Whats happening with work, Covid, Moto project and my plans?
Progressing slowly on all fronts Id say...
1) The moto project.
Ive ridden it enough to complete the engine break-in now, but the weather here in Vancouver is now into winter mode with lots of rain and cold temperatures and darkness in the mornings and evenings, so Im about done with riding for the season. But I have done a bunch more modifications on the bike (not done yet though)
First I added an auxiliary fuel tank which gets me another 100Km of range or so... bringing total range on a single fill to about 450Km... which is plenty good enough... The extra tank fits in quite neatly on the rear side at the back of the bike, and it automatically fills into the main tank via the breather line... (no fuel taps needed and no "forgetting to switch over/back issues)
BTW, the bike gets about 21Km/l on either highway or city which is pretty decent; You might expect better highway mileage but with a very blunt profile and big luggage boxes on the side, its pretty non-aerodynamic so at highway speed it loses the efficiency a streamlined bike would have.
Then Ive added all the electrical options I wanted with relays and fuses and busbars etc.... It took a while to wire it all in how I wanted but its done now... I added heated grips, GPS mount and Tire pressure sensor system... It makes the control panel a bit of a "space-ship" with readouts and controls for different things everywhere, but like I said, none of it is critical but all of it adds significantly for comfort/safety on long long trips; and if any of it does break-down then I can keep riding without it, no problem.
And Ive added a windscreen extender as well for now till I can get a larger plexiglass touring windscreen to stop the turbulent air buffeting of my head when highway riding.
And Ive done some sculpting of foam to make both the main and pillion seats far more comfortable... Its all temporary at the moment while I sort out the subtleties and get the fit right. Once Ive finalized it I will get it upholstered professionally so that its wear and weather proofed... The mod's do make it much better for long rides but worse for off-rad technical riding, so Im making it all removable so if I want to take it off, I can.
And I lowered the suspension by 40mm or so... which is easy enough to do with a couple of pieces of steel bar and a drill to lengthen the rear suspension links... But the trick is if you lower the suspension then you have to shorten the side and center stands too, and that requires cutting and welding... But its done now and I like it much better for maneuvering.
Still more to do but getting much closer to ready to tour with :)
So thats the bike updates; What about Covid and work?
Well, covid is an ongoing "fly in the ointment" as they say. The Delta variant is far more contagious, though about the same lethality. Most of the urban population in British Columbia are well vaccinated now but the rural populations and some specific cultural groups decided they didnt like being told what to do by the government and so decided they w/could tough it out (or whatever), so now those communities are keeling over in droves and the hospitals in those areas are all massively overwhelmed and so we are all still in lockdowns imposed by the government because about 15% of the population dont want to get vaccinated... very frustrating!
BTW, my view on the whole vaccine thing was never that it would make us all immune to infection... My view was always that we would all eventually get exposed to the virus, and that the vaccine was merely to control the impact on the health-care system... and these "hold-out groups" are simply prolonging the phase where our health systems cant handle the flood of victims and lots of people (thousands in this province as time goes on) are dying unnecessarily because of it... Covid will I think become endemic and much lower threat in the long term.
Im really saddened by how this issue became so political... Vaccination status is so massively correlated with which way a person votes here in North America (and in truth most western countries it seems) its pathetic, and its so incredibly hypocritical too in my opinion.
I dont like to have to take the vaccine either (I am at low risk myself and also dont have anyone in my circle of contacts who is at higher risk either)... but I got the vaccine because it was the socially responsible thing to do...
I hate having to wear shoes instead of thongs/flipflops in a bar when its hot weather, and I hate having to wear a helmet when I ride a bicycle, and I hate having to stop at a stop sign when there is no other traffic too, but if I break those rules then I am doing it by choice and I will pay the fine if I get caught doing it... And those rules are there for the protection of the community regardless of if I think they are necessary for me or not. Its part of being a community member. There is no freedom in a community without responsibility to the community also... And if you believe in Democracy as a process then that means you have to agree to abide by the rules that are set by the majority when its your turn to be the minority... I think thats the real problem... people are not actually in favor of Democracy when they find they are the minority and it has impacts that directly effect them... Clearly they have scant regard for what happens if they live in a non-Democracy (and that is a very scary though I must say!)
... All in all, its a perfect example of "humans"... and its a perfect example of why Im such a grumpy person and so "judgy" of others...but Im like this because Im grieving!
Anger and sadness are parts of the popularized "grieving process" (stages 5/6 I think). And Im grieving for us!... Its just that I have too high expectations for us humans... I was taught (by my upbringing in society) that we are intelligent beings; and I see all the amazing things we can do and understand and make because of our rational minds... But in my upbringing, they neglected to emphasize that we are also incredibly able to completely disregard the blatantly obvious facts, and to decide "not to be rational" and just be emotional, and make the most basic of stupid choices... And so Im grieving for us and for the false vision of us that I got during my upbringing... Its a very long slow journey for me... I feel I am still along way short of the "acceptance" stage :)
Addendum here...Truth be told, the fact that we humans are emotional more than rational has been blatantly obvious throughout my upbringing, so I really have no excuse for my "false vision" other than my own willful disregard of that obvious fact throughout my upbringing... self inflicted denial of facts... I guess Im just another "human"!
So, covid rages on and society rages with it and all in all it looks like it will be a while before things resolve and before Ill be able to go off on any long moto ride... Though I have to say that the impediment to me taking a long ride is about the least significant factor in the whole covid debacle, even for me :)
And what about work?
