Friday, April 28, 2006

Delegate!!

Today, I am very very angry. Angry at people who do not know how to delegate and manage stuff. Who run about helter skelter trying to do everything, be everywhere. Be the one-man army, the sole standing hero. The supervisor and sweeper and thus... neither. And finally, when the show is over, say, "See! we pulled it off!", and count that as experience. But never learn anything from it. Be too irreplaceable, too inexpendable. Be the three rungs of the ladder instead of the carpenter who fixes it.
"If I could offer you only one tip for (being) the future manager, Delegation would be it". (This line is parodized from "Everybody is free to wear Sunscreen"by Baz Luhrmann. Read the lyrics to this song here).

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

The potion works!

Heh heh heh !!! :-) I managed to get that magical moment where I could see my newly created device under the microscope. So, the spell is created. Next step is to see if the spell works.

Well, so I shipped this out to the other university, and the proof of the pudding will be in the t(e)sting.

Glad to be back to rainbow hues, and natural sunlight...the regular earth, ....till a few more weeks. The weather is really warm here, and everything looks bright and the trees look so green, and the sky couldn't be bluer. You'd think I was falling in love! And all I did was make this itty-bitty thing that is just about the size of my little finger nail. Phaedrus would wonder, coz I told him I hated this stuff, but see that's what it is.....I like the end not the means ;-)

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Alpha to Earth

April 23, 2006. Either it is going to be a go-down-in-my-history date, or just another day. Sitting in the fabrication (clean room) of my university. In a clean room gown, and nitrile gloves (typing with gloves is not much fun, really), face mask, hair cover and goggles. Waiting for the final step of my fabrication process to run, patiently expectanct, or more truthfully Very impatiently awaiting the fruit of my 6 hour labor. Well one, cannot do much about the analogy to chilbirth. When you Make something, it really is your baby , isn't it?!
The sterile environment of the cleanroom occasionally does make you feel like you are out of this world. The light is all yellow, so even glancing out of the double paned window makes you feel you are on Mars, or Jupiter, or wherever the powers-that-be claim life exists. The lone PC with internet connection helps to drive you back to reality. The white clad beings similar to me move about silently, differentiated only by their height and girth and eyes. Focussing hard on the work at hand, almost desiring themselves to see the microscopic features of their work by the naked eyes. Did this really work? Is this really there? All this stuff that I am magically seeing here under the microscope, is that really all there on that tiny chip? One can have done fabrication ad nauseum, but the tightening suspense of seeing a perfectly device under the microscope, as you move from a small magnification to large...couldn't be beaten by the nerve-racking moments of a prime time who-dunnit on the idiot box. Well, let me go check what the status is, the concoction that I am boiling....of frog's blood and newt's eyes, whether it turns my lead to gold.