ASCO

Dead Crow

On my usual route to work I pull up to a stop sign at the intersection of the 5 lanes of US-1, turn right, run most of the way through the rev range of first and second gears until it is time to signal left and to enter the turn lane for making the left onto the parking lot access road. Time to execute this takes about 6 secs. The 100 yard access road is traveled at selective speeds depending on the closeness of other incoming Valve Store employees and takes another 5 to 15 seconds.

When I take the left turn on US-1, I can get a good idea how I’ll handle this final approach. I do have to be 3/4 of the way down the access road before someone gets in it behind me, because I have to do a u-turn into the lot, stop, shift into reverse and back into that very first spot. Today there were just two vehicles headed north towards me and both were at least 1/3 of a mile back, so no worries. Wrong boy chick. Turns out the lead small pickup truck was hauling ass.

I should not have been too surprised because less than a 1/4 mile before where I spotted the traffic is a red light that catches most everyone and right past it the speed limit jumps to 55. So naturally most everyone who has to stop this one last time on the way to work, and possibly having just been sitting at the previous much longer stoplight 1500 feet before, pushes their foot to the floor and leaves it there until it is time to slow down to turn left.

So I’m only halfway down the access road when the truck hangs the left in behind me, I look back to see their new velocity and it hasn’t changed (much). By the time I transit the last half of the access road his headlights are right bright in my mirror. Now this is no big deal as I’m not militant on the backing in thing, if I don’t time have to to execute the maneuver gracefully without holding up the person behind, I just pull straight in. As the truck zips by towards the front of the lot I recognize it and I know the fellow well. I pass right by the machine he operates quite a few times a day, so I tell myself to be sure to tease him about his speed during the day. At least once.

Later in the day while walking through the shop he is standing there, so I walk over and ask if he ever looks down at his speedometer when traveling that stretch of road. He laughs and says, “Not if there no one in front of me.” “Well,” I say, “You were really moving this morning, I was kind of curious.” Then he asks, “Did you see the dead crow there on the road in?” I said, “No. How’d you? Moving that fast?” Which led me to tell him my favorite joke from Mark Turner about why you never see a dead crow on the side of the road (read it here.)

When it was time to go for my morning walk, sure enough I could see something black, fairly large, laying in the middle of the access road. I took a picture to ask him if this is what he saw. When I got right up to it I took another confirmation picture. Then when I walked back by after my walk, I showed him the pictures and told that maybe he better slow down a bit so he can really tell what he’s looking at.

Bicycle Friday

The bike riding to work on Fridays continues even if only one of us actually rides all the way to the Valve Store. In the morning Donna rides to the halfway point and turns around and heads home on a different route and I continue on pedaling our old standard route to ASCO. At the end of my work day I saddle up and Donna meets me right across the street from the plant having ridden the standard route to within the last tenth of a mile. There is really no reason for her to cross the busiest road on the route only to have cross back 10 minutes later.

People are so used to us riding the tandem in together that you might be surprised to learn how many people wonder how the whole thing works now when I tell them she rides halfway in with me in the morning. “Does she have to walk back home?” “What’s it like to ride that bike with no one on the back seat?” “Ohhh, you have other bikes…”

This morning when a cubicle1 neighbor said, “I didn’t think you were here.”

“It’s Friday,” I reply, “I bike rode in.”

“Oh, I didn’t notice the bike.”

“That’s because it is half as long as the tandem,” I tell him eliciting a chuckle.

This got us talking about cycling and as it turns out he was into mountain biking about the same time as we were back in the middle 1990s. I wonder if we ever crossed paths as we talked of riding some of the same local trails and we both even had ridden the Tsali Trail up in western North Carolina. But I don’t think we were at the same places at the same time because even though it was 20 years ago Donna and I would have been hard to forget. Among all the usual pick up trucks, jeeps, SUVs and big cars, it was hard to miss a Miata with 2 mountain bikes mounted on the trunk at trail head parking areas.

