Google Searches Part One
After spending a few months in the lab working on the latest product it was time to take it to production and begin working out the bugs associated with producing a new instrument. This meant seeing my old buddy, The Beard. Now down in the production area they have what they call a "mirror production" line which is a separate line made specifically to be just like production, but used for introducing products until all the problems with it are solved. This is where I will be working. At this time The Beard is supposed to provide a couple of his techs to help us out and to get them acclimated to the new product, but their main job is to keep things moving during the day because I was alone on swing shift and had to concentrate on problems and not so much on dealing with testing pilot instruments.
Getting these pilot units through test could be quite a challenge because of new designs, new tests, broken parts, faulty firmware, faulty software and so on. So it was really important to keep everything going all day both shifts in order to meet our deadline. Well one day I notice a pretty big problem with our test software that would have to get fixed as soon as possible or we would have a serious setback and it could actually affect production itself. Since I know the programmer pretty well and he told me to page him whenever I needed him I decided to talk to him on the phone instead of emailing him about the problem. Besides it was still fairly early.
To my surprise he decided to come in and fix it right away because I was there now and the two of us could pound it out better than just one of us. He decided it would be easier for him to come in at night than it would be for me to come in during the day (true what a nice guy take note Beard). Anyway when the programmer got there we discovered that it was a much bigger problem than I had originally thought, this was going to take all night…crap. About 3:30 or 4:00am we are still a long way from finishing and while the program compiles we decide to take a smoke break out on building two's rooftop break area. While we are out there smoking and joking, you have to remember we have been working pretty hard for quite some time now and have gotten a little goofy minded, all of a sudden we see a bright medium size blast of white light. It was out close to the road like and seemed like transformer had just blown. We both go, "Whoa did you see that!" That's when the programmer said, "That was probably the infamous black helicopters taking shooting practice" or something like that. Now I had no idea what he was talking about so asked "What black helicopters?"
He told me that some people claim to see mysterious black military-style helicopters flying around for no reason at all or for spying on people.
"No way" I said.
So he tells me "When we get back to the production area just do a Google search on it."
"Ok I will."
When we got back to the production line instead of walking all the way to my desk and doing the Google search on my computer I decided to do it on the test rack computer, which according to The Beard is a no-no because we might get viruses on our test equipment. Did I mention that The Beard is a computer illiterate paranoid freak? Using the test rack's computer I could keep working while Google searching. So at Google I type in "black helicopter" or "mysterious black helicopters" or something like that, and sure enough many hits came back. I clicked on the first one and unbeknownst to me a pop up ad comes up.
I read the article and sure enough my programmer was right. Lots of paranoid people out there. I closed the web browser and went back to work still not noticing the pop up ad. Around 5:30am we finished and went home. This time I knew I would not have to be in early so I was going to sleep late and come in a little late. The next day I came in around 4pm or so and noticed that the Turn On 2 station had a note on it saying "Do not touch or close the internet window. This PC is under investigation." I thought to myself, what the hell is this? I talked to one of the day shift techs and he told me The Beard was on a rampage about someone using the test PC for "GOOGLE SEARCHES" and that the station had been shut down all day.
Getting these pilot units through test could be quite a challenge because of new designs, new tests, broken parts, faulty firmware, faulty software and so on. So it was really important to keep everything going all day both shifts in order to meet our deadline. Well one day I notice a pretty big problem with our test software that would have to get fixed as soon as possible or we would have a serious setback and it could actually affect production itself. Since I know the programmer pretty well and he told me to page him whenever I needed him I decided to talk to him on the phone instead of emailing him about the problem. Besides it was still fairly early.
To my surprise he decided to come in and fix it right away because I was there now and the two of us could pound it out better than just one of us. He decided it would be easier for him to come in at night than it would be for me to come in during the day (true what a nice guy take note Beard). Anyway when the programmer got there we discovered that it was a much bigger problem than I had originally thought, this was going to take all night…crap. About 3:30 or 4:00am we are still a long way from finishing and while the program compiles we decide to take a smoke break out on building two's rooftop break area. While we are out there smoking and joking, you have to remember we have been working pretty hard for quite some time now and have gotten a little goofy minded, all of a sudden we see a bright medium size blast of white light. It was out close to the road like and seemed like transformer had just blown. We both go, "Whoa did you see that!" That's when the programmer said, "That was probably the infamous black helicopters taking shooting practice" or something like that. Now I had no idea what he was talking about so asked "What black helicopters?"
He told me that some people claim to see mysterious black military-style helicopters flying around for no reason at all or for spying on people.
"No way" I said.
So he tells me "When we get back to the production area just do a Google search on it."
"Ok I will."
When we got back to the production line instead of walking all the way to my desk and doing the Google search on my computer I decided to do it on the test rack computer, which according to The Beard is a no-no because we might get viruses on our test equipment. Did I mention that The Beard is a computer illiterate paranoid freak? Using the test rack's computer I could keep working while Google searching. So at Google I type in "black helicopter" or "mysterious black helicopters" or something like that, and sure enough many hits came back. I clicked on the first one and unbeknownst to me a pop up ad comes up.
I read the article and sure enough my programmer was right. Lots of paranoid people out there. I closed the web browser and went back to work still not noticing the pop up ad. Around 5:30am we finished and went home. This time I knew I would not have to be in early so I was going to sleep late and come in a little late. The next day I came in around 4pm or so and noticed that the Turn On 2 station had a note on it saying "Do not touch or close the internet window. This PC is under investigation." I thought to myself, what the hell is this? I talked to one of the day shift techs and he told me The Beard was on a rampage about someone using the test PC for "GOOGLE SEARCHES" and that the station had been shut down all day.
posted by factory_peasant at 8:48 AM
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