Keystone 6

The Denver Tebows pull another one out at the end.  Brett and I watched the game at Grub's in beautiful (*snicker*) downtown Indiana, PA.  The bar was going crazy, especially in the fourth quarter.  Almost felt bad for the two Bears fans at the table next to us.  Almost.  Good beer, cheap food, and a football environment made for an extra exciting game.  And, oh yeah, we had to work today.  That is always the case:  We work 7 days a week, 9+ hours a day until the system is installed and reporting all of our constituencies.  There are times in which ( get grief for forgetting which day it is, but to be honest, working 7 days a week makes the actual day irrelevant.  It sucks, because we have games to watch and there is always something happening that requires a calendar.  Oh well, submitted the time card tonight.  Another 30+ hours of overtime.

Today was actually a pretty good day at the plant.  We worked almost exclusively in the climate-controlled computer room installing the Rack.  The Rack is a half-sized, 19-inch rack containing the brains and lasers of the Boiler Optimizing Spectroscopy System that we get to install.  There are three lasers, a UPS, laser controller, detector bank, a computer (XP!!), and a bunch of magic inside the rack.  A coupe of pictures:

Arse end of the Rack

Front of the Rack.  Lasers are the black boxes in middle.

Most of the Rack is assembled in Boulder, before it is shipped to our customer's site.  We get to splice five fibers and route the same to the appropriate locations.  Also, some other wires are managed and the detector bank is installed.  The Rack has changed quite a bit over the past 1.5 years that I've been working at Zolo Technologies.  Mostly for the better.  We left after working a half day,  in order to get ready for the game.  Besides, we were at a great stopping point for the day anyway.  The boiler is scheduled to start up tonight, which is great news.  We need the boiler on and over 1000 F for us to put the finishing touches on the install.  Looks like another 2-3 days of work, and hopefully we'll be done (knocking on wood).  My sympathies to our colleagues in Germany:  They've been busting their buttocks for the past 2 weeks and seem to be having all kinds of problems.  I am sure that they are ready to come home for Christmas.

A couple of pictures on the way out of the plant today:

The plant's after-hours medic.  Break the glass and cut up your hand...

One of four, monster cooling towers (no, not nuclear)

Another bit of good news, at least on the personal level:  No new bug bites.  The current ones that I have are healing, but still itch like a mo-fo.  Thank you to all those that "liked," my FB link.

Thank you for reading,

Kevin

P.S.  Ed:  I'll respond to your email in the next few days.  Gotta bust out the big calculator...