How is the shutdown affecting you and your company?

You are suggesting that he sell some of his Amazon stock and give the cash to Amazon? That's about the same as if Amazon issued more stock.

Does Amazon need cash?

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

Science teaches us to doubt. 

  Claude Bernard

Business is OK, actually pretty good. We got a PPP forgivable loan, which is nice. Everybody has full pay and benefits and bonuses and most people are working from home. We run the pick-and-place a couple times a week and send out kits for assemblers to finish up things at home.

Production test techs have taken test sets home, or come in one at a time for the big stuff.

We run two 5-hour shifts of a few key employees per day, with all the masks and separation stuff. A janitor service comes in every night and sanitizes. They wanted $20 an hour but we demanded $40.

I go to work every day to sort of coordinate the engineers working from home, and to play with some hardware. The Brat does too, to run things.

Our charitable contribution budget will be considerably up this year. We have consulted with experts on the most efficient way to spend money and save lives.

All the on-site work has been approved by local authorities.

We expect massive disruption to our customers and our suppliers. It will be ugly.

My wife is a speech pathologist and is doing speech therapy by video, which seems to work. She will probably continue some of that after the virus is gone. She only has to dress from midway-up, so can do therapy in sweats or grubby gardening jeans or whatever, and can go dig in the dirt out back between sessions. She likes that.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

Science teaches us to doubt. 

  Claude Bernard

A distant relative is a speech therapist, and it has been determined that she cannot do the remotely. Instead she has been diverted to do general occupational therapy[1] on people now stuck in their homes.

[1] looks at how patients live and do tasks, and advises on equipment and practices to reduce future problems (and I guess suggests exercises)

She can do some stuff remotely, like work on stuttering and pronunciation things. Not with severe cases or autistic kids.

One stuttering patient is a fermentation scientist and bakes amazing sourdough. He masks up and drops off a loaf at our house occasionally and then hikes in the canyon with his GF. He has to make presentations and the stuttering is embarassing, and he's enormously grateful for his improvements. Mo fixes stutterers.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

Science teaches us to doubt. 

  Claude Bernard

bulegoge wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

Well, ya got GE and L3 and some others. No telling which yu are at, but the bigger ones are likely going to have the best odds of recovery with the least 'damage'.

Might be a good time for the big boys in the game to buy up some of the smaller shops.

ViaSat could buy L3 or the other way around.

GE could buy up a bunch of 'em. Harris just got bought again or am I thinking of Rockwell... yeah... I think Rockwell just got "owner- shifted". :-)

Gonna be a ride for the big players too from a different perspective. Remember when all the Radio stations were being bought up by a few main players? And now only a few 'parents' remain.

All most all of the employees are working from home

I have a good equipped lab and order components direct to my home address, so I am actually working more efficiently than before Corona

I use my CNC mill for prototypes, going from start schematics to milled PCB in about an hour. If I were to use prototype PCB suppliers that would be up to 5 days and more than 500 USD per PCB

Cheers

Klaus

Only annoying thing about DIY prototype PCBs is the possibility of solder bridges since it does not have solder mask and no easy way to make small vias for double sided PCBs

Right, a serious proto needs smt footprints and vias and an internal ground plane. We just order some. We try to put several experiments on one 4-layer board, buy 5 boards, and shear them apart.

Simpler stuff I build by hand.

I just got a call from a customer who wants something weird, a servo valve driver. We can piggy-back that onto our next proto board.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Most but not all of our engineers (including me) are working from home. We got the same PPP loand/grant as John Larking I think so everyone is at least back on the payroll whether working or not.

The PCB line is running as well as many manufacturing employees, all wearing masks when near-ish each other.

The one lady that did our janitorial job did not want to be around others but we need everything to be cleaned each day right now so we had her come in after everybody goes home.

Business is OK and busy.

e did about 1/3 military 1/3 commercial and 1/3 business and GA. Recently we jumped much heavier into commercial and are scaling back on business/GA . We are probably 70% commercial and 30% military. So we took and are tak ing a big hit.

ho knows

few exceptions) are on either team 1 or 2 and each team works every other week. So everyone is now receiving half pay. While this is going on we aw ait our longer term fate which is whether we get laid off or not. Layoffs have begun and they are moderate so far, but the company has not put everyo ne backon full time pay either.

Business is as good as ever, but we are in biotech. I haven't missed a day since this started and haven't told employees they can't come in.

We have one employee working from home now, and used this as an excuse to s hed a few of our less productive employees.

I do enjoy the vastly improved commute, rush hour no longer exists.

What I worry about is the long-term consequences to our society. My kids h ave been out of school for far too long, and now they are talking about con tinuing this in the fall. The teachers have really let me down. Only one of my daughters classes is doing remote learning...one hour twice a week, l anguage arts. None of the other teachers are doing anything whatsoever.

How long can we pay everybody to do nothing?

