Chris Bliss.

Twila and I drove to south Denver yesterday and had an excellent dinner. We then went to the comedy club (I don't remember the name, but it was something like "Comedy Club"). Somehow we managed to end up in the front row - I was resting my feet on the stage. The first three acts varied from :p to :), then Chris Bliss appeared. He was wearing clothes that looked like they were pulled from a dumpster, and he looked a lot older than in his glory days five years ago. But he was hilarious. It didn't hurt that his political leanings are the same as ours - if he had said that Mitch McConnell had just been run over by a steamroller, we would fallen off our chairs laughing. As it was, many times I laughed so hard my eyes watered.

At the end of the show he did one of his famous juggling routines, in which he juggles three tennis balls in time to music. It was amazing.

Chris Bliss

All in all, a great date!

An anniversary.

Last year on June 4 Carl asked if I'd like to go to New York for six months and work on NuSTAR. I laughed and said no, but then agreed to think about it. Twila was in Texas for a graduation. I spent the weekend thinking, thinking, thinking, and finally decided that I really did not want to do it. I had to propose it to Twila, though.

Twila arrived home on June 6, and we sat down with wine, cheese, and crackers. When I felt sufficiently lubricated, I tossed it out: "Hey, you don't want to live in New York City for six months, do you?"

She said:

And that was the beginning of that.

Finally examined!

The pros and cons of a man sitting down to pee.

Life as we know it.

I've been wanting for Twila to start blogging again, because it seems easiest and best when we do it together. She's insistent on having a "theme", though, and she hasn't thought of one yet.

Yesterday we climbed 3 miles up Round Mountain. I considered it training for my attempt at Pikes Peak in about 6 weeks. (Twila could climb Pikes Peak tomorrow, if she wanted to. She could probably climb Mt. Everest, if it weren't all icy and stuff.)

The hike was difficult, but not as hard as the last time. That's a good sign, maybe. But when we got to the bottom, Twila said, "Wow. That was fun." And I was like, "Huh?"

We're all pleasure people, I suppose. Really, who doesn't like pleasure? It's kind of in the definition. But when I think of pleasure I think of cuddling, having my feet massaged by my super chair, a hot shower, web surfing, or an afternoon nap. Twila thinks pleasure is struggling up the side of a mountain for 12 hours, clambering over rocks and boulders, gasping for breath at high altitudes, fighting past constant pain, putting up with bone-chilling cold or intense heat (sometimes on the same hike), and forcing your body to do things it doesn't want to do, and probably was not designed to do, except in extreme emergencies.

So we did climb Round Mountain, and I felt some satisfaction, but when she said, "Wow. That was fun.", my oxygen- and nutrient-deprived brain could not grasp what she meant. I'm still working on it.

Tomorrow night we're going to Denver for dinner and then a Chris Bliss show. Chris Bliss is the guy who went viral a couple of years ago by juggling to a Beatles tune, or something. I don't really remember what it was, but I know seeing him is going to be a lot more fun than climbing Round Mountain.

Durf gets a raise.

Today is, for me, historic. It's the day I make my last obscenely large health insurance payment, about the same amount for one month that people in civilized countries pay for a whole year. As of July 1 I am a Medicare baby (as, I might add, we all should be, and not because we're geezers).

L’Inconnue.

"The most kissed face of all time"

The inside story at Nevis Labs, Epilogue.

As I've described, there were some personal tensions at the lab. Nevertheless, I greatly enjoyed and felt privileged to be working on the project. My hours let me work alone most of the time, and I strived very hard to do things correctly. Everything considered, it was an awesome experience.

It was my intention to not say anything negative about any of the optics team, and I hope I didn't!

Todd and I had issues, but he was professional almost all the time, and he performed his job splendidly.

Tom also did a great job and he worked extremely hard. I think he was as essential to the success of the project as was Todd. Tom is not the type of person I would have spent any time with away from the job, but that is just a matter of personalities.

Bill disappeared, but that's his business.

I like Ken, and I'm sorry that our conflict at Christmas hurt our relationship. We remained cordial and have had some contact since I left NY.

People I really liked and who were always a pleasure to be with were Iliya, Nicola, and Regina, who cleaned spacers and had other duties, but whom I had not mentioned previously.

As I've probably already said, I am going to be very excited and proud when the NuSTAR satellite is launched, and I am very grateful to have been part of the team that built it.

The inside story at Nevis Labs, Conclusion.

