I believe it was the Challenger Tail Cone Tank internal loads report that I had to completely redo following one of the "killer tag" checking events, fortunately for me, I could do repeat stuff like that pretty fast so although it subtracted time from the schedule, I could work at "burst" mode to fix my stupid mistakes.
The error I had made was to reference ultimate loads with the limit loads rolling radius curves, so all the dimensions of compressed tires for the side load cases were incorrect, and incorrect in a bad way as the extra load produced more tire stroke which meant the internal loads were unconservative.
Regardless of me messing up that report initially, it was directly due to that experience on the Challenger aircraft that I was enlisted to work on derivatives of the Canadair Regional which was a similar aircraft but with different CG envelope and increased weights. The proposals for various new work came and went and I was busy on the F/A-18 NLG work when Dowty won the project for the next version of the aircraft, plus there was another proposal for the Global Express on the cards.
This was the start of an interesting six months at the tail end of 1993, as Jim Collins, who was our beloved Stress Office Manager, and good friend, retired from that position. Jim was always in his heart a job shopper, and even as the manager of the Stress Office (not the chief) he was quite a laid back individual and we would all enjoy his office banter.
It was sad to see him go.
The new project meant that Dowty needed bums on seats and there was such a huge influx of contractors that it presented a major problem in that busy time.
There were not enough seats for the required bums.
Sunday, October 25, 2015
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
The nameless ones.
In the last post you will have seen me refer to "my boss" and not the person by name, well, the truth is that in the coming year or so of this account, people who know me will know who that particular "my boss" was, and that although he was a very good boss, he ended up doing something quite unforgiveable to me, so I won't be using his name.
I will also not be using someone elses name, who was actually an accomplice in the same future deed, and although I in particular agreed that all was forgiven with this secondary person many, many years afterwards, in fact, I never really did and merely "went with the flow" of circumstance.
It's just drama, and I think the blog is more about fun.
In 1991 when I returned to Dowty, I promised I would be back for at least two, perhaps three years as a permanent employee. I kept the promise and in the next few entries I will describe the set of events, which to me are quite comical, that led to me leaving once again for the realms of the job shopper world and of course, a much more lucrative career.
I will also not be using someone elses name, who was actually an accomplice in the same future deed, and although I in particular agreed that all was forgiven with this secondary person many, many years afterwards, in fact, I never really did and merely "went with the flow" of circumstance.
It's just drama, and I think the blog is more about fun.
In 1991 when I returned to Dowty, I promised I would be back for at least two, perhaps three years as a permanent employee. I kept the promise and in the next few entries I will describe the set of events, which to me are quite comical, that led to me leaving once again for the realms of the job shopper world and of course, a much more lucrative career.
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Musical Chairs
The music would stop and one of us would once again become the office bad monkey, and in my world of paranoia, I always suspected it was me. This was mainly due to the fact that it was usually most likely to be me and even at the grand old age of approaching fourty, I was still quite an accomplished office idiot.
Perhaps that's why I considered myself to be the magnet, it was a self serving set of behaviours of not conforming to what was expected, attracting (mostly bad) judgement all the time, perhaps it was a form of attention deficit disorder, because after I'd completed my quota of work, I just enjoyed disruption.
This backfired many times, as my distraction would creep into my work, sometimes with catastrophic results in the check cycle, my boss would take my work home with him, check it over and mark, or tag, the pages that needed to be updated or corrected.
Sometimes, what resulted, was the well feared "killer" tag.
A little post it note, indicating that a very early report assumption was in error, an error that would cascade through subsequent reports. It was usually an error in the loads report, and that would jumpspark to the internal loads generation, and if I'd been efficient, even into the limit and ultimate strength analysis reports.
When that happened, thems was true bad monkey times.
Perhaps that's why I considered myself to be the magnet, it was a self serving set of behaviours of not conforming to what was expected, attracting (mostly bad) judgement all the time, perhaps it was a form of attention deficit disorder, because after I'd completed my quota of work, I just enjoyed disruption.
This backfired many times, as my distraction would creep into my work, sometimes with catastrophic results in the check cycle, my boss would take my work home with him, check it over and mark, or tag, the pages that needed to be updated or corrected.
Sometimes, what resulted, was the well feared "killer" tag.
A little post it note, indicating that a very early report assumption was in error, an error that would cascade through subsequent reports. It was usually an error in the loads report, and that would jumpspark to the internal loads generation, and if I'd been efficient, even into the limit and ultimate strength analysis reports.
When that happened, thems was true bad monkey times.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Pocket Computer revisited
I'd come back from the UK at the end of 1992 with my younger brother's programmable calculator, a Casio. It was an impressive thing and in my opinion, bringing it to Canada to be a useful device in my career, served to keep his memory fresh in my mind.
