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Canadian Travels and Weird Internet Friends
This week business took me on my second-ever cross-the-border trip, once again to Canada, though this time to a part of Canada (Toronto) that felt much less alien then last time (Montreal). Something about them still speaking English in Ontario makes it a little more comfortable.
Anyhow, there wasn’t much time for sight-seeing as we sandwiched a day of customer meetings and round-trip travel into a 48-hour window, but I did get the chance to finally meet, in person, some “weird internet friends”: Dan, Laura, and Wally. First, a little photographic evidence, then, the narrative.
Dan and Laura:
Wally, Dan, and me:
It should come as no real surprise by now to anyone that reads this blog that I have a group of “weird internet friends”. We’ve had some visit in our home, and met up with others in Minneapolis, Nashville, Lincoln, and Charlotte. Each time I’ve found them to be decent, enjoyable people, and we’ve had great times visiting. I had a little extra anticipation this time, though; Dan and I had hit it off so well online that I figured our in-person meeting would either be brilliant or amazingly awkward.
This meeting fell into the brilliant category. Without minimizing my enjoyment of Wally’s company at all, I have to say that Dan and Laura felt less like new acquaintances and more like long-lost family. We had a fantastic time visiting, eating dinner, and drinking coffee far too late into the evening.
While it is a nearly 12-hour drive from Toronto to Cedar Rapids, I extended the invitation to Dan and Laura that I’d extend to any of my weird internet friends (and you know who you are) - any time you have a long weekend and want to come visit, we have a spare bedroom, an expandable dining room table, and all the excitement of Eastern Iowa for you to enjoy on your visit. Hope to see you soon.
Bullet Points for a Friday Morning #3
- Monday road trip to Nashville was awesome. Saw some friends, made some new ones, saw a great concert. (Geof recorded it and you can download MP3s.)
- Driving 1300 miles in two days will make you a little bit saddle sore.
- Work has been somewhere between ridiculously crazy and insanely crazy for the past couple of weeks. Looks like it’ll stay that way until the middle of May.
- I’ll be traveling to Toronto for work in a couple of weeks. Looking forward to finally meeting Dan and Laura in person.
- Listened to about 15 hours of D. A. Carson sermons/lectures on my road trip. That guy is an amazing teacher.
- At the moment I’m listening to Manchester Orchestra (which isn’t a symphony orchestra, Dad, it’s a rock band) and they’re pretty darn good.
- Guess it’s time to get back to work.
Moving beyond the "what" to the "why"
Earlier this afternoon I posted this thought to Twitter:
Scary Thing #1 as an engineer: people who just want the magic words rather than wanting to understand the problem.
My buddy Geof suggested on Facebook that I should take it easy on managers, but I let him know that no, I wasn’t talking about a manager, I was talking about a fellow engineer. And so then I got to thinking.
Now, I work in the aviation industry. We have very strict regulations and processes we follow when we write embedded software, and for good reason. Let’s face it, when you’re next flying in an airplane, you’d like to hope that we didn’t screw up the code in your Flight Display or your Autopilot or your GPS. So at the beginning of a development program we write a software development plan, where we explain in nauseating detail exactly how we’re going to go about developing the software. The tools we’re going to use, the processes we follow to review the code and fix any errors, the way we’re going to test it, the whole nine yards.
Now, if you’re a new hire right out of college, I expect that you’re going to be able to take that Development Plan and follow the processes we’ve defined. And I don’t really expect you to understand yet why we’re doing it. But before too many years go by you have to make the step to get past understanding the “what” of the Development Plan and get to understanding the “why” we wrote it that way.
Sure, some training will help. Sit down and read a copy of DO-178B sometime when you get bored. And some mentoring along the way is very valuable. But eventually, if you’re gonna turn into a really good engineer, you’re gonna have to be able to think through it for yourself. Hmmm…. Here’s our regulatory objective. Here’s how we’ve done it in the past. But… we could do something different, it would be more efficient, and it would still achieve the same root purpose_, which is what we’re really after._
Because engineers, after all, are a pragmatic people. (We’ll ignore the curmudgeons among us for a minute.) On the whole, their primary objective isn’t simply following the book. They’re more interested in finding an efficient, elegant solution that does it right and, in our industry, does it safe. Beyond that, if you’ve got an idea, say so!
So this is my plea to my fellow engineers out there. (And yes, the fact that I’m writing this at 8:30 on a Friday night is sad proof that I’m an engineer.) Use your heads. Think about it. Start trying to understand the why and don’t just be satisfied with the what. Eventually it’ll start to make sense, and when it does, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a successful senior engineer.
News to make my day cheerier
It’s been a frustrating couple of weeks, but this does make the day cheerier: I just firmed up plans to road trip to Nashville on April 27 (less than two weeks from now!) to meet up with some friends (Geof Morris, Mike Terry among others) and see Andy Osenga play a show with full band at 12th and Porter.
Yeah, who care if it’s a 10-hour drive each way. I can’t wait.
[Oh, and also: I completely have the best wife in the world. Thanks, Becky, for being supportive of this.]
