james.georgie.nu

So, over the last six months I was working (for free) at a small engineering company around two hours from my house. We were taking part in an international robotics competition to make a robot that could autonomously travel through a maze and tag with a laser some stationary red bins and walking people in red overalls. The objective was to have three robots that were capable of this; and this is how it all went down.

Up until the last two months, everything was so relaxed. They eventually figured I wasn’t too bad at maths, so I was in charge of almost every mathematical task in the robots’ programming. When that was done, I helped make cables, and do some rudimentary machining tasks.

The guy running that place was retarded. Some of his ideas included:
-redesigning the chassis of the robot literally seven times over (the last amendment being a week before the contest date). At the end it was still…a rectangular box.
-coating the rubber tyres in Teflon to ‘reduce friction’. Hello, that’s how wheels work? And besides, I don’t think tyres can stand 400 degree C heat. The worst part was he made one of us call up a Teflon company, and when he was told it was a stupid idea the guy laughs and goes ‘Well, maybe we should’ve researched it a bit more”
-tried to make me sweep the floor because he had nothing for me to actually do (but I couldn’t leave early). I swept around one square metre before leaving

etc.

Finally, the day of the contest crawled around. It was a Saturday, too. The dad of the guy who ran the place turned up to help out, and we were using cable-ties to secure some plastic sheeting to posts we had driven into the ground; this would serve as a barrier. One of the cable ties his dad put in were upside down, and I had to state it five times and pull it out in front of him before he was convinced.
Like father, like son. Eh?

The government people (it was a govt run competition) turned up on the dot, and we were still scrambling to set up the maze, and some people were trying to…fix the robot. It didn’t move. At all. It had to be driven with some hastily written code controlled with a big fat Cat-5 cable running to a laptop with a guy walking behind it. Not impressive.
The reason why this was, was because we had never tested this robot because we simply ran out of time. Ironic, considering how laidback he was the first few months. Pathetic.
So our evaluation started four and a half hours late, and I got home at a quarter past eight.
Yay.

Hargh. So, there’s this internship I have to do as part of my degree. I was able to find a small robotics place roughly two hours away, and I have been going there for roughly three weeks now. Nobody tells me what to do so I generally go around trying to help people, and I hate that.  We’re trying to build a series of autonomous robots that’ll go around an obstacle course; many other interns have been going at it before us and all they’ve got is basically a big remote controlled car. But it’s not my fault; all the tasks I get are so mundane that they have very little impact in the first place.

It’s quite a depressing atmosphere; a lot of work gets done, for sure. Many things are printed, people mull over screens and type a lot, but not much progress is made. The remote control car is still, alas, remote controlled. The one intern who bosses everyone else around whilst doing the minimum amount of work himself, still does what he does unchecked. I can not wait until this is over; by the way. Did I mention this is all unpaid? Gah. I’m never taking this train line again when this is over. EVER. Hahaha

I like it when I’m alone. It’s nice, and quiet. You don’t have to think about what other people want without seeming like a callous asshole, and you have time to reflect on your own wants and needs. What I don’t really like is when people ignore me when I actually have something to tell them. I had to overhaul a small part of the company’s website, and when I was done I told the company’s manager (it’s a veeeeery small company). Turns out he didn’t even pay attention to me/believed me when I told him; he asked someone else how the website was going soon after I left. I hate that, more so because of the way he’s rather nice to me when I am there.

Every day I have to leave an hour earlier or so, in order to take the last bus from my station home. I turned up at the station near the company a few minutes late; I was wet from the rain so I sat next to a man staring into a bottle in a brown paper bag.
“They got you stuck in work, mate?” It took me a second to realize he was talking to me. I started talking about the internship and the things I didn’t like about it, and he would complain about his failing career and the fact that nobody would hire him even if he promised to stop drinking. He was smelly, swore a lot and had wild, crazy eyes, but he also said some things that didn’t really suit his appearance like ‘Hahah, look at me, talking to a foreigner. You’ve been here since the gold rush, and they still call yous foreigners. Pretty fucked up, eh.’ and ‘That psychic chick in Minority Report; she could’ve been Shakespeare. Yeah, Shakespeare.’
We talked about life in general, and everything before he shuffled off the station when my train arrived, unlit cigarette in hand.
I sat on the train with my iPod in my ears turned off, thinking ‘That was the first proper conversation I have had with anybody down here.’ It was. It really was the most fulfilling face-to-face contact I have had with anyone in that part of the…world. In four minutes it felt like I’d known that dreamy alcoholic more than the people I’ve been working with for nearly four weeks. It took me twenty minutes of sitting there thinking that over, until I realized the iPod was still off. I didn’t take it out, or turn it on until I was on the bus an hour and a half later. I really just didn’t feel like moving; I guess I was a bit upset about the…isolation, if that’s the right word.

Well, that’s all.
I believe I can see the future, ‘cos I repeat the same routine… D=