The Dog Ate My Homework - Part 2

So I was discussing the glorious ray tracing results with the Sarcastic Brit, who took one look and said "Why the hell are the mirrors so big?"

I looked at it, and said "I don't know. But the Big Boy did it, so they can't be wrong."

Then, I went back to my desk and used some of my vast knowledge of grade 12 physics to come up with a new set of numbers. They were vastly different than what the consultant had produced with the $1000 + software package (that he's apparently running on a Trash 80). So, I went to the lab and I set the distances in the prototype. It turns out that grade 12 physics (and a supposedly incompetent engineer), give more realistic results than the $100/hour consultant and his $1000 software.

I mentioned this to MNNB. I don't think he believed me. I showed him the prototype. He had to admit that I was right.

He was right: I learned a lot from working with the consultant. Mostly, that if a consultant doesn't want the work, paying him won't make him do it.

The dog ate my homework - part 1

So... classic Mecca management:

You don't like one of your engineers. You want to insult him. So, you hire a consultant at $100/hour to do his job.

You tell your engineer that the consultant is brilliant. You tell him that he could absorb vast amounts of knowledge just by being in the proximity of this consultant.

You call the consultant "the big boy" in front of half of the company and tell your engineer that he can't do anything useful. Just let the consultant do it all.

You tell your engineer that you might agree to let him set up the consultant's model on the bread board, just so that he can bask in the greatness of the consultant's overpowering intellect.

Then... the line went dead. The consultant disappeared.

He said that he was very busy. Too busy, in fact to reply to email.

Apparently, the consultant does not own a cell phone.

Apparently, the consultant has more important clients.

Finally, MNNB emailed the consultant to find out why we hadn't received the ray tracing. The line remained dead. MNNB tried calling the consultant's house. He didn't answer.

After one week, I emailed the consultant and asked him how he was doing. His response went something like this:

I have been working on the ray tracing, but it runs very slowly on my computer, and that's why I haven't been able to provide you guys with anything.

Two hours later, I have 1/2 of the ray trace. Fantastic... The assignment was half done, and over a week past due. If we were back in school, I'm pretty sure that would amount to an F. Of course the consultant is brilliant, so his invoices will be paid in full and on time.


now I can prototype the thing and bask in the consultant's brilliance...

The Blockhead

Greetings, patient readers. My apologies for going so long between posts again, but I have been plotting the demise of the Mecca.

In other news.... I want to write about an often overlooked character at the Mecca.

It turns out that ALL of the software for the flagship instrument platform was written by one guy. That's right... hardware control, UI, algorithms, all written by one lonely guy. The best part about this guy is that he's not even an actually employee at the Mecca - he's a contractor.

So... you might ask why a "world leading" biotechnology company would entrust their entire platform to a consultant. Then, of course you remember that it's the Mecca, and such foolishness is their forte.

I have actually known the Blockhead for a long time. He worked with the Mad Man and I back in the Northland. Unfortunately, due to some strangeness with citizenship and visas and sheer blockheadedness, the Blockhead was unable (perhaps too wise) to get sucked out to Silicon Valley. So, the Blockhead sat is his cave and developed the software without even an instrument to work with. It's truly impressive.

You may be thinking by now that the Blockhead is brilliant. Perhaps he's brilliant when it comes to computer programming, but as the Sarcastic Brit is fond of reminding him "stick to the ones and zeros!"

You see... most people would realize that they are the key to the whole thing and take advantage of the situation. Not the Blockhead. When he had to face down the CFO for contract negotiations, it went something like this:

CFO: Blockhead, you've done some fantastic work, but times are tough, so we can't pay you for as many hours per month.

Blockhead: That's ok, I guess. I am already working twice as many hours as you are paying me for, so I won't really notice working a few more free hours. After all, the decreased value of the US dollar has eroded my wages as well, so I shouldn't even notice that you are paying me less money.

CFO: That's a fantastic way to look at it. I'll give you some underwater stock options as well.

Blockhead: That sounds totally fair.

Harbinger: I have a present for you Blockhead. Here is a bag that says "Mecca Magic Beans". If you plant them in your back yard, maybe a beanstalk will grow that will lead you to the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Blockhead: Cool. I'll have to try it.


Does anybody know: Will white beans grow to give you a beanstalk or a bush??? I guess that it's as likely of a thing as those stock options.

Launch the Torpedos

Greetings avid readers. Please don't faint - it's two posts in a week. What can I say? The Mecca is a happening place.

So... you run a company, and you have been trying to bolster the share price so that you can find more little girls willing to let you steal their stuff. What do you do? You could always resort to the "product launch". Who cares that you've been trying to sell your product for six months already? Who cares that it really doesn't work? Who cares that you have no defined way to determine if a customer installation was successful? Who cares that the engineering team is coming up with band-aids daily? It doesn't matter. The fact is that nothing jazzes investors like a good product launch. Of course nothing sinks a ship like a good torpedo launch either.

Swiper and the Fearful COO have disappeared from sight in order to concoct a way to get the most mileage from a momentous event that they will be unable to recycle for at least six months. Of course, the hiding phase is followed by the now familiar flurry of activity. Change the company logo. Change the company colours. How about those press releases that really say nothing? Perhaps that is a result of the fact that the Mecca is currently in litigation with the company that does their media relations. Something about unpaid invoices. Or maybe there's nothing to say that wouldn't result in an SEC investigation. But, I digress.

Anyway, all of the pieces are in place. Recycle the same "customers" that we have been "shipping product to" since the very beginning. These guys have seen lots of instruments. Some day, they might actually pay for one. The only missing element is the company bling. It's a product launch, so they need to do something nice. They need to make sure that we feel that our dedication and team work are deeply appreciated. So, they gave out very nice polo shirts with the company logo.

I know what you are thinking right now... "what's wrong with that?" I forgot to mention that directors, VP's, and important people got that. The Proles got tacky plastic lunch boxes, defective coffee cups that hold approximately 1.5 ounces of coffee (trust me... that may be a favour though), and slightly different shirt. Rather than the nice polo shirt, the peons got $2 T's with the following slogan. "$mart A$$ays, not Half A$$ays". Great. My employer gave me a shirt that's too vulgar to wear to work. That's class.

Note that my security team has insisted that I replace the S's with $'s. Although, after a quick web search, it seems that even the marketing geniuses at the Mecca are not dumb enough to use that slogan in their literature.

Harbinger of Doom Versus the Stupid Acronym

This post will henceforth be known as HODVSTSA, in order to keep competing blogs (or Scott Adams) from stealing my material.

I must apologize for not having blogged for a while, but all of my mental energy is consumed by learning the names of all of the new employees at the Mecca. We now have five applications scientists. Four of them are in United states. Strange, since our US install base consists of two instruments presently. The new characters in this post are:

My Next New Boss
This is one of MNB's cronies that he brought in from his former (tanking employer). His cronies now compose over 2/3 of the engineering team. He has also been parachuting them into manufacturing, product management, and any other function he can drive a wedge into.

The Product Mismanager
This is another of MNB's cronies, although he was not billed as such, the Product Mismanager admitted it to me. Apparently, he thought that it would impress me. The Sarcastic Brit's first comment on this particularly character: Wow – just think of the material that you will get from him!

The Borg (only 5 so far but the mothership is coming)
Yep, they have hired five apps guys to support effectively two instruments (although it may be up to a whopping 10 instruments by the end of the year. ) That's two instruments per guy. Oh right, our service engineer is still doing all of the installations and real work. What are these guys doing? They are home based... so my guess is – sucking at the corporate teet.

This except is from a real email thread that started with some remote troubleshooting of a customer unit by one of the new applications chemists that we hired and threw out into the field with two day's training.