Lick Fork Lake Trailhead

Arts & Crafts Engineer



Last Friday: Hey Brian can you make me a banner for my Relay for Life Event…tonight?
Monday: If I email you the pictures and bring over the words what I want on it, can you make me up a Lost Dog flyer?
Tuesday: Not enough people have returned their Safety Survey. Can you design something and print out five of them on 18 x 24 paper?
Wednesday: I print out my usual Service Level chart to hang outside the cafeteria.
Thursday: I need a banner for my Dad’s 75 birthday can you fix me up?
Friday: If I send you a picture with something circled could you erase it somehow?2

Another Exciting Day at Work

Two of the Valve Store’s engineers were standing outside my cubical discussing a housefly problem. The engineer with the problem had tried a couple things with little success, so the other says, “Have you heard about air-power gun that shoots salt that kills them.” “Nooo..”, came the reply. “It is sort of like a shotgun water pistol that fires table salt.”

I hadn’t either, so I looked it up. It’s called Bug-A-Salt, cute, huh? So, the housefly host says, why don’t you get a couple of them and bring the boys over (non-fly guy has 5-year old twins) and they can hunt the flies down. I’ll offer up a bounty. At this point I jump in with, “Hey, I want in on this bounty. How much is it?” The answer is $50 a ton. This is a perfect answer because the kids will jump at the size of the bounty and not really have a sense of how much a ton is.

I on the other hand know how big a ton is and how big a fly is, so I’m no longer interested in hunting houseflies. But I am now curious as to just how many flies it would take to get a ton of them. A quick search turns up these figures in a couple places, so they are going to be accurate enough for our little math problem.

Typical housefly: Adult size: 5-7 mm = 0.005-0.007 m Adult mass: 12 mg = 0.000 012 kg

1 Imperial Ton = 1016.05 kilograms, so we divide 1016.05 by .000012 = 84670833.333, or just a mere 84.7 million flies in a ton. Not nearly as many as I originally thought, I would have guessed some number followed by about 10 or 12 zeroes.

Next I guess we will also need to figure out how big a bucket we are going to need to hold ton of flies. I couldn’t find a volume for a house fly, so I’m going to take a SWAG and say if the fly is 6 mm long and it is roughly cylindrical shape of about 2.5 mm in diameter. This gives me, fudging for wings and legs, let’s call it 30 cu/mm per fly. So the 84670833.3333 x 30 = 2540125000 cu/mm. Converting to cubic feet gives us 88.90437499965 or a slightly overfilled 3-yard dumpster from California Waste Services.

Pomp & Circumspect Stance

Donna told everyone at work that she was going to retire March 31st of 2017 back in December of last year. Now, what usually happens when someone retires is they bring in a cake and some soft drinks. All the front office/salary folks gather in a conference on that person’s last day, the plant manager gives a short little speech praising the retiree and how hard it is going to be at ASCO when they’re gone, they present the retiree with a watch and the retiree says a few words. Then, cake is eaten and stories are told.

Around the middle of March Donna gets a call from the plant manager’s assistant, and tells her that on the 31st we will have too many different groups of visitors in the the plant so there will not be a conference room open. Could we move it Tuesday the 28th? Sure she says to the assistant. To me she says, “If they are giving me the cake and watch on Tuesday, I don’t want to come back for the rest of the week.” “Fill out a vacation request for Wednesday, Thursday & Friday” She has about 2-1/2 weeks of vacation left that she’d get paid for after retiring, and we had that money earmarked for a small project, but we really didn’t need it, so I don’t blame her I wouldn’t want to either.

Not more than two days later Donna gets another call from the assistant, “Ahhh, we need to move it to Friday the 24th. That OK?” “Sure,” Donna says. To me she says, “Fill out a vacation request for Monday & Tuesday now too.”3 We are now set for 12 noon on the 24th in the HR Conference Room for Donna’s going away Soiree.

About 10 minutes before the start time of the get together I wander down to the conference room to see if the assistant needs any help setting up, she has things well in hand and tells me the saga of picking up the cake. The cake came from Grocery Store #1 because they are know as makers of great tasting cakes. Normally they include one of those plastic cake knife/sever things with the cake, but they have stopped giving them out. She asks can I buy one? They tell her nope, we don’t even have any of them in the store any more. So she stops into Grocery Store #2, which also does cakes, to ask if she can buy one of those cake serving knives. They tell her we don’t sell them, but, you can have one for free.4

At this point I look down and see that the sentiment on the cake reads: Congratulations On You Retirement Donna. I wait for the assistant to apologize for the error, but she never does. So I figure, A) she hasn’t even noticed in all the hullabaloo or B) is too embarrassed to say and is hoping that I don’t notice. So I don’t say anything because A) maybe no one else will notice and b) I don’t want to embarrass her.

