Day 70/365: The Friday Five on a Sunday

[nanila]

1. Who made you feel good this week, and how?
   My line manager made me feel appreciated and valued. An ex-colleague made specific plans to hang out with me twice in the next five weeks and that made me feel good about people wanting to spend time with me even though I’m always tired.
   
   
2. What did you do this week that moved you closer to reaching your goals?
   Arranged a meeting with my Big Boss. Well, I don’t know if the meeting will actually move me closer to my goals, but the act of setting aside a specific time to talk about it was a step I’d been putting off for ages.
   
   
3. What did you most enjoy doing this week?
   Calibrating Cluster magnetometer data.
   
   
4. What did you learn this week?
   I learnt that there are a lot of ways to arrange the wires and pads in a flip-and-wire mounting of a SMD (surface mount device) on a PCB (printed circuit board), and that they are all ugly. Some are more compact than others, but there is never going to be anything pretty about big blobs of Scotchweld.
   
   Hey, you asked.
   
   
5. What’s the funniest thing that happened to you this week?
   [Bodily function TMI alert] Keiki pooped himself whilst he was asleep. He came downstairs for his breakfast, and Humuhumu and I went, “Phwoar, Keiki!” Then the three of us spontaneously burst into a rendition of Keiki’s classic song Poo in the Night.
   
   Parenting: so awesome
   

Comments

[wohali]

Eep (SMD)! Much easier to lay out the PCB for an SMD part from the start. But if you have no choice....30awg ("wire-wrap") wire and epoxying the wire to the board somehow is....i guess OK for an ECO.

[nanila]

Much easier to lay out the PCB for an SMD part from the start.

Absolutely. The problem is that some of the otherwise flight-qualified packages (e.g. rad-hard) available for space are notorious for not surviving environmental testing for space (e.g. the solder joints crack or they, uh, fall off the board completely). And so you end up having to flip and wire them. I'd much rather go back to using through-hole packages for these particular parts but it turns out no one makes them any more, which is ruddy irritating.

[davidgillon]

Ouch! ISTR some components on Eurofighter we bought up and stockpiled enough to cover a decade's worth of production specifically to avoid the "we don't make that any more" scenario.

[nanila]

That would be a foolproof strategy, except that if you let something sit around for too long, then you end up having to go through the re-lifing process to use it for a new mission/purpose, which is just as much of a headache as qualifying a new package.

[davidgillon]

Yes, it works for multiple unit steady production scenarios, not so well for occasional unique designs.

Did you notice in that article on the Chinese geophysical satellites I linked speculation the launcher had been sitting in inventory for a decade?

[nanila]

I didn't catch that! Interesting.

[ankaret]

I am imagining 'Poo in the night' going to the tune of 'Stayin' Alive' now.

[nanila]

I wish it were that disco, but it's more of a nursery rhyme/preschool tune kind of affair. :P

[mysterysquid]

:D

Good questions!

[nanila]

I enjoyed this set!

[hamsterwoman]

Then the three of us spontaneously burst into a rendition of Keiki’s classic song Poo in the Night.

XD

(I have noticed that having children makes one's sense of humor descend to the lowest common denominator of youngest child*. It is kind of cringeworthy on one hand, but on the other hand, life DOES seem a lot funnier!

*Although this no longer explains why my husband still find the Minions as funny as he does, considering said youngest child is now 14...)

[nanila]

I'm hoping that the top-volume scatological humour phase comes to an end reasonably soon. I get tired of constantly trying to discourage it!