Cleanliness is Next to Intelligent Designliness

I rarely discuss work, but sometimes important stuff happens.

Along with my usual routine, I belong to a “Community of Practice” (CoP), a collection of subject matter experts comprised of an assortment of employees working at company sites all across the country. We try to help each other. A typical mass email request goes like this: “Say, does anyone have test data on fatigue properties of thermal shielding material at the 120,000 foot level?” Someone usually has an answer.

Except not today. Last week was Bring Your Child To Work Day in our Unmanned Systems site in Rancho Bernardo, and there were various activities involving modeling clay, and, much to the chagrin of the site Facilities Engineer (“I wasn’t informed!”) thirty-eight new tables are now stained with clay, impervious to any of the standard cleaning fluids on hand.

So the Bat-Signal was sent out to the CoP: “Does anyone know how to get rid of this god forsaken clay? Otherwise you engineers owe us Facilities guys $457.00 times 38 tables, see?!”

I’m sure a solution will avail itself. My guess is, a watered down mixture of the clay itself will act as a cleaning agent and get rid of the clay stains, but the irony of a collection of eggheads spending their time pondering this question rather than designing the next great space transportation system will remain.