Typical Day
Andy wakes up around 7:00AM to the awesome '80s sound of Whitesnake blasting over the radio. Rolling out of bed, he stretches deeply, noticing a stiffness in his right thigh. That's the spot where that ungrounded circuit ever so gently touched him, sending 311 volts of electricity into his fragile human body. It'll be with him the next few days.
He goes through his morning routine, including a breakfast of coffee and a bagel. Scrolling through his phone, he checks out the latest tech headlines on the web, lingering on a news report about a new home energy innovation. At 7:45AM, he's on the road on his way to the office.
He rolls in to the parking lot around 8:00AM. The complex is mid-range in size, with a two-story office building attached to a larger laboratory and garage space.
After a hearty hello to Susan at the front desk (and a wisecrack about the Broncos to Shane, the security guard), Andy makes his way to his office space on the second story catwalk overlooking the main design floor. He switches on his various computers, oscilloscopes, and other gadgets, then heads to the office kitchen to grab another coffee.
By 9:30AM, Andy has answered e-mails, checked his messages, organized his schedule for the day, and heads down the hall for the morning design meeting with the team. Their latest prototype, a multi-use in-home hydrogen fuel cell generator, is in beta testing. While consisting mostly of fuel cell specialists like Andy, the team includes a mechanic, two architectural engineers, and a manufacturer. For the project to actually become a product, a lot has to go right.
Back in the office at 11:00AM, Andy begins analyzing the data from the last test cycle. Using advanced mathematics (or as some would call it, "magic"), Andy is able to see where problems with energy efficiency or connectivity (or dozens of other areas) may lie.
He then spends a while coming up with math-, chemistry-, and physics-based solutions to the problems inherent in the system's circuits.
As 1:30PM rolls around, the rumbly in his tumbly helps Andy to do that which engineers rarely do: take a break. He heads back to the office kitchen, pulling one of his frozen entrees from the freezer.
Ryan, Pat, and Heidi follow in short order, and the crew spends the next hour talking about things like the band they saw last weekend or Star Wars trivia, occasionally interspersed with work talk. Ryan admits to never having seen The Empire Strikes Back, and the team jokingly decides to shun him until he fixes this problem.
From 2:30PM until the end of the work day, Andy spends most of the time on the development floor, wiring circuits and taking measurements. He's not just a data and ideas guy; he'll actively spend his afternoon hammering, soldering, fidgeting, cutting, tweaking, tweeting, and twerking (well, maybe not those last two).
After yesterday's discomfort, he takes extra careful precaution when dealing with the internal wiring. Just in case, he stays as close to the red emergency off switch as he possibly can.
By 6:30PM, Andy realizes he's the last one left in the office besides the cleaning crew. This happens kind of frequently: not only is he good at what he does, he truly loves it and can thus easily lose track of time. Wrapping up today's work and making notes and schedule changes for the next day, Andy shuts the door a little before 7:00PM. He says good night to the janitor as he takes off.
Out in the parking lot, Andy notices that the test vehicle is sitting in its open-air garage, charging itself as it lays idle. As a senior member of the design and development team, one of the perks is the ability to use the tester whenever he feels like it. Andy's got a date in a little over an hour, and since she's a mechanical engineer herself, rolling up in a car like that will definitely win him bonus points.
Leaving his own car behind, Andy takes off in the smooth, carbon-footprint-reducing ride. After heading home to freshen up, by 8:10PM he's outside her house, leaning on the hood at the side of the curb. Exiting the front and locking the door, his date notices the test vehicle and her face lights up.
"Sweet ride" she says with a grin as she slides onto the test vehicle's odd "Hello Kitty"-themed passenger seat.
"I know," says Andy as he gets in. He starts up the almost silent engine with the push of a button. "I kind of built it." He steps on the gas, and the pair drive off into the night.