My Job

Folks have been asking me about my job. What do I do for a living? Some are trying to understand how I can possibly survive by doing what I do, while others wish that they could do it too. I would like to find someone who can do this job as well, or at least someone who could be trained. Then I could take a "real" vacation like a normal person.

My job involves answering the telephone, answering E-mails, web meetings, surfing the web… So far so good, you could do it. Most of the answers are in the FAQs which most people are too busy to read, or buried in the server someplace if you know where to look.

The most interesting part of the job is learning to read weird, alien logic diagrams from a Tel'tak, a flying saucer, or from a vehicle manufacturing company that has gone out of business. We try to assist the owners of these abandoned vehicles, because the alternative is to throw the vehicle away and then buy another vehicle.
Here is an example of a logic diagram that controls the wheelchair ramp (a.k.a.landing ramp) in a vehicle. I have a basic idea of how the landing ramp should function, based on experience with other vehicles that have a landing ramp.

In this example the old control system is being entirely removed. The next step is to redline the document by adding a cross reference between the input and output points of the old control system which exists, and the input and output points of the new control system which doesn't exist as of yet.

After redlining each page of the document, I build a software model of the same logic using familiar tools. The logic on the picture below is the same as the logic in the picture above.

Final testing of the logic takes place in a vehicle, where ever the vehicle resides. This testing step may require travel to exotic locations such as Pilsen, Mexico City, Lamar Colorado, or Roswell New Mexico. For some reason the hangars which house these vehicles are located far away from any large city, sometimes on an old military base that was converted into a factory.

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