Recently, articles like this one peppered the web regarding the unfortunate consequences of sitting all day at a desk.  While I’d consider myself fairly active, I’m definitely a member of the set that sits for more than 23 hours a week.   At a minimum, I probably spend 5-6 hours a day in my office chair – yikes!  So I decided to try and see if I could get by without a chair.

I hope to alternate between  sitting on an exercise ball and standing.  The former is said to activate those muscles used for balance and apparently also improve posture.

If nothing else, I anticipate that I will be much less likely to nod off at my desk.

We have arrived safely!

Upon exiting security, Shaun L. immediately booked it over to the Dunkin Donuts for a taste of home.   Right now we’re waiting at the airport for our bus which will be taking us to our next destination.  Hopefully we’ll reach a hotel fairly soon.

Provided we have internet at the hotel, further updates will appear shortly.

Tonight (actually tomorrow morning at 12:50am) I’ll be headed to the Korean peninsula for work.  I haven’t been to Korea before and I’m not quite sure what to expect.

Friends inform me that the food is amazing and that the society is very modernized, though I’m not sure how true this is outside of the cities.  I’ll be flying with Shaun L. into Seoul and then we’ll be taking a drive from there to various smaller towns for meetings with a few customers.

I’m excited in part because last Friday, at the urging of my bosses and under the fashion guidance of Vivienne,  I purchased a new suit.  I’m really pleased with the fit and the quality.  With these new suits, I also purchase some French cuff shirts and some cuff links from Etsy.  These were my cufflink choices:

Rockstar

Scrabble (mine are the letters M and D)

Dinosaurs

Links to the cuff link sellers.  Rockstar, Scrabble, Raptors.

Sadly, the raptors didn’t arrive in time for this trip.  But I’ll have plenty of future opportunities to rock all of my irreverent cuff links.

In other news, I’m not sure if I’ll have consistent internet access in South Korea – so updates may or may not be plentiful.  I am bringing my camera, so at a minimum we’ll have an update-fest upon my return.

Talk to you soon!

I received two independent identical messages within the last 24 hours, one from my boss and one from my company president. Both told me about this weekend’s 40% off Brooks Brother’s sale.

Ouch.

I guess this means either:
1. my current fashion is weak
2. my current fashions don’t match my upcoming responsibilities.

Let’s hope it’s number 2. Either way, it looks like I’ll be spending some non-trivial coin this weekend to update my professional wardrobe.

Speaking of professional responsibilities. It’s looking like Korea is almost completely definite. Hopefully I can get my new suit(s) tailored in time for that trip.

There have been talks in house about sending me to Korea next week or the week after.

Yikes.

Friends! It turns out I have to go to China – today.

The executive staff of my company is stuck in Germany after an exhibition show. As such, they can’t make it to their meetings in China scheduled for mid week. So I’m headed down to JFK and then I’ll be on a 4:30 flight out to Beijing and then on a second flight to Wuhan. 18+ hours of travel! woo!

I’ll be returning Friday.

I suspect that i’ll have internet access in Wuhan. So, as soon as I can, I’ll post about this past weekend’s roller derby recap and the Deviled egg food extravaganza.

Until then!

Recently my company switched to the CAD software Solid Works. In general, I enjoy using this software a bit more than our previous antiquated version of Solid Edge. But today I came across one of the most confusing error messages I’ve ever seen.

I was happily dimensioning a part within a model when I mistakenly over-constrained the model. For the non-mechanical amongst us, that means that I measured the same thing twice. This tends to confuse modeling programs because they don’t know which of my two dimensions is more important. If I change one of the two, which should it follow?

To fix this problem, the primary dimension is defined as the driven dimension. Once you set the driven dimension, the software knows which dimension gets the priority and acts accordingly.

But today, when I mistakenly placed an extra dimension, The software came back with this:

Should I “Make this dimension driven” or do I “Leave this dimension driving”?

Huh? These are all the same things.

This makes no sense.

For the past two days our operations manager has been out on business and was foolish smart enough to leave me in charge on the shop floor.

Wouldn’t you know, yesterday afternoon our big revenue unit for the month which has been going through our test department suddenly tripped on an unexpected fault. The masses began scrambling. We had to get a replacement part into the equipment immediately so that we could retest the machine before the container came to pick it up.

