here's life

The date is 2007. The place is a factory floor in the Air Capital of
the World. Technology level: feasible at present day.

I'm talking to another investigator as I finish up describing my
latest fix to the airplane parts. "Just think, a year ago the 'Super
CAR Team' wasn't a team, just your joke name for the impending train
wreck you were working on!" "We have come a long way..." Before, I
was working on CAR's an acronym that meant "problems on every plane".
I was trying to keep up with a constant flow from the shop. It took
me way too long, but my megalomanical delusions prompted me to call
my efforts the Super CAR Team. I though about making a t-shirt... My
lead's voice fades into the conversation we are having over the
pilot's headsets we wear on the noisy factory floor...
"Abu, that change looks good. I've run it past our support people,
when you get it submitted, I'll queue it to the supplier." I tap the
submit button on my tablet, and then tap my lead's name.
"Here it is, I got the description inputted---why we made
the change. Can you check the photos I've marked up, make sure
they make sense?" "Sure, meanwhile, I've got this tag..." an icon
pops up on my screen "...it's on the other side of the factory, but it
came in yesterday..." Yesterday? We'd better get this fixed to reduce
the number of planes that have this issue. Our managers used to ask
us about 60-day-old problems---the averages had changed, now that we
have this new system.

I click on the icon, and photo pops up. A map shows me where in the
factory it is located. The map is pretty detailed, since it is
constantly being updated by the cameras on the overhead cranes. As I
walk, I glance at what we've got so far. The mechanic was about to
install this clip, but when he drilled the hole from the pilot in the
surrounding structure, it came in closer to the edge of the part than
is best. So, he got the PDA from the inspector, and clicked "created
new issue". Then he took some pictures, and marked them up with the
stylus to highlight the problem and gave a short description and
possible solution. Last year we started to specify where on parts
they get their number stamped---somewhere they could be seen easily
throughout assembly. Even our OCR software could load up the parts
based on the numbers seen in a picture. Plus, the RFIDs on the PDA and
a few parts, and the two-way positioning information from the time
delay in the wireless links helps the software know what parts it is
looking at, based on where it is.
Looking over the pictures, I'm not sure what the nominal distance is,
so, based on the part, and where in the assembly process it is, I
bring up the pertinent solid models on my screen. My tablet pc is just
a "thin-client"---all the computing power is provided by the extra
processor time on the computers in the office, taking what I do, and
piping me the results over the multiple wireless links that my tablet
is seeing... A view of the parts pops up on my screen, aligning
itself with the photo, which is now shown transparently over the
parts. I dismiss the photo, click the "measure" button, and click the
pilot hole, and the edge of the part. It tells me the distance, and
how that relates to the diameter of the fastener that goes through it.
Well, that should be good...if everything works right.

Oh, I need to turn left here, the where-I-am dot on the map is getting
close to to the where-the-problem-is dot. The mechanic says that the
distance to the edge is changing all the time, it just recently
started dipping beyond what it deemed best. The one he is currently
working on also looks bad---I take a picture with my tablet, and
compare it to what-it-should-look-like... yup, it's a bit short, and
it is because the part is shifted down...due to allowable tolerance.
Are the parts not the right size? I pull up the data from the
suppliers--the measurements they took when they made each of these
parts...import the data as fuzzy, shifted solids...move some around,
ok, the data shows that the parts should be close to nominal. Well,
do I move the edge of the part, or the hole? I expand my view to show
more of the parts--parts that get put in later. As I work my way out,
fading in parts in different directions, I see there is a part that
gets pretty close to the offending edge...but nothing is keeping me
from moving the hole. I call up my lead and discuss it with him. We
get stress on the line, and I show them the drawings I am working
with. They suggest some camera angles of the problem parts for better
clarity, so I move my tablet around until we get the views they
wanted. They agree that we need to move the hole, stress is happy
with the analysis they are getting--in fact, they say there is some
extra material, we could save some weight by moving this edge---a red
line appears on my screen---to about here...20 thousandths. Ok,
sounds good. I thank the mechanic, and he says he'll contact us if he
has any other problems.

