Category Archives: Work

Michigan by Bike or Bus!

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Michigan by Bike or Bus!

Michigan by Bike or Bus!

The title and graphic for this post is a test, a test for reading comprehension. Last weekend, we were cycling in Forest Park and came upon this old Trailways bus in front of the history museum. The museum was inaugurating a new Route 66 exhibit that day. We stopped and toured the bus and spoke with the owner operator, an enthusiast. Anne is seen pointing to the vanity license plate that bears her initials. On this ride, Anne got her 300th mile for June. The woman is all about making and meeting her goals. Fast-forward to today or should I say last night? We got up at uh-oh dark-thirty (3 AM), so that Anne could be downtown at the bus station by four. The area around the new bus station is a happening place at that time of night. The nearby post office distribution center had a dozen semis milling about. I was able to dodge them all. Amtrak had a train idling nearby and Anne caught one of two Greyhound buses heading to NYC. Who knew there were so many alternatives available for people who just had to get out-of-town in the middle of the night? Anne changed buses in Indy and is now with her folks in Ann Arbor. Meanwhile, I went back home to bed and slept in. I did make it into work about the time Anne was in Indy. I worked until noon and then went for another bicycle ride. Spacely Sprockets is on the move don’t you know. There were a lot of workmen in the park preparing for this weekend’s 4th of July festival. I think that I’ll be catching some of that action.

A Real Dog’s Breakfast

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Female Merganser at Point Lobos

Female Merganser at Point Lobos

I’m hurtling towards the day of reckoning that day the yoke is broke. There are only nine more work days left or maybe even less, depending upon how much more leave I take. Anyway, two more week no matter how you slice it. I’m kind of feeling like the pictured Merganser, a little dazed and confused, she I suspect got a little banged up by the surf that day, which was pretty high and when I photographed her, she was kind of hunkered down. She seemed totally unfazed by either Anne or I as we clambered over the rocks near her, but don’t worry about me dear readers, I’ll gird my loins and hike-up my big boy panties and be ready for the big day when it comes and more importantly for what lies beyond. Although, because of this transition, the house is a mess, hence this post’s tittle and the fact that I have learned a new idiom, but I suspect that things will straighten themselves out pretty soon.

777x

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A380 at LAX

A380 at LAX

Meet George Jetson,
His Boy Elroy,
Daughter Judy,
Jane, His wife

Just like I partook last Saturday night in Garrison Keillor’s farewell tour, I’ve been milking my own little farewell tour at work for a while now, but I’ve got just three weeks left. People have been telling me there that I’m smiling too much, like that’s a bad thing, but lately their tune has changed to your lucky to be getting out when you are. You see dear friends all is not happy in Mudville. Ever since late last year when mighty Casey struck out, people have been all down in the mouth. In the immediate aftermath of that loss, some people were let go from Spacely Sprockets, including Mr. Spacely himself. Mrs. Spacely took his place, which is fine, except that she has been saying some things that people don’t like, like, “We’ve got to get over the fact that we are no longer in the fighter business.” Say what? Now, she has walked this statement back a bit, but meanwhile our Rangers fan-friends down in Texas are going all, Snap! God only knows what our customers must be thinking.

Like Keillor, I’ve taken my farewell tour on the road, sort of speak. As part of the Spacely Sprockets ‘On the Move’ campaign, I’ve been getting my steps in. It has been hot this month, so walking the air-conditioned factory floors is a welcomed relief from hot asphalt on the edge of the tarmac. It was on one such sojourns that I discovered a display announcing the standing-up of the 777x wing assembly line. Work from Puget Sound is being moved to Saint Louis. In Michael Crichton’s 1996 novel, “Airframe” the central tension of the story is whether this allegorical commercial aircraft manufacturer will “giveaway the wing” to the Japanese. Well Spacely Sprockets eventually did that with the 787, so why not now throw Saint Louis a bone? Back when Spacely Sprockets was shopping for a new venue for the 777x, all the while it was negotiating with its Seattle unions, Saint Louis put together an attractive offer. The unions signed, but we did get a piece of the job and to hear Crichton, it was the best piece.

The neat-o-keen aspect of this new wing and with a new wing you have a new airplane, is that the wingtips fold up, just like on a carrier plane. I’m not talking about winglets here, but actual folding wings. The above pictured white elephant has a wingspan of 262’, which necessitates special gates to dock, load and unload this cattle car. This severely limits the number of airports that can handle the A380. The 777x in its longest variant has a wingspan of 235’, which is just too long to use a normal gate. So, the last 12’ of each wing will fold up to allow the plane to slip into a normal gate. I’ll miss this sort of gee-whiz aspect of work, but on the other hand, I have been smiling a lot lately.

Happy Anniversary!

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Harry and Bubs - 1954

Harry and Bubs – 1954

Happy 63rd anniversary, Bubs and Harry!

