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.

Are all Wall Street Analysts loudmouthed braggarts? (Part 2)

So... the Evil Wall Street Analyst has come and kicked some butt. After much butt kicking, the following events happened:

1) Slimy Indian Barbapapa has been removed as head of Biology. He hasn't been fired though... he's too slimy for that.
2) The CTO (who couldn't engineer his way out of a wet paper bag) with a chainsaw has been sacked. Perhaps it was because he was useless. Or perhaps he was a crazy a**hole who was fond of screaming "chicken sh*t" during meetings.
3) The petty thief CFO (who couldn't balance a check book) was fired.
4) Jaba was hired.

I was invited out for beer with EWA, Jaba, my Boss, and the scared COO.

It always amazes me how deep the bullsh!t gets piled when people consume even a couple of beers. Apparently, the acts listed above were all that were needed to solve the company's problems. It didn't matter that the CEO was still a liar, that the COO was scared of the CEO, or that the senior management is still unable to make a decision and stick to it. (Even ordering lunch appears to be a problem.) Perhaps, if the specifications stopped changing, we could build an instrument... but I digress.

It seems also that the CTO and CFO were fired on my say so. WOW, I wield a lot of power. Why do I constantly feel that I am speaking to the wall? Why did I have to lobby for a month to fire a consultant who feels that it's fine to come in to work between the hours of three and six in the morning, and also vehemently believes that pneumatic actuators provide more force when held upright than they do if you flip them upside down? Of course, this guy also believes that a proper vacuum seal should use a nice soft, rubber gasket. Really? Apparently, the perveyors of O-rings are conducting the largest engineering scam in the history of mankind. And to think that they almost took me in. Yet more digression.

Of course, I told EWA that I wanted to see Indian Barbapapa's head on a pike. (So that I can wave at him... like this.) Instead, it seems that Indian Barbapapa gets to keep his salary... his office... his influence... in fact, all he loses is his workload and responsibility. Some pike! It's not like he lied chronically to the CEO and board regarding the state the biology. It's not like he didn't bother to check the IP on anything. It's not like he didn't try to have everybody who was competent and question his lies unceremoniously sacked. It's not like he's key to the fact that every member of the biology team (people he hired personally) is an incompetent liar, trained by him personally. It's not like he is still trying to subvert his replacement (Jaba). Again, I digress. Needless to say, the pike has yet to be forthcoming. But, I am a patient man. EWA promised, after all. As they say, revenge is a dish best served cold.