Goodness, what time is it? What day is it? Blarg, what a week.
Well, it hasn't been *too* bad at least. I'm writing from China Lake, where Jess and I continue our marathon work week. Even the short days are pretty long. We've been showing up at work at 2 in the afternoon, which is weird enough to start with, and then working till usually about 1 in the morning and sleeping until we wake up, which is usually just enough for us to go get food (lunch? breakfast?) before going back to work again.
The work itself isn't bad. It's not the typical, engineer number-crunchy stuff I'm trained to do, but I don't think I could do that for 10-12 hours a day anyway. It's more like 'technician' work. Set some stuff up, some hardware and some software, make sure it's running okay, take down some numbers periodically, and make sure nothing breaks. Pretty simple, overall. I spend most of my time watching a computer screen out in the middle of the desert while numbers scroll by and occasionally changing parameters by request. Jess updated a bunch of software yesterday and then was the unofficial 'communications hub' for all the people at all the different locations.
We've been doing tests for the past few days, and today (Thursday) is likely to by the last one for us. I, for one, get put under the microscope a bit more today, which is okay, because I've had a lot of practice with my stuff over the past two days. Jess isn't sure what she'll be doing, but letting people know what's going on can easily be a full time job. We don't get to do an 'official' test on friday, so tonight (tomorrow morning, technically) Jim will decide if there's any reason for us to do some testing of just our stuff. If not, we may get to go home on friday, if we can find any flights that aren't stuffed with vacationers and/or travelling college kids. (Hi Kelsey!)
As I've said to Jess, it's not the work that I dislike (at least this time I have something to do), it's all the trappings that go along with it. The travel, which at least isn't so bad because I get to bring the thing I miss the most along with me (Jess :), the strange schedule, the desert, the inability to leave for lunch, and the sense that the only contribution I can make to the project is by not screwing my stuff up, which is true.
Well, I'm going to go try and work out a birthday list real quick before I have to go back to work again. Remind me sometime and I'll write more about the desert. It can be kinda cool, in small doses.
-N
3 comments:
Do you get super extra OT for travel? I hope they put your guys up somewhere really nice. Do you have a car or did you both drive out
like the IDEA of traveling for work, but it seems like you've been out in nowhere a long time now...
Here's hoping you get to go home soon.
We get paid for up to 6 hours of flight time and 2 hours of drive time, which is a lot, and we don't get 1.5 time but they did pay us for all of our hours, which works out to be *a lot* of hours.
We could have gotten our own, individual cars, but we didn't need them too much as we had the same hotel room and you're not allowed to drive out in the desert alone, for safety.
-N
Oh, and we got to stay at a comfort inn, which isn't spectacular, but they have free breakfast, internet, and a big bed, which is pretty much all we used it for.
-N
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