We did what we could yesterday, but today was the real day of action. It started at 7am as I raced around the shop floor orchestrating a massive rescue attempt. Our workers responded and by 11:00am we had 7 people working on different sections all at once. It was a great testimony to our company’s ability to rally together. Still, there was a lot to do.

At 1:30pm I was called into a meeting with our president, vice president, and financial controller. They asked me when we’d be able to pull the equipment into test. Always the optimist, I said it’d be in by 4pm. They laughed.

“Wanna bet?” The president retorted.
“I’d put some money down, sure.”
“five dollars.”
“ten.”
“deal.”

I kicked it into full gear. I headed out to the floor and helped tighten bolts and collect needed components. Things were coming together with incredible speed. Come 3:30 we still had a few pieces left to assemble but it was mostly together. At 3:45 I sent one of the guys off to get the fork lift to bring this monster into the test department. At 3:55 we started moving it.

Time was ticking away. We turned the first corner. 3:56. We rolled around the second corner navigating between some large containers. 3:58. I watched in eager anticipation as the wheels on the fork truck inched the equipment around the last corner towards the final straightaway. I walked ahead and opened the test department’s large gate.

Suddenly I heard the test department’s bell blare three times. I turned to see the President grinning. The equipment rolled into test at 4:01pm.

One minute. One lousy minute late.

Darn it.

1. Saying I’m in Beijing is a bit of a stretch. I’m actually in Changping which is a dramatically less populous area on the northern outskirts of the city. In fact, breakfast at my hotel reminds me a lot of those ending scenes of 2001 a space Odyssey. Breakfast is held in a huge room. It has tall ceilings, ornate decorations, plates of food, and pristine table cloths. Yet despite this glitz and glamor, there’s no one else to share it. I sit at a huge round dinner table with the buffet table spread out in front of me and there’s isn’t a soul in sight. It’d dead quiet except for the occasional moment when my fork scrapes against the plate.

2. China really has a unique spot on the global culinary scene. It’s got all-stars like dumplings and delicious rices, but I have a hard time diving in when there’s a duck head* on my plate staring back at me. In somewhat related news, I haven’t thrown up yet on this trip. Keep your fingers crossed that I’ll make it through Thursday without digestive upheaval.

*It tasted like awkward.

I have arrived in Beijing!! The flight actually felt very reasonable. I was flying Air China and I must admit it didn’t have some of the amenities that one grows accustomed to on American flights. Namely, no air nozzels and very limited TV screens. That said, the service and food was wonderful and the airfair was very affordable. I had a window seat which let me finish Dune uninterrupted. I even got a little sleep.

For this trip, I experimented with a jet lag technique that I read about in some online article. Basically, the theory is that if you fast before your trip and then start eating on the new schedule your body will force itself to acclimate more quickly to help you find and hunt food. I stopped eating at 8pm on Thursday and didn’t start again until 5pm Friday. Now that I’m in Beijing, I will try and sleep and we’ll see if this theory works well. I really hope it does because this is a short trip and I don’t have tons of time to dominate jet lag before I have to fly home and screw everything up again.

There should be plenty of updates this week as I have a computer in my room. As a start, here are a few pictures of my hotel room.

Note the nice tall ceilings and the split brick columns. The pathway in the back leads into a second room containing the bed.

There are a bunch of ceramic pots and camel and horse statues adorning the mirrored glass shelves. It’s a pretty nice room.

Tomorrow I’m going to try and get in touch with Mika’s sister. My colleagues don’t arrive here until tomorrow night so this would be a great opportunity to do something fun. Stay tuned!

Hello readers!

I’m off to Beijing. While it is a work trip, I should get some personal time on Sunday. Hopefully I’ll be meeting my friend Mika’s sister and her husband in Beijing. They live there and speak the language well, so it’ll be nice to have an English speaking friend nearby. Mika also passed on some great ideas for things to do while I’m there.

Things will very likely be quiet around these parts for the next week as I traverse the far east. If I find myself having some spare time to put up some scheduled posts, I’ll do so – though my time is limited between now to tomorrow’s departure. OR, if I can find internet access while abroad, I will update the website with some degree of regularity.

