How patient are you?

It seems our profession is one that requires a great deal of patience.

Things I have patience for:

Code that doesn't do what I expect it to
analog glitches that occur very rarely and take days or weeks to track
down and fix
soldering 0604 components with a soldering iron
computer troubleshooting that requires reboot after reoboot after reboot
after reboot.
Tiny little hemostats and needlenose tweezers
Manipulating tiny objects under microscopes and 10X loupes whille holding
a soldering iron in one hand, a tweezer with two fingers of the other
hand, and a wire of solder in another two fingers of the second hand.
etc. etc.

Things I do not have patience for:

People who yell when there are no fires about
Children who obstinately put themselves in harm's way in order to be
disobedient
Software with buggy and needlessly complex user interfaces
Mechanical contraptions in general, if it is smaller than a two-by-four
and the tools weigh less than 5 LBS, and it is not electronic.

Now these are all things that would try the patience of most people, I
believe.  however, here is a situation where my patience is tried to the
breaking point.  This is typical - I have no patience for mechanical
contraptions.

 I have a cord retractor for an appliance. The cord retractors are
prototypes, and so do not work very well.  There is a major appliance show
in two days, the guy who made these is in China, The appliances are going
to be shown to a major client who may buy a million of them, the
appliances are here and so am I.   There is a fix that needs to be applied
that involves taking the cord retractors apart.  So far so good.

Now it is almost impossible to get one of these back together if the
mainspring gets out of the cord retractor unit.

Step 1. I take one apart, being careful not to let the constant-force
spring go sproing! and fly out of the housing like a jack in the box.  I
put it back together after appling some grease.  It works a lot better!
But the cord doesn't go in all the way.

Step 2. I take it apart, and SPROOIIIYOYOYING! There goes the mainspring
across the room.

No Worries! I have another.

Step 1. I take one apart, being careful not to let the constant-force
spring go sproing! and fly out of the housing like a jack in the box.  I
put it back together after appling some grease.  It works a lot better!
But the cord doesn't go in all the way.  This time, I clamp onto the
mainspring with hemostats and hold it in place.  THis works pretty well
for a while and then...

Step 2. I take it apart, and put it together.  It works a lot better!  but
the cord still does not go in all the way, but it is closer now.

Step 3. I take it apart, and SPROOIIIYOYOYING! There goes the mainspring
across the room along with the hemostats.

No worries ! I have one more.  However, my career may depend on whether
this one works when I get done.  BTW it is midnight.

Step 1. I take one apart, being careful not to let the constant-force
spring go sproing! and fly out of the housing like a jack in the box.  I
put it back together after appling some grease.  It works a lot better!
But the cord doesn't go in all the way.  I Anchor the end of the
mainspring with epoxy putty so it cannot go sproing.

Step 2. I take it apart, and SPROOIIIYOYOYING!  The other end comes loose
and there goes the mainspring across the room .

At this point, ...  well, ...   I am not sure I want to publish what I
said at this point.


Anybody wanna hire a mechanical klutz?  I will be looking for work
tomorrow........

-- Lawrence Lile

--
http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic:
[PIC]:,[SX]:,[AVR]: ->uP ONLY! [EE]:,[OT]: ->Other [BUY]:,[AD]: ->Ads