Multiply By Pi

A rule of thumb I like to go by, when estimating the amount of time it takes to complete a complex project, always multiply the estimated time by 3. 14159265358979...

Project E has official hit the deck at my work. What is Project E? It is a next gen testchip that my work team and I have been prepping for the past year - doing research, setting up infrastructure, meetings, etc... the typical work flow of projects. It is high speed signal integrity that pushes limits in characterization. The exciting, and also very laborious portion is right now, when Project E officially arrives and everything we've prepped for is put to test.

Project E arrived yesterday, an unexpected few days early. After 18 hours of work through yesterday, running on 4.5 hours of sleep and I've-lost-count-of-how-many-cups-of-caffeine, plus 12 more hours of work today, I'm here blogging and looking forward to seeing Em in the morning for the few minutes before I rush out to repeat yesterday and today, all over again. (So friends, family... my abilities at keeping in touch will probably go from a not-so-good-percentage, to an even more not-so-good-percentage. =P.. but I will try.. and blogging is one of my feeble attempts. )

While on one hand, I already miss seeing my little Em and husby, it is also exciting to focus on the tasks at hand. For the next few weeks, we literally drop everything. (After that, for the next many months, we drop almost everything.) There is personal satisfaction and also a sadistical nostalgia to all this... the mad rush, the excitement and anxiety associated with long term work, the team camaraderie, the frustrations and wide range of emotions that run wild with working on any complex project towards a deadline. Yes, it is a distant familiarity of back in the days of college, spending days and nights on end, not seeing the sunlight, glued to the computer, programming away in the dungeon of the applied math and physics building.

While none of this probably sounds all that appealing, it is.. sort of fun. =) Tackling the uncertainties of unforeseen issues and following the progression of the work unfolding is also a pre-cursor to lots of silly laughter to be had in the wee hours of the work. I could mention the power supply snafu which was painful to deal with, but then turned really funny at that time, but probably not so funny in story-telling. =P

For my little Em, work is a journey that encompasses a spectrum of qualities - arduous, satisfying, creative, tiring, silly, fun, delirious, frustrating, hard, a necessity for character building, endurance, failure, productivity, success. A spectrum of qualities and then some, and multiply it by Pi.