Borg – 1 of 5

MNNB
Could you do me a favor and translate that into English?
Seriously, what is a cylinder. My guess is that it extends and retracts the platform?
Thanks.
Borg – 1 of 5


MNNB

Borg – 1 of 5,
The [brand 1] cylinder is the rotary and up-down air cylinder that moves the sample holder in and out of the instrument.
Pardon the vernacular. When I got here I also wondered what “snoots” and “choils” were here till someone told me.
MNNB


Borg – 1 of 5

MNNB,
You are just torturing me. You mean to tell me that you aren’t going to include the definitions of “snoots” and “choils”? I have no idea of what they are either!

Thanks!
Borg – 1 of 5


Product Mismanager

Hi,
As a side note, I would really, really encourage us to not reference any outside component vendors in our discussions – internally and externally.

I’ve heard: [brand 1] and [brand 2]. Please refrain from using these references in the future. It will be a vernacular change.

These should be the [our stupid product part 1] and [our stupid product part 2], respectfully.

I realize these are a mouthful…

Snoots and choils are OK for now since no one seemed to know what they are…

I’ll be implementing a piggy bank approach and getting people to pay $1/reference.

Thanks for your support and I’m really pretty laid back…


Harbinger

Not to cause trouble, but doesn’t it make it hard to procure parts if we are not allowed to discuss vendor identities? I tried your idea of vague descriptions on a couple of the POs that I had to file today, and finance was unappreciative.

When I told them that this was your suggestion, the Used Car Salesman asked me to email you for clarification.

Cheers,
Harbinger.



And for those of you wondering if I actually submitted PO requests with the company names removed... Do you really need to ask. Of course I did, and then ran as fast as I could from the Dragon Lady :D

Dear John Letters

Greetings loyal readers. It has been quite some time since I last posted, and I have heard that some of you have been wondering if I have finally departed from the tender loving environs of the Biotech Mecca.

Unfortunately, I still turn up every day for my generous helping of chaos, foolishness and abuse. The story for today however, is not about the Sarcastic Brit or myself... it's about Flyboy.

If you will recall, Flyboy was originally hired as a general "go to guy" for the engineering department. Alas, he had the misfortune of appearing beneath my name on the org chart. Needless to say, that put him in the sights to be picked off by MNB.

MNB doesn't see any value in having a general engineering tech that can deal with vendors, sort stuff out in the lab, work on documentation control, and do mundane, crappy tasks like dealing with packaging vendors. After all, that is why he has the Harbinger of doom, and the Sarcastic Brit.

Anyway, seeing that his position was somewhat precarious, Flyboy ingratiated himself to the Used Car Salesman. After all, he had already been drawn into being the purchasing agent for the engineering team, as well as the person responsible for pretty much all logistics. It only made sense that he should report to the head of finance. (I had to try very hard not to laugh when I wrote that last sentence. What kind of idiots would put a used car salesman in charge of the checkbook?)

But back to Flyboy. It seems that Flyboy inserted himself into the middle of a minor war between the Dragon Lady and the used car salesman. It's a pity... as I feel that he was more or less a victim of the infamous management style that is so pervasive at the Mecca.

First of all, Flyboy's contract had expired. He was not under contract, not full time, not under any agreement. He would show up (after an hour and a quarter on the road), work for the day, trying to avoid drive-by abuse by the likes of MNB, and hope like hell every payday that they would provide him with payment. I can't think of a better way "Sleep Well Wesley... for I shall most likely kill you in the morning."

Second of all, the Dragon Lady has a very simple set of rules. Do your job. Don't screw up. That means primarily not losing track of trivial things like purchase orders and packing slips. After all, how can she pay the bills if she doesn't have the purchase order (so that you know what you've ordered), and the packing slip (so that you have a record or receiving the goods?) Unfortunately, she wasn't getting these things. The larger problem was that her boss (The Used Car Salesman) is chronically trying to avoid paying the bills, so wasn't all that worried about the missing paperwork. The best way to keep cash in the bank is to not pay the bills. If you don't see the bills, you don't have to worry about not paying them.

At the core of the problem (in my humble opionion) was that the Used Car Salesman has no idea about running a finance department. He has no idea that for a company producing product (as such) purchasing is a full time job. You can't add facilities management, shipper, and any number of other duties to that. Flyboy however, saw the precariousness of his situation, and didn't say anything.

Unfortunately, Flyboy isn't really a crack administrator, and was always looking for ways to streamline the process. Usually that involved doing things in a way that would entail the least amount of work for him. So... the paperwork was pretty much always the victim. I think that he knew better... but was trying so hard to please that he lost track of the need to dot the Is and cross the Ts.

Now the Dragon Lady was in a bind. She was missing all of the paper trail that she needed to do her job. As a result, even with whatever temporary help they brought in for her, she was working an extra three or four hours each day, and her mountain of papers kept getting larger. Needless to say, when she started having days starting at 7:00 am and ending at 10:00 pm, she had to do something. The final straw was when six months of purchase orders and packing slips were found in Flyboy's desk. The obvious conclusion was that Flyboy was setting her up.

Although I will admit that it certainly looked like that, I believe that the real issue was that Flyboy was not an administrator, and hence chose to throw the paperwork out of the sinking ship that was his workload. He probably meant to get back to it... but the funny thing about paperwork is that the longer it sits, the harder it is to go back and sort it out.

The upshot was that the Used Car Salesman decided that Flyboy had to go.

Did he speak to him before hand and try to find out what was going on? Not that I heard. He just decided to turn on his "employee" (much like a rabid dog), and attack. The only problem was that Flyboy was not at the office. He was taking a couple of days off.

Eager to take action, the Used Car Salesman called Flyboy on his cell phone. He didn't answer. I will admit that I don't take calls from the Mecca either. They are never good, and I have heard about the sky falling too many times for it to trigger any emotional reaction apart from disgust.

Flyboy didn't return the call, and the Used Car salesman is a man of action. Actually, I think that he was probably intimidated by the thought of having to fire him in person. So, he left him a voicemail. I can imagine that it went something like this. "Flyboy, I'm afraid that we are going to have to let you go. We will send you your last check and your things in the mail."

Thanks. They say that getting dumped on your answering machine is hard. Perhaps the people who say that have never been fired via answering machine. Just another example of the professionalism and class that are so pervasive in the senior management at the Mecca.

Have you heard anything?

Greetings readers.

Morale at the Mecca is at an all time low.

Nearly every morning, the Sarcastic Brit and I greet each other with the mutual inquiry of "have you heard anything?" Of course "heard anything" refers to the job hunt that both the Sarcastic Brit and I have been conducting over the last few months.

Apparently, we are not the only ones looking to get out. The Maytag repair man (our service engineer) is also actively looking for a job. Of course, he's no dummy, and has been asking for cash advances before he leaves for long distance service calls. He recounted the following discussion with MNB:

Maytag: I need to take the week of the 16th off.
MNB: Sorry, you need to give me at least three weeks notice for that.
Maytag: I'm not asking you. I'm telling you.
MNB: Of course you've been traveling a lot lately. Go ahead.

Today, we had our weekly engineering meeting. It wasn't pretty. Over the course of 90 minutes MNB managed to exclaim "I don't give a crap what the Sarcastic Brit says", ask my new new boss (this is Cronie #3 that MNB has brought in. Not to be confused with Cronies 4, 5 or 6. Or Cronies 7 or 8 for that matter) for a status report on my work, while I was sitting there. He also pronounced that the Sarcastic Brit and I can't be trusted with safety related tasks, and questioned the items on our task lists as being irrelevant. In all it was pretty much a standard meeting.