The plant manager can’t be there to do the honors because he is on a conference call with someone higher up the food chain and if he does it will only be for a second, as he is on his way out the door to an eye doctor thing. Next in the chain of command is Donna’s manager, so it should have fallen to him, but he has had unexpected doctor’s trip with his elderly dad. This leaves her supervisor for the remarks. “Donna has…how long you been with company?” Donna says “Thirty years.” Her supervisor continues, “Donna has been with the company 30 years and in this time…” This is about when I stop listening, but his remarks while totally un-noteworthy, were very brief. Donna’s words to the assembled were even shorter, something along the lines of, “I’ve enjoyed my time here, but I’m glad I’m retiring. Let’s eat.” One of Donna’s friends/co-worker and I cut and dispense cake to the gathered throng.5

We are about 20 minutes into the ceremony and there are only about 6 or 7 people remaining from the original 35-ish when the HR Manager comes in and announces, “Well, I guess I’m right on time.” I cut her a piece of cake and we chat a bit longer. There are about 4 of us left and because the HR Manager is relatively new, we are regaling her of retirement ceremonies past. I don’t know if someone says the word or it suddenly occurs to her, but the HR Manager goes, “Your watch! Let me go get it.”

The three women left are oohing and aahing over the the thing and babbling on about watches while Donna and I stand there, mute. Because inside we are both thinking the same thing, “Whooo-pee.” Donna doesn’t wear a watch, never has and probably never will, but it was explained to her, like they explained birthday gifts to Dr. Sheldon Cooper on the Big Bang Theory: it is a non-optional social convention. Donna and the HR assistant had picked the most expensive one out of the available choices with the thoughts of selling it on Craigslist.6

Now it is down to just Donna, myself and the plant managers assistant with a very large sheet cake that is three quarters gone. We wonder aloud what we should do with the rest of the cake and the assistant says, “You can take it home.” But this was impossible, because even on her last day at work Donna and I have ridden the tandem bicycle. “why don’t we put it in the cafeteria so anyone who passes through can grab a piece,” Donna suggests. We all agree that sounds like a plan.

It is now just Donna and I. I start to finish cutting up the cake into little rectangles before moving it and I spot the envelope of a greeting card with Donna written on it sitting next to the cake box. I pick it up and ask, “What do you suppose this?” Well, what else could it be but a Hallmark card that has been passed around for everyone to leave their well wishes in, that probably should have been handed to her sometime during the party.

Backup Man With A Backup Plan

“Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerer’s ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebel’s hidden fort…” – Admiral Conan Antonio Motti

The Valve Store has actually hired a real IT Guy1 a couple months ago, so I am back to being just a back-up. And right now my only actual duties when the primary IT Guy is off is to change the backup tape every day in the server room2. Occasionally I get called upon hand out a cable or go lay hands on an ill PC, but the tape is really it. I remove the previous night’s tape and put in the current day’s, then take the used tape over to the main entrance door and hand it to the Security Guard (where later he gives it to a courier for off-site storage.) The highlight of this duty is to make up something different to say about the contents of the tape: “Just fast forward to the hour and 15 minute mark because that is where all the nudity is.” or “Don’t let Congress get a hold of this, its got all of Hillary’s emails on it.”

Unless you have been out west protesting an oil pipeline for the last 2 months or so you probably know there is a new Star Wars movie coming out. Well, over Thanksgiving week while the real IT Guy was on vacation I thought it would be cool to make a label for Friday’s tape referencing the supposed plot of Rouge One. That way when he pulls out the tape on Monday to swap them, he’d notice my little Easter Egg and get a smile. Trouble was, because I wouldn’t be in on that Friday, the guard was going to do the swapping and I didn’t want to take a chance he’d notice the different label, not get it, and call somebody because of the “error.” So I didn’t do it.

