Wild life...
Jun. 6th, 2002 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jayThree hours of sleep last night -- home at 4, back in time for the 7:30am telecon. Then I turned in my contributions to others' proposals. Then met with the folks at the large ATC tower simulator that my project is leasing. Saw a 4' snake, a jackrabbit, butterflies, a feral cat and two 3" lizards while on a walk with hopeforyou at lunchtime.
Awards and an all-hands meeting and a motivational film about fish-throwing later, we were sitting in a project design review shortly after 4pm when a colleague burst in "we only have an hour!" "For what?" "The proposal goes to DC, not locally, and FedEx closes in an hour." The automated Mars-prototype drill development proposal still lacked biographies, letters of commitment, a drawing and its executive summary. And of course 15 copies hadn't been printed yet. Let alone the color pages...
Rather than scatter, however, my co-authors rallied -- both asked "what can I do to help?" instead of blaming me (deservedly) for confusing the sponsoring/evaluating office (which is local) with the DC-area lockbox where proposals are to be collected tomorrow. At 4:16 I received another CV and commitment letter. At 4:45 my other co-author sent me his material, plus an updated figure. By 4:50 I had finished the executive summary and renumbering the references and figures. We began printing, each of us with separate printers and sections of the document. At 5:02 he color printer jammed. We switched to a backup. It printed everything in B&W because we needed an updated printer description file. We switched to a third color printer. My colleagues snapped at each other about the printer strategy. At 5:10 the middle and end sections were printed and we began rolling off the 15 required hardcopies. At 5:27 I had finished burning the accompanying CD. We printed the signature pages and final table of contents at 5:32. At 5:40 we gave up on color pictures of the drill, settled for what we had in-hand, and began assembling and stapling. At 5:45 we left for the FedEx in Santa Clara, which stayed open until 6:15pm. With two of us, so that we could use the carpool lane on 101. But... my gas gauge pointed below "E". We decided to risk running out of gas on 101, since the needle was still moving a bit. At 6:07 we arrived at FedEx, and at 6:12 handed the package over. Richard suggested that we buy champagne simply to celebrate getting the proposal off in time.
Then I go home, skip dinner, and make it to James's 5th grade school play by 7pm... he was playing Thomas Jefferson, in costume. Now back home. Time for bed soon...
hopeforyou at lunchtime.Awards and an all-hands meeting and a motivational film about fish-throwing later, we were sitting in a project design review shortly after 4pm when a colleague burst in "we only have an hour!" "For what?" "The proposal goes to DC, not locally, and FedEx closes in an hour." The automated Mars-prototype drill development proposal still lacked biographies, letters of commitment, a drawing and its executive summary. And of course 15 copies hadn't been printed yet. Let alone the color pages...
Rather than scatter, however, my co-authors rallied -- both asked "what can I do to help?" instead of blaming me (deservedly) for confusing the sponsoring/evaluating office (which is local) with the DC-area lockbox where proposals are to be collected tomorrow. At 4:16 I received another CV and commitment letter. At 4:45 my other co-author sent me his material, plus an updated figure. By 4:50 I had finished the executive summary and renumbering the references and figures. We began printing, each of us with separate printers and sections of the document. At 5:02 he color printer jammed. We switched to a backup. It printed everything in B&W because we needed an updated printer description file. We switched to a third color printer. My colleagues snapped at each other about the printer strategy. At 5:10 the middle and end sections were printed and we began rolling off the 15 required hardcopies. At 5:27 I had finished burning the accompanying CD. We printed the signature pages and final table of contents at 5:32. At 5:40 we gave up on color pictures of the drill, settled for what we had in-hand, and began assembling and stapling. At 5:45 we left for the FedEx in Santa Clara, which stayed open until 6:15pm. With two of us, so that we could use the carpool lane on 101. But... my gas gauge pointed below "E". We decided to risk running out of gas on 101, since the needle was still moving a bit. At 6:07 we arrived at FedEx, and at 6:12 handed the package over. Richard suggested that we buy champagne simply to celebrate getting the proposal off in time.
Then I go home, skip dinner, and make it to James's 5th grade school play by 7pm... he was playing Thomas Jefferson, in costume. Now back home. Time for bed soon...
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Hardly High Tech!
Date: 2002-06-07 02:17 am (UTC)Time for the planetary people to catch up with the astronomers perhaps? Or is there some subtle politics involved?
Re: Hardly High Tech!
Date: 2002-06-07 06:27 pm (UTC)I see no reason to ritualistically slaughter trees and ship 2 reams of the toasted, painted remains to faraway places, when a simple e-mail would suffice to transfer the information. But NASA has contracted-out the peer review process to a consultancy...
no subject
Date: 2002-06-07 04:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-06-07 10:07 am (UTC)Glad your coworkers rallied to help. It seems you work with adults -- a rarity and a blessing!
no subject
Date: 2002-06-07 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-06-07 11:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-06-07 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-06-07 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-06-07 06:31 pm (UTC)Definitely more excitement (of that sort...) than I'd wanted...
no subject
Date: 2002-06-07 06:56 pm (UTC)One of the many fine features of living on the Right Coast. ;)
no subject
Date: 2002-06-08 07:31 am (UTC)pat pat pat
i love to pull things like that off
at the last minute
what a rush
but i know
you never plan things like that
btw, i hate printers
i think they are evil machines
trying to drive us weak humans
out of our wits
they have succeeded in my case
rita
no subject
Date: 2002-06-08 09:46 pm (UTC)Sometimes, I have been guilty of allowing things to pile up just to prove to myself that I can be hyper-productive in a short time... and for the rush. Time to put on my pirate hat and turn up the volume...
But this time, it was unintentional. And printers are, after all, relatives of photocopiers...