I sit down to do some "drafting". A year ago someone else would have
done this because it would have taken a week---because at that point,
we had really just computerified the drafting-table-and-ink process.
Now I just double click the pilot hole, and a sketch defining it pops
up. I double click the dimension holding it in place, and type "-.02"
after the number and hit enter. There! Update part...pilot hole snaps
over. Now I move that edge...that was as easy...update assembly...a
flurry of activity...type in why we are changing it...done! The
pictures that the mechanic took, as well as the one's I took are
already attached. I call my lead, and we determine that we want this
implemented as soon as the parts get here. We approve it and forward
the change to the supplier.
Across the country, a CNC mill is drilling holes in parts. It was just
about to start a new one when the change came through. An instant
later it has updated the hole location, and the next part won't have
the problem. Tomorrow after it is painted it will be shipped here,
and soon our line will have the new parts.

Meanwhile, I've finished up all the problems that have been reported
for the day, so I go talk to some mechanics, see if I can redesign
some parts so they are quicker to put together---do they need more
holes? Less? Are there some shims that really aren't needed anymore?
Can we consolidate two parts into one?

Come with me to my childhood home!  The house holds little interest for us, and while we glance at the barn as we pass, our real destination is beyond it and it's double-trunked Red Maple which reaches above it.  No, we are heading down the sandy isthmus, a two-track lane between two sets of fields.  This year, there are soybeans on the right, and corn on the left. Every year, the same two crops are alternated on this fertile soil, which produced well each fall, with the proper application of seed, fertilizer, lime and pesticides. Every summer, the crops would pull down carbon dioxide, water and sunshine from the sky and turn it into plants.  A small portion of each plant was harvested, hauled off to be made into chicken feed, most of which turned into chicken manure, mixed with sawdust, and was stored above our wellhead and then spread on the fields.  Every winter, the rest of each plant---much more massive than the seeds which were harvested---the rest of each plant fell into the ground, and rotted.  When we figure in the chicken cycle, I think we can ignore the amount of carbon hauled in and out in trucks each year, and call that part of the cycle steady-state, or constant.  Because our winters were not very harsh, microbial action over the months would break down the dead plants, and turn them back into carbon dioxide, which was released into the air---or, dissolved in the water, washed away, and then released into the air---unlike places more north, where the cold winters stop the breakdown of carbon, resulting in deep, humus-laden soil, or even peat bogs. But, carbon isn't the only cycle going on.  There is nitrogen as well, pulled from the air by the soybean plants, and the distant fertilizer plants, the excess nitrates being washed into the groundwater, endangering wells, and flowing into the ocean and bay, disrupting aquatic life.  But, since today's environmental outlook is more focused on Greenhouse Gasses and Global Warming, we will ignore the death of coral in the gulf at the mouth of the Mississippi.  After all, it won't matter what killed the coral-reef diving industry, when our Earth looks like Venus---as my little brothers explain, "you don't want to live there because it rains sulfuric acid, and is hot enough to melt solder!"
So, for the carbon cycle we have a fairly constant amount of carbon in the soil, and not a large amount of carbon being hauled off.  Even though the plants remove CO2 from the atmosphere, pretty much all of it goes back again. This helps our plight very little. We need some way to hang onto the Carbon, keep it out of the sky. Maybe we should keep walking.

After passing a quarter mile of fields, we come to hundreds of acres of trees.  On the left is a stand that is several decades old, the trees are tall, and block out most of the light, so there is little underbrush.  The right side is a little younger, a little more brush, and so more interesting for us to play in.  Oh, there is a tree which has fallen, landing on a smaller tree so that the top is several feet off the ground.  I lost a Reindeer-horn knife playing on that tree soon after moving to that house.  Ten years later that tree was much more rotten---in fact, it would have rotted more quickly had it actually hit the ground like some of the other trees around.
 As we continue back toward the pond, we on our left is a stand of short pine trees, 15 feet tall or so.  So thick with briers and underbrush that we didn't venture into it.  It stands on my map as "Unexplored".  There are more woods beyond the pond, but they are hardwood until you get really far back, so let's stand on top of the sand mound by the pond, and just watch the trees we've passed change over the years.  The trees reach for the sun, drawing in water that falls from the sky, and gleaning tons of carbon out of the air to build their strong, uniform trunks, one ring each summer and a more dense one each winter.  But tree's don't grow forever.  Winds blow down branches and even trees, and these slowly sink into the forest floor, building up a thick layer. This mass of needles and wood slowly rots, turning back into carbon dioxide, which is cooking us all.  Neither the woods nor the fields are helping to stave off the warming that is causing climate change, melting the icecaps, and triggering more and more massive hurricanes, which level our levies and leave our lower lands in Louisiana lying in liquid....oh, sorry.  But since these plant cycles end up about the same way they started, we haven't helped anything.  I must leave now, and move to the other side of the Mississippi, but you can continue to watch---what's that?  You see that loggers have arrived.  They are clearing the land of the mature trees, ripping them out using huge purpose-built machinery, loading them on trucks and hauling them away.  The young, brier filled stand of trees is spared, but the woods are not the same.  I wouldn't want to move back, not after that destruction!  But, being curious, you snag a ride astraddle a log on top of one of the trucks, to find out where all this carbon is going, now that we have gotten it out of the air. Meanwhile, bulldozers are piling up the tree stumps, and some industrial crew of wood elves is planting more white pines, in long straight rows.  You have arrived at the pulp mill, where you disembark, and watch the trees be debarked, and ground up, soaked in chemicals, ground to a slurry, and eventually turned into paper. 