For those with publishing abilities, feel free to log in and post on the site while I’m gone. Two hints:

1. change the tag. Quickthoughts appear on the right, Features on the left (not recommended). Everything else in the middle. The default is a Quickthought.
2. For non-quickthoughts, add in a short quip for the optional excerpt (it’s found in one of the expandable tabs below the text editor) otherwise the site will double post your work.

Good luck!

We painted the floors.
Fumes were bad, we opened doors.
Sooo cold. Fumes preferred.

To those who remain sedentary in their office cubicals the idea of business travel conjures up visions of glorious customer dinners in distant lands, exotic hotels, and peculiar and captivating cultures. It’s no wonder that the strongly rooted occasionally ask me why I don’t fervently relish* these travels.

Mike D’s top travel travesties
#1. Industrial facilities vary little between Boise and Bogota
#2. The shortest of trips still dramatically disrupts your week
#3. The time dependency of the labor limits visits to local attractions
#4. Waiting in lines gets old fast

Sound familiar? It should! Business travel is a lot like an extended stay at your local Department of Motor Vehicles with the added bonus of checked baggage. Yay!

Now, just like those times when the plate lady lets you choose between the available license plates, business travel occasionally redeems itself. Especially when you can take some vacation on either end of a trip to experience the local culture – a luxury better enjoyed in London than Cleveland.

I’m banking on that personal time for a potential China trip looming in mid-December. This particular plan puts Beijing on the menu. I was last in Beijing in 2006, so if this trip does go down I hope I’ll have a chance to check out the birdcage and other 2008 Olympic buildings.

First things first, I’ll have to make sure my passport and visas are up to date. Thankfully, this doesn’t require a trip to the DMV.

*relish as in ‘enthusiastically and vigorously enjoy’ not as in ‘delicious pickled condiment.’

This post coming live from 30,000 feet.

I’m trying an on-flight wireless account on my plane from Atlanta to Hartford.

It was pretty hilarious coming back to Ohio this week. When I was making my regular business trips to Ohio last year I always stayed at the same Holiday Inn. On Monday when I walked through the door, the lady at the desk gasped “welcome back!” Later that day at the restaurant, waitress Tina stopped in her tracks “hello again! I was just thinking about you the other day.”

It was both awesome and kind of a bummer to be welcomed so graciously.

I guess I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Ohio.

I am currently traveling for work, in fact when this posts I should be in the air.

This morning my flight left Hartford at 6:30am to Charlotte, NC where I connect on a second plane to Akron, Canton. I’ll be there for a day and then I’m headed south to Shreveport, Louisiana. I’ve never been to Louisiana, so I’m excited to add another state to my list. This is especially exciting, because after this trip I will have been to half of the states in the US.

50% Yes!

Here’s the pictorial status:

Awesome.

Lately, I’ve been practicing a lot of guitar. What makes this noteworthy is that I’m not just playing guitar… I’m exercising guitar. I’ve started marching down the demanding path that is music theory. Pushing my knowledge base and running scales like it was my job… and realizing that I wish it were my job. Sadly, artistic expression is not my forte. My parents instilled music into my life at a young age (thanks Mom D and Dad D!) so I feel I can hold a tune, but I don’t have that natural ability to phrase music in a new unique way. At the moment, I can’t really communicate with the guitar; I can only mimic.

I think that the best way to contribute to society is by doing something that you’re good at, or by doing something you’re passionate about. One of my proudest moments in college was bringing 250+ people together for a five song 8 of Bass concert – 8 basses performing ace of base tunes.

Oh! The Majesty!

I remember very vividly a moment a few years later where Jesse made note of my ability to generate excitement and bring that crowd together for the show. If I had to pick a personal strength, I guess it would be in working with people and building some degree of excitement. The personal side of business is all about interaction and motivation, so that career path makes a lot of sense.

But business can be so colorless! Perhaps I’m still too low on the business totem pole (and indirectly maslow’s hierarchy) to find art and self-actualization in organizational structure and business operation. Maybe I can find passion once I pass the point where I have to click through Auto-Cad menus… but right now this path is not entirely fulfilling.

Unfortunately, with an 8-5 job come luxuries that aren’t available to musicians and I’ve come to grow too comfortable with them. I’m not talking financially as much as structurally. There’s comfort in organized repeatability; a comfort that is far less common in the life of a driven musician.