Strangely enough, It would seem that they gather in my office. I don't remember hanging the sign inviting people to drop in and kill an hour or two when they're too pissed to work. It's really bad for my productivity. Oh right... Maybe I should actually hang the sign and see who else shows up.

In the meantime, I am expecting an offer from a company down the street tomorrow or Monday. The Sarcastic Brit was one of my references. Apparently his conversation with the HR person went like this:

HR: Why is Harbinger leaving the Biotech Mecca?
Sarcastic Brit: Because he has a new boss who wants to replace him. Come to think of it, you don't have any other positions opening up, do you?
HR: We just may. Send me your resume.

Will this be the end of my tenure at the Mecca? I don't know. If they offer me a job sweeping the floor, it will be better than what I have now.
Will this be the end of the Silicon Valley Way? We shall see. There are still stories to tell. Hard to believe isn't it?

Will this be the end of the Silicon Valley Way? I don't know.

Outline of the CFO

Thanks everybody for your patience (those of you who have not left for pastures in which the grass grows faster.)

Since I have just spent the last two weeks on vacation, I have little new to report. The Mecca continues to be bilked by consultants who charge copious amounts of money for designing piles of poo. MNB now refuses to even talk to the Sarcastic Brit or I. We have effectively been barred from doing any useful work. In fact, I got in on Friday (first day back from vacation) at 10:00 am, and left at 3:00 pm. I also took an hour for lunch. Nobody noticed or complained. But, I digress. Tonight I want to talk about a Mecca all star. The CFO. This character has since been removed, but it took a long time, and the damage that he did was incalculable.

He would walk around stroking his mustache. I am not sure if he ever understood what he was seeing or asking about, but whenever things got stressful, you could count on the CFO to come out of his office to watch you work and ask dumb questions while stroking the mustache,

Although it has been said that the CFO did not know the difference between a debit or a credit, he was well versed in the fact that giving people money resulted in having less of it. To this end, he was constantly trying to save a few bucks, and refused to pay people any earlier than necessary.

When the Sarcastic Brit first started at the Mecca, he was given the job of trying to sort out the IT situation. This was not easy considering the fact that the entire infrastructure was originally set up by a bunch of guys were were lucky to find the on switch on their computers. Needless to say, his first task was to order a bunch of computer equipment. Since there was no purchasing procedure, he just called up Dell and ordered the computers on his credit card. He then submitted his expense report of $5000 and waited to see the check.

Unfortunately, the check didn't arrive, even after a month. So, the Sarcastic Brit started to inquire as to when he might get his money back. The answer was always soon. Unfortunately, soon never seemed to arrive. The situation was finally resolved by the Sarcastic Brit waking into the CFO's office and sitting down.

What are you doing?
I'm waiting for my money.
I'll sign the check soon.
I've heard that one before.
Well... these things take time.
That's OK, I'll wait.
In here?
Yes.
Don't you have work to do?
Yes, but I want my money, so I am going to sit in here and remind you that you need to write me a check.
Let me see what I can do.
Please do.

In the end, it only took a couple of hours of targeted looming on the part of the Sarcastic Brit before he got his money.

Of course, our suppliers never figured out the trick of sitting in the CFO's office, so they would routinely go unpaid for months at a time. I have to admit that it's really embarrassing to call up a vendor regarding a bunch of parts that you desperately need, only to find out that the reason they haven't been shipped is that your employer is on the infamous "credit hold". The worst part of it is that you start to wonder if you next pay check is on the list of payments that "can wait".

Hijacked Pt. 2

Those of you who know Harbinger, know he is concerned that this blog be both public and yet secure, as if that's possible but what do I know I'm only the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

Anyways I've taken the liberty of changing a couple of words on his behalf. I'm sure he'll understand after all people are always tampering with his work.

Garfield

Greetings patient readers.

Since this is Friday, I will keep the post short. It seems that Jaba has been trying to hire himself some competent people. So... he hired an intern. That seems to be a term they use here in Silicon Valley for somebody with a degree (who may even be competent), but no work experience, and hence should expect to be treated like crap. Anyway, they hired this intern and immediately placed her under the tender loving care of the Chihuahua. Please check previous posts if you forget. (I only wish that I could.)

The intern seems kind of cat-like to me. She has the same all knowing, self assured attitude of a cat that is quizzically watching you as you do something stupid. Looking at you as if to say "What are you thinking? You know that I could do better, if I could be bothered". Needless to say, Garfield immediately gravitated toward the Sarcastic Brit, and uses his office to hide from her "boss".

This is a typical discussion:

Harbinger: Why do your co-workers ask me to fix things that are not broken?
Garfield: Because they have no clue. They are biologists, after all.
Harbinger: Biologist is not synonymous with incompetent.
Garfield: Really?
Harbinger: One of my friends is a "biologist". His hobby is building torsion catapults that hurl ten pound pumpkins the better part of a mile.
Garfield: That's nice. He obviously doesn't work at the Mecca.

Of course, I'm not so sure about this one. Garfield has another job offer. When she went to Jaba to see what he would do to try to match it, he offered her a chance to work more closely with the Sarcastic Brit and I. Apparently, we are being used as bait. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I told Garfield not to fall for it... run while you can. She was at work today.

P.T. Barnum wins another round.

OSHA 12

Good evening. It seems that even at the Biotech Mecca, history repeats itself. This is the sequel to OSHA 11. It seems that despite the new location, old habits die hard.

The local fire department was in doing our inspections for various safety issues. This is a good thing, I suppose, except that they keep finding chemicals that are not properly stored, and paperwork that isn't properly done.

Somehow, Jaba managed to get talked into being the safety officer for the company, so he gets to deal with the fire department. I believe that the conversation went something like this.

Safety inspector: You don't have your permit for handling biological waste yet. You can't legally handle most of the chemicals that you are using until you get your license.

Jaba: How long does it take to get a license?

Safety inspector: 90 days.

Jaba: Is it faster to transfer the license from the old facility to this location?

Safety inspector: Why yes it is. Unfortunately, you never bothered to get a license at the old facility.


It seems that permits are not the only place that the Mecca is trying to skimp these days. It would also seem that we are testing the rules on squatter's rights in the state of California.

It would seem that nobody bothered to allocate space for instrument manufacture. Added to this was the fact that the engineering lab in the new facility is about half the size of the space in the old facility and you have problems. How do you overcome such a lack of planning:

1) You fire enough engineers so that everybody can occupy the smaller space
2) You send the used car salesman in to negotiate a lease on more of the building.
--He tells the landlord that the company will lease more space in his vacant building
--The Landlord lets you move in since the space is free anyway and you obviously need the room right now.
--You move your stuff in and then tell the landlord that you are planning on paying him in stock.
--You don't mention that the company is basically out of money and that the share price tanks every day.
--You refuse to sign the lease.
--You don't bother to move your stuff out of the lab.

Presto, you have just increased your floor space by 50% without it costing a dime. Great work. I wonder if the landlord tenant rules for evictions apply to commercial real estate.

Of course, I would expect no less of a company where the directory of finance says things like "Oh, we will pay our vendors. Just, not right now."

The Good Old Days

I may have mentioned in my last post that we are running out of money. At least that's what our SEC posting proclaimed.

It's no problem though, we just won't pay our vendors. Remember the nice new building that we moved into? We never paid the construction company that renovated the building for us. They sent the used car salesman a nasty letter wanting payment. His response was something like this:

We are currently broke, but we are trying to raise more money. We can't pay you until we do. Don't worry though, this happens a couple of times each year and we always manage to find more suckers.