But last week I got a second chance. The IT Guy had to visit a sister plant for a project and would be gone from Tuesday through the end of the week. Friday afternoon I scoured the internet for a Galactic Empire logo and I also found out that the “Death Star” had a real name – Orbital Battle Station. I made a label just a touch smaller than, and used a glue stick to paste it over, the existing one on the tape.

Monday morning I heard the IT Guy get paged a half dozen times in the first hour by at least 4 different people, so I knew he was hopping around like a one-armed paper hanger. Around mid-morning I finally stopped in for a visit and asked him how the visit went and updated him on any IT problems that arose. I then asked if he had changed the tape yet. “Yep” “Did you notice anything different? Like the label?” “Yeah,” he replied, “I thought the storage site messed up somehow and just put the tape in the box and sent it off.” He totally missed my joke…sigh.

1. His name is Matt Somethingorother, but I like IT Guy better. And besides it gives him a bit of anonymity. The previous fellow’s real name was John Smith, but that’s got the anonymity built right in.
2. This is what the new IT Guy calls it because that is where our plant’s servers are. John and I always referred to it as the computer room because it was purpose built to hold the AS400 mini-mainframe we were supposed to get.

Phish And Let Phish

In my work email this morning was the below email:

From: careerservices@ernerson.com
Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2016 11:52 PM
To: Bogardus, Brian [INDAUTO/ASCONUM/USAK]
Subject: Account Owner Questionnaire

Emerson employee,

As of May 1, 2016, all account owners will be legally required to digitally sign and provide response to the employment history questionnaire. This questionnaire helps develop a more complete profile of our employees for reporting purposes.

Please confirm and update your questionnaire immediately via the link below.

Click Here

Sincerely,
Career Services Team

It has phishing scam written all over it. Because the Valve Store(TM) is part of the Emerson Corporation all our email addresses are @emerson.com, this email, if you look quickly, appears to come from the home office, but it doesn’t, it comes from er nerson.com. Career Services? Never heard of it. And if this sort of action was required of us we would have already had a couple of emails ahead of time informing us that this action would be coming up on a certain date.

The clincher was if you hover over the Click Here link in the email (go ahead, I copied it here) you will see the URL that you would be taken to and it was the word phishing right in the link, thus signifying it probably really wasn’t a phishing scam. To double check, I opened a browser and entered mediapro.com and I was taken to website that sells Privacy and Security Awareness Solutions.

It was a phishing test from corporate. Every couple months we get one of these things to test our awareness of this type of scam. From my informal survey around the engineering area we are definitely getting pretty good at not falling for them.

Later in the afternoon this email showed up in my inbox:

From: Help Desk, ASCO Numatics US
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2016 2:57 PM
To: ASCO Numatics US DL
Subject: Phishing Attack Notification
Importance: High

‘Account Owner Questionnaire’

OVERVIEW: Reports have identified a malicious email circulating on the Emerson network. The attack appears to be related to an online questionnaire in an attempt to lure users into clicking on and opening a malicious hyperlink.

DATE EFFECTIVE: Immediately

IMPACT: All Emerson Employees and Contractors

DETAILS: The following malicious email is an example of what has been reported throughout the Emerson network. Please be aware these e-mails may vary slightly.

<Copy of Above Email>

Please report all suspicious e-mails to phishing@emerson.com. (Please note that the phishing e-mails quarantined by IronPort in your Outlook mailbox need not be reported; only the e-mails that gets through the spam filters.)

ACTION: Always use caution when opening an e-mail from an unknown or untrustworthy source. As an e-mail and web user, beware of any suspicious e-mails, e-mail attachments, or unknown Internet locations. Blah, blah, blah…

So this second email effectively kills the test.

I went up front and asked our new IT guy Matt why. He of course recognized the phish for what it was and he had a few people ask him it was real or not. And he had a couple people ask him if he was going to send the warning email like John Smith used to, but he couldn’t because he had emailed the Help Desk in Florham Park to ask if he should send out that boilerplate email, but was told no. So I asked him why did one finally come out. His answer was probably one of the Division IT Directors or maybe the VP of IT got tired of answering the “Is it real” question and ordered it sent.

I asked Matt do they ever get the results and he said no, but you can bet if enough people clicked on the link we’d hear about it in some form of company-wide email phishing recognition training.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 06/25/15: 166