NE64-twinsburg

the long time readers of this in-recent-times failing blog will note that I am and have been interested in embedded ethernet solutions. I'm just kicking myself for not having the time and motivation to learn the NE64 architecture because on the first tour of duty to twinsburg, and now the second I could have made good use of that technology and saved the company a ton of money in the process. well. woulda-shoulda-coulda.. maybe next time.

twinsburg part 2

ok.... yeah. I know... I should have learned from the first 2 week tour, but I singed up for ANOTHER two week tour of duty to 'the sister company'. its gonna be hard to improve upon the success I had on the first tour, so I don't think i'm going to give it 120% like I did the first go around. this time I'm giving it 80. as noted by the fact that i'm flying back (at the end of this tour) on a thursday night instead of a friday night this time (no sundown issues) and i'm not even planning on going in on friday (company will give me the day)

I told the super boss dude I wanted to work on something else this tour and he looked at me with shock and amazement so I quickly retracted my statement and agreed to be the lacky again and do what i'm good at, the (insert name of super secret project here) project.

this time it gets more complicated. last time we stayed at a hilton garden inn, very nice and respectable for the 109$ price tag per night. its interesting to see that some things actually cost MORE with the company discount, but i digress.. the nice thing about staying there was that it was only a few miles from where I worked, and they served breakfast, so we didn't have to waste time diggin up grub in the morning and you got your own room, they had maid service, and a swimming pool. now i'm sure your wondering WHY i'm going into all this detail. it is to compare a contrast it with the setup this go around....

now the company is renting 2 3-bedroom condos. so.. what does that mean? no room service, probaly no tv in my room. no made to clean up after me, no breakfast on the house.. NOTHING. that almost made me choke all over myself when I learned its about the same price as just living in the hotel any way... so whats the point!?!!! AND its 20 minute drive. hmm........... interesting............ I hope I don't get one of my coworkers as a bunkmate cause we dn't have any women engineers, they all got pregnant and quit.

yup.. definatly interesting. and now we only have 2 LEASED cars instead of a bunch of rental cars to share with like 6 people. before we had 3 cars to share with 6 people. this is gonna be 'fun'. good thing we booked that cruise cause i'm gonna need it.

linear power supplies

heres a link for dave, for linear power supplys. some good ideas epanorama.net

ghetto generator

I had been thinking about this for quite awhile, and now I see someone else already made it work. a lawn mower engine + a car alternator = ghetto generator. check it out at Theepicenter.com



another good resource and a bit more indepth knowledge can be found at homepower.com. check out mark8.pdf

ohio = success

the trip to ohio was a smashing success. I worked 12-16 hours a day for 2 weeks straight including sunday. the only day we took off was saturday and we ended up going to the cleveland car show which turned out to be pretty cool even though I was unable to find a GOLF V. the one they had was built on the IV chassis so that disapointed me.

I was able to reverse engineer something, and build a new one in 2 weeks. amazing actually. it wasn't overly complex but it had about 500 nets in it so that took hours to map with my little fluke meter. I called in all the favors I had with the guys at work and was able to get an intern to do a little CAD work for me and given the time difference from east coast to west coast it worked out just perfect. I was able to get a new board on order and delivered in less than 2 days, spent a few more days wiring it up and debuggging.

I don't think anyone from work is going to want to go out there and help, cause it will be hard to work more hours than we did and i'm sure they will expect more out of the next group.

after it was all said and done it appeared to turn in to a shameless sales pitch to recruit my team to move to ohio and work with the sister company indefinatly. what a bunch of crap. it was shameless, so shameless we almost puked over our 30$ steaks when management brought it up at the table.

advice to a friend on corporate travel

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