When the Left Side is Better Than the Right
The Adventure Begins
For the past two weeks, I’ve been working on wiring up a shuttle for a commercial business. This is only the second time that I personally have wired up a shuttle at Tanglewood design, and the last one was several months ago. I was excited to get back into it. I even began working on the plans before the shuttle had begun being built! In the week leading up to that, I spent hours pouring over the pictures of the previous one. I planned out cord trails, material lists, and battle plans. Once the guys in the shop started building, I started putting together lighting systems in our office. Then, once it was all painted and put together, I carried everything out and got started.
Navigating the Stars
Something that made this shuttle different, and difficult, was that rather than one side of the shuttle getting lights and the other sitting up against a wall, this shuttle would be wired on both sides. Which meant there were a lot more cords/lights to deal with and a few mechanical issues to solve. After all, the entire playhouse needed to come apart for shipping, then be put back together without our help.
It was decided that rather than every single light having its own switch, a switch would be connected to the corresponding lights on each side. For example, take the top of the three thruster lights on each side. Rather than having two switches, one for the right top thruster light and one for the top left, we had just one, which controlled both top thruster lights. This kept our dashboard from getting too cluttered, but we had to be a little creative with the actual carrying out of this plan.
I solved problems as they arose, both in the shop and in my free time (I scared a few of my friends one day when I shouted out loud upon realizing the cockpit was meant to split in two during shipping). Everything revolved around making the lighting systems smooth, efficient, and simple. Finally, it seemed I had prepared for every situation, and planned for all the problems. I carried out armfuls of wires, all color coded, and set about organizing them around the shuttle. It was going to be perfect.
Mission (sort of) critical!
I began by working on the right thruster and wing. We use DC Plugs, A.K.A. Jack connectors, to make sure wires can split when parts of the playhouse needs to come apart. They are very useful, but a little wide. So, they have to be spaced in particular ways to make sure they all fit through the little holes connecting the pieces.
With that in mind, and having made everything purposefully too long for this very thing, I began installing and cutting the cords down to size. Once everything was fitted and installed (and working—I had a strange instance where two jacks worked perfectly when paired with any others, but not with each other) I crawled out from under the wing and moved over to the left side.
And the moment I did, I thought of a better way to space the Jacks.
The way on the right side worked fine. But the way on the left would be a bit neater, use a bit less cording, and be a bit easier for the people who were going to be installing the shuttle. It wasn’t a big difference. The right side was far from horrible. But it was simply a better way of spacing things. The trouble was, I had already made up the right side. Trying to change things now would just cause clutter. So, I continued with the left side in the new way, muttering grievously to myself about the poor right side.
How could I be so blind? Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Isn’t that why I spent hours drawing up plans? To prevent things like this from happening? What was wrong with me?
But in the end, I had to let myself off the hook. After all, the right side was fine before I came up with the idea for the left. It would continue to be fine even with the left side in place. Just because my epiphany took its time to occur didn’t make me terrible at my job. Plus, next time I went to wire a shuttle, I would know to use the left side method instead of the right.
Lessons in Space
We all like to beat ourselves up over things we didn’t think of until it was too late. Oh, I should have packed some snacks for this road trip! Why didn’t I just think to grab this thing when I was at the store half an hour ago? How could I not have thought to space those jacks that way in the first place?
Mostly, they are small things which don’t have much of an effect on our lives after the fact. But even when these problems are big, and important, we can’t always beat ourselves up over the things we didn’t foresee. ‘Hindsight is 20-20’ is a popular phrase for a reason. And no matter how big, or small, an issue might be, we have to remember that it’s in the past. No amount of dwelling on it, cursing ourselves, or imagining what we should have done differently will change it. All we can do is move forward with the new knowledge we have gained, prepared now for when we reach this situation in the future.
And remember, no matter how much time and effort you spend preparing, there will always be those annoying little times when the left side is just a little bit better than the right.
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