By that time, I am in college, standing in the computer labs, waiting for my two page English paper to print.  Unfortunately, someone just sent a 500 page presentation on FAA rules to the printer, (one slide per page) and then forgot about it and went to dinner.  When it is done, it sits on the table for several days, but no one claims it, so it is thrown in the Recycle bin.  I grab a hundred pages, punch holes in them, and use the blank backs for my Robotics notes.  The rest stay in the "Recycle" bin until the Phys Plant workers come and dump it, and all the other trash, into the dumpster, where it goes to a landfill.  After Robotics, I go to Senate, where we discuss this paper problem, and tell Administration about our concerns.  One day, Senate announces a victory!  After harping on recycling for a long time, we find out that Ram Paper Products is going to do a pilot recycling program in the new Engineering building, and see if it is break-even or better.  Ahh, so it is economics, not ecology that drives paper recycling!  Which makes sense.  Every tree we kill to print a Flight Science 1 presentation is replaced by a baby tree, which quickly begins to pull carbon out of our air.  When we recycle a bin of paper, one less tree gets removed and replaced by a little tree, so more carbon stays in the air.  When we throw a bin of paper in the garbage, that paper goes to a landfill, where it waits anaerobically for the next flood/volcano/iceage to turn it into coal.  Meanwhile, my local model airplane field is built on top of years of trash from Boeing and it's employees that populate this town.  Boeing, and now my company, uses a lot of paper.  We print everything out a couple times each time we touch it. Whenever I make some tiny change I use a big stack of paper, which grows as it goes down the line.  This is because our process is set up to fit the requirements of the FAA---me and some others joke that stands for Forest Annihilation Association, due to the huge amounts of paperwork we do in response to their rules.  Actually, it is more our system which is at fault, but paper is so much easier than a screen to look at, thumb through, and mark up.  I am not sure where the paper goes that I toss in our "Recycle" bins...

The drive down was uneventful. After leaving the presentation on SolidWorks 2007 (amazingly cooler than 2006) I got on I-35 and headed south. Saw gas prices fall and then rise again, and it reminded me of a Google Maps application---chart out current gas prices along your route, so you know which town to stop in.  Saves the consumer money, or, makes price fixing that much easier.
We hung out at Bubble's place for a couple hours, didn't really feel like getting on the road again.  Finally as our destination time slipped later into the night, we started out.  We wanted to eat something first--just a quick bite--so we pulled into a drive through. Fifteen seconds later, we determined that we were waiting too long for the single car ahead of us, so we headed for Longview instead.
We got to Andrew's place and went over the Lists of tasks for the marrow.  We weren't very hungry, so we ate some crackers and cheese. There were four basic areas: Painting, Construction, Landscape and Wiring.  Aduma took the first two, and I took the others. Bubbles was just going to float, since he knew general information people would need.

