New Computer Part 2 / Sunset for Athena / First Long Week
I'm writing this on my new computer, a mid-2010-model Mac Mini. It finally arrived Wednesday morning and I've been tinkering with it all day; mostly moving over my old data from my old computer and updating everything. My previous computer was a 15-inch 1.33 GHz revision C Powerbook G4 laptop which I purchased shortly after graduating college in the summer of 2004 and lovingly named Athena. I paid $1,800 for her and at the time she was a top-of-the-line Macintosh laptop. Over the years, I decked Athena out with the maximum amount of RAM, a 120 GB hard drive, and I even upgraded the internal CD-writer to a DVD-burner. The machine has also seen an insane and ridiculous amount of use; something like 60+ hours a week every week for more than six years. For any computer that's simply incredible. Apple clearly built this laptop a little better than all the others, and I'm truly thankful for that. It's been such a quality piece of craftsmanship that I'm sorry I even have to move on. But Athena is showing her age and the computing world these days requires a lot more raw power. This new Mac Mini is a top-of-the-model-line machine and should give me several years of power and functionality.
All I have now is to decide on a name for this new Mac. I typically go with Greek mythological goddesses and I'm down to deciding between Aura, the goddess of the breeze and the fresh, cool morning air, and Iris, the goddess of rainbows and a messenger of gods, goddesses and mortals. As for Athena, she will be cleaned up properly, restored to as good a condition as possible, and sold on eBay for someone else to find joy and use in. She has served me well and although it may seem cold to simply discard the machine on eBay like a used glove, it would only collect dust if I kept it since I'm done with it and have a new workhorse machine up and running. I can't give it away to someone I know because it has some special problems: The LCD is slowly dying and keys need to be pressed harder as well as other issues. I wouldn't feel comfortable giving it to someone who would just inherit these problems and not want to deal with a costly repair. Goodnight, sweet Athena, and may you rest peacefully for now. For your sun shall rise again, but beneath someone else's fingertips.
The end of last week was my first long-haul four-day work week at my new job at Maxim. Four straight twelve-hour graveyard shifts beginning Wednesday night and ending Sunday morning earlier this week. It was rough, but mostly because I'm still scrambling to learn what I can in what seems like a crazy difficult job. The Wednesday and Thursday shifts were rough as the guy who's training me seems to be qualified to run half the fab and was constantly running off to run other machines that have nothing to do with what I'm being trained on. Just before quittin-time Friday morning, I leveled with the dude and tried to steer him back on track. It was my second week at work and things were still not what I would have expected from an on-the-job training atmosphere. Even now, three weeks in, I still don't have my fab shoes, I still don't have my employee number, passwords or badges, the machines I'm training on are breaking down daily and things just get stranger and stranger.
During the Saturday-night-Sunday-morning shift, some spooky things went on. In a hallway I was all alone in, a cassette of wafers mysteriously fell off a shelf reminiscent of a scene from Ghostbusters. Nothing was broken but it was a big deal and even the shift manager came up to joke with me about the fab having ghosts. Later on in that evening, half of the machines in the fab went down. One of the three machines we use even dropped a wafer inside of it during processing and flagged errors my trainer had never seen before. It was crazy. Halloween had arrived for sure.
I am learning, though. After that sit-down with my trainer Friday morning, we got on course and I learned a lot about exactly what I'll be doing. The work seems less and less confusing every day and, even though it'll take several more weeks before I'm fully comfortable with everything, I'm feeling optimistic. By the time I certify, hopefully before December, I'll probably look back and wish I could tell myself to relax and not stress.
This Saturday-night-Sunday-morning shift will fall upon daylight savings time. Which means my shift works thirteen hours. Straight. It's gonna be rough.
All I have now is to decide on a name for this new Mac. I typically go with Greek mythological goddesses and I'm down to deciding between Aura, the goddess of the breeze and the fresh, cool morning air, and Iris, the goddess of rainbows and a messenger of gods, goddesses and mortals. As for Athena, she will be cleaned up properly, restored to as good a condition as possible, and sold on eBay for someone else to find joy and use in. She has served me well and although it may seem cold to simply discard the machine on eBay like a used glove, it would only collect dust if I kept it since I'm done with it and have a new workhorse machine up and running. I can't give it away to someone I know because it has some special problems: The LCD is slowly dying and keys need to be pressed harder as well as other issues. I wouldn't feel comfortable giving it to someone who would just inherit these problems and not want to deal with a costly repair. Goodnight, sweet Athena, and may you rest peacefully for now. For your sun shall rise again, but beneath someone else's fingertips.
The end of last week was my first long-haul four-day work week at my new job at Maxim. Four straight twelve-hour graveyard shifts beginning Wednesday night and ending Sunday morning earlier this week. It was rough, but mostly because I'm still scrambling to learn what I can in what seems like a crazy difficult job. The Wednesday and Thursday shifts were rough as the guy who's training me seems to be qualified to run half the fab and was constantly running off to run other machines that have nothing to do with what I'm being trained on. Just before quittin-time Friday morning, I leveled with the dude and tried to steer him back on track. It was my second week at work and things were still not what I would have expected from an on-the-job training atmosphere. Even now, three weeks in, I still don't have my fab shoes, I still don't have my employee number, passwords or badges, the machines I'm training on are breaking down daily and things just get stranger and stranger.
During the Saturday-night-Sunday-morning shift, some spooky things went on. In a hallway I was all alone in, a cassette of wafers mysteriously fell off a shelf reminiscent of a scene from Ghostbusters. Nothing was broken but it was a big deal and even the shift manager came up to joke with me about the fab having ghosts. Later on in that evening, half of the machines in the fab went down. One of the three machines we use even dropped a wafer inside of it during processing and flagged errors my trainer had never seen before. It was crazy. Halloween had arrived for sure.
I am learning, though. After that sit-down with my trainer Friday morning, we got on course and I learned a lot about exactly what I'll be doing. The work seems less and less confusing every day and, even though it'll take several more weeks before I'm fully comfortable with everything, I'm feeling optimistic. By the time I certify, hopefully before December, I'll probably look back and wish I could tell myself to relax and not stress.
This Saturday-night-Sunday-morning shift will fall upon daylight savings time. Which means my shift works thirteen hours. Straight. It's gonna be rough.