In life, it’s important to remember the basics and execute those before anything else.
For instance, when driving somewhere today, you probably buckled up, looked both ways at the stop sign, and used your blinker when turning.
At home, you likely shut refrigerator door behind you, make sure the thermostat is set at a reasonable temp, and turn the oven off when you are done using it.
Our lives are extremely complex today, but it seems like if we forget to “check off” the basic things, those are what tend to kick our hineys.
Not the really complicated things.
See, on those complicated tasks, we tend to focus our attention 95% at that task. Or ask for help.
This ensures that we get the complicated things done correctly, most of the time.
Once during my Navy submarine tour, we screwed up the lineup to blow our sewage to the ocean, and ended up blowing it into the inside of the sub.
Into the kitchen, of all places.
That really ruined moral for awhile. The boat smelled like crap (literally) and it took a long time to clean up.
It was a basic task that had the wrong person assigned, someone that didn’t pay attention to detail. They basically missed closing or opening 1 or 2 valves.
And life sucked for a week or so.
In the laboratory business, it’s also important to get the basics done.
For instance, when I’m doing a crush test, a relatively complicated procedure, I’m focusing intently on ramping the pressure up at 2,000 psi/min and focused like a laser on that task.
But, if I’m not taking care of the basics, like ensuring that the lab and equipment stays extremely clean, then I could contaminate a client’s sand with another client’s, or even with dirt from outside.
Not good.
So, I take care of the basics.
I clean the lab thoroughly, like your mother-in-law cleans her kitchen.
I use our sample splitter to split the samples down. I’m always splitting.
This makes sure that the sand I’m testing is completely random.
You see, when you send 5 lbs of sand in or so, that is a tiny sample of the sand on your property.
Then, when I get it in the lab, I take small samples of that already small sample!
This means I’ve got to be ruthless in randomizing my samples.
So, I split a lot.
Then I split again.
And again and again, making sure that what I’m testing is the best representative of what you have on your property.
It’s all for you, the client, you see.
You’ve hired me to test your sand, and I intend to do that by following the procedures to the letter.
And taking care of the basics, like cleanliness and random sampling.
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