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thief in the night
Tuesday, May 31 2016
Today was the first day working remotely for The Organization in its post-Meerkat incarnation. With the removal of that iron fist, Da had immediately implemented some easy changes. The most immediately important of these was the transition from using Google Hangouts to Slack ("a messaging app for teams"). Initially it seemed like a fun way to communicate with other members of the team, but it also seemed to Facebookify the whole experience. (There is even a way in Slack to emoticonally react to posts.) Of particular concern is the little green light icon that shows whether or not someone is at their computer. That's strikes me as something of a privacy violation in my remote workplace (though that same green dot is visible in Google Hangouts, and I never even noticed). We had a big long video conference this afternoon about the things we'll be doing and how we'll be doing them in the new regime. Despite Da's overeagerness to tear things down and build new ones, I think in the end I will be able steer him towards a more pragmatic way of thinking, particularly as the weight of our workload bears down.
This evening immediately after work, I implemented a clever little hack of the Subaru's air conditioner clutch that I'd found in a YouTube video. Evidently the problem with the salvaged compressor I'd bought on eBay was that the clutch gap was too big for the magnetic engagement system to close. But by inserting little bits of thin copper wire beneath the clutch springs, it is possible to force the gap smaller. (I'd actually thought about doing something similar, but hadn't been clear on where to put the wires.) Once the wire is installed, it's important to tack them in place with a high temperature epoxy like JB Weld so they don't move around. I didn't test the fix tonight because I had to wait for the JB Weld to set up, but the gap was now down to around 0.013 inches, which was (according to the video) nearly perfect, so I had every confidence it would work. To measure that gap, I had to use my set of feeler gauges, orginally bought to set valve clearances on my Punch Buggy Green and then to set spark gaps in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I don't think I'd used it in more than ten years, and it was difficult to find. (It turned out to be precisely where it should've been: in my observation & measurement tool collection atop the laboratory bookshelf.)
Tonight I stayed up late revoking permissions for a potentially-psychotic web developer working for my latest web client, a corporation with a brand you've probably heard of. Before beginning, I made sure I had tabs loaded with all the pages where permissions needed to be changed. And then I worked quickly, changing the permissions for the accounts that would probably send emails last. I came like a thief in the night, and then my work was done. I felt bad for the guy whose permissions I was revoking; it hits you in the gut to learn you're no longer trusted by an organization. But who knows, maybe that guy was on the edge of replacing the entire web presence of this particular corporate brand with rants about chemtrails.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?160531 feedback
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