We had a first attempt at running 'the whole plant' (almost) in simulation with every bit talking to each other. It was all going well until all the little boxes went red on the screen. A swift get together of the Emerson people told us why; the system cant handle more than 11 parts of the plant running at once ......something they should have knew and be prepared for. They are working on it, and as no-one has topped himself yet, we are hoping it can be fixed. This is the big job for this week.
Things didn't get any better after this. Progress got slower, with more and more errors and parts of the code not even ready to test. Then, on Monday a power cut to the whole site. This resulted in loss of a lot of code that had been entered that day and over 200 controllers having to be reprogrammed. The back up from Saturday took almost 2 hours to reload and most people put the power cut down to the storms that they get at this time of year - another one would really fcuk us up. They do not have a Uninteruptible Power Supply (UPS) to keep the computers running when the power goes off which seems crazy as they are not all that expensive. They have asked for one for over a year now but the money seems to have been spent on rather large nice big Volvo's parked outside in the spaces marked Diretores - or am I just being bitchy? Either way we have had to extend our stay.
The 10 or 11 hour days are starting to get to us. The chairs are not the best in the world and despite getting up and walking about, sitting on your arse for so long at this altitude seems to have the effect of making your ankles swell. I've started wearing the flight socks you get on the planes and its helping. As for the screens them selves we are starting to see programming code in our sleep and quite often you can see us walking round the car park with a blank mindless expression on our faces.
