here’s life

Well, my desk is done. After a couple weeks I am finally finished. It swallowed 3 twelve foot 2×4’s, two 1×4’s, two hinges and some glue and screws. Then to top it off, 19 suction cups and six 20″x20″ pieces of tempered glass. It turned into more of a kluge than I was hoping for, but I went ahead and varnish/stained the awkward thing anyway and I am please with the result. My cable modem and router are suction cupped under the monitors. Their blinking lights reflect off the glass and are visible, even though they are out of sight.

Now I have to clean up (with the vacuum I bought) and rearrange my furniture. I found a Lazy-Boy(R) recliner, which will nicely supplement my couch in seating accommodations. It is in pretty good shape; needed some cleaning, and some kid used a Sharpie on the seat. But with the help of some solvents, I hope to remove that.

On a different note, I went to a small group meeting this evening. They were in Exodus 20 and discussed the 10 commandments and how the law relates to our current grace-driven faith. Some good points were brought up.

Life at work continues unabated. I go to class and work hard at staying awake for the first couple hours of lecture. I am not learning anything earth-shaking, but it will be helpful. Sometimes it is really frustrating to try to make the program do something, and have this feeling that the programmers could have so easily made it so it would work. And other programmers have, why don’t we use their stuff? (But we are doing 3D solids now, and that is fun.) And then on break, if I am not walking around eating an apple, I surf the web, and when I go to use a mouse gesture or open a new tab, I realize my dependence on better technology. I haven’t tried installing FireFox yet…I wonder if it would work, and if it would be a problem…
So, since I have work in a few hours I must go to bed.

I have been in class all week, learning the ins and outs of the CAD program my company uses. The current version has had many improvements since it was first implemented about 10 years ago. In the next room, students are learning the next version, which we hear is less mature, but easier to learn and use. Why are they paying me for three weeks to learn a program that is several years past it’s prime? Inertia. There is so much data in this format that needs to be maintained, and so many expensive computers that run it, they can’t afford to make a switch over…yet. They say they’ll make the change in a year and a half, but they have been saying that for a while. And as I get better at the program, I see that it is not as hard to use as it first seemed, and is actualy pretty powerful for what it was designed to do.

However, since the advent of newer, better and cheaper CAD systems, nearly anybody can try out their ideas for the configuration feasibilitiy using a CAD program and test if their designs are sound structuraly using an FEA program. And for number crunching, they could just write their own scripts. And when they are ready to move into the physical, materials are much more sophisticated and much cheaper than they were 25 years ago. And if you need computer control, there is so much more to be had. For example, this on-going robotics project started in 1967 and had various ranges of success over the next 20 years. In the early 80’s they got carbon fiber, now easily had by every design team. Their computing systems also progressed over the years, giving them the ability to test out designs before they built them. Often, the difference betweeen a working and non-working design is just a few variables. Which can easily be “brute forced”, using today’s computing power to cut-and-try until a solution is found. There might not be more ideas surfacing now than 25 years ago, but the good ones are easier to pluck from the haystack of bad ideas.
So, go out and make the world a better place! Don’t wait for the big companies to do it for you, they have too much legacy baggage to take advantages of all the advances of the current technology and infrastructure.