Event - at 13:37 on the fourth day of work I have made a material contribution

[jack]

I finally tracked down the problem with the phone I was given on the second day, after quite a while figuring out how to get the testing program downloaded, compiled, running, and not pre-empted by the phone, and basically no LJ posting :). After a couple of iterations it seemed a memory chip was (a) dead (b) unstuck or (c) not there or (d) was intended to return zero whenever read from.

The actual "OK, I know it's broken because this" took about 30 seconds, most of which was clicking on "safely remove hardware." I wonder if I'll maintain this ratio of work :)

Things about my job that could plausibly be described as good free perks if you were optimistic:

1. Free sandwiches, crisps, fruit, etc.


2. Free mobile phones with doom on


3. Free laptop without doom on


4. Free oriental holidays

Things that could plausibly be described as a fecking pain in the arse if you were pessimnistic and slightly Irish:

1. Debugging a program on a mobile device requires a lot of fiddling with (a) disk swapping and adaptors or (b) soldering.


2. Free oriental holidays with no notice

Comments

[nakedtoes.livejournal.com]

Where in the Orient are you being sent with no notice???

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Korea.^[1]

And I don't know that I am^[2], but I will have to go at some point, and occasionally some people need to go out urgently.

We are a fabless^[3] facility, and the physical work of turning sand into mobile phones that can play Britney Spears music is done by some big factories out there. But people who understand the design need to oversee sometimes.

[1] No-one's actually said but I assume they mean South Korea. On the other hand, they say if you 'assume' you make an 'ass' out of 'U' and 'Kim Jong-Il."

[2] The "you will be ececuted one day this week but won't know which until it happens" paradox says it's actually impossible for me to know that :)

[3] So it says on our website. Mum just really liked the word 'fabless'. It actually means "without fabrication facilities on site."