A surprise good time

I was planning on taking the Friday before Labor Day week-end off but I had promised to do the builds of our product and have them ready for that morning. "Doing the builds" means getting the latest versions of all the program code (the instructions the programmers write - we all check our code into one, central repository), compiling the code (making the actual program that you can run on the computer) and then making an installer for the program (so that anyone in our office can install it on their computer to test). This has to be done every day (except holidays) for both Windows and Macintosh computers. For the most part, this is an automatic process for the Windows build because there is a program that does all of this. But it must be checked. The Macintosh build is in the process of being automated (by me) but it is almost as easy.

So, all I had to do was log into my work computer from home, do the two or three steps needed to make the Mac build and then test both builds (just to make sure they actually installed and allowed the latest version of our program to run). Well, for some reason, I couldn't log into my office computer from home. So, I was going to have to go into work for a few minutes to make sure everything was OK. I asked my son, Evan, if he'd like to come with me and I was pleasantly surprised that he said yes.

We had a nice, relaxed ride into work and I was looking forward to a quick and easy ten minutes in the office. Well, when we got there, I saw that the automatic Windows build had failed. So, I had to look around for the cause. Before I got too deep into looking for the cause of the problem, though, I thought I'd better do the Mac build. When I did that, it worked. So, either the problem was Windows specific or the code base had changed between the time the automatic Windows build was done (at 4 o'clock that morning) and when we did the Mac build (about four hours later).

Evan seemed to enjoy looking behind the scenes of what I do all day. It turns out that someone on our team (I know who but won't name names :-) had checked in some code late Thursday that didn't work! So, there must have been new code checked in that morning that fixed the problem. Sure enough, that was what happened. So, we just had to start the Windows build process again and everything went well. Evan liked how I was able to track things down and figure out how to fix it. I tested both installers and the program after it was installed. Then we wrote up a note of explanation and sent it to the rest of the team.

We were heading out of the office when we bumped into one of the mechanical engineers. He had just gotten a new machine that I wanted to show to Evan. It's called a 3D Printer (the one our company bought is from here) and is the closest we've come to the replicator in Star Trek. What this amazing thing does is take any kind of object you can draw using standard three dimensional drawing programs and turns it into a plastic prototype. This includes screw threads, holes and even notches and o-ring slots inside the piece. Evan got to see a part under construction and also a few parts that had already been made. He really liked it. The machine makes the parts by putting a layer of plastic ten thousandths of an inch in diameter on the model each pass. It takes a long time (hours) but it's faster than sending the drawings out to a manufacturer and getting the prototype back.

Evan and I had a great time (I think - he sometimes tells me what he thinks I'd like to hear) and it reminded me of the time I got to work with my father on one of my summer jobs. My father belonged to the Operating Engineers union. They are the guys who run the heavy construction equipment you see - bulldozers, cranes and backhoes to name a few. While I was in college, I joined that union, too, and worked on construction jobs in the summer when they always needed extra help.

My father had worked in that trade for all of his adult life but I'd never worked with him until the summer before my senior year in college. It was a great experience and, mostly, a good time. The experience Evan and I had on Friday morning has inspired me to write some articles on the summer Dad and I worked together.