That may work but…

Steve spent much of his working life with Patheon traveling to Puerto Rico away from his family and I think I am to blame. I was contacted by this talented engineer early in 2008 and found out that he knows a thing or two about process engineering, equipment, and technical transfer so I convinced him to follow me to Puerto Rico to begin work trying to rescue a product that was not performing well. As part of that effort, we spent many days holed up in the Courtyard Marriott in Isla Verde while we tried to figure out how to fix the broken process. Usually over a Medalla beer, we would spend after work hours having technical "debates". In my younger, more naive days I felt I was pretty savvy and could hold my own with anyone in a technical conversation. One of these times, I had proceeded to explain to Steve my theory of fluid bed automation and process thermodynamics and why if we just did what I said everything would be better. Steve listened patiently and after taking a sip of his beer, put it down, looked me in the eye and said "you could do that ". I grinned and thought to myself, wow, looks like I was able to teach Steve how to fix this thing. After about 10 seconds of basking in my own glory he smiled and added "that may work but only if you want to spend the rest of your life with your head up your ass". I learned that day when Steve's around to stop talking, and start listening. Boy have I learned a lot since then. ~Stephen Closs