Saturday morning we got up and finished preparing---setting things out, getting the paint ready, and getting tools together. Duncey arrived, so we gave him Construction. Then they arrived. About 50 people poured out of the 11 cars, and we introduced our tasks and divided people up. I took some people for making retaining walls, and gathering gravel.
I handed my Wiring List to Spork, and gave him a 60 second overview of what it meant.  People began painting the house while we scraped gravel away from it. Others started leveling off for one retaining wall, while several began pulling up concrete flats and carrying them around back.  The shed got painted, some trim out in the yard got primed, and then painted. A set of doors got three coats on one side...and none on the other. I found some guys who were helping Duncey---they had gloves on, so I had them move a big slab of concrete from near the A/C unit to in front of the shop. Nobody shredded their finger. In fact, it seems that there were no injuries all day! I just sort of wandered from place to place, working for a few minutes on something, and then getting some people started on something else.  The first course of the wall was a big task, but I had a few dedicated people who went at it with a level, and made it flat.  The next courses went on very quickly; we had a "brick brigade" handing bricks from the pallet to wall, and they stacked up like hotcakes. I didn't have them take the bricks from the pallets that had been put nearby---no, we took the ones that were near the other wall, tomorrow we'd have to carry them farther.
The crowd started to dwindle, but many people stayed for lunch, and continued to hook up downspouts into an invisible buried pipe, to finish off the ends of the retaining wall, to touch up trim around the roof, to hook up wires in the sweltering attic.
I spend a good part of the afternoon washing out paint rollers.  There were so many, but they were pretty much dried, so I just tried to wash them out, having fun making them spin at incredible speeds using a sharp stream of water from the hose sprayer.
Eventually it was night, and so the few that were still around watch How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. It was rather enlightening, for being a chick-flick.  I'll stay on the alert for girls who are trying to be as annoying as possible. 
It's not everyday that you get to be a part of 60 people working on a house.  Can't always find people who not only know what they are doing, but are willing to struggle in the hot texan sun, moving dirt and concrete, painting and building. It was  a success.  Some Photos, curtesy of Luddie.

Sunday we got to sunday school in time to eat doughnuts and sit on bean bags. Baker did a good job of leading it, and I drew a rubber duckie on the attendance sheet.  I knew only a handful of people there. 
Church was good, but there weren't any hymns on the agenda.  This is a surprisingly global-minded church. Rather refreshing to see people bent on bringing the rest of the world to Christ.  After church, we were some of the last to leave, as usual, and then we went to Bodacious for lunch.  But first we stopped by Pier 1 to help some of our newly married friends pick up a chair.  There wasn't much room in Bubbles's car, so we had to pawn off a box of maternity clothes on them...they didn't realize the gravity of it until it came up during lunch.

We spent the afternoon building a second retaining wall. This one had multiple curves, and we tried several different multi-degree functions before we got a shape we liked.  Tip: when making stepping retaining walls, start at the bottom--it is a lot easier to get level when you are stepping up instead of down. We ended up being about an hour late to the Burger Burn at the pastor's house, but there was still burgers, and corn, and soda and stuff. We sat and talked, and had a good time.  As it was getting dark, the conversation drifted to Baker's backyard, and he mentioned that he had a cord running across it, that kept getting chopped in the mower. "You need to bury it, then you won't hit it!" "Well, yeah, but I just haven't gotten to it yet.." "It would take like fifteen minutes to do!" We still only had our craziness-meter at about 326 for the weekend, so we volunteered to go out and bury the cable for him. They said we would need some electrical tape to fix the wire.  Aduma has a roll in his pocket, of course.  Borrowed a shovel from the pastor, and left.  When Baker got there with his family, we had a trench across the yard, and were starting to lay the wire.  We about had it covered up, when the local annoying armadillos came out.  Bakers normal procedure was to shoot them with a bb-gun, but that proved futile, due in part to their impenetrable armor.  So, Bubbles and I took some sticks and an old mower blade, and beat around in the bushes after the critters.  We found one, and cornered him behind a tomato cage, and then I poked him out, and Bubble got off a solid hit with the sharp edge of the mower blade.  It bounced off harmlessly.  We chased them around the woods, but it was dark and briery, and we got our first wounds of the weekend, some minor scratches.
After finishing up the trench and checking out the cool job of tile in the dining room, we headed to campus to drop off the chair.  We were going to try to forget the maternity clothes, but they remembered to bring them out.  We stood and ate cookies in what once was Shroud and Bev's apartment, and then we headed for Dallas.

I took Aduma over to visit a local branch of his company in the morning.  Dropped him off, went to Walmart, got a pump, which broke as my tire reached it's correct level, so I returned it, and drove back, arriving as Aduma and his former  coworker emerged from the security envelope.  After packing up, we went to the airport and I dropped off Aduma, and headed for Wichita.  The ending bracket on the weekend was tryouts for acting in the Road to Bethlehem at church at 7:00.  My clock read 6:59 as I pulled into the parking lot, having driven from Dallas.