The construction company sent a very nice response. In summary:

Not our problem. You signed a contract. Pay up. By the way, we are putting a lien on your assets. Have a nice day.

This is very much like the old days with the petty thief CFO. We still haven't recovered from the damage he did to our reputation.

But alas... I got paid yesterday, so they have earned my attendance for another half month.

What a stupid place to put an iceberg

So... remember the lifeboat drill? Turns out that it may be more than a drill.

When Swiper was talking about the "reorganization" of the company, he said that he hoped we would raise more funds by the end of the month so that we could move on without distractions.

So... it turns out that there is another reason for getting the fund raising finished by the end of the month - The Mecca is out of dough.

The Sarcastic Brit sent me a link to an article in one of the online biotech trade rags. It turns out that they look at the SEC filings. It also turns out that the SEC filings say that the Mecca will be out of money next month.

I'm not surprised. I am, however a little bit embarrassed because
a) I found from an article a trade rag
b) My wife had already figured it out and wasn't at all shocked or surprised.

The question is - what to do now? Maybe they will raise more money. Then again, when the music stops next time, I could find that the person without the chair is me.

It would seem that once again, the Mecca has applied their most tried and true method of managing the budget: Keep buying stuff but ignore the avalanche of invoices. Unfortunately, people start to get wise to this behavior after a few years. Some people are even quicker, and stop sending you stuff after you screw them only once or twice. Of course, it's really hard to convince the investors that you can sell machines when your vendors won't ship the parts to you because you are a bunch of dishonest weasels who don't pay the bills, but that's just my humble opinion.

Strangely enough, I got a call from a head hunter today. Apparently, there is a company down the road from the Mecca that is in need of the better part of an engineering team. Apparently, they need a VP of engineering, as well as three or four engineers. Strange, but it sounds like MNB's old company. Maybe I should apply.

For now, things continue full steam ahead at the Mecca. Do not board the lifeboats. She's unsinkable. Besides, icebergs and water are really the same stuff... right?

Lifeboat Drill

A couple of weeks ago, the Sarcastic Brit was talking to MNB, who asked him if he knew what a "lifeboat drill" was.

The Sarcastic Brit replied "I assume it's where you decide who gets to live and who drowns".

It was a strange conversation, but it made a bit more sense today.

The Mecca has this product - StupidProduct, where they sell the instrument for modest profit, and then sell consumables for $50. Unfortunately, the consumables cost $150 to make. No worries... we'll make it up on volume.

Anyway, the management at the Mecca have been trying to find a sucker... I mean buyer for this product line. Needless to say, they couldn't find somebody with a sufficient lack of common sense. So, we just kept making more of them.

Today, they announced that we would be focusing on our core product line. I have heard that announcement several times over the last year. This time however, they also announced that they were going to lay people off. Strangely enough, the only layoffs were in Engineering. It seems that MNB took the opportunity to rid himself of two engineers. Apparently, MNB really was deciding who to throw overboard. Oddly enough, I believe that with the exception of the CEO, these two engineers were the longest standing employees of the company.

I will admit that the first candidate for the sharks is a guy best known as The Sleeper. He used to sleep in his cubicle, which would be fine, except that his snoring was very disruptive. The Sarcastic Brit used to call him in order to wake him up. He was glacial at getting things done. He used to take a chair outside for his smoke breaks. He was known for never finishing ANYTHING, let alone being on time. I only worked with him on one project. I was the project manager and he was the design engineer. We got the project done on schedule. I think that it was the first project completed successfully and on schedule at the Mecca. My secret: I treated him like a human being. Apparently, that actually works. I'd better not tell MNB though, as he will likely fire me for heresy.

The other guy was what the Mad Man from Down South called "the old practical guy" (OPG). Turns out that OPG is actually a pretty decent electrical engineer, and the only guy at the Mecca who was proficient at designing circuit boards. He was actually the only practicing electrical engineer. (The Sarcastic Brit has a degree in electrical engineering but won't own up to it, as it's much more fun to change hats each week... mechanical engineer... biochemist... industrial designer...) I'm not totally sure why OPG was sacked, but I suspect that it was because MNB has somebody with the same skill set that he wants to bring in from his former company. Of course, I get the joyous task of cleaning out OPG's cubicle. Pallbearer duty... Lovely. Bring out your dead!

At the meeting, somebody made the mistake of asking how the fund raising was going. Swiper replied that we were able to raise money last year when there was none to be had, so of course we would have no problem raising more capital this year. Apparently, there are lots of interested investors. (But have any of them actually committed money?) All we have to do is stick to the company's deliverables and meet them.

At this point the foolish employee (who happens to be the reagent manufacturing lead) replied that she has seen no such list of goals and would very much love to see them. Wow... she's new at the Mecca, and it shows. I don't know where she worked before, but it sounds like a real company. Can we all go and work for them instead?

What does all of this mean? Here is my best guess:
1) The ship is sinking.
2) Throwing people overboard will lighten the ship and slow its decent into the abyss. The fact that those people would probably be more useful helping to plug the hole is irrelevant.
3) The ship will keep sinking. More bodies will be needed to go over the edge.

The only think I haven't figured out yet is whether it is going to be me or the Sarcastic Brit who goes next. Of course, the Sarcastic Brit has been there longer than me. Maybe it's first in, first out. We shall see.

In the meantime, I think that it's time to start looking a bit harder for that life jacket.

Lights Out.

It would seem that the thieves can't do nearly as much damage as the used car salesman. He noticed that a bunch of lights were on in the offices last Thursday. It was late, and not many people were around, so he took it upon himself to shut them off and save the Mecca some money on their electricity bill. Of course, he did so by flipping the breaker that controlled the power to half of the building. The half of the building that contained the freezers. The freezers containing something like $100k in newly acquired reagents, special reagents, lovingly procured, signed for by Swiper himself.

Friday morning came along, and the entire biology group spent the morning try to figure out why the alarm on every freezer was screaming at them, while the the heavy equipment in the engineering lab was fully functional. Apparently it was due to the fact that engineers are more likely to shut the lights off when they leave the room.

They probably should fire him. Of course, the last I heard the used car salesman wasn't actually getting paid. I think that he was working for toilet paper, rather than cash. I once heard it said, "If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys." So, does that mean if you pay in toilet paper you get ... Do I need to fill this in?

Is a used car salesman better than a petty thief?

The petty thief, formerly know as the CFO will have to wait for the next post. It would seem, though, his ghost still wandering the Mecca.

Only the best at the Mecca

I went in to work on Saturday morning. I know this sounds odd, seeing as how highly appreciated I feel most of the time. In fact, I didn't go in to do work. I went in to pick up some crap that I had forgotten in my office on Friday night, and to spend some time peacefully working on a presentation. (It just happens that the presentation was part of a job interview to go work for the competition. But that, as they say, is another story.)

So... armed with my shiny new RFID card, I approached the front door and swiped the card. The little light went green, and the door went click. In I went.

I had no more than entered the building when I was confronted by the alarm panel, sitting there, beeping at me to remind me that I had to feed it a code to disable the alarm.

Too bad they had given out the key cards and not bothered to give out the codes. Apparently, the used car salesman that passes for the head of finance had a spreadsheet of codes, and couldn't figure out how to send everybody their code without revealing it to the rest of the company. The solution is obviously to not send ANYBODY their code.

That's ok, I thought, I will just call the security company and tell them who I am before they call the cops. Oh right, nobody sent the info out for the alarm company either.

So... I looked at the card, ignored the alarm, and walked to my desk to look them up on the web. The alarm company's name was on the card after all.

