The Job... err... Collaboration...

I started my Co-Op at the JAC last Monday, my first duties are to do something with there drawing management data-base, an excel spreadsheet?!?! I thought this was a government run operation?!?! This started out really rocky, they say that the drawing management is horrible and I agree, fully, but they aren't really sure how they want to repair it and heaven forbid moving a files around as it might upset someone!

THE JCMT sub-millimeter telescope has been in design since the late '70s... So 35 years of modifications, updates and additions makes for LOTS and LOTS of drawings. The mechanical drawings are pretty organized and pretty easy to file into something logical, but the electrical drawings... Oh god...

browsing though the electrical directories you can find something that are very well organized with descriptive file and directory names, great! And then there are some directory and file names like:

//xxx/xxxx/in_progress
(yet all the from "in_progress" are dated from '82)

or

//xxx/xxxx/in_progress/fred2.dwg

or

//xxx/xxxx/recovered_from_old_C/

or files with the exact same name and appear to be the same but one version is like 6 minutes older that the other... BLARG!

And then I meet resistance, as you can see the "recovered_from_old_C, or "work_in_progress" directory, well we could move that into a new directory that's name makes some sense, but alas no. The old electrical guy has been storing his stuff there for 20 years and doesn't want to move it to something logical, he would rather have a "new_work_in_progress" directory made where he can put the new stuff... BLARG!

They do promise me some real work by the end of the month... Here's hopin'...

On a very cool note, they are going to be sending me up to JCMT on Wednesday, yay. It is apparently an all day trip (there going to feed me, yay) where we make the accent to 14000' and look around. I'm not sure what I'll be doing up there yet, but it does sound fun.