However, there was another device out there that caught my eye, and I knew that it had the capability to run Lotus 123, and be a "pocket" clamshell computer. It was a Hewlett Packard HP100LX :
It was a full on DOS computer that was over a thousand bucks, and I set up a nefarious deal with a chap that had advertised in the paper, he had a brand new unit for a mere five hundred bucks.
I called his number (not internet back then) and he said "I bought it for my girlfriend and she does not want it" which I completely believed. He said the best thing would be to meet at night time in the carpark at the McDonalds on Markham Road near Toronto, make sure to bring cash in unmarked bills and he said that we'd be good to go.
And so it was.
Ok, he did not say bring unmarked bills, but the entire transaction felt like some sort of drug deal and at one point I felt that I would be killed during the proceedings. However, in the end I was safe and I did not care, I had secured a brand new HP 100LX and I was happy as a clam with a clamshell.
It was time to put the "Houseplan" home budget spreadsheet on a pocket computer.
However, there was another device out there that caught my eye, and I knew that it had the capability to run Lotus 123, and be a "pocket" clamshell computer. It was a Hewlett Packard HP100LX :
I called his number (not internet back then) and he said "I bought it for my girlfriend and she does not want it" which I completely believed. He said the best thing would be to meet at night time in the carpark at the McDonalds on Markham Road near Toronto, make sure to bring cash in unmarked bills and he said that we'd be good to go.
And so it was.
Ok, he did not say bring unmarked bills, but the entire transaction felt like some sort of drug deal and at one point I felt that I would be killed during the proceedings. However, in the end I was safe and I did not care, I had secured a brand new HP 100LX and I was happy as a clam with a clamshell.
It was time to put the "Houseplan" home budget spreadsheet on a pocket computer.
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Danger Zone
The work on the F/A-18 E/F continued and I was initially responsible for several items in the catapult launch train. In the early stages we were shown a training video, with the previous derivative of the Hornet undertaking launch and arrest. It was exciting stuff.
What was more exciting was my "bad monkey" status seemed to be wearing off and I was being sent out on trips to further the project. It was during one of these trips that I met up again with Ray Rapo and the guys from Cleveland Pneumatic, saw my first Hummer vehicle at the South Bend airport and enjoyed many Dos Equis beers at the American bars once more.
A lot of the work was intense with quite steep learning curves, we were expected to "port" the McDonnell Douglas fatigue program over to the computer system and the processing requirements of their "flight by flight" spectrum required Dowty to invest in a much improved mainframe and hundreds of hours of coding and debugging by the guys.
It was during this time my professional friendship with a McDonnell Douglas structural guy, Ed Nowakowski, started. That relationship, and the overall F/A-18 program rekindled my respect for the American "no BS" type approach, which of course meant that I had to get my personal act together and rein in my bouts of silliness and immaturity.
Another steep learning curve.
Monday, May 11, 2015
Eye Contact
The first days back at Dowty were difficult, mainly because of the inability of most of my colleagues to make eye contact, or act remotely normal around me. I know I was walking my own little tightrope between the hours, managing to hold off the tears while somehow attempting to focus on the mundane.
John Jeffries came to talk to me, and I don't know why, or ever asked for that matter, but I could just see in his eyes that he understood my pain. I had held my composure quite well until he came to chat that Monday or Tuesday, however, once I looked into his eyes I lost it completely.
It was a good thing.
It seemed from that moment on things started to be better, perhaps only in tiny steps, but my life started to work it's way back to the "new" normal and I was able to focus on work once more.
In the month that followed, things settled down at work, and at home.
Those that have lost a brother, sister or parent for that matter, may know of a strange positive consequence of the loss, and the equally strange feeling of guilt associated with that effect.
I found myself enjoying life more and realised certain things that had been taken for granted were important again. This was a broad, sweeping appreciation of most of life's pleasures, food, drink, sex, driving with the window down, almost anything to do with life became focused, as though it was all new and special again.
I realised that all of this was down to the fact that my brother had been killed, that I was somehow benefiting from the loss, which mixed this new found lust for life with a growing feeling of guilt and almost an inability to look myself in the eyes in a mirror.
It was another stage of grief.
I concluded that to honour my brother and to make some good consequence out of his tragic death, I should attempt to live my life to the fullest. I knew that I could not blame myself, however indirectly, for his death and that each new day of my continuing life, was an extension of his.
It was time to move on.
I did not realise at the time....
It seems that a lot of my time is spent here in the present, reflecting about the past and wondering what would have been different if I had done something in a different way and how things may have turned out or how people would have been affected.
I've called the process "unproductive nostalgia" and that's mostly what it is, and perhaps in ten years time I will look back at this blog and think along similar lines, that perhaps my time spent doing this could have been used in a more productive manner.