I called the alarm company and gave them my name. Of course, I noticed that it was PRINTED ON THE CARD as well. I was surprised that they didn't put the the Mecca's address on the card for added convenience.

So, they asked me who I worked for. The Mecca didn't ring any bells. They asked me for the address. I gave it to them. Apparently, they didn't have any clients at that address. I tried the company name again. Oh... there it is. And you are? I read them my name as printed on my oh so secure security card. They gave me my code.

Fantastic. And then I laughed at them, told them that I found the card in the parking lot and would leave a nice note behind after I took all of the Mecca's stuff. Har!

I'm Back... for now

Good Evening. So much to say...

The top items for the week are:

Our security company doesn't know where our office is.
The US Postal Service doesn't know where our address is, but the mail man does, so he's looking out for us. You've gotta love the US postal service.
The fire department knows where we are. Apparently the new security system asked them to bring out the hook and ladder.
MNB: See, I didn't even threaten to fire you today.
MNB: I can't believe that he's [Swiper] run two companies. His expectations are totally unreasonable. You can't run a company on wishes.
MNB: You need to remember the rule of three. For each day vacation you want, you need to give me three business days notice. I need to be able to plan. I only have one Harbinger and one Sarcastic Brit. [I should have responded: And I bet even that's too many.]
You may have also heard that the COO needs her beauty rest.

Now... on with the show.

MNB had to have more consultants come in to tell us that we didn't know what we are doing. He actually hired some good consultants this time, and apparently the worst things they could find were that I was too defensive, and that the Sarcastic Brit was too arrogant.

Needless to say, MNB decided that he needed to take the Sarcastic Brit and I to task for it. I believe his exact words were "If you don't clean up your attitude, I will have to ask you to leave the organization." My response was to ask him why he keeps threatening to fire me, and noting the correlation between his threats and my defensiveness. He was confused. Apparently, asking me to leave the organization is not the same as firing me.

The next day, MNB asked me to come into Swiper's office, and handed me a bunch of shares as a reward for good work in helping to make the first commercial shipments happen. Of course, they have a one year vesting period. Maybe the Mecca will still be around in a year. Maybe MNB won't have made good on his threats. Oh well, I can always use free toilet paper. I do not know if the Sarcastic Brit got the same thing. If he didn't it would have been a crime. (He too appreciates a good -that would be free - roll of TP every now and then.) If he's reading now... I was told not to tell anybody... even my best friend. I don't remember any mention of Sarcastic Brits in there though. Nothing like a reward that's not made public. Makes me feel ashamed for doing a good job.

"Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning."

This week, when the Sarcastic Brit had his one on one meeting with MNB, what I like to call "the weekly whipping", MNB told him that he could be "the most evil manager ever." What would possess somebody to say that type of thing to an employee? Can you say harassment? Of course, I was ready for my weekly whipping, which occurs one day later. I was going to point out that the only power he had over me was firing me. I didn't get my chance.

Unfortunately, MNB worked really hard at being civil during my whipping. He asked me if I was having a problem with anybody. I'm not sure what that was supposed to mean. Perhaps I have made some new enemies that I don't know about. If so, it's news to me. He finished the meeting by noting that he didn't even threaten to fire me, and then accused me of giving him a complex. Funny, he keeps threatening to fire me. And HE's the one developing the complex?

Scary how easy it was to find this blog when searching for the "Sleep well Wesley" quote. It came up number 4. Perhaps I should make it unsearchable by Google. I hope that Swiper and MNB are not Princess Bride fans!

Hijacked

No, he's not been abducted by aliens, just getting ready for vacation.

He says there's not much going on at the mecca which is definitely the truth. With a COO who delays a shipment so she can get her beauty rest what could possibly be happening?

Maximize the Chaos

Greetings,

I am sorry to say that it has been over two weeks since I last wrote anything. (I feel like I am giving confession...) Anyway, the last couple of weeks have been busy at the Mecca. So busy, in fact, that I don't know where to begin.

I will start by telling you that the Mecca is now in new its new digs. However, we had some moving issues. Needless to say, the well oiled machine that is the Mecca was supposed to move last October, but couldn't quite get to it. I guess that things could have been worse.

Listing these issues will likely finish out the post.

1) Our sign is pink. Apparently despite the fact that the Mayor personally welcomed the Mecca to his city (odd, since we moved from across town), the City may tell us to take down our sign on account of it being too pink.

2) We were supposed to have a security system with lots of pretty swipe cards and crap. It turns out the leasing company we were working with decided that we didn't have enough credit for the card readers, so they rationed the keys to the early risers.

3) They held the grand opening only five days after moving in. To add to the drama, they invited a foreign head of state, who actually showed. Apparently, they tried to get the Governator as well, but the notice was too short. Perhaps he will be able to come to our closing party - Hasta la vista, baby.

4) Despite the fact that the overall size of the facility is twice the size of the old place, the engineering lab is half the size. And, they want to build product in the engineering lab.

5) The Used Car Salesman (he used to do sales, now he's the head of finance) spends hours every day fighting with the post office over what our address is. Technically, we have two, but the one he wants to use seems to show up on the other side of town when you use Google Maps.

6) The contractors are still doing renovations.

7) The fire department comes to visit routinely to tell us that we are storing our chemicals improperly, and haven't gotten all of the necessary permits. They haven't started bringing in their axes.

8) They scheduled a product shipment four days after we moved in to the new facility.

9) Apparently, nobody noticed that the building is built on a flood plain.

10) There is no loading dock. Large deliveries must be made through a patio, and down a walkway of patio stones.

Needless to say, it wasn't the best though out move ever. It is actually a nice building, but alas, having a nice building isn't going to turn the Mecca into a decent company. It's still a company who's core competency is generating press releases in order to convince investors to pony up more money.

The Sky is Falling

Greetings. Sorry for not blogging in a while, but there has been a minor lack of stupidity at the Mecca. I think that what is actually happening is that I have been burying my head in the sand and trying to get work done. I have been marginally successful.

Where to start? We shipped our first instrument for real money at the Mecca last week. We even managed to get a press release out of it. Apparently, the original draft of the press release very heavily stressed the fact that we had passed the safety approvals. The Biotech Mecca - our stuff is guaranteed not to electrocute, maim or otherwise incapacitate or kill our customers. It would have been an bonny press release. But alas, MNB had them tone down the lack of death and destruction aspect. Pity.

So... you've shipped an instrument. The only problem is that you're not sure that it works. You think that it works, but you don't have any good data out of it yet. You have some excellent, although pretty much irrelevant data for a sample that
was specifically designed to work except under the most hopeless of cases. So, you know that the thing more or less works. The problem is that every time you try to run the type of samples that customers might be willing to pay real money for, something goes wrong. People all of a sudden are rendered incapable of doing things like sticking a piece of tape onto the top of the sample.

Our outstanding biologists at the Mecca knew that they had about one week to figure out how to tune these instruments for real samples. They have had three or four instruments sitting around for the better part of a month, but have never managed to run more than the kindergarten samples. It started to dawn on people that our first customers would want to run more than the kindergarten stuff that has no scientific value, but that was only late last week. At that point, MNB issued the edict that the Sarcastic Brit or I had to observe the start of every run to make sure that the biologists were not doing anything funny, and try to ensure that things would work well enough to get sufficient real samples to tune the instrument. No meaningful data were generated last week. The runs were beautiful, but alas their boss hadn't mentioned that it was time to leave the sand table behind.

I don't think that I've mentioned the our service engineer and applications scientist (boy is that an exaggeration of his abilities) are boarding a plane for the Far East on Saturday morning. Too bad they still don't know what settings they need to put into the instrument get coax decent data out of it.