More busy than a one-legged man at a butt-kicking contest
That’s the way my friend Steve used to describe it, and this week has been one of those weeks. Half my calendar at work has been meetings; each meeting seems to generate more tasks for me; the remaining non-meeting time doesn’t seem to be sufficient to complete the tasks at a rate that will bring me anywhere close to keeping up.
Help is on the way, though: a loaner laptop to help me get work done during meetings, and a minion junior engineer who can be responsible for some of my lower-priority-yet-still-time-consuming tasks. Next week is still meeting-heavy, but I have hope that my group and I are making progress.
On the home front, we were able to keep Katie asleep long enough last night for Becky and I to blow off some steam on the new Wii. So far we’ve only got the Wii Sports and Wii Fit, so we played a bunch of head-to-head sports. She quickly proved she could beat me at tennis, baseball, and golf. It’s some small comfort that I can still take her in bowling, though. One of these days I’m gonna pick up Mario Kart and then we’ll see who’s boss.
Now we approach Easter weekend, and it’s gonna be the most relaxed Easter weekend we’ve had since I don’t know when. Saturday is the 8th (!) annual egg hunt out in Stone City at the Berberich’s - will be so good to catch up with them. It’s been far too long.
I’ve got a post on music floating around in my head that I’m gonna try to get written this weekend, but until then, dear readers, be patient and put up with my automated link posts. Go read the articles if you’re bored - they’ve gotta be good before I’ll link ’em. :-)
Home again, home again... (new baby edition)
As a friend noted the other day, it’s a bit of a weird feeling to know that you’re driving only two to the hospital, but when you come home there will be three. But it’s a great feeling, too, to finally leave the hospital and bring folks home. Becky and Katie were discharged on Sunday morning and came home to two excited sisters and two grandparents.
Since she came home there has been a steady stream of visitors: my brother Aaron and his wife Emily came down on Sunday for a few hours, my parents came down to visit today for the day, and my sister Rebecca and her roommate came down this afternoon and will head back tomorrow. Such excitement for such a small person! :-)
Katie was awake and hungry a good bit of the night last night and has then managed to sleep a good bit of the day today. Hopefully we can get her schedule switched around this week so we can get some better sleep… or, I should say, so Becky can get some better sleep; I’m afraid I slept through most all of it last night.
Such a blessing to have a home with a beautiful wife and three beautiful little girls. God is good.
It's a girl!
Katherine (Katie) Paige Hubbs born March 20, 2009 at 11:22 am 7 lbs, 13.5 oz 20.5" long.
Everybody is doing great.
Who says you have to spend a lot?
Back in college, Dr. Batts suggested a cheap date: a trip to Walmart. His rationale? First, go through the food side of the store and eat the free samples, then, go back to the electronics department and watch whatever movie is playing on the TVs.
Well, 10 years ago I guess they still did have food samples and movies on the TVs at Walmart; now the samples are gone and the TVs run perpetual advertising. But last night we still managed a pretty fantastic cheap date.
Dinner for two + dessert + tip at a nice Italian restaurant: $1 after gift card. Mario Kart on the Wii at Best Buy: free. Mocha and Decaf Sumatra at Brewed Awakenings: free thanks to a credit on my account.
Three hours out with Becky on a beautiful March evening: priceless.
(Of course, a couple more experiences with Mario Kart on a Wii will pretty much convince me that we need to buy one… which has the potential make the total financial impact of the evening a little bit more expensive.)
The Waiting Game
We’ve gotten to that point in Becky’s pregnancy now where it’s just a waiting game. The calendar is clear; the in-laws are here (and planning to stay until after the baby is born), the bags are packed. Heck, we even made a trial run to the hospital on Thursday morning when we had a bit of a false alarm. So now we wait.
Last time when we were playing the waiting game we ended up buying a minivan. We’re still paying it off. I don’t think we’ll do anything quite so expensive this time, but we might at least take advantage of the free babysitting and go out to dinner or watch a movie or something. The weather is great this week so we’ll take lots of walks. And then we wait some more.
Actually, if the baby were born on Wednesday or so of this week the timing would be pretty great - nothing like having a built-in excuse to take vacation days from work during the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament. :-) Not that basketball would be my, um, priority or anything.
I am slowly learning patience whether I like it or not.
A dilemma of sorts
Last week I accepted a position in a new group here at work. It’s a group I’ve worked with for several years, and I knew I wanted to work in that group if the opportunity arose. The opportunity did arise, and I got the position. While the exact transfer date has yet to be settled upon (sometime today we’ll get it figured out, I hope), it’s just a matter of time.
Which leads me to this dilemma. I have two options for my new office. (I’m not quite senior enough to get my own full-sized office yet… one more engineering grade to go.)
Choice 1: share a two-person office with a co-worker, getting the end of the office near the door. One desk, one table, file drawer.
Choice 2: get my own little mini-office. Basically it’s standard cubicle-based office furniture inside a room with a door. It’s not very big, but it would be my first-ever “own office”.
One thing that makes the choice easier: my new department will be moving to a different building within the next couple of months, so my choice really only impacts the near term. What think ye, friends and readers?