call saying that my father had died. I was pretty much a mess. Thinking that it would be hard for them to fire me on the day my dad died, I took advantage of the sad situation and zipped an email back to Todd angrily saying that obviously there had been a training problem.

That was probably the low point of my time at Nevis, but things didn't get a whole lot better.

We're here!

This is just a reminder that we're still here. I've finished about half of the next post in the Nevis Lab saga. Twila is still contemplating a theme for our next mutual blog. We've been hiking, which is my training for our planned assault on Pikes Peak in July (based on physical condition only, Twila could probably climb Everest in July). I've been spending more time with my helicopters, which is a lot of fun. There are still a lot of things to take care of, from pinball repair to truck maintenance to boat modifications and numerous household chores, as well as a rebellious toilet and the usual computer hassles. Life seems busier than ever, but, except for the Sharks choking like dogs, things are going fairly well.

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.