More fun twists and turns there too :)
As Ive explained of my own situation there recently, Im strongly leaning toward "leaving" very soon... and thats because the company I work for, in my opinion, has been behaving very badly toward its employees, and shows no signs of changing that behavior, and Im sick of it so Im gonna stop helping them do what they do...
Well, it turns out that Im really not the only one, and the "karma train" is now arriving in the station so to speak. Over the past six months or so things have really changed at work, though not in a good way; at least not yet anyway...
The chain of events looks roughly like this to me:
The company has been being very greedy and selfish (though they dont see it that way at all of course) and the Engineer employees have been getting less and less satisfied over the past 4 years or so (Since the old smaller company got acquired by a much larger multinational) as rewards for work have gone down or stayed flat, company profits have gone steeply upward, and cost of living in Vancouver have also gone steeply upward (mostly cost of housing). Then Covid came to town and everyone went into "keep your head down" mode and was more or less grateful to have a paying job while many others lost theirs... But covid also taught us all that the whole office work thing was not as critical as had been thought and in many ways we could all be pretty damn effective while working from home too. And now that covid is starting to come under control and there is light at the end of the tunnel (though we are still in it for a while longer), people are "popping their heads up" again and looking around at options... and new options there are indeed!
It seems that there are now a bunch of new players in the "employer" game in the Vancouver area for electrical Engineers of many sorts... And ironically its because of Covid... It turns out that because we can all now work from home, companies see that they dont have to have employees located near their offices... so there are many remote employers now bidding for Engineers in the Vancouver market place... What used to be a small pond with just a few big fish employers, has suddenly become a big pond with many other even bigger fish... and those fish are hungry.
So, there are several more employers without offices who are aggressively hiring... and Vancouver is now effectively in the same time zone and hiring range of "Silicon Valley" companies from California.
And so in the past six months, I estimate that over 50% of the senior experienced design Engineers at my company have left for much bigger salaries.
This sort of thing (disruptive events) happens in HiTech companies every 10 years or so and companies either adapt and survive/thrive, or they fail to adapt and die... The company I currently work for appears to be unable to adapt this time... Which is ironic since it (when I say it I really mean the company senior executive I guess) has a self-image of being really good at adapting quickly and anticipating the market trends... and that's true as far as their products and manufacturing go, but as far as their human resources go they are clearly a dinosaur... and we all know what happens to dinosaurs.
And its now happening fast and hard... To the point where the company has seen the largest voluntary exodus of intellectual talent/resources it has ever seen... And still the company executive cant manage to grip the situation and adjust... I think its because they are in "preservation" mode and not realizing that their competition (the other companies that are hiring their people) are in "startup" mode. My company is asking how do we keep our Engineers and what counter offers to key people do we need to make... But the other companies are thinking, we need 30 Engineers in 3 months, how do we get them... The result is that by the time a person goes to their manager and says "I quit", they are long past the point of even listening to a counter offer... they crossed that line weeks if not months before and now its way too late... and the employees have the last 4 years of grumpiness with the new "megaCorp" overlords to justify their leaving too.
But there is also a flip side to this story that the older senior Engineers see too... and that is that with the 10 year cycler of disruption comes the inevitable downcycles as well as the upcycles like this one... and sure as eggs is eggs one of those is coming too! Those new competitor companies are quick to hire at the moment but they may well also be quick to fire in a downcycle. So these new jobs could be short term, and my company is saying to its self... These huge salaries being offered are not sustainable... soon enough they will stop and come back to our level... But it doesnt matter, because in the meantime, my company will have lost all its skills and its development projects will fail because of it, and so their revenues will tank in a couple of years... Who cares if the other companies also fail... you killed your engineering teams by not adapting now... Its like the common trope that companies dont fail because they are not long-term profitable; they fail because of their short-term cash flow problems... Its just human resources instead of cash that is flowing at the moment.
So where does that all leave me? Well for better or worse, my job (Silicon Validation) does in fact mostly require an office and a lab to test the hardware, so there are not currently lots of new job opportunities for me at the moment... But if other companies are starting lots of new design projects then soon they will be in serious need of lots of Validation work and thus Validation Engineers... They may or may not open offices in Vancouver and set-up labs, but certainly some of them will, so soon I expect there to be lots more options...
But do I want them or do I just want to retire? I dont know.
At the moment I am sitting squarely on the fence of a three way junction...
1) Stay at the company I am at and expect that they will have had to adjust their compensation quite a bit (and the compensation adjustment would be the reason to make it worthwhile staying with a company that now recognizes employee value.
2) Get a new job and start a "shinny new project/adventure" that pays even better... This actually is a really quite exciting idea... Its scary leaving the comfort zone of the old company and processes etc but the "shiny new" aspect revives the idea of continued working for more years in a role that can be quite rewarding and fulfilling, and that could overcome those fears... and the definitely larger compensation certainly helps too :)
3) Proceed with the full-on retirement plan... Though I have to say, having thought about this for a few months Im coming to the conclusion that a "traditional" retirement simply would not work for me... or not yet anyway... Im gonna need to "engage" with something significant in some way for some more years yet... though I really would like to take a break for a few months and go for a ride :)
I dont know which way I will go yet, but its certainly interesting times :)
That'll have to do for now... lets see what happens after a few more months?
