Go fly away: a summer story

During the summer, it gets pretty hot in a shop that’s not air conditioned. With sweat running down my semibald head, I was trying to get a part set up in a CNC lathe. This particular part was giving me some trouble because of a tool compensation problem. I was hot and frustrated.

To make matters worse, a big, fat, bluebottle fly was buzzing around my sweaty head. Periodically, the little carrion-eating pest would land in a droplet of sweat that still happened to be connected to my head. With maddening regularity, it would do its little bird bath dance in the sweat droplet and flee as soon as I tried to swipe at it with my dirty paw. This went on for a while as I worked on my programming problem.

Now, I consider myself a pretty patient person, but this was bordering on a declaration of open hostility. Each time the fly landed on my head, it was like the programming gods were sending some kind of message to me, reminding me of my flaws as a programmer again and again. I wonder what hell looks like for CNC programmers. My best guess is an endless string of cryptic error messages followed by eternal heartrending machine crashes or near misses—while in an elevated-temperature environment with a fly thrown in for good measure.

The next hour felt like an inquisition conducted by an expert interrogator. Eventually, however, my feelings about the process went from anger to resignation. After a couple hours of fighting this fly, I guess I reached the second stage of my downward spiral. I think it happened after I wiped my head off a few times to keep the diabolical critter from landing. I just gave up and let him creep around my scalp, licking the salt deposits with his hairy little suction tube.

I have sometimes experienced moments of almost divine understanding when I mentally give up but keep plugging away. That’s what happened in this situation. I finally figured out the problem with the program. I felt a rush of mental relief at solving the problem and a renewed surge of loathing for my winged nuisance.