Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1457913
40 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2022 but I swear its truth; I hadn't had the truck home but five minutes before that horrible alarm went off on its own again. I went back outside, checked it, and sure enough, the truck didn't chirp when I used the key fob to lock the doors. is is a sure indication that the con- trol module thinks the door is still open even though it was closed. I went back inside to call my mechanic, and I kid you not, the truck's alarm went off again while I was on the phone with them. It felt like e Beast was deliber- ately mocking me. I know that everyone has dealt with their own gremlins in life. ose annoying little bugs and problems that creep up and cause us to spend a lot of time and money fixing a prob- lem that just won't go away, and ultimately spoiling the weekend we had planned. What's worse, though, is when those glitches happen while on the job, causing us to go over budget and miss scheduled design and production deadlines. How many of us have waited for an answer from technical support when a CAD tool doesn't behave as expected, or you just can't find the intermittent short that you've spent all morning searching for? I know that I've been in those situations, and here's a cou- ple ideas I've found that have helped me work through these annoyances. Be Mentally Prepared Gremlins usually appear at inopportune moments in our lives, and oen create a lot of stress, anxiety, and even anger inside if we don't deal with it in a healthy way. If le unchecked, these emotions can derail our concentration and we'll lose the ability to focus on finding a solution to the problem. is is where the adage of "just walk away from it" can be a real lifesaver. If we resist the urge to yield to frustration when confronted with one of these problems and take a short break, it's amazing how our perspective can change. Sometimes the answer will be an obvious solution that we couldn't see because we were simply too close to the problem. Let's face it, electronics will falter, CAD sys- tems will develop glitches, and alarm systems will go off in the middle of the night. None of us know when the next gremlin will strike, so pre- pare yourself now for that eventuality to pre- serve your sanity. Allowing frustration to take the lead from our normal analytical approach to problem solving isn't a very practical or productive response to an unexpected grem- lin. And for goodness sakes, be kind to your- self. Aer all, if you didn't break it in the first place, don't blame yourself if it's broken. Just step back a bit, take a deep breath, and then reevaluate the problem with a new perspective and a fresh pair of eyes. It's amazing how many times a resolution will present itself aer just a short break. Be Functionally Prepared One of the things that can be so frustrating about gremlins is how they easily pop into our lives when we least expect them. As we just talked about, we can keep these unexpected annoyances from driving us nuts with some mental preparation. But is there anything that would help us on the more practical side? I think so. Consider the following: • Back up your work: One of the most annoying gremlins is lost data. Sure, we've probably all deleted a CAD file that we didn't mean to or worked from the wrong database. But there are plenty of instances where a file becomes corrupt or is just plain gone when it shouldn't have been. To keep these gremlins at bay, make sure to regularly backup your work. I hadn't had the truck home but five minutes before that horrible alarm went off on its own again.