Monday was busy as usual. The usual phone calls and some emails from last week left over from when I was away from my desk/computer at training.
Tuesday things were much the same, a little twist started to appear in the space time line of Ben just before lunch……. I got an email from the VP of Marketing at Opto inviting me to a meeting with two people from QSI. I have been teaching the OptoTerminal section on Thursdays, so did not think too much of it, little did I know.
Wednesday morning Benson (VP of Marketing) handed me a wireless battery terminal, the G-58, and asked that I get it up and running so that we could show the people from QSI, it would also give me some exposure to the G-58 which is a newish product for QSI.
Thankfully Kelly, whom you may recall is on maternity leave, had got the lion share of the application working. This is not surprising given that Kelly was the Opto guru on our QSI terminals (the G-70 and G-75). I needed to sort out some of the wireless network issues with the terminal more so than the application. I love doing this sort of thing, ‘playing’ with a new product that was wireless, had a display (close enough to color video) and linked in with Opto 22 hardware. It was a lot of work, but it was really stimulating and really interesting.
It took some sorting, and I ended up working back late for pretty much the first time since I started.
Thursday morning I finished things off, needed the IT guys help to get the network issues sorted (1 of the three wireless routers was configured differently). Did it just in time for the meeting.
It was a great meeting, went three and an half hours! Covered a lot of ground and I found it really interesting. QSI were really happy with the feedback that Benson and I could give them on some of the issues and postive things we found working with the G-58.
After the meeting Benson asked that I get the G-58 working with one of our Ethernet brains. This is something I have never done before with any of our screens…….
I stayed back to try and get it working, Benson had to have it working by Friday afternoon. I knew the phone would be ringing as usual Friday, so at least it was quiet in the evening at my desk.
I left for home about 6pm that evening with it not working.
My head was spinning on the ride home for two reasons. Firstly because I could not get it working and was not sure where to start the next morning, secondly it was announced that Kelly and Steven had given notice. They both were finishing up on Friday. Kelly of course was on maternity leave, and Steve was busy finishing up editing the latest Opto 22 video. (Video editing and filming was his primary roll).
Friday morning I called QSI and got some guidance on how to get the terminal to talk to a brain, in the past all the work I have done has been with connecting the terminal with a program running on one of our controllers….. QSI gave me a major nudge in the right direction (I was using the wrong library function…. If I am to become Kelly and become the goto guy in Opto for the terminals, I have a lot to learn!!) and I got it running before lunch. Post lunch we cleaned it up and then the rest of the afternoon got lost in getting it all working on Bensons laptop.
I got home the usual time Friday evening.
It was a big week. I have a lot to learn about programming the displays. I am really looking forward to that. It seems I am going to keep teaching Thursday’s class for a long time to come…. Looking forward to that too. I would love to get involved in the video editing and filming, but know that I am a better resource to have on the phone doing the application engineering than being out in a back room with an eyeball stuck to a camera. Its a small but significant shift for me, I am used to being in the back room (basement if you like) on my own, but I am finding that more often than not over here, I am in a room of people, some time among them, sometimes in front of them. The really interesting thing is that I find myself willingly making that choice. Those that know me will understand why it was a huge week for me, and a lot of other people, at Opto this week.