Todd, the Assembly Engineer, had invented an adequate process for building the optics. It was labor intensive and held together with duct tape and baling wire in places, but it was effective. There was one critical assembly component, however, that was poorly designed - the strongbacks, which held the epoxied spacers on the glass until the epoxy had cured.

Each strongback was constructed of several components. The base was designed to apply even pressure along the length of the spacer. The parts that actually held the spacers were called shoes, and they are where the design was weak. The shoes were built from two or three pieces screwed together. There was a groove in the top for the spacer, under which was a Buna o-ring, at first, and then later replaced with Tygon tubing, a superior solution.

To hold a spacer in a shoe, a strip of Teflon tape was applied over the groove, and then the spacer was inserted. The problem with the shoes was that the width of the grooves was inconsistent, which resulted in some spacers being held inadequately. Sometimes the epoxied spacers would fall out when being attached to the glass, which resulted in a bit of a mess. The problem was limited to the double shoes, which were used where glass segments met. That was because the doubles were constructed of more parts.

Sometime in the fall Tom came up with a useful solution. If he discovered a double shoe in which the spacers were inadequately held, he marked it with a felt pen. When I saw that mark, I used two strips of Teflon tape on that shoe. It was a minority of the strongbacks that had the mark - two strips of tape on an unmarked shoe would result in the spacers being held too tightly.

Sometime after the first of the year there was a problem with the accuracy of the grinds. When Todd returned to Nevis, he embarked on a project to rebuild each shoe. That's when the o-rings were replaced with Tygon. Todd spent several very long days modifying the shoes.

I was happy about the modifications, because I thought I would no longer have to apply double tape to the marked shoes. I did pay attention, though, and if I noticed that Tom had added a layer of tape the previous day or if I thought a spacer was loose, I marked the strongback myself and subsequently applied two layers of tape. That sort of worked, except that in one or two cases where two layers of tape fixed one slot in a double shoe, it made the other slot too tight. Tom pointed those shoes out to me, and eventually only a few of the doubles were marked. None of the singles had been marked before, and none was marked now.

It was a few weeks before Tom mentioned to me that spacers in a few of the unmarked double shoes were loose. I asked him to mark them, as he had previously, but he said he was too busy to do it. (Both Tom and Iliya had an idle hour or more when the glass and spacers were being automatically scanned.) He wanted me to determine the shoes that needed double tape. I used the standard test, which was to shake the strongbacks upside down to see if a spacer fell out. I thought I had identified the loose shoes, but I hadn't gotten them all. Tom had a lot of experience in evaluating the shoes, but he had become annoyed and was not willing to help. Ken pushed Tom to mark the shoes as he had before, and Tom relented, but he did not mark any shoes. He was making one of his infamous stands.

Finally Tom and I got together to discuss what could be done. That's when he told me that the modifications that Todd had made didn't affect the width of the slots, so I should be double taping the same shoes as previously. It would have been good to know that a couple of weeks earlier, but no-one had told me, even though it was obvious to them that some of the marked shoes weren't double taped. After I told Tom I'd double tape all the marked shoes, he said, "The single shoes are okay. [pause] No, the tape on them has to be changed more frequently."

Then, mysteriously, spacers started falling out of single shoes, even though the grooves were the same width, the tape was the same, and no spacers had escaped from single shoes in the past (except for my mis-inserted 1.6 mm x 1.5 mm spacers).

The normal procedure was to replace the tape if it was torn or if it had been pulled loose when the spacer was removed. During my training, Iliya told me that he had changed tape on all of the shoes every week, regardless of condition. I was doing twice as many shoes as Iliya had ever done, but I worked out a system to change the tape on the spacers on each tray (there were six trays of strongbacks) on a specified day each week. Now Tom was complaining about loose spacers, so I modified my routine to change the tape a minimum of two times a week. Tom said that was inadequate. Since no spacers had fallen out previously, even with only a weekly change, I was aware that Tom was having another emotional reaction, and I wasn't sure how to handle it. I asked Tom to mark any single shoes in which a spacer was loose so I could double tape it, but he refused.

I asked Tom why the spacers had started falling out, and he decided that some of the spacers were curved, so that the ends were up too high in the shoes. Why that caused them to fall out, I don't know. More important is that I could see no evidence that any spacers at all were curved. Some had slight curves along the 1.2 mm axis, but they were uniformly straight along the 1.5 mm axis.