So, I was asked to ensure that we can get two decent runs out of the instruments before I go home tonight. The service engineer, who generally gets into work at about 7:30am to beat the traffic was still there at 6:45 pm. We were tweaking the instrument to get the best data possible out of it. The Chihuahua (small, nippy, nasty biologist) was attempting to dispense the samples. She was screwing it up, and looking for ways to make it not her fault. Her boss (Jaba) was hanging around, as well as one of the senior biologists. My cell phone rings. It's my wife. She asks me where I am. I reply that I am at work. She asks me why. I calmly tell her that I am still at work because the sky is falling. She says Oh. In that case, you are getting takeout for supper. I'll see you with the food.

Now... we have one more day to finalize the parameters for running our first customers samples. No pressure. Everybody is scared that it's going to go to hell at our first installation for a paying customer. MNB is hurling threats, promises, and anything else he can to convince the Sarcastic Brit and I to keep the train on the tracks. The Biologists have sat on instruments for weeks, not getting the information we need to be able to actually convince a paying customer that we have a clue, and now, we have to pull the rabbit out of the hat.

MNB has a fondness for acronyms. One of his favourites is PFA. That would be pulled from ass. That is where our parameters will come from. I just hope that whoever ends up pulling them is feeling lucky. Maybe I should tell our service engineer to smash all of the optics and plead shipping damage to buy some more time. Unfortunately the stellar biologists at the Mecca would most likely just use it for more crayon and finger paint time.

The paycheck is not important. Go about your business.

Greetings. I must apologize for not blogging more, but things haven't been quite as utterly stupid lately. I can almost believe that the Mecca is a viable company, and that we will make it. Then, I take stock of things and think that I must be REALLY crazy.

The competent accountant finishes his last day on Monday. He was the guy who did the payroll. That made him the canary in the coal mine. I used to ask him routinely - Are we going to get paid this week? His answer was always, "I'm still here, aren't I? When the money's gone, so am I." Needless to say, I have to question the state of the Mecca's finances. My understanding is that it's not that bad... and they haven't cut my pay recently, so that's a good sign.

What scares me is that the accountant did all of the things that made it worth my while to go to work. He did the payroll, administered the benefits, and made sure that, in general, Swiper and his crew of merry backstabbers didn't treat the employees in a fashion that violated too many labor laws. With the accountant leaving, the Accountant that does the SOX compliance (or not... as the case may be) will be doing payroll. Yikes. He is always out back doing business in Spanish on his cell phone. If you walk in on him when he's holding a private teleconference in the meeting room, he scuttles like a cockroach. When things get really bad, he resorts to using really bad English in order to make you think that he's too dumb to be up to something. Not the kind of guy I want responsible for making sure I get paid, and can therefore pay my own creditors.

The "Director of Finance" is a used car salesman that feels it necessary to shake your hand every time he talks to you. (Let me tell you that grows tiresome really quickly. He drives a gigantic truck with Florida plates (does he commute in to California?). Moreover, he takes up four parking spaces with this monster truck that he supposedly "inherited" from his brother. Ironically, I asked him why he was running Florida plates one day, and the story terminated in his inquiring as to my interest in buying the thing. As I said, he really is a used are salesman.

The HR functions are going to be handled by the "Executive Assistant". This is the replacement for the Horsie Princess. I actually like the Horsie princess much better than this woman. She keeps bragging to the Dragon lady about how she "Married herself a white boy". She is Latino... which I didn't think was that far from "white", but apparently, being a Canuck, I am not cultured in such things. I really don't care about her white husband, or white kids the she brags about. However, it would be really nice if she would answer the phone when she is supposed to be working the switchboard. Too bad she's too busy flirting with all of the senior managers. (That would be men and women.) If you are a VP, she has all the time in the world for you. If you are low level scum, she can't even be bothered to talk to you. My desk is literally one cubicle from the front desk, and yet she will call me two or three times in fifteen minutes to come and get packages when they come in. If they are offending her so much, she could bring them over. Needless to say, I don't see any useful HR functions being filled there.

Then, there is the fact that Flyboy will end up taking on a bunch of the accountant's shipping duties. That would be fine, except MNB keeps threatening to fire him. Of course, I should probably talk to MNB, as Flyboy supposedly reports to me. I should probably feel upset about my boss threatening my employee all the time. Unfortunately, It just makes me feel relieved, it means that MNB can get his threats out of his system before he runs into me.

In short, the guy who does everything useful (at least as far as the things that are important to me... like getting paid) has quit. There has been no real plan to replace him, and everybody who is supposed to be taking up his duties is either lazy, incompetent, or likely to be sacked for no good reason.

It all seems to be running fine, until you take a good look under the hood.

Welcome Back

I have been back from vacation for two days. I haven't quit yet. That is good, I guess. But, it was a close thing.

MNB told me that I had to create unpacking instructions for the instrument, and that they had to be done for a meeting at three o'clock that afternoon. I will admit that I wasn't sure who I was writing the instructions for, as the equipment would be installed by our service engineer, who is actually competent and doesn't need me to tell him how to take the instrument out of the box.

At about noon, MNB came by my desk and told me that if I didn't have the document finished in time for the meeting, he would kick me out of the meeting. Of course none of the other guys had finished their stuff for the meeting, and they knew about it a week ago. I mentioned to MNB that I thought it was a bit unfair that he give me so little notice.

His response was "I sent you an email before you left for vacation. It was in the meeting invite. Check it now."

So, as MNB waited impatiently while I dug up the meeting invitation. I looked at the invite, and noticed that there was only one task on that list, which was order the crates. I told MNB "The only thing on this list for me is to order the crates. They have been here for over a week. No mention of the packing instructions. Do you wish to continue playing this game?"

His response was "No."

The meeting of infamy happened, and sure enough, despite the short notice, I was closer to finished than anybody else. He didn't kick anybody else out of the meeting though. After the meeting, I pointed out that he had scheduled the meeting over our weekly one on one meeting (which is really just a scheduled chance to threaten and insult me). He told me that he had already spent enough time with me today, and he knew what I was working on. No other interaction was necessary.

Thanks. Of course he did finish up by saying "Welcome back. We missed you." Really, he must have meant that he missed having a punching bag around. Either that, or he's getting soft.

We shall see. It's good to be back. Well... not really, now that you mention it.

The Official Airline of the Biotech Mecca

Greetings.

I apologize for the hiatus, but I have been back in the homeland (that would be Canada), renewing my driver's license. Apparently, my old license has expired, and if I let it go for too long, I will have to start back at the beginning, should I ever want to return home. If you really want to know... read this. Of course, I don't know why I would ever consider such an action, seeing as how loved I am at the Mecca, and how well the company is doing.

In any case, I decided to return back to the land of ice and snow (No... not Washington DC, although I did end up there.) I booked my flights based on the cheapest flights that I could find on the days that I wanted them. I didn't pay attention to who was offering the flights. Strange, I had forgotten my experience going to Maui, where they sat us on a plane for eight hours and gave us half a lousy can of pop (or Soda if you will). On the way home, our single connection in Chicago was canceled due to weather. They told me on the phone that we would connect in Dallas. I KNOW that is what they said. Once we were on the plane, I found out that it was really DULLES (as in Washington DC), but they omitted the fact that the plane was also stopping for four hours in LA, and we had to get off. In any case, that bit of mayhem was brought to us by United Airlines. Apparently, I am not the only one who thinks poorly of them.

There was a certain musician that had a dispute with them over mishandling his guitar. After a year of fighting with them, he posted a song on the internet. It made the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) six o'clock news. Then, it made Fox news. Then, all of a sudden, United decided that they would pay him for the guitar. I have included the link to the original song, as well as a related post, that is even more funny.