Anne has been busy scanning family photos, in-between making plans to head north again. In addition to her looking forward to returning to Michigan, to see family and to summer at her cabin, the weather here is providing plenty of additional incentive to get the heck out of Dodge. The last time that I checked it is 101 ˚F, but don’t worry, because it only feels like 115 ˚F. We should get a momentary cool down tomorrow, which will be much appreciated, because we would like to get outside some this weekend.

A good rule for rocket experimenters to follow is this: always assume that it will explode. — Astronautics Magazine, 1937

There was the odor of schadenfreude at Spacely Sprockets this morning. One of our competitors in the launch vehicle business, SpaceX had some misfortune. Their Falcon 9 rocket after successfully delivering two of Mister Spacely’s satellites into orbit had a problem. The Falcon 9 rocket features a reusable booster that lands vertically on the landing pad, as if it was a rocket out of some 1950s science fiction yarn. This rocket has successfully blasted-off and landed four times, but on this fifth landing attempt it experienced a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly, as they say in the parlance. They even have an acronym version of this, RUD, in short it blew-up. We at Spacely’s have been watching the progress of Elon Musk and his team with a combination of admiration and apprehension. They are doing great stuff, but yesterday’s accident amply demonstrated that they’re not quite yet ready for prime time.

Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department. — Tom Lehrer

Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)

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Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)

Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)

Yesterday, I touched upon the annual On the Move campaign that Spacely Sprockets relaunched last week. It is intended to motivate employees to exercise more. Everyone who participates is supplied a pedometer and depending upon your level of participation a gift card is offered as a reward upon completion. The highest level reward is a $100. An average of 13,000 steps a day is required to obtain this reward, but smaller rewards for less effort are also available. So, there is really no competition, except with yourself and everybody can be a winner. Still, there has been cheating at times. During one of the early years, one of the leading teams in Saint Louis was averaging 40,000+ steps a day per person. That’s like 60-80 miles. I didn’t know any of the people on that team, but I know someone who did and she told me that there was no way that they could be exercising that much and didn’t know who they thought that they were fooling? I was listening to the NPR show “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me”, a comedy, news, quiz show. I tuned in too late to hear the question, but it had to have something to do with cheating in these corporate exercise programs. These programs used the Fitbit to count activities, which apparently offered the opportunity for more creative ways to cheat. Some diligent employees attached the Fitbit to their Chihuahua, while others used their ceiling fan. One truly high performer attached his Fitbit to a power drill, but the overall winner attached his Fitbit to the hamster wheel. Most corporations that do these programs hire a contractor who facilitates it. It is this way at Spacely Sprockets. In an attempt to curtail cheating these contractors will gently question the more outlandish claims. I encountered this treatment last year, while doing the MUP ride during On the Move. I entered 50,000+ steps using their conversion formula for biking 75 miles. They questioned this four-fold jump in activity, but accepted it.

Hot, Hot, Hot

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Little Blue Heron

Little Blue Heron

Down at the ballpark, in the men’s rooms, there is an advertisement placed strategically at eye level, above some of the urinals that reads, “Your Wife Is HOT!!!” and then “The Problem Is in Your Hands!” It then goes on to name some heating and cooling company that wants to fix the home air conditioner. Well, she is and it is, but the AC is running just fine, thank you very much, which is all very fortunate, because it is hot, hot, hot out today in Saint Louis. How hot is it, you might ask? Well, it’s not quite surface of the sun hot, but it has to be close.

We went for a morning bicycle ride today, not quite the dawn patrol that I would have preferred, but not either our more usual sedate noon launch. At the beginning of the week, when the mercury was lower, the noon launched worked out well, because I could go to work in the morning and then Anne and I could ride together in the afternoon. As the temperature rose through the week, Anne started launching earlier and earlier. She’s on some kick to ride every day in June, don’t you know. Near the end of each Forest Park ride, her go to destination is a pair of wooden board walks over ponds in the northeastern corner of the park. I’ve always liked the first one as a photo-op, but she has discovered that the second one is now home to a diverse crowd of feathered fishers. Today, in addition to the pictured little blue heron, we also saw a night heron and a snowy egret, who thought for some reason that this little stretch of water was its private domain and that all these other feathered interlopers should just scram. Well, he is entitled to his opinion.

This week, Spacely Sprockets launched its annual On the Move campaign, which is designed to keep us old engineers moving, at least until the time comes to push us out the door. It is also designed to get some my younger colleagues going, who need that extra push, so that they can at least make it to my point, before it becomes their turn to leave. In 1980, when I first walked in the plant doors, there was a rather rotund guard who I would have to sit with every morning, until someone came to take me in. He did have one bit of rather sage advice that I have kept filed until now, under do what I say and not what I do. His advice was to always take the stairs and eschew the elevator. He said that if you walk up and down the stairs every day, some day you will walk out of here, but if you let the elevator carry you up and down, then some day you are going to be carried out of here. It’s looking pretty good for the former.