Home!

After my two-week top-secret mission to Indianapolis, I am back at El Casa del Senor van Hossfeldo. Better known as my hovel. I am now fully able to tear apart, troubleshoot, and reassemble a couple more robots. Good for the resume, in these trying economic times. And since The Great Pharmaceutical Juggernaut picked up the $15,000 tab, I figured why not.

Class was interesting. I missed three questions on the final test. Two because of a lack of information - everyone (6 of us) in the class missed those two questions. One because I over-analyzed a trick double-negative question and confused myself. But I got my certificate, so it's all good. Beckman-Coulter (the company whose robots I was training on) has one of those "we are right and the customer must obey us" mentalities. Not so much with the customer service. I fear they are on their way out in the Great Laboratory Automation wars. Nothing really new in 6 years, high prices, poor engineering, and a general lack of customer focus. It's a competive business these days, and they no longer have a lock on the multichannel pipetting market like they used to. The writing is on the walls, but I don't think they are looking.

Best of all...get this...they engineered and build a plate-moving arm that can rotate. It's got the motors, gears, controllers, and is actually pretty elegant. But - shockingly - they couldn't be bothered to write the software to actually make it rotate! It can rotate, it wants to rotate...but the software is unable to tell it to rotate. Likewise with variable span of the tips. 6 extra motors, 8 lead screws...but no software to take advantage of it!!!! What the Hell? Those little servo motors are not cheap. Figure $700 a pop at wholesale. $1,600 for the control electronics. They have 8 of them in there that - because of software - don't do anything. That's like having a 12-cylinder car but only using 4 of them because the company couldn't be bothered to program the engine controller to fire all the spark plugs.

Indianapolis is a great place, but I could never live there. Despite the presence of the Major Taylor Velodrome (one of very few functional velodromes left in the US) the streets and motorists are decidely anti-cyclist. My hotel room had previously housed untold numbers of cats, which negatively impacted my sinuses, and resulted in a sinus infection. I switched rooms after the first couple of days, to no avail. The infection has already been roundly defeated, mind you, but it was tiring nonetheless.

I am pleased to be back in my home, my own bed, listening to a little Soundgarden. Tomorrow, I will get reacquainted with the Trek...