Die Buchwalds

My previous ideas regarding time-dilation have failed to manefest super powers within me. While I’m not completely surprised about this, I am a little disappointed that I cannot actually shoot lasers from my eyes, despite claiming otherwise on numerous forums and such.

This year I found that it’s a lot harder to work out a topic for a paper that I would have otherwise thought. Finding other papers with interesting topics proved difficult, as just about anything related to the field I was looking at went way over my head. Presently I’ve been reading through my old college engineering texts, reestablishing fundamentals, etc. It’s amazing how things make more sense the second time through. So much from Circuits II suddenly tied in with later work that it was sort of an epiphany.

I’m switching a goal into “be a better person.” I’m not yet sure what all that means or involved, but it sure seems like a good thing to be. Sort of like a cranberry turning into a blueberry. Much tastier. I know, I know, somewhere along the way in this paragraph I completely lost the point.

Work has been fun, in various flavors of fun. I prefer the zesty ranch. Ay the end of June, right after we moved everything into the house (literally right after), I ventured off onto my first big project startup, where I learned that it really is possible to do four things at once while three people are trying to talk to you. When I first got there, motion control was the company’s priority (even though it shouldn’t have been), and since I did the motion control, I got flung right into, “make it all work right now” mode. Which was okay, becaues I made it work right then. More or less. Problems consisted of the electricians wiring the motor phases incorrectly (fun!), and a few little sequencing issues, along with one motion latch that somehow ceased to exists from the time I programed it to the time I got there. Whatever, it got moving quickly, and then they shifted their priorities to other things. While I tweaked the motion user units a bit, their priority bounced rapidly between heating and quenching, making things generally more complicated than neccesary. I ended up being in charge of the quenching part of the process, even though I did not do the code, purely luck (bad luck?), because when they mechanical guys needed something done, I knew how to do it. Also because if I didn’t do it, we had no spare engineers to do it. Luckily, I had gone through the code before, and it turned out well. Over the course of the startup, I got to work about19 straight 12+ hour days, including 14 hours on my birthday! At least it was holiday pay. All in all, it went well, and for the most part I was told that’s about a- busy as things can get, so if I can handle that, it should be good.

Next, I got to work on a machine that dresses grinding wheels in various (potentially complex) profiles. It was quite fun breaking out the ol’ trigonomety and learning CNC code do do the job. Since then, I’ve been working on some other projects for that company, including some ring millers that cut out crank pins in one rotation. I’ve been constantly amazed at how quickly I can leran C++ things when necessity arises. I found that I really like doing UI (user interface) design, even though it’s stressful at times trying to figure out what is easiest to use from a user standpoint. I feel a little bad admitting it, but the greatest tool I have is to stop and think, “If I were a total idiot, what would make the most sense to me?”

Taking care of a house removes a remarkable amount of time from life, but every time something needs to be fixed, I get to learn how to fix something, so my the time I’m say… 50 years old, i should be an expert, right? So far I’ve gotten to install a utility sink, do some kitchen sink repair (our kitchen sink is now a Frankensink, since it’s got one platic pipe and the rest is chrome), reattached the garage door to one of its supports, and installed a litght in our bedroom, among others.

The biggest projects was before we moved in Amy thought it’d be nice to have her dad refinish the hardwood floors (some spots were worn down to the wood) before we had all our furniture in the way. He suggested that I try it, and told me what he had done in the past, giving me some suggestions. Let me tell you, the work is exhausting. We rented a floor sander (orbital sanding pads), and I went through the living room, hallway, and bedroom ]five times, each time stepping down to a finer grained sandpaper. It was after 11pm that day before I finally finished. The sander itself probably weight more than me; at the end of the day, I’m not sure how I got it outside, down the steps, down the hill, and back into my car. The belt sanding around the edges took me the next two nights (I would go to this house after work and stay over night), and the hand sanding for the very close edges seemed to take forever. After all that, I learned that I never want to touch tack cloth (sticky webby stuff for getting up all the sawdust). I also learned that I should have done the polyurethane coats with a hand brush, as it was way too easy to inject air bubbles in with the floor brush. The coats also ended up a little thick and took forever to dry. Some day in the future (10 years? 15?) I’ll sand down the remaining air bumps and do a fresh coast, but it came out looking beautiful anyway.

Amy has been the most wonderful wife ever. Without her, things would be so much harder, and I’ve come to find that her work at home has been a true blessing.

I still don’t have anyone else to mow the lawn, however.

I’m going to let Amy’s goals also be my goals, but I’ll add two:
1) Paper
2) Continue my quest for super powers.
3) Get in better shape.

Or three.

Posted in Marriage,Year-in-Review | By Matt at 12:48 pm | Comments(0)