Measure once, cut a dozen times

Okay that isn’t really what happened, it was more measure once, realize the piece is directional, measure a second time, realize that the direction doesn’t matter, and after about three times finally making the cut. Then freaking out because you’ve now marked the piece three different times, but you cut the right mark… right?

Yep, it’s been one of those days. With the rush to get the robot done for the big demo I’ve been working overtime to make sure it all comes together and looks reasonably good. So far we haven’t had too many problems and I think (fingers crossed) I’m ahead of schedule. Since the visit we’re preparing this for is Wednesday, even if I’m ahead of schedule, I still have my work cut out for me.

Oh and speaking of visit, fun update! We may or may not have the visitor come see the device I’m assembling, so all that work may have been for… well not nothing since the device will get used, but I would’ve rushed for no reason and that kind of sucks.

It’s well past dinner time and I’m just now sitting down, that’s how busy it’s been today (still haven’t eaten, but that’s just how committed I am to this little project!). The funny thing about the day is that the whole measure a handful of times thing almost certainly backfired when I measured a few times, gave myself some extra slack in the thing I was cutting, cut the thing, then finding out we need to route it a different way less than two minutes after I made the cut. Thankfully I figured out a way to make it work, but just barely.

Not exactly the topic of the post, but we also had some bad news. I mean I guess it’s not bad, it’s just a “rival” lab published something pretty impressive (very impressive) so hospital-PI and I have spent the day muttering curses as we worked. I keep reminding him that big idea will be more impressive, but the problem is big idea is still in the idea stage and not the writing a paper on the work stage, so it’s good on paper, but in practice… well there’s still a long road and there are probably other labs working on very similar (if not exact) projects.

So all around it’s been a stressful day for everyone. That said, things will decompress very soon, but that doesn’t feel like a very big consolation at the moment.