Are we going to start banning anything that might lead to deaths? Will the lakes and rivers become permanently off limits? People drown every year. Where does it end?

we did about 1/3 military 1/3 commercial and 1/3 business and GA. Recent ly we jumped much heavier into commercial and are scaling back on business/ GA. We are probably 70% commercial and 30% military. So we took and are t aking a big hit.

who knows

ry few exceptions) are on either team 1 or 2 and each team works every othe r week. So everyone is now receiving half pay. While this is going on we await our longer term fate which is whether we get laid off or not. Layoff s have begun and they are moderate so far, but the company has not put ever yone backon full time pay either.

ay since this started and haven't told employees they can't come in.

shed a few of our less productive employees.

have been out of school for far too long, and now they are talking about c ontinuing this in the fall. The teachers have really let me down. Only on e of my daughters classes is doing remote learning...one hour twice a week, language arts. None of the other teachers are doing anything whatsoever.

he lakes and rivers become permanently off limits? People drown every year . Where does it end?

What a silly goose.

--

  Rick C. 

  - Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging 
  - Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

e did about 1/3 military 1/3 commercial and 1/3 business and GA. Recently we jumped much heavier into commercial and are scaling back on business/GA . We are probably 70% commercial and 30% military. So we took and are tak ing a big hit.

ho knows

few exceptions) are on either team 1 or 2 and each team works every other week. So everyone is now receiving half pay. While this is going on we aw ait our longer term fate which is whether we get laid off or not. Layoffs have begun and they are moderate so far, but the company has not put everyo ne backon full time pay either.

Ask your local congressman if he/she is taking half pay while all of this i s going on.

we did about 1/3 military 1/3 commercial and 1/3 business and GA. Recent ly we jumped much heavier into commercial and are scaling back on business/ GA. We are probably 70% commercial and 30% military. So we took and are t aking a big hit.

who knows

ry few exceptions) are on either team 1 or 2 and each team works every othe r week. So everyone is now receiving half pay. While this is going on we await our longer term fate which is whether we get laid off or not. Layoff s have begun and they are moderate so far, but the company has not put ever yone backon full time pay either.

is going on.

That is the rub. Those making the decisions have no skin in the game excep t with the possibility of their wives complaining that they cannot get thei r nails done.

ly we did about 1/3 military 1/3 commercial and 1/3 business and GA. Rece ntly we jumped much heavier into commercial and are scaling back on busines s/GA. We are probably 70% commercial and 30% military. So we took and are taking a big hit.

y? who knows

very few exceptions) are on either team 1 or 2 and each team works every ot her week. So everyone is now receiving half pay. While this is going on w e await our longer term fate which is whether we get laid off or not. Layo ffs have begun and they are moderate so far, but the company has not put ev eryone backon full time pay either.

is is going on.

ept with the possibility of their wives complaining that they cannot get th eir nails done.

Spoken like someone who has never run for an elected office.

--

  Rick C. 

  + Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging 
  + Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

e did about 1/3 military 1/3 commercial and 1/3 business and GA. Recently we jumped much heavier into commercial and are scaling back on business/GA . We are probably 70% commercial and 30% military. So we took and are tak ing a big hit.

ho knows

few exceptions) are on either team 1 or 2 and each team works every other week. So everyone is now receiving half pay. While this is going on we aw ait our longer term fate which is whether we get laid off or not. Layoffs have begun and they are moderate so far, but the company has not put everyo ne backon full time pay either.

Personally, crunching data is 95% of what I do, so working from home is mostly fine. Meetings are not the same, using streaming & lousy audio. Company wide, is challenging. The tester who normally have access to the test lab have had to improvise (where possible) with in-home testing. But for some things, there's no substitute for big heavy lab equipment! A lot depends what part of world you live in, or for the U.S., what state of the "union". Cheers, Rich S.

we did about 1/3 military 1/3 commercial and 1/3 business and GA. Recent ly we jumped much heavier into commercial and are scaling back on business/ GA. We are probably 70% commercial and 30% military. So we took and are t aking a big hit.

who knows

ry few exceptions) are on either team 1 or 2 and each team works every othe r week. So everyone is now receiving half pay. While this is going on we await our longer term fate which is whether we get laid off or not. Layoff s have begun and they are moderate so far, but the company has not put ever yone backon full time pay either.

I got a notice today from Google, about 'Google Meet' conferencing for up t o 100 people at a time. I have no use for any service like that, but others do use it.

we did about 1/3 military 1/3 commercial and 1/3 business and GA. Recent ly we jumped much heavier into commercial and are scaling back on business/ GA. We are probably 70% commercial and 30% military. So we took and are t aking a big hit.

who knows

ry few exceptions) are on either team 1 or 2 and each team works every othe r week. So everyone is now receiving half pay. While this is going on we await our longer term fate which is whether we get laid off or not. Layoff s have begun and they are moderate so far, but the company has not put ever yone backon full time pay either.

I don't understand why the video protocols sacrifice audio. I've been usin g Zoom a lot lately and some days it's good and some days it's not so good sounding like talking in a barrel or just plain dropping out. It seems lik e the required bandwidth is so different between audio and video that they could send every audio bit two or even three times with error correction an d still not impact the video much. So why does the video still look good w hen the audio mucks up so much. It's not like I won't get the concept of w hat is being said if the video glitches. It's not very often glitches in t he audio won't require a manual retransmission request, "What was that?"

--

  Rick C. 

  -- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging 
  -- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209