Crunch time in the labs

It’s crunch time in the labs.

Crunch – there it is again.

Crunch. Mmmmm. This pizza is really good. It’s Monday and work is still continuing in the part IV labs, despite it being past 10 o’clock in the evening. There are some things you only ever learn doing a GDP, and it’s easy to catch out the project makers from the project fakers. For example, a faker won’t know that the main doors lock between the hours of 2300 and 0800. They won’t know about the late-night security guard with a penchant for watching cheesy movies on his portable DVD player, and they certainly won’t know that Domino’s pizza will accept “ECS labs” as a valid takeaway location, which brings me back to this lovely pizza. Crunch.

Some of you readers might just be wondering what I (Hugh) am doing at work this late on a Monday night, especially when Jesters nightclub serves beer at 50p a pint until the early hours of the morning. Well, we have exactly 230 hours until our final report has to be in. Yes, that’s 24,000 words on a device that we’ve not even finished building yet. Hopefully now you’ll begin to see why I’m mixing every single activity with GDP’ing. Crunch.

It’s not just about deadlines though. There are certain freedoms we can afford that the 9-5’ers just can’t ever enjoy. There’s always more space in the labs, and a much more relaxed atmosphere. Nobody minds if you take your shoes off, kick your feet out and vegetate for a while. Plus you get to escape the endless thud of bulldozers outside as they tear at the skeletal remains of the Mountbatten building, busily creating a future for those of you lucky enough to make it into this department. Still, I’d better dash.
My pizza’s almost finished and I have another 5,676 words to write on the benefits of the I2C bus. G’night! Crunch…