SPLat Happenings Newsletter December 2002

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Well, the festive season is just about upon us! Here in Australia we are stocking up on sunburn cream and checking out the barbecue equipment, while some of our friends “up over” are already exercising their snow shovels.

At SPLat Controls, as always happens, we are being flooded with “must have it by Christmas” jobs. I remember, many years ago as a young engineer soldering on (sic) to finish a “must have it by Christmas” project for a major mining company. Meanwhile a noisy office Christmas party was going on upstairs directly above my lab, and I was missing out on my chance to chat up that cute little secretary over a glass of punch!. Three months later I was “on site” at said mining company on another job and inquired about my brainchild. “Oh, that” was the reply, “It’s still down in the warehouse, we haven’t looked at it yet”. That was when I decided never, never, ever again to panic whenever a customer absolutely positively had to have it by Christmas. But guess what, it still happens every year!

Here in Australia business just about comes to a standstill for 3-4 weeks over Christmas. Because it’s our summer and school summer holidays, people also take their annual leave (that’s Aussie for vacation), and many businesses simply shut down for 3-4 weeks. That is particularly the case with companies like printed circuit manufacturers with process lines requiring full staffing to operate. Given that we always seem to be developing something in a hurry for someone, and that it requires printed circuits, it always gets “interesting” for us at this time of year. As it happens, we are developing something that’s in a hurry, for a customer in Florida (hi Bruce!), and we’ve just had a mad scramble to get the PCB artwork in before the 12 noon on 12/12 deadline. We made it! So in January we’re off to Florida to deliver the prototypes and help with the commissioning (how’s that for personalised service :-). On the same trip we’ll be visiting Diamond Telemetry in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who make very competitive (try half the price of competing systems!) SPLat-based SCADA systems for pumping applications. Finally we will have some meetings with potential SPLat reps in Southern California and spending some R&R time with friends in San Diego. May even make it down south of the border for the first time!