The evening of March 2 Todd sent me an email:

>> Kurt,
>>
>> We are still on L132 on FM1. We had a spacer not bond correctly because it partially fell out of a shoe and bonded crooked on the glass. There is only one strongback on FM1 and half the guidewheels. I've set up the grinds for rough and finish grind.
>>
>> If you have another hic-cup like we did this morning, just leave the machine as is so I can try and diagnose it in the state where the error happened. I think this mornings issue was with Windows and not Delta Tau but I can't be for sure. Also, don't change any of the grind parameters without first consulting Ken or I. Since I had to completely power down FM1 machine, all of the parameters that I've updated revert to the settings as built by Dan at layer 1. This means that the machine now thinks it is grinding layer 1 which would be disastrous.
>>
>> FM2 will advance to layer 126 and take two grinds as usual.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Todd

I responded:

> Todd,
>
> Okay.
>
> I haven't changed the grind settings in months, except for the time a couple of days ago when I did a regrind. The last time I touched FM1 was when I was adjusting for the previous day, as you told me to. I'll stay away from them.
>
> I really don't know why spacers are falling out of single shoes all of a sudden, when they were fine for so long. I'm replacing more frequently than Iliya did. A couple of weeks ago I was in the lab with Tom and Ken and Tom was talking about the doubles, and he said, "The singles are fine. Well, no, you should change the tape every couple of days." I don't know what's going on, but I told Tom to mark any shoes he things are loose so I'll double tape them. He doesn't want to do that.
>
> Kurt

That seemed like a normal exchange.

The next morning I arrived at the lab and checked my email from the gowning room. That was my normal procedure, because Todd often sent email instructions in the evening after I'd gone to bed. Todd had responded to my reply with one sentence: "What time do you estimate you'll start the second grind on fm1?" The meaning of that was clear to me: Todd wanted to come to the lab to discuss the spacer issue.

It was March 3 and my last day at the lab was scheduled to be March 11. FM1 would be complete after one more layer, and I'd already been told that I could go home when only one optic was being built because the guys could easily handle what I'd been doing. I knew that it was inevitable that if Todd came in, he would side with Tom regardless of the circumstances.

After several minutes, I made a decision. I took my keys and left them on a table in the lab, then went home. Iliya, Tom, and Todd had all quit previously, and now it was my turn. The difference was, I had no intention to return.

The inside story at Nevis Labs, Part 7.

When the school year began I started going into work earlier to avoid a traffic jam on the way home, and things quieted down in the lab. I was leaving about 20 minutes before Tom and Iliya arrived, but when I was delayed I was happy to see them. I didn't see Todd often, but he put aside whatever feelings he might have had and acted professionally. I did the same.

We were told about a month in advance that we'd have two weeks off at Christmas - the week before and the week after - mostly because of a shortage of glass. It would be a welcome respite from our 6-day-a-week grind.

On December 14 Ken sent an email that included:

**********
As most of you know, we are suffering problems with the schedule for building FM2. Iliya has offered to build during the Christmas week, so I am trying to figure out if we can support him. This would require Zeshan to mix and lay epoxy, Kurt to remove hardware, Doug to scan glass, and Marcela to stage glass.

To see if this is possible, let me know your availability on the following days that Iliya could possibly work. We would not work all of these days even if it were possible.

Sat Dec 18
Sun Dec 19
Mon Dec 20
Tue Dec 21
Wed Dec 22
Thu Dec 23
Sun Dec 26
**********

I wasn't excited about it, but I told Ken that I'd be available when I was needed. A few days later the holiday schedule was posted and I was working ALL of those days. I felt betrayed. I had volunteered based on the idea that we'd only be working a few of the days. It was particularly important to me because Twila was going back to Colorado on January 4, and I wanted to spend as much time with her as possible.

I assumed that the decision to work 7 days had been made upstairs somewhere. Since Ken was whom I felt most comfortable with, I wrote to him to say that I was irritated that I'd been misled. He told me that he was responsible for the schedule, and I was shocked. I reminded him that he'd said we would not work all of the days. I expressed some anger, then told him that I had vented and that was that, no hard feelings. But it did affect my relationship with Ken, who was considerably more distant thereafter.

Colorado wildlife.

Every spring about 22 gadzillion Miller moths fly overhead on their way to the mountains. Not surprisingly, about 21 gadzillion of them end up in our house. They don't really cause problems, other than flying into our faces at unexpected moments and cluttering up the floor. They do, however, fly back in the late summer to wherever they came from, and they like to drop in on that trip, too.

"Miller moths" is kind of non-threatening. "Army cutworms," OTOH (clickable)...