That being said, I regret not writing down what was happening in 1992 and '93 and I did not realise at the time how important it all was.
I had flown back from the UK, following the funeral of my young brother. It had been an odd flight, because I was using his ticket, and ironically it was the exact flight that would have been the start of his two week holiday in Canada, a period of time for the pair of us to find out about each other.
We had talked on the phone a few weeks before and Paul had mentioned that he would borrow my Ford Mustang to do some exploring while he was here, I'd talked to mum afterwards and she had told me in no uncertain terms not to let him drive while in Canada.
That was fine, as I never intended for him to get behind the wheel on the wrong side of the road, especially in my beloved Mustang.
The details of the events of the night of his death were vague, but it had been rumoured that Paul and his girlfriend, Barbara, had been arguing on the Saturday night, that they were separated and yards away from each other when he was clipped by the car.
During the flight, I wondered if it was all because I lived in Canada that he had been killed.
That sounds insane I know, but it was my thought process, that the butterfly effect of my actions five years prior, when I emigrated to Canada, had led to Paul planning his visit and subesequently resulted in tension and an argument about the holiday on the Saturday a week before his flight.
That it was somehow my fault.
It was a secret I kept from the nice lady who sat next to me on the plane, during the flight we had chatted about this and that, but not really about that. I had told her that I had been visiting my family in the UK, and all was well.
I wonder what Paul would have said to her as they approached Toronto.
I've called the process "unproductive nostalgia" and that's mostly what it is, and perhaps in ten years time I will look back at this blog and think along similar lines, that perhaps my time spent doing this could have been used in a more productive manner.
That being said, I regret not writing down what was happening in 1992 and '93 and I did not realise at the time how important it all was.
I had flown back from the UK, following the funeral of my young brother. It had been an odd flight, because I was using his ticket, and ironically it was the exact flight that would have been the start of his two week holiday in Canada, a period of time for the pair of us to find out about each other.
We had talked on the phone a few weeks before and Paul had mentioned that he would borrow my Ford Mustang to do some exploring while he was here, I'd talked to mum afterwards and she had told me in no uncertain terms not to let him drive while in Canada.
That was fine, as I never intended for him to get behind the wheel on the wrong side of the road, especially in my beloved Mustang.
The details of the events of the night of his death were vague, but it had been rumoured that Paul and his girlfriend, Barbara, had been arguing on the Saturday night, that they were separated and yards away from each other when he was clipped by the car.
During the flight, I wondered if it was all because I lived in Canada that he had been killed.
That sounds insane I know, but it was my thought process, that the butterfly effect of my actions five years prior, when I emigrated to Canada, had led to Paul planning his visit and subesequently resulted in tension and an argument about the holiday on the Saturday a week before his flight.
That it was somehow my fault.
It was a secret I kept from the nice lady who sat next to me on the plane, during the flight we had chatted about this and that, but not really about that. I had told her that I had been visiting my family in the UK, and all was well.
I wonder what Paul would have said to her as they approached Toronto.
Sunday, April 12, 2015
Timeslip
The timeline, always a constant, and I think we're around 1993 in the proceedings.
I would recount everything that happened in 1992, but that was a tragic year for my family, the year that my youngest brother, Paul, was killed.
I've written at length about that period of time in the book "The Taxi Driver's Son" so I don't want to repeat it here. It was such a bad year that I wrote very little in my diary, perhaps there was no real need to do so, everything is still quite clear about that time almost a quarter of a century later.
It is interesting to have a moment in your life when everything is about one thing, but in reality, many different things are on the go and many of those things were of great importance, yet they all must pale in comparison to the one big event that consumed everything.
In the next few entries though, I will recount the other events, because they too deserve to be told.
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Personal Computer
I glibly mentioned that I had bought my first personal computer, or as we called them back in the day, an IBM clone or a PC. However, I did not say why this sudden diversion away from the Commodore 64 or Amiga was warranted.
Stan Solomon, my accountant, had educated me in 1990 about the power of deferring a portion of taxation to the following year, and, assuming that all circumstances stayed the same, the devious plan would have worked out quite well. The unfortunate aspect of the game of numbers, now that I was not under contract anywhere, was that in 1991 the deferred part would have to be efficiently disposed of so that I would not be hammered for taxes.
It was decided that a major legitimate expense would be a personal computer and a printer. I remember welcoming this suggestion and did some research and then promptly bought one at the Toronto Computer Fest.
The company was called "First Choice Computers" and the machine was a 386 with 2mb of RAM (which I increased to 4mb at the cost of $190) and a 100mb hard drive (which I increased to a 200mb unit at the cost of $200) - the grand total was somewhere in the region of $4000
It was a lot of money for sure but solved an uncomfortable tax situation, plus there was another life changing benefit.
