Resting on the computer in the lab, I find two sheets of paper, paperclipped together, with a post-it note from Dr. Smith: "Check these carefully."
Care is not necessary. The errors are obvious.
This is the schematic and circuit board layout for the smart synchronizer. All the material that we provided, the schematic, notes, a drawing of how we wanted the layout to be—why did we bother?
"I can't believe anyone would be this willfully stupid," I comment.
Pinocchio volunteers that he would be, so hey.
"Not even you."
Mountain Girl looks over everything. "This is hilarious! They had to go to a lot of trouble to short out all those connectors and wire up the LEDs backwards! Why would they even think we'd want to do that?"
"Maybe they think we're really stupid?"
Our board has two 40-pin connectors that are going to connect to two other connectors on an FPGA development board. Somehow, that didn't quite get through to the layout person, who put four 40-pin connectors and shorted them together in two pairs.
"Look, they changed the values of all the capacitors too."
This has me wondering about all the emphasis prospective employers put on good written communication skills. Why is it important if no one ever reads anything? Or even looks at the pictures!
We have to get all this straightened out before we can have the boards made. I haven't seen Dr. Smith since I found the papers. I think he took one look at the schematic and suddenly remembered some pressing thing to do in Hampton for the rest of the week. Or, as Oz puts it, he took one look at the schematic and thought, "Oh, no! She's going to fuss at me. I get enough of that shit at home!"
298 words | April 12, 2005 09:06 PM | Ivory tower