United Breaks Guitars

Response to United Breaks Guitars

In any case, I found myself humming this song last night in Buffalo airport. This was shortly after phoning my wife and announcing that I was almost home. After all, I had cleared customs and security. That was the hardest part. Right?

Our flight was supposed to board at 7:00 pm EST, and leave at 7:30. At 7:20 I noticed a distinct lack of airplane at the gate. Funny, even one of those little Embraer commuter jets is hard to hide. Also, there was the lack of person at the gate.

Finally, somebody asked. Strangely enough, I think that United is run by Swiper's cousin (or maybe Swiper himself.) Apparently, they never updated the monitor or rerouted anybody because they didn't realize that the aircraft was sitting on the tarmac of an airport hundreds of miles away in Washington DC. Maybe they could have looked out the window and noticed the lack of aircraft. What about the passengers from that flight? Perhaps they were kidnapped by aliens. Space aliens, not the illegal kind. Or, are space aliens also illegal? Sorry... you can blame the computer glitch on that one too.

Of course, the problem was weather related, as the flight attendant couldn't get to the airport due to the weather. No other flights were canceled that day, however. Then the angry mob began to form. By the time I got to the front of the line, the ticketing agent was too busy complaining about the whining woman with no money and a three year old son that was going to have to sleep in the Buffalo airport because United Airlines was too poor to pay for a hotel room. After all, it was the weather's fault that their flight attendant went on a bender and couldn't make it in to work. That poor woman with the kid should have made contingency plans. At this point, I asked if I could get a new ticket should I get stuck in bad weather driving to the airport. That got me sent off to DC too late to catch my connector. I also noticed the cops coming to hang around the counter. They were obviously on break, fondling their weapons.

In the end, United did pay up for the hotel room in DC. That poor woman with the young child in Buffalo... She probably slept in the airport. I'm sure that my friend at the ticketing counter didn't try to find her a warm bed for the night.

I made it to San Francisco about ten hours late. Of course, United had to call my home at 3:00 AM PST to make sure that I didn't miss my flight. Hey... wasn't I in DC? Didn't they know I was in DC, since it was their idiocy that put me there? They woke my family up. So... while I was sleeping at the DC Hilton, my family was getting crank calls from United Airlines. Nice.

The final insult was finding my luggage already at the airport. It got there before I did. How did they get my luggage there before me, since I was supposedly on the first available flight?

Apparently, United does more than just break guitars.

They told me it would work

First off, I must apologize for the length of time between postings. All I can say is that I have been busy and I will try to make up for it with an entertaining story about the CTO.

I was talking to the accountant at the Mecca last week. He's been around since the beginning. This is not the weasel accountant that does the SOX compliance, but rather the competent accountant that (thankfully) does payroll, administers the health plan, and generally does the things that actually make the company run. (If you can call it that.)

Anyway, the accountant threw out the comment that despite his wacky (unfeasible) ideas (that would have defied the laws of physics to actually work), there would be no company without the CTO. I think that I have to concede that point. He was one of the founders of the company. Of course the company's strongest skill is the ability to blow cash, so I am not sure that everybody would agree that the Mecca should have EVER existed in the first place. Regardless, it does, and I have another story of the engineering genius that is so prevalent at the Mecca.

Let us say that you have several thousand little holes that you want to dispense a very small amount of liquid into. There are basically two ways in which you can do it. The first way is to take a single needle (or a small number of independent needles) and dispense the liquid into the holes one (or a few) at a time. This is not a bad solution, provided you can fill each hole quickly enough. The other method is to dump the liquid into all of the holes at once. This has the advantage of being quick, but also the disadvantage of being much more difficult to control.

The original solution adopted by the Mecca (led by non other than Captain Fantastic) was the former. Unfortunately, he picked a machine that not only took too long to fill each hole, but couldn't do it reliably enough to fill several thousand of them. Of course that endeavor cost the company over a 1/4 million dollars, and wasted over a year while we tried to remedy the situation.

The CTO came to the rescue. I believe that his original project plan called for a solution inside of 8 or 10 weeks. This was a brand new device that was only a concept in his head. The concept was simple though, he would make a disposable array of several thousand capillaries, using the fabulous material that Captain Fantastic tried to make the sample holder from. Remember the photo-polymerized material that leaked and seemed to be incompatible with the sample? No bother, they told him that it would work.

Now a reasonable engineer would try to make an array of two, four, ten, or even 100 capillaries in order to test out the concept. Not the CTO. He knew this would work. He ordered the capillary arrays, and had his favorite engineer (a relatively competent guy, but prone to fits of sleeping in his cubicle) start on the rest of the machine. They hired a machine vision consultant to rig up a way to align the capillaries to the sample holder. It was all so simple.

Each capillary had a volume equal to the desired well volume. All you have to do is dip the array of capillaries into the sample, and it will pick up the liquid. The first miscalculation was that the space between the capillaries was roughly the same as the space inside of the capillaries. Of course that means that you will pick up lots of extra sample that will go pretty much anywhere, but where you actually want it. Apparently, this behavior was completely unanticipated and incomprehensible. Naturally, myself, the Sarcastic Brit, and the Mad Man from Down South were neither consulted nor welcome to offer our opinions on the matter.

No matter, they would dip the holder in mineral oil first and fill all of the capillaries. Then, they would use air pressure to blow the oil out of the "real" capillaries, and dip the array into the sample. From there, the sample would be ejected via an air stream and land in each of the holes in the sample carrier. It sounds easy. They missed a few things.

First of all, I remember making peashooters as a kid. Somebody had the bright idea to make a peashooter Gatling gun by taping a couple of dozen straws together and putting the peas in each. By blowing on all of them at once, you could pepper your victim with projectiles. It didn't work. You would get one or two peas out, and then no matter how hard you blew, all of the air would come out of the unblocked holes. Something about about pressure differentials and mumbo-jumbo that doesn't apply to the CTO of a company as grand as the Biotech Mecca.

Of course, this issue was brought up on many occasions, and always the CTO had "several ways to deal with it". Of course, they all involved differential air pressure and no way to block the empty capillaries and allow the others to see sufficient pressure to eject.

The other issue was one of the difficulty in making thousands of very small, perfect tubes using a bulk process. This meant that the tubes that did eject often missed the holes they were intended to fill.

The CTO chalked all of these problems up to the machine vision being too inaccurate. He brought the machine vision guy in again. I have no idea how much that guy charged, but we paid him as a consultant, and he worked full time at the mecca for six months. (So much for the 8 week project.) Strangely, each improvement in the vision system brought nearly no improvement in filling the holes with sample. A sane (or technically competent) person would have figured out by now that the problem was in the basic premise for how the thing was supposed to work. Not the CTO, he still felt that he was one machine vision miracle away from solving all of the Mecca's problems.

After nearly a year of wasting vast amounts of money, Swiper finally decided that the thing might not work, and that his CTO was merely wasting money and manpower. Did he scrap the project and get rid of the crap? No. We are paying to store it.

But, it does provide an amusing show and tell as part of the history of the Mecca. Unfortunately, new employees rarely believe the Sarcastic Brit or I when we tell all of these stories. It seems that it's too outrageous to be true.

Sleep Well Wesley

I did the unthinkable yesterday - I stood up to MNB. I told him that veiled threats were not useful, and that if he wanted to fire me, he should probably just do it. I told him that constant tantrums were definitely not the way to get the best out of his engineers, and that he should try a different tactic. We were all in this together after all.

I also made a point of asking him where I fit in the organization. He spent entirely too long thinking before giving me a line of crap which basically meant that he couldn't think of anything meaningful to say.