I’m not sure how to come to terms with this situation except to just keep plugging along. Keep practicing guitar in the hopes of finding a musical voice while maintaining the M-F agenda with the hope of sparking some business inspiration.

morning at the coffee machine

I apologize for the lack of updates. Work is really crazy this week. Yesterday I put in a 16 hour day, and today might rival it – though if we’re lucky we’ll be out at a reasonable hour tonight. The hours, though crazy, have been way fun. We’re doing some extremely helpful tests this week which could boost our product offering dramatically. The testing requires some pretty hardcore equipment and extensive data acquisition. Each test run consists of a few hours of prep work and then 5 minutes of pure action.

I think this is one of my favorite parts of engineering, the point where you can confirm your radical ideas with huge equipment, complicated rig-ups, and tons of excel programs.

Three cheers for Science!

With the passing economic dooms, my company has limited the purchase of non-essentials, including but not limited to: pens.

As one would expect with basic economic laws, with this reduction of supply the value of the pen has gone up dramatically. Co-worker Shaun joked about having a stock pile at his desk and charging fellow employees for them… really, not that bad of an idea. Yesterday, I foolishly left work with a pen in my shirt pocket and this morning I found myself without a writing tool. I headed upstairs to talk to our administrative assistant.

Mike D: “Karen! Do you happen to have any pens?”
Karen: “I might have one or two really cheap pens under my desk here…”

She reached under the desk and pulled out a whole box of pens.

Mike D: “Whoa.”
Karen: “Don’t get excited. They’re really cheap pens.”
Mike D: “A cheap pen is better than no pen!”

It was an Office Max pen and the moment I laid pen to paper the tip jammed backwards through the pen and the conical tip support piece split down the middle. Weak.

It turns out that a cheap pen is not necessarily better than no pen.

Oh the perks of the platinum elite holiday inn member.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

Ohio is decent. I got a ton of work done yesterday and traveling with the Kindle has been totally awesome. Stay tuned for some exciting book reviews in the near future.

I’m currently in Charlotte on my way to Ohio for work (clearly my flight wasn’t direct. In fact, some might say it’s been rather indirect.) Interestingly, Bradley airport changed its queuing system. Previously, they had a wild maze of temporary barriers that channeled the masses up to 5 or 6 desks after which you proceeded through security based on seemingly random selection.

This morning, however, I found that Bradley now had 10-12 straight lines herding the people forward. They were organized by traveler experience. Families and casual travelers were on the far left, expert travelers were on the far right. How novel! I zipped through the expert travelers line in no time at all and enjoyed being trusted to remove my laptop from my bag without the constant reminders of the security personnel. Granted, the airport was not busy during my check-in this morning. I’d be curious to see how the system fared when stressed.

NPT is National Pipe Thread not to be confused with MPT which is a Male NPT – NPT could also be FPT (female). Don’t put the F at the end because then you’ll get NPTF which is Tapered Fine, a.k.a. Dryseal, although FPT and MPT can be used with NPTF without a problem. MPTF is male NPTF and can be used with NPTF, NPT, NPSM, and NPSH. NPSM is straight mechanical, not tapered. NPSH is straight hose. MPSH is go with FPSM and FPSH but FPSH is good with MPSM, MPT, MPTF, AND MPSH. BSPT is British Standard Pipe Taper, and can’t be used with NPT or NPTS. Meanwhile, NPS is Nominal Pipe Size not National Pipe Size and deals in schedules not threads not to be confused with NPF which is the National Psoriasis Foundation.

I really dislike Plumbing threads.

I really dislike it when you go to the contact page of a business website and find a required form that you have to fill out instead of finding a phone number to call. I go to the contact page of a website to find a phone number so that I could talk to a person, not to leave information for a sales database.

When I see these things I’m tempted to leave the website and find a competitor who’s cool with me just calling them. Interestingly, I don’t care all that much about keeping my information private. I just like talking to a person first. If the person on the phone asks me all this same information, I’m happy to provide it. But being forced to provide that information first bugs the heck out of me.

For the sake of full disclosure, I should point out that my website’s ‘contact’ page has a form you have to fill out. But for a personal website it’s a bit different because I’m trying to keep my e-mail address away from spammers. For businesses one would think they’d want to encourage contact of any variety.