thebaldgeek

It’s hard to believe almost…..a whole week has past since I finished up at work.
Lets just look at the week and see whats been going on….

Thursday morning we had an nice smoko for me at work, all the guys were there. The boss made a short speech and presented me with a camera bag on behalf of the Engineering department. I said a few words and that was that.
Friday was a nice day, it was about the best you could hope for. A few little things to work on in the morning, and then Dan, Nick and I had lunch over the road. The afternoon was taken up with the last minute things like handing over my keys and the like.
Nick and I had some time to finish things up. Sadly the HR department could not arrange an exit interview for me in the 4 weeks that I gave as  notice. (I think I now understand why the exit interview is important, after 18 years I felt I had a few things to say and its very frustrating not having had the chance to be heard. I feel that I have ‘unfinished’ business at the Hospital, I feel a little dissatisfied and uncomfortable with how things finished up….I think the exit interview would have closed things up nicely.)

One last look around the office and I walked out for the last time. I am not going to go back. I will catch up with Nick over a few cans at his house, but I don’t want to go back into the basement again. I just want to make a clean break.

That afternoon I rode to Melbourne. Was a good ride and a needed escape from work. I had a smooth run on the ring road so got to Gordon’s feeling pretty good.
He had a nice long list of computer issues that he wanted me to look at, so over a beer or two we worked our way down the list, it was great having something to focus on and the usual joking and teasing that goes on was a heap of fun.
The next day was the usual church in Melbourne.
I ended up not going home as planed from church, but instead went back to Godon’s and staid the night there.
Sunday was a smooth run home the back way, stopping now and then for some photos. (Will be the last time I get to ride that road).

Had about 1/2 hour sleep Sunday afternoon before Dan picked me up and we went out to Gary’s.
A super night followed. It’s always a blast when the three of us get together. Got some great photos of Gary’s house in the moonlight. Dan does a great impersonation of a deep south Yanke getting abducted by UFO’s and the usual Linux / Windows bashing took place while we dubbed 8mm videos to DVD.

Got about 4 hours sleep and came home to start stripping the study.
4 days latter and I am still stripping the study!!!!

The rack is out, the telescope is down, the weather station is down, we are almost there.
With a pile of stuff we intend to pack in the lounge, finally things are getting to the point where I almost beleive that I am not going back to work in the basement (it had felt like a week off work to rewire the house or some such) and that we are really moving to the other side of the planet…….. Excitement is in the air!

Thats about the week. Just a whole lot of packing and sorting going on.
The packers arrive on Wednesday, its vital we be ready for them, so we are going hard till then. If we get done on Monday, its a bonus, if we get done on Sunday, its a double bonus, but there is no slacking off till we have it all sorted, inventoried and priced (for shipping insurance).

A long blog, but its been a ‘long’ week.

On thing that I have been really overwhelmed with is just how positive everyone has been.
Everyone I have spoken with about the move has been so positive, I have found this really, really encouraging.
The amazing thing is that there is no way each person would know what any one else has said, I’m the only one that has the total picture. Its been really helpful for me to know that everyone is happy and excited for me and the family.
Its a big move, there is lots to be nervous and stressed about, but I am just so overwhelmed with the fact that everyone that knows me is right there behind me. Lots of comments about how good I will be at the job, how excited they are for me, many have said that they are jealous of my opportunity.

My point is this, just ‘one’ person being positive can make a big difference.

Thanks to everyone for all your words of encouragement and support.

Eighteen years and three months. As Freddy pointed out, thats almost 1/2 my life….. When we started here, there were 2 serial controllers (LC4’s) and 2-3 racks of digital I/O (B1’s). Now, the whole joint just humms with Opto22 gear. 14 controllers, over 100 racks and thousands of points of I/O.
Amazingly I have known the guy that first ‘picked’ Opto22 for the hospital automation for years, but never knew that he made the choice till about 2 weeks ago. What an amazing train of events has led me here, to this blog, to reflect back on the past 18 years.

I have lots of memories, and the nice thing is that they are ‘all’ good. Sure, there has been some low points, but most of them were self inflicted, so I cant point the finger at any one other than me to say that I had a bad day because of them.

The shear amount of Opto22 gear that we have installed, configured, programed and tuned would have to be the highlight. Its good stuff (and no, they did not pay me to say that!) Remember, I have been on my own the bulk of that time, so its not like it was much of a social job, FactoryFloor and ioProject are my friends that I know well.

Watching it grow and seeing the plant come alive on the graphics screen has been great. I have always enjoyed automating things, so it was a great job for me. Getting involved in the IT side of things has been fun, learning about networking under Dan was a real highlight. Working with the architects and contractors has been interesting. Getting involved with planing and building a 6 story hospital block was intense. So was commissioning it! I think I wore out a pair of shoes getting it done! (~180 SNAP-PIDV modules over the 7 floors (basement had a few) had a learning curve that has now flat lined).
We talked about web pages and touch screens for the users back in 2002, and its just happening now, about 3-4 weeks from now, the first of many touch screens will go in, at least I got to do the programming for it.