It's strange. You would think that my level of paranoia would increase, when every interaction with my boss contains thinly veiled threats. After my discussion with him yesterday, I am no longer worried. I know what is going to happen, and strangely enough MNB told me a whole bunch of things that I am sure he didn't realize.

1) He told me that he wasn't afraid to fire people. I take that to mean that he ENJOYS firing people. As I said in a previous post, he would like to deep six the Sarcastic Brit and Myself, but he doesn't figure he can get away with it.

2) He is the only member of his family without a graduate degree. But, he has brothers who have doctorates from Oxford. What that tells me is that he hates people with graduate degrees because his brother probably lords his academic achievements over his head. No wonder he hates the Sarcastic Brit so much. The Sarcastic Brit also has the Oxford pedigree.

3) He only wants people doing what they were "trained to do". Only mechanical engineers can use CAD, only electrical engineers can design circuits. That tells me that he has a hard time picking up new skills and can't believe that people (especially young people) can be good at more than one thing.

4) He is a very good manager. People follow him from when he changes companies. This tells me that he is incapable of hiring new people, probably because he isn't a good enough judge of talent, and he can't inherit a team because he is unable to trust the guys who were there before him and don't owe him their loyalty. In short, he is unable to earn the respect or loyalty of others. He would rather just move his old team. It's easier.

5) He keeps telling me how expendable I am. Oddly enough, I have never said that I am indispensable. I am neither that arrogant nor that stupid. He also told me that he doesn't lose sleep at night over whether I will quit or not. The fact that he keeps telling me that indicates to me that he has some issues over my employment being terminated. I am not sure if it's because he wants to fire me and can't or if he figures that he's screwed if the Sarcastic Brit and I leave.

6) He is a pathetic man, working for a pathetic company. He is a bully who can't lead an engineering team that was functioning fine before he arrived. His boss is a weasel who convinced the EWA that she would be his pawn if she were made COO, so he pulled some strings to make it happen. She then screwed EWA and showed her true allegiance (only to herself). Her boss, in turn, is a fictional character that steals things from little Mexican girls and their friends. Need I say more? (Sorry for recycling that one, but I just enjoy it too much). MNB's behavior has only convinced me that my leaving the Mecca is inevitable. The only thing that worries me is that I won't get the chance to quit before he fires me. Sleep well Wesley. You have done a fine job today. I shall most likely kill you in the morning.

Fantastic!

The Sarcastic Brit has been working diligently on the new sealing method for our sample holder. This brought on a visit from the host of projects past. Somehow, I never remember how brilliant people were. At least not at the Mecca. Perhaps that is because the inexplicably stupid seems to reign supreme. Perhaps it's just the brilliant engineering doesn't make for very good stories.

Back in the early days(before we realized how bad Captain Fantastic actually was), I remember having many discussions regarding the sealing film that had to go over the sample to prevent evaporation. Our sample is mostly water, which boils at 100C, last I checked. We are heating it to 95 degrees, which is pretty close to boiling. For those of you not keeping track, that means that the the water vapor is exerting nearly an atmosphere (15PSI) worth of pressure on the inside of the sample holder. In addition, there is a bunch of air dissolved in the sample, which is good for an additional 5PSI, or so - I don't remember the exact numbers. When you work it all out, you get a total of about 20 pounds per square inch pushing from the inside of the sample holder.

Captain Fantastic didn't see this as a problem. Apparently, the fact that each well in the sample holder was only 0.0001 square inches meant that the sealing film would definitely hold. After all, that means that each well only sees 0.0015 pounds (or about 0.7 g) of pressure meant that there was no way that the glue would fail to hold.

Strangely enough, every other instrument uses a great big plate to hold the film to the top of their sample holders, with hundreds of pounds of pressure. Apparently, Captain Fantastic forgot to count the wells. The design called for 33,000 of them in the sample holder. By my math, even at 0.0015 square inches per well, works out to 52 pounds of force pushing on a 3.5 by 5 inch piece of tape.

Not only that, but people use hot water vapor to remove adhesive. They rent things called wallpaper strippers. Hmmm... steam. How about removing stamps from envelopes? Hmmm... steam. I bet that hot steam would be pretty effective at removing the adhesive from the top of the sample holder too.

We mentioned this to Captain Fantastic, and he started going on about "peel" stress, and how the glue was really strong in tension, but not in "peel". As far as I have been able to determine, there is no such thing as "peel force". And, of course, the plastic blew off the sample holder the first time we tried it.

It was OK though, both the Captain and Slimy Indian Barbapapa were convinced that the glue would hold. The CTO was backing them up. We must have tried fifty glues of various types. It should have been no problem to find a glue that was transparent, chemically inert, non-fluorescent, and able to give a totally airtight bond capable of withstanding 20PSI of hot water vapor. Of course, we never found one. Every now and then, however, I am asked why the instrument is designed as it is. My response is always "because the glue will hold of course."

As an interim solution, I found a way to hold the seal on a sample holder 1/6 the size. That means that I only had to push down with about 50 pounds of force. No problem, right? And, it had to be designed to fit into the instrument without significant modifications, and it had to be finished in less than three weeks. No problem. Not impossible, but definitely improbable. I accomplished the improbable. Did I get a medal for fixing another one of Captain Fantastic's spectacular derailments? Nah - nobody even noticed that there was ever a problem.

Hard to kill

Greetings!

It has been quite some time since I have written, what with the impossible schedules at work, and the extra effort of trying (in vain) to find a job with a company that doesn't suck. At this point, I would settle for a company not run by a fictional character that steals things from little girls.

It seems that MNB may be finding that several members of his engineering team resemble Steven Seagal - that is they are hard to kill.

First, I would like to relate a discussion between myself and the Fearful COO.

COO: How are you doing.
Harbinger: Still here.
COO: Where else would you be? You NEED to be here!
Harbinger: The only reason why I am here is because there is too damned much snow in the mountains to drive back to Canada.
COO: Why ever would you say such a thing?
Harbinger: Perhaps my boss extolling the virtues of being fired has something to do with it.
COO: What do you mean? Surely you are taking it out of context.
Harbinger: Really? I don't think so.
COO: Tell me exactly what he said.

After I told her, she went white. That's pretty tricky for somebody who isn't Caucasian, but she managed.

Two days later, I was called into MNB's office.
MNB: Do you take everything I say seriously?
Harbinger: Shouldn't I?
MNB: You know I hear what you say. It gets back to me... I have sources.
Harbinger: Oh yeah. (Thinking - only what I want to get back to you).
MNB: Have you ever taken a project management course?
Harbinger: Not a real one.
MNB: You should find a course at UC Berkley or Stanford. The company will pay for it.

I would love to know what was said between the COO and MNB. Alas, I am sure that I never will know.

Next, MNB tried to get rid of the enlightened one. I have since been told that the Enlightened one is now my problem. Seems he too is somewhat hard to get rid of. Apparently, MNB didn't count on the fact that the Enlightened one has known the Fearful COO for over a decade, and that she was the person who brought him in to consult in the first place.

Finally, MNB told the Sarcastic Brit that he was being obstructionist, and that he was either with MNB or against him. And... if the Sarcastic Brit were against him he would be replaced very quickly. That sounds like a threat to me. I would advise the Sarcastic Brit to tell the COO about it, but alas, I wouldn't want MNB to think that he was powerless to fire any of his engineers. That would take all of the joy from his life.

Apparently, he didn't realize just how dysfunctional the Biotech Mecca really is. Maybe they are keeping his old job for him. I doubt it though, as he has already poached three staff members to come work at the Mecca. Replacements for people he isn't allowed to fire?