After I returned from my trip down to Sunnyvale, I attended my old roommate’s birthday party. A couple weeks ago I mentioned that they’re live-in caretakers for a group of teens. When one of the parents heard that they invited a bunch of people over for a party they got in a tiff. I think they didn’t understand how mellow Church members are 🙂
On Sunday I ended up singing with the choir for the first time in over a year. The number was awesome – some text to the tune of If You Could Hie to Kolob. Unfortunately they were performing the next week and I couldn’t participate since I had plans to come down for Denny Bates’ funeral. But it was a real nice experience nonetheless.
Earlier the month prior I’d taken my drone out to show a friend at work, since he was kinda-sorta in the market. Got some nice shots around Kirkland.
So when that friend closed on some 20 acres of land and wanted an aerial survey done, he came calling again.
The imprint in the clearing is where the previous owners planned to build their house. My friend will be scaling down quite a bit – that’s too much house for them. But his family’s gonna have a fun time in that forest.
The weekend home was fun! Really enjoyed seeing everyone. Good respite.
After I got back I took my car in for some long-needed service. A funny brake-related noise has been coming from my wheels – a high-pitched whining whenever I’m in reverse, and a grinding noise whenever I drive forwards. Turns out one of my brake pads was entirely gone, and the rear calipers and rotors needed to be replaced. Cost me a pretty penny but that’s how it goes.
One of the reasons I hadn’t taken my car in for service in so long was that I usually bike to work while it’s in the shop, and it’d either been too rainy to do so or my back had been out of commission. With the grinding noise I thought ok, even if I can’t get myself to work I’ll just catch a bus or Uber.
But it was a nice day and I was feeling daring so I strapped my bike to the car and it turns out I had absolutely no trouble biking to work. It was awesome. (Mattie and Steve: I had an idea – a VR / AR game where you run through a forest evading the Survey Corps. Can you imagine trying to avoid Levi?)
So that’s very heartening. Further evidence that of all my relapses I think this has been the fastest recovery. I worked from home the next day but went out on a short bike ride that evening just to get some air and food.
I was waiting outside for my teriyaki chicken to finish when I was approached by someone, who gestured at their bike and showed me their phone. Google Translate was up and it read, “Do you have air cylinder?” I fumbled for a bit with his phone but since he had a Chinese keyboard I ended up just pulling mine out to communicate back. Told him I live 5 minutes away and would be right back. He was most appreciative. Grabbed the food on the way out, though in retrospect it would’ve been simpler just to leave it with the restaurant till I got back.
Grabbed the bike pump, got back, let him pump his tire up, got a big hug and lots of thank-yous out of it. Just goes to show you never know what adventure you’ll end up on when you just ride around for fun.
Ate the food in a nearby park, until I got a call from a friend who’d gone through a painful break-up and needed someone to chill with that evening. We ended up watching one of the new Twilight Zone episodes. Suspenseful music and camera work, but something felt a bit off. I think this article summed up my thoughts, though I haven’t seen much of the original series and only the one episode from the new run.
Friday night was Ward Temple Night. Could barely keep my head up in the sealing room, haven’t been doing so hot on getting to bed on time.
Didn’t really have a better place in this post to put this pic, but it goes nicely with the temple ground shots. 
It’s certainly spring-time.
As an aside: here’s what Jeff’s been jamming out to during late nights at work:
Dad, if you could convince MCO to work this number into their upcoming performance I’d be delighted.
Speaking of late nights. I’ve been told on and off again ever since I joined Google that I tend to work too hard and I’ll burn myself out. I’ve kind of relegated such admonitions to the same level as “you’ll shoot your eye out”. But I have noticed a recent up-tick in people quietly asking me, “you doing alright?” Yeah I’ve been tired but I thought nothing of it.
Then yesterday one of the managers I work closely with pulled me aside and more or less put the hammer down. Said he’d heard from three different people that I’ve been showing signs of irritability, exhaustion, and a short fuse. Said I’m killing myself and I’m gonna snap at some point. Asked, “What can we do? We’d hate to lose you.”
I’m curious about the exact nature of these interactions where I’ve apparently given off an irritable vibe, but inquiring into them would likely be futile and I don’t want to give the impression that I’m dismissive of the concerns. I mentioned I’ve got a trip coming up in a few months but the manager said no, that’s too far away, gotta do something now. So I’ll take some time off to re-charge. With all the late nights I’ve been working I’ve got about three days’ worth of unofficial vacation time saved up, so I think next week I’ll take a five-day weekend and just chill, ride the Burke-Gilman trail again or something. I was hoping to do that this next week, but looks like it’ll be rainy all that week so I might delay till the week following.
But back to our regularly scheduled programming. Our team has a bit of a unique challenge, in that we need to reliably destroy some small doo-hickeys. We’re not happy with the shredding options available. Early on a co-worker – the same one I did aerial photography for – cracked a joke saying we could use his plasma cutter. As it became evident that all the other options were less ideal, I though, well, why not the plasma cutter? I filed a formal inquiry with our site leads to see if they could offer us a 220v outlet on-site to do the cutting, preferably in an area with some good ventilation. The inquiry, surprisingly enough, was not immediately laughed off. But eventually liability reasons made it a non-starter.
I recalled seeing a large outlet in my garage and never knowing what it was for, but I snapped a pic and sent it to my co-worker who confirmed that it’d be plenty powerful to drive the plasma cutter. We’d just need an air compressor. I was able to borrow one off my bishop, though it turns out it’s kind of small-potatoes as far as compressors go, and we can only run the cutter off it for so long before needing to take a break and wait for the air pressure to come back up. And we have a lot of cutting to do.
See, as soon as we got talking about plasma cutting and my co-worker mentioned we should test it out on some sheet metal, I thought wouldn’t it be neat to make a piece of team swag while we’ve got a plasma cutter all geared up. A simple team logo of sorts.
After working out the feasibility with my co-worker I sent an email to our managers, who once again surprisingly enough did not immediately laugh it off. They thought it was awesome. As did the rest of the team when we sent a general notice on the subject. I kept waiting for someone to say it’s a dumb or dangerous idea, but I guess we’re all grownups now and can do whatever we want.
So today after the morning Conference session my co-worker came by to do a test run. We quickly realized that although my outlet has sufficient voltage, it’s of the wrong type, so we had to head off to Home Depot to get the parts to build a converter. Got some sheet metal too while we were at it.
Proof-of-concept for what we originally wanted to do with the cutter. 
I thought I’d be smart and try and tape the pattern on and cut over it. It worked, but ended up leaving quite the burn marks on the finished product. 
Borrowed a bench grinder from my bishop as well, to ensure the parts are safe to handle. 
Definitely rougher around the edges (ha) than I was expecting. It comes down to the fact that plasma cutting is ridiculously easy – there’s no mechanical resistance as you move the arc over the metal, so the slightest jiggle in your hand will result in jagged edges.
This is just a sample which we’ll bring in to work. For the official run we’ll order some quarter-inch stainless steel from a hardware supplier. Not the sort of thing they carry at Home Depot, so it’ll take a while to get here.
Well that’s been my week! Looking forward to seeing Hayden in a month!