Family Life

I have a list of about seven things that need fixing on one of our machines. This is a new machine, so it’s warranty work. That means we do the work for free, which is easier and harder at the same time. Easier because we don’t have to wait for the customer to agree to payment (which can sometimes take months), and harder because we don’t actually get paid. All the same, good product support is part of a successful business, so we don’t mind doing the work. I just wish things got built right the first time. It would make everything so much easier in the long run.

Today’s trip started at seven in the morning. Way too early, in my opinion. A nominal three hours driving each way, and today we had a mere one-and-a-half hour border crossing. So there’s the morning gone. We sat down to lunch before starting work for the day. We really need to get an earlier start on these trips. But oh, the pain of early mornings!

I knew it would be impossible to complete all seven items on my list in one day, but thought we’d attempt the top three. It turned out that even my pessimistic assessment was wildly optimistic. By about 8pm we were more or less satisfied we’d completed the first item, and decided now would be a good time to pack up and go home. So we did.

I got home at 11pm. Between today and Tuesday I put in four and a half work days. Just ridiculous, I tell you. And I have the remaining six items to look forward to next week.

Photo note: That’s not the machine we were working on. It’s just a particularly sharp photo of a brand-new shiny machine we made a while ago. I like shiny.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 9th, 2007 at 11:36 pm. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.