Jenny Craig vacations in Paris?

Dude, Jenny Craig totally came to the shop today. She totally kicked ass too. We we're eating our vegetables, doing sit-ups, jumping jacks, the whole deal. She cranked up punk music on the stereo and made us do ab crunches for 6 hours, god damn it hurt. But that shit works.

Take a look at the first picture, that's the base of the Totemobile at 7:30am. The second picture shows what happens after 6 hours with a sawz-all, a couple disk-cutters, and a few buckets full of sweat, blood, and minthe intense chocolate. Somehow or other, we found 374 kilograms of extra weight floating around in the bloated belly and derriere regions of that thing. It was awesome.

This whole experience, it feels like the "mission impossible" theme song is playing in the background the whole time. I fly to Paris, I meet these guys at the airport, we go to work. We all have our specialties, we all have our quirks. But we show up, we shake hands, we tell dumb jokes, and we kick ass.

There's:
Me: (code name: Jean-Beeel) specialty: cutting steel, weighing things, eating minthe intense chocolate.
Chico: (code name: Jean-Francisco) specialty: never gives up, stinky farts when it get serious, often mistaken for a homeless person.
Dan: (code name: Jean-Dan, aka the Six Million Dollar Jean-Dan) specialty: mustache, mullet, 13-year's old sense of humor, sees 374kg where nobody else does.
France: (code name: The PitBull) specialty: swearing at vice-presidents of major car companies, getting lost, doesn't take no for an answer.
Jean-Pierre (code name: Jean-JP) specialty: can't pronounce the sound "th", badass programming skills, still can't pronounce the sound "th" - even when you make fun of him for it.

We also worked today with Jean-Claude, Jean-Etienne, Jean-Francois, and about six other Jean-somethings. I’m not kidding. Dude, everyone in France is named Jean-…..

We kicked ass from 7:30-1:30 today, removing more than 700 lbs of weight. Then the weighing crew showed up to take the weight of our machine again. It took them about 4 hours, because, well, that's a very French thing to do.

Sooooo, is that is? Is that, that? We move in to the new building Monday? Ohhhhhh, wait, not so fast.

You have to understand something that I don't even understand. There are a couple of key players to know here:

There's this guy named Mr. Satine. He WAS the CEO of Citroen. He loves the arts. He loves (bad) architecture. He decided to have a new showroom built and have a super cool transforming robotic sculpture put in this building. You know what he didn't love? Accounting. That's probably why he was fired last March for loosing loads of money and spending money on frivolous things. The new boss wants to save money and cut costs.

There's this woman named Mmme Gautrand. She's an architect. She won the design competition to design the new Citroen showroom for this guy named Satine. Her new building is amazingly ugly. She thinks it's just amazing. She really doesn't want some robot stealing the show and taking the glory from her ugly building.

There's this guy named Round-Square. That's not really his name, but his name isn't important. He wears glasses. One lens is round, the other is square. It's so ridiculous it's hard not to laugh in his face. He works for the architect Gautrand. He clearly drew the short-straw and got stuck with us. Somehow, he ended up semi in-charge of this endeavor. And it's clear that his prime directive is make sure our piece of art never gets into Gautrand's new building. Did I mention his glasses?

The Amorphic team and our 9,300 lb robot are very caught in a political war. We just won that weight battle by the skin of our teeth with about 30 seconds to spare, but the war ain't won so easy. As soon as we reported our new weight, 3 new issues popped up that we aren't in compliance with. That fast. 6pm on a Friday night in France. Almost nothing happens that fast in this country. That's ok, we've performed no less that 4 miracles so far with this project. What's a few more?

another weird dream of Paris

it's been a really long time since my last post on this blog. I feel like it's time though, considering where I am and what I'm doing.

Here I am, back in Paris....again. It's August 30th 2007. Dan, Chico, and I arrived this morning from New York, here to continue and hopefully conclude the great Totemobile saga.

The quick back story, for those who didn't know or don't remember, is this: The Totemobile was mostly built in Brooklyn last summer by a team of awesome people, Amorphic Robot Works. In September we flew this giant transforming car to Paris for the Paris Auto Show. We then, somehow, ended up staying here in Paris for about 6 months to work on it. Along the way, we learned that it was nearly twice as heavy as the elevator rating for the building into which it will go: the new Citroen Showroom on 42 Champs Elyees, Paris. TWICE as heavy. That's OK, we just cut it in half. Really, not a big deal.

Weight has been a major issue with this damn machine all along, so it goes.

We finished our work last April, and on the last day we weighed the machine to verify that we meet all the required limits to get this thing in the building. There's a weight limit on the elevator, a weight limit on the floor, and everywhere in between. And we're damn close to exceeding all of them.

Well, Citroen, being the on-the-ball kind of folks that they are, decided to weight he machine as well. They could have done this in May, June, or July. No, why rush it? They waited until last week, 1 week before it is scheduled to go into the Champs Elysees building to weight it. And it came out almost 10% heavier than when we weighed it last.

That's the emergency, so here we are, back in Paris a few days early.

We landed today and went straight to the Conservatory, Citroen's museum of all their great and not-great cars of the past. That's where the Totemobile is being stored. (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/08/23/automobiles/20070824_CITROEN_SLIDESHOW_index.html)
We re-weighed it, and quickly realized our crappy scales are just that, really crappy. Not trusthworthy at all. To be fair to myself, I last weighed it in April, after working nearly 48 continuously with no break, it was 4 in the morning, and I was sketchy at best. I didn't realize the scales were quite so prone to error.) Sadly, we have to assume that Citroen's number from last week is probably correct, and ours was off.

But, there's always the last minute, right?

Our big weighing was supposed to happen today with all the major Citroen people witnessing and us there too. The situation is very serious, we're facing the very real possibility that they won't let the Totemobile in the new building because it is too heavy for the floor loading specifications (not the elevator, the floor!). It would be doomed to a life stored away in a warehouse outside of Paris. Well, lucky us, the meeting was rescheduled for tomorrow at 1:30pm.

So, here's the plan. We wake up tomorrow, get to the shop by 7:30am, and we have 6 hours to cut 300kg out of the base. We think we can do it. It could get crazy.

(Just to complicate things: Mr. Pontieux, the guy who is officially weighing the car and transporting it, hasn't been paid by Chico - even dating back to when he transported the car from Brooklyn to Paris in September '06. France just called Dan 5 minutes ago (it's 10pm Thursday night here.) to say that if Chico doesn't wire Pontieux the money tonight, he won't weigh it tomorrow. Of course, Chico is complaining he never got the bill. We just had this conversation with Chico through his door as he tries to get down with his lady friend in the hotel room. Seriously, just now.) I wish I was making this up, but it's much too ridiculous for me to invent.)

So, the story will continue tomorrow.

I'm exhausted, so I'm heading to bed.

good night folks.