Mini-Rel

For the past few months I've been working exclusively building entire test stations for our department as well as extra racks to be sent to our division in Malaysia. It has been very challenging, stressful work in part due to the fact that I have received little to no support from my immediate management staff. They wanted their test racks built and they wanted them yesterday, but they didn't do anything to help me expedite the job. In fact they were more of a hindrance than anything else. All I can say is I got the job done and I learned much along the way.

The Malaysians still aren't up to speed yet at producing the same instruments we do. I have a feeling as soon as they do though, our American workforce will be thrown out of here.

Now that I have dished out dozens of functional test stations my supervisor has re-assigned me once again. Looks like I won't be heading back to Area 51. My new job is working with a giant oaf of a technician in our environmental laboratory. Back there in the E-lab they take new prototype instruments and subject them to many different kinds of extreme conditions to flush out unforeseen design flaws and set performance specifications. They call this testing "Mini-Rel" which means mini-reliability testing. I guess once upon a time we did thorough reliability testing on our new products and now we cut corners there too, just like we seem to do everywhere else in our processes these days.

I will be working with a big ass goofball of a guy. He's got a bunch of nicknames. Some people call him "Baby Huey" because he reminds them of the giant dopey cartoon duck. Others call him "Tiny" as he is the exact opposite of being small. Really, this guy is a behemoth of a man. I don't mean entirely overweight, he's just huge, balding, and he's got a beer gut that would make Homer Simpson proud. Shoelaces likes to call this guy "Mr. Around The World In 80 Days." I'm not sure why. For now I'm just going to call him Tiny like most people do in the department.

This week I start my new assignment with Tiny in the environmental lab. I'm somewhat apprehensive about it right now because Tiny doesn't seem all that bright and he's in charge of running that area. I might be stepping into a serious mess here.