Well, a little more than halfway, but details, details.
This was a tough week workwise because it involved a lot of troubleshooting–a long, drawn out process that requires patience. And, as my mother would love to tell you, patience is not one of my natural talents.
Last week, I had some trouble connecting the Bluetooth chip in my thermometer to my computer so that I could view and analyze data. By the start of the day on Monday, I knew that it was a software compatibility issue so at the beginning of the week I and one of my coworkers, Rafael, worked on finding and downloading the right software to the chip. It took two or three days, but by Wednesday, I had a functioning setup. Huge shoutout to Rafael for helping me!
While I waited for the software download, I began work on a side project: fixing errors in four, previously made AED files. Basically, my boss wanted to change the wall thickness on the parts, but because of the way the file was created and imported from a non-Solidworks program, couldn’t figure out an easy way to do it and the parts kept generating errors. I started by trying to see if there was any way to fix the import issues (I tried several different versions of Solidworks and opening/analyzing the file differently), only to figure out that, alas, twas not possible. Then, I moved on to trying to figure out ways to work with the existing part. My first goal was to figure out what was causing the error, then solve it, as I suspected that would help with editing the part. It took several hours of trial and error and plenty of help from Google, but I managed to find and fix the error, then figure out a simple method to thicken the walls. From there, it took only 30 minutes to correct all of the parts.
I then returned to my thermometer, examining the code used to collect and display temperature data so that I fully understood what exactly I was working with. This involved a bit of detective work, because while the code itself was pretty clean, it had no comments and many of the variable names were abbreviated, so I had to piece together what was going on.
In particular, I was interested in six lines of code used to calculate the temperature detected by the thermistor. I tackled it by first trying to identify what various variable names stood for, then identifying specific algorithms, then putting it all together by figuring out how the algorithms worked together.
On Friday, Nathalie, Latané, and I took off for part of the day so that we could fly to Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil and cross the border into Argentina, home to Iguazu Falls, one of the biggest waterfalls in the world. All of our Brazilian friends and coworkers have been urging us to go and visit since day one, calling it one of “the 7 wonders of the world.” We booked the trip sort of last minute, but we couldn’t waste this chance to see this natural wonder in person. And, wow, was it worth it. I’m not one to wax poetic, but as we stood over “la garganta del diablo” (the devil’s throat) and watched the water roar and mist, I felt like a flea: a tiny insignificant flea.
We had perfect weather on Saturday as we explored and the park looked like a Disney movie, full of clear blue skies, rainbows, and lush green jungle.
We even took a boat ride close to the falls, getting sprayed and soaked!
On Sunday, we had to cross back to Brazil so we could return home in time for work, but we stopped at “A Parque das Aves,” a private bird rescue/conservation zoo that showcased hundreds of birds, including toucans, cassowaries, and macaws. They had several aviaries where we could walk along the path and see the squawking, swooping birds up close and personal–sometimes a little too personal one of the toucans decided to poop all over poor Latané.
Nathalie and I were very amused. He was not. Though to be fair, he was a great sport about it and let us take photos and laugh at him.
Even though we got back to the Casa, dirty and tired, at 11:30PM Sunday night, the exhaustion was a small price to pay for the spectacular experience!