I could play Doom!
The secondary thing that Stan Solomon instructed me to do was to maximise my RRSP contribution, something that made less sense to me than throwing money at a computer, however, I reluctantly agreed and in 1991, prior to the deadline, we both put our first RRSP contributions away.
I did not realise at the time, but that advice was one of the key ingredients in changing our financial habits and oddly enough, that home PC, as it evolved, became an invaluable tool that over the years solved every financial situation we faced.
Stan Solomon, my accountant, had educated me in 1990 about the power of deferring a portion of taxation to the following year, and, assuming that all circumstances stayed the same, the devious plan would have worked out quite well. The unfortunate aspect of the game of numbers, now that I was not under contract anywhere, was that in 1991 the deferred part would have to be efficiently disposed of so that I would not be hammered for taxes.
It was decided that a major legitimate expense would be a personal computer and a printer. I remember welcoming this suggestion and did some research and then promptly bought one at the Toronto Computer Fest.
The company was called "First Choice Computers" and the machine was a 386 with 2mb of RAM (which I increased to 4mb at the cost of $190) and a 100mb hard drive (which I increased to a 200mb unit at the cost of $200) - the grand total was somewhere in the region of $4000
It was a lot of money for sure but solved an uncomfortable tax situation, plus there was another life changing benefit.
I could play Doom!
The secondary thing that Stan Solomon instructed me to do was to maximise my RRSP contribution, something that made less sense to me than throwing money at a computer, however, I reluctantly agreed and in 1991, prior to the deadline, we both put our first RRSP contributions away.
I did not realise at the time, but that advice was one of the key ingredients in changing our financial habits and oddly enough, that home PC, as it evolved, became an invaluable tool that over the years solved every financial situation we faced.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Crime and punishment
At the time there were numerous frustrations that started to eat away at me and start me on the path towards leaving once again.
There were a large group of design contractors employed at Dowty and it seemed that because I was spending some time in the CAD room after hours, I was involved in a lot of the banter between them and was learning a lot (again) of what I was missing in the wallet department.
In addition, to help in some of the scheduling of projects in the stress office, the Chief had advised us "senior" stress guys to utilize the jobshoppers more, something that was easier said than done and it became a daily frustration, and counter productive, to have someone else do the work. This may have been their plan, adopt a clueless approach to analysis and have the mini-bosses downgrade the task set.
The third irritant, and this felt more like an ongoing punishment for my past behaviour, was that the Chief appeared (to me) to be actively blocking my happiness, and he was doing this in a very subtle way. I was not being sent out to meetings at other companies, no field trips, no courses and certainly no jollies. If there was a junket to be enjoyed, for the first year or so, you could bet that I was not involved.
And that, more than anything, pissed me right off.
That was perhaps the intention, but the real effect of it all once again started a bit of a deep resentment inside me, first that the contractors were happily enjoying a lot more money, second that they were not taking much responsibility for delegated tasks and thirdly, here I was, worrying about getting reports done in time but it appeared that no one on the corporate ladder appreciated me.
Sob.
I don't know if at the time, throwing a few breadcrumbs my way in the form of a two day course, or a trip up to Montreal to Canadair for a business meeting, would have made anything better. I do know that by about the halfway mark of my tenure I was becoming rather bitter and twisted once again.
So once again, I started to plan my escape.
There were a large group of design contractors employed at Dowty and it seemed that because I was spending some time in the CAD room after hours, I was involved in a lot of the banter between them and was learning a lot (again) of what I was missing in the wallet department.
In addition, to help in some of the scheduling of projects in the stress office, the Chief had advised us "senior" stress guys to utilize the jobshoppers more, something that was easier said than done and it became a daily frustration, and counter productive, to have someone else do the work. This may have been their plan, adopt a clueless approach to analysis and have the mini-bosses downgrade the task set.
The third irritant, and this felt more like an ongoing punishment for my past behaviour, was that the Chief appeared (to me) to be actively blocking my happiness, and he was doing this in a very subtle way. I was not being sent out to meetings at other companies, no field trips, no courses and certainly no jollies. If there was a junket to be enjoyed, for the first year or so, you could bet that I was not involved.
And that, more than anything, pissed me right off.
That was perhaps the intention, but the real effect of it all once again started a bit of a deep resentment inside me, first that the contractors were happily enjoying a lot more money, second that they were not taking much responsibility for delegated tasks and thirdly, here I was, worrying about getting reports done in time but it appeared that no one on the corporate ladder appreciated me.
Sob.
I don't know if at the time, throwing a few breadcrumbs my way in the form of a two day course, or a trip up to Montreal to Canadair for a business meeting, would have made anything better. I do know that by about the halfway mark of my tenure I was becoming rather bitter and twisted once again.
So once again, I started to plan my escape.
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