Today’s is just a quick little post, like the little Green Heron in the animated GIF accompanying it.  The weather this week is gorgeous and fall like and is expected to continue through the weekend.  We have lots of weekend plans, but for now there is just work, but not too much else that is going on here in Mound City.  Mound City is an old nickname for Saint Louis, because before it was settled there were many old Indian mounds on the Missouri side of the Mississippi.  As the city was settled, the old Indian mounds were torn down and their dirt was used as building material, such was progress.  Nowadays, the only mounds still left are across the river in Cahokia.

For Anne this week in school it is Spirit Week, in honor of this weekend’s high school homecoming.  Monday was pajamas day; wear on the outside, what you normally wear underneath.  Tuesday was dress like your rivals day; this week’s opponents are the Perryville Pirates, so pirate garb was the order of the day.  Wednesday, was wacky tacky day; Anne wore mismatched socks, Capri pants to highlight them and her, “I don’t know if I’m the good sister or the bad sister” t-shirt.  Thursday is fancy day dress up day; Anne is scheduled to work in the high school, but could get a last-minute reassignment to kindergarten, but only if she dresses really nicely, as in, let’s play hug the teacher after snack time. Friday will be school colors day, blue and white for the Maplewood Blue Devils; the football game is Friday night.  Anne wants to hear about your high school homecoming memories.  Did you participate in spirit week too?

There is an old adage in engineering that goes something like this, “No one ever believes the model’s predictions, except for the engineer that made them and everyone believes the measurements, except for the engineer that made them.”  I have generally made my career at the modeler’s end of this continuum and have many times felt the lash of this dictum, but occasionally I have also walked on the other side of the street and felt the measurer’s insecurity.  Which ever side of the road that you find yourself on, modeler or measurer, error is your enemy.  It creeps into your calculations through the finite mathematics that you must use.  It also inevitably creeps into your measurements, but with measurements you can quantify known error, it is the unknown error that keeps a good measurement engineer up at night.

I say all this partly just to whine about my new impossible mission assignment:  Good morning Mister RegenAxe. [Redacted] As always, should you or any of your modeling force be caught or killed, Management will of course disavow any knowledge of your actions.  Good luck, Mister RegenAxe.  This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Queue the Mission Impossible music …

This week though I have a diversion from this work reality, it is called QFD.  QFD stands for Quality Functional Deployment, but don’t ask me what that means.  It is a systems engineering process.  On large engineering activities, system engineering earns its place at the table, at least as the referee among the other engineering disciplines.  This is not a large activity and the purpose for this exercise of systems engineering escapes me, but unfortunately I cannot escape it.  I feel like the little Green Heron, trapped in time and destined to take one step backward for every step forward.  Otherwise, just mark me frustrated.