[TR] soldering

[Randall]

> I used to work for a company that installed mini computers on 
> board seismic
> survey ships. 

Forgot to mention: A seismic survey is done by setting off the equivalent of
a keg of dynamite just behind the stern of the ship, every 5-10 seconds
literally for days on end.  The ship tows a long (can be over 1km) string of
microphones, to "listen" to the sound echoing off the layers of rock under
the ocean floor.  As you might imagine, the vibration on the ship is pretty
awful.  The entire ship would literally jump by a few inches, every time a
"shot" was fired (on top of what the sea was doing, they would keep shooting
in weather where a sane person would have headed for port).

I learned to not only sleep while they were shooting, but it would wake me
up if they stopped.  Probably just as well, because it was frequently
because our computer system (which was responsible for triggering the shots,
among other things) wasn't working right and I would be expected to fix it
ASAP no matter what time it was.  No pressure, it was just costing the owner
thousands of dollars per minute while I tried to figure out which (crimped)
connection was bad, or whether it was a software bug to be fixed, or a board
to be replaced.  Typically, they would start to make a circle as soon as
shooting stopped, and I had to have things running again by the time the
ship & cable got back to where the last shot was fired.

-- Randall