Leave Cali day 14

I might miss my front yard garden, but I have some work project binders to toss out.

I can't remember what the purple flowers are, maybe irises. I see a yellow daffodil peeking out too. This is what I will miss about my house, the things like this front-yard garden that I worked on for the seven years I lived in Sunnyvale. There was a huge palm tree breaking the foundation up. I had that removed before it did any more damage. Then a pal told me the reason ants march into my house is

because they are looking for water. So I bought a sprinkler controller for the valves and pipes that were already there. No more ants in the house. A miracle. I put in drip irrigation for this garden. I trimmed the orange tree every year, and planted flowers in the ground and in those wine barrels and planters. Now, though I will miss the garden, Florida calls, so today I dig though some work binders.

Here is another shot of the garden, I love that things will grow in Florida better then here. This was a reliability study using BellCore and MIL-HDBK-217 standards for a local client.. The product was a cell-phone repeater you could install into elevators.

I always made good documentation for my clients. As a contractor, I know I will be gone. I liked these color-coded dividers. I would print a table of contents on an A-sized printer. I always included a CD or DVD with all the files to make the entire notebook up.

I thought I had all the files on my hard drive NAS (network attached storage,) but some jobs were missing, so I copied the files from disks. Here is another product's reliability study. I put the owner name on the bottom of the spine to keep the binders straight.

I always did the back cover as well, it was a way to be a bit more professional. This binder has the table of contents printed out. These were a big hit with clients. All the documents and results of the project were a fingertip away.

RFQ is "request for quote". WDS was Worldwide Diagnostic System.This was an HP automotive test equipment project for Ford.

I joked it was the RFQ from hell since at the time Ford was run by micro-manager Jac Nassar. He was a real jerk. He was gone a couple years later.

One of the problems was Nassar was a resurrection of those Whiz-kid idiots that were all about finance and not so much about engineering. He would tear up contracts and constantly beat us up on price. HP was great, when Nassar wanted a cheaper price, HP responded, "What features would you like us to take out? What specs can you loosen up?" Jac just thought he could annoy us into lowering the price. We lost the bid, but were not too sorry since nobody wanted to work with him.

Leave Cali day 14

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