It's fun, being good at what you do

James Snover

The Ill-Advised Physics Amplification Co
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True conversation from earlier today:

Walking into cath lab, alarms going off:

Me: "Everyone take it easy. I'm here."

Staff: "Jim! Thank Heavens you're here!"

Five minutes later, problem resolved.

Staff: "Jim, how can you be so darn good at fixing all this stuff?"

Me: "I'm just here for two reasons: chewing gum,* and fixing machines. And I'm all out of gum."

*Not really. I don't like gum. Doesn't leave very many options, does it?
 

James Snover

The Ill-Advised Physics Amplification Co
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Ask hi
My biomed guy doesn't suck but he cant tell stories about acft like you can lol
Ask him about repairing defibs. Bet he's got a story or two, if he's been at it for any length of time! Not aircraft, true, but defibs are fun!
 

1wild-horse

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Called a fix for a dead Camaro that was in the shop. Had to tow it next door to get the new bcm programmed. Feels good to be right.
 

derklug

Seriously? No, never.
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Customer brought in a VV carb and an overhaul kit. Was told I could fix it. Car had been retrofitted to a 2bbl but he wanted it original with the VV. Had to venture way back into the dust covered books for that one.
 

prs97

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I shifted my career about 4 years ago so I'm up to my armpits with imposter syndrome at work.
 

Machdup1

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True conversation from earlier today:

Walking into cath lab, alarms going off:

Me: "Everyone take it easy. I'm here."

Staff: "Jim! Thank Heavens you're here!"

Five minutes later, problem resolved.

Staff: "Jim, how can you be so darn good at fixing all this stuff?"

Me: "I'm just here for two reasons: chewing gum,* and fixing machines. And I'm all out of gum."

*Not really. I don't like gum. Doesn't leave very many options, does it?
Normally, proclaiming that you are king of the lab is followed by being humbled by a strange problem.

Ask me how I know.
 

James Snover

The Ill-Advised Physics Amplification Co
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Normally, proclaiming that you are king of the lab is followed by being humbled by a strange problem.

Ask me how I know.

Or a simple problem, but you go down the wrong path and it takes three days when it’s just a minor adjustment, but in an area you aren’t even looking at ... oh, yeah, I’ve seen that movie, too.


Sent from my iPhone using the svtperformance.com mobile app
 

Deceptive

Muffin is my spirit animal
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I like working entirely on ventilators now. Such a fun and crazy shift from in-house to OEM FSE work. Never messed with ventilators until this job but it wasn’t a big shift from Anesthesia machines.

Best one was a trip to a facility in which the reported problem was a big leak. Get there and they are using the patient circuit to do all the testing. Patient circuit had a leak. Easy money.


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2000GTSTANG

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I once had to drive out to Mentor Ohio from Metro Detroit for a service call on an old Zeiss CMM that we retrofitted. So old it said West Germany on it.

They were having intermittent read head errors. I got there, pulled the cover off, and found a piece of lint stuck between the scale and the read head. Removed the lint and it was all back to normal. Damn I’m good lol.
 

James Snover

The Ill-Advised Physics Amplification Co
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I had an old ultrasound machine by a company I can't name, but it was good enough, if you know what I mean. It would lock up on boot-up, right after BIOS. Just sit there, for. freaking. ever. And do nothing. It was early days in the medical biz, for me, and I was a bit stumped. So while I'm trying to figure it out, I see the CD-rom light is on, constantly. I press the button to open the cd-rom and see what's in there, and the instant I do ... it boots up! Huh. Well ain't that something? I'm finishing up, and I decide to do a full shut down and reboot. Locks up after BIOS. CD-ROM light on solid. press the button, tray opens, machine boots up normally, works perfectly. Ok. On a hunch, I grab the vacuum cleaner, and vacuum out the open cd-rom tray. Man, 15 cubic feet of dust and lint must have come out of that slot! After that, it works perfectly, boots correctly. Turns out that there was enough dust and lint to make it think there was a CD in the tray, and boot priority was hard-coded that it always looked to boot from the CD-ROM first, then the hard drive. So if it thought it saw a CD, as it did when it was clogged with dust and lint, it would just sit there forever, endlessly waiting to see the OS on the CD!

After that, over the next ten years, I fixed a ton of of those systems for the same problem, armed with nothing but a vacuum cleaner.
 

Double"O"

N2S come get some
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I thought of snover and my svtp bros as I went to fetch a 3ft tall bottle of nitrous for an anesthesia machine yesterday...even though it's not my job lol
 

coposrv

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3 different Trouble calls Friday night into Saturday morning. Lights not working at a school, fan controls failed at a restaurant, fire alarm system in trouble at a 40 unit building I wired 2 years ago. 3 different jobs all repaired and happy owners within a 14hr day. Nearly 5600$ in the bank. Not a bad little Saturday.


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