We have gone from Paragon, to Paragon NT, to Cryano to Factory Floor to ioProject, thats MSDOS to Win95, Win98, WinXP and some Linux file servers thrown in for ‘fun’. The first controllers were serial, then Arcnet, then Ethernet. From our own network to piggybacking on the IT network and infrastructure.
I think you get the point, 18 years has seen a lot of changes and different thinking go under the bridge.

The past 3 years with Nick have been great, I have really enjoyed the brainstorming sessions we have had, I had not known it, but I have really missed throwing ideas around with someone……no one, and I mean no one, other than Nick, knows what I do (what I did!), what we go though to do it down here all this time. I always wanted to someone to know, and when Nick came up to speed, it was better than I imagined.

I still wish that ‘management’ took the time to try and understand what we do. No one is irreplaceable but they just don’t get the fact that we program the computer that runs the joint. They can pay the surgeons and managers all they like, but one ‘opps’ here in the little office in the basement and all those high paying staff would walk out and the place would grind to a halt. Not bragging, just stating facts. You cant open the windows anywhere, turn the heating on and it would be 40°C in no time! Do that and watch all those high paid, ‘important’ people do their job then! Now that they are back to only one guy that knows the system, they are exposed again like they were when it was just me.
My point is simple, its important, on really big jobs, that more than one person knows how it all works…..

Anyway, its an odd feeling leaving after so long. I think the time is right, and I am really looking forward to starting at Opto22, and I am looking forward to changing rolls from ‘hard core’ programming to sales and marketing. Its going to be very exciting…….so, overall, the sadness of leaving is overwhelmed with the excitement…… Still, I suspect there will be a few tears in the bike helmet on Friday afternoon…..

180 bucks, 9 hours, 4 rides…..thats an average of 2 and 1/4 hours standing in line for each 50 second ride. One ride was 25 seconds……
None of us really enjoined it.

We stood in line for 2 and 1/5 hours for the X2. What a piece of over marketed garbage! I hope that the designer got fired! It was so rough! I had to clamp my mouth shut so my teeth would not vibrate out. To add salt into the wound, it has just been given a 10 million dollar refurbish. I am so glad that I did not get to ride the original X!!!! It was popular because we rode it the day after it opened I guess, hence the long wait. It will be interesting (not) to read some reviews and see what the popular consensuses is about the ride after all that money has been spent on it.
After that, it could only get better, and it sort of did.
Standing in line for another 2 hours saw us ride the Viper. Now thats a roller coaster, nice and smooth, no getting smashed to bits, nice loops. All over in about 54 seconds, but at least you walk away smiling.
From there we did the Superman escape. It was ok, it was the shortest of the rides at 25 seconds. I don’t remember feeling weightless for so long (pity really).
From there it was over to Tatsu. This is one weird coaster. You get in sitting down, but then they rotate it so you are horizontal (your feet are clamped in as well), then you do the whole ride like that, head first, inside and outside loops, it was really neat and super!

That was it. That was 9 hours. We ate lunch while standing in line, so there was no time lost.
All the standing on line and getting banged up in the X2 has left me with some pretty cranky hips and leg muscles, I have a pretty solid limp at the moment, not a lot of fun, I hope it works its way out asap, I have been doing a lot of streaching to try and get it sorted.

Note to self (and you lot), DO NOT do amusement parks on a public holiday!

We spent an enjoyable Monday morning with Steve and Karrie and the kids. (Oh, and Sunday night we watched ‘P.S I love you’, the girls loved it, the guys put up with the girls loving it).
We installed blinds in the rooms, weeded the vegi garden, planted his fruit trees, installed the closet cloths racks and just generally did stuff. Since we don’t have a house to do stuff with, its fun to help them.
Monday afternoon we had a super smooth fast run home. (i.e the holiday weekend traffic nightmare did not show).

I have given up on the computer and have gone back to the old hard drive, its not the best, but I hope in a day or so I can get it a little more sorted. I am going to see if I can get the sound working and look at running Windows in a virtual machine with this old version. (Im still keen to only run the one PC for both Linux and Windows). Anyway, just letting yous all know the status of the computer (aka, still not happy).

Yes, I know the blog has been down for 2 days, its hosted by a company in Australia, not me or Dan, its just another reason why I have gone back to my old hard drive, the blog was working on there.
Sooner I can get it up and running, sooner I can transfer the site from Dan (and the flaky blog hoster) to my PC and have things the way they were.

So, that was our first long weekend in America……. they can only get better from here!