Corona Virus COVID-19 and the effect for Ross-Tech

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Bruce

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I have had many inquiries about how we (Ross-Tech) are doing. Many of those inquires have been specific to this old man. As I am the oldest in RT land, I guess there are concerns about what this old fool might be experiencing. Rest easy. While we are at the epicenter of the COVID cases in Pennsylvania, the old guy is doing well. Thanks to those who have been asking.

We are however greatly concerned with the way this thing is rolling out. To that end, we have directed all of our staff to work from home save the ones who process orders and pack. This went into effect on Tuesday, 10 March 2020. Our operations staff - those that process orders - are working in their normal area. As need arises, others will come in for brief periods to do tasks that can only be managed at the office. When those others come into the building, their interaction with others is kept to a minimum.

We are in touch with our vendors so that we can know what their plans may be. We will continue to stay in touch and continue to review our situation. At this time, we are not expecting any interruption in our ability to provide product.

We have also decided to ban travel around the country or overseas for the next few weeks. Our people will hunker down in their homes restricting their travels even around the area. Those reporting to work will come directly to the office from home, will work, and then will return to their home. We are asking our staff not to be in places where others gather if at all possible.

Obviously in this fluid situation, we will continue to monitor and modify our response. If you have questions, please do post them here.

Uwe, Linda and I are all concerned for the well being of our staff as well as that of our partners around the globe. If you wish to tell us how things are, please post the comments here in this thread. In times like these, we all need to be thinking of each other and supporting one another. May all get through this time with minimal interruption to your lives. May all continue to have good health. May your families be healthy and happy. Please do stay in touch with us.
 
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Jack@European_Parts

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#StayTheFuckHome
https://staythefuckhome.com/

Seriously; it's the only way to slow this thing down now.

-Uwe-


I went to Clown College & I know that! :p


krustys-clown-college.gif



NostraJackASS asks nicely, please everyone...... take lots of Vitamin C !
I think it helps.........
 
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Bruce

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DV52

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^^^ Bruce: IMHO, RT has implemented a very sage strategy (staff isolation)!

Quite apart from the focus on the health of individuals, the approach recognizes that for RT's business model, the company's greatest asset is its staff (yes, I know it's a cliche - but for what's ostensibly a software-house, it's an extremely valid cliche in RT's case)!!

Not sure how other corporations are responding to the virus up there, but RT's response is both humane and it makes good business sense!! So-it's one of those rare win-win outcomes where both "wins" don't go to one party in the transaction ;)!!

As for concern about "this old man" and as an even "older man", I get the feeling from your writings that the "old fool" is probably healthier than many of his younger work colleagues (this certainly seems true about his intellectual acuity and his EQ). That said, I can vouch from personal experience the importance of aligning one's mental self-image with one's actual physical limitations!!

So in response to your good wishes, remain well and stay happy during this time of "pestilence"- not that I'm suggesting that COVID-19 has anything to do with the pale horsemen of the Apocalypse, or any other of the nonsense that is found in the Bible (if you are a religious man, then I apologize for the heresy)

Don
 
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Bruce

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Hi Don,

The credit for the policy implementation goes to Uwe. He had us run a test of our ability to hunker down last Friday. Now it is our new reality.

I make jokes about myself all the time. Being the oldest in the company, but one with the whit to banter with the young ones, I am often derided for being that old one. Most respect that with time comes at least great stories of the old days when we coded computers using a card in hand for the mnemonic of the processor instruction and a HEX key pad for zapping an instruction into memory. They laugh when I tell them we had to punch cards to write a program.. but, age is showing as I digress... They like hearing how it was and in the stories comes respect. Still, we banter about the old fool and such. It's all good.

I don't like expressing high opinions about my abilities. In fact, your kind words caused my face to go a touch red. Really? You think that of me? I am humbled...

As to religious belief, I am a Christian and I do believe... The book of the Revelation of Christ is a very difficult book. I have taught it on several occasions to mixed age groups and always I preface my teaching that no one really knows or can understand all the symbology of that writing - that highly educated theologians have debated the writing for a thousand years or more. So, I am never offended by others opinions of what they have read and interpreted. In fact, I welcome such conversation. How can one learn if we close our minds to other views?

Thank you for your support Don. We'll keep all informed as things roll out here. Do post how things go for you and your country. We are all one really big connected family and for now, this electronic means may be our only connection one to the other. Let's use if for good!
 
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PetrolDave

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Most respect that with time comes at least great stories of the old days when we coded computers using a card in hand for the mnemonic of the processor instruction and a HEX key pad for zapping an instruction into memory. They laugh when I tell them we had to punch cards to write a program
I remember those times fondly too Bruce.

Back in the early 1970's my best friend and I (both still at school) managed to persuade both the local university and technical college to give us access to their mainframe computers where we learnt the punched card codes so well we could punch a complete program (of up to 500 cards) from memory, just using the printing punch/reader to confirm our memory was correct.

When I was an intern in the mid-1970's I learned how to program a Motorola 6800 microprocessor directly in hex - it was so much faster than editing the source code and reassembling it, which could take up to 3 hours even though the code was less than 16K bytes!

Anyway - back on topic.....

Corona Virus has caused a factory tour that my brother and I were due to take round the Morgan Motor Company factory in Malvern UK to be cancelled, hopefully to be rebooked later in the year. The cancellation was made to protect the workforce and the tour guides as they have visitors from many countries and are in close contact with them for the duration of the tour which takes around 2 hours.

Let's hope all of the extended Ross-Tech family wherever they are in the world come through this pandemic safely.
 
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D-Dub

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if there is one good thing to be said about the corona virus, it is causing the most interest and motivation of businesses to enable 'work from home' I've ever seen, even from companies/workplaces that would never have previously even considered it, let alone recommend it to their workforce.

I'm not referring to RT, but the innumerable traditionally run businesses that are often only drug kicking and screaming into the future (or present for that matter).
 
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PetrolDave

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if there is one good thing to be said about the corona virus, it is causing the most interest and motivation of businesses to enable 'work from home' I've ever seen.
That is so true, for the last 10 years of my working life at least 70% of my work could have been done from home (software designing & coding, PCB layout, etc.) but not one supposedly "high tech" employer allowed WFH.

Not only would this have been more efficient for the employer (when I did work for an employer that allowed WFH I found I worked longer hours and got interrupted less, so I got much more work done) but also the lack of pollution due to commuting would be environmentally beneficial too.
 
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Uwe

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if there is one good thing to be said about the corona virus, it is causing the most interest and motivation of businesses to enable 'work from home' I've ever seen, even from companies/workplaces that would never have previously even considered it, let alone recommend it to their workforce.

I'm not referring to RT, but the innumerable traditionally run businesses that are often only drug kicking and screaming into the future (or present for that matter).
Ross-Tech has been amenable to WFH for more-or-less since the beginning. I think it may be because the business started in my home 20 years ago. At first it was just me, and then it was just me and Linda, but in 2002, we started hiring people. By 2004, we had four or five people showing up to come to work at our house at 9:00 AM every morning, and Linda put her foot down; "Enough!". So I rented some office space and moved the operations people out. However, R&D stayed in my house until we moved to a bigger facility (the one we're still in) late in 2007. Then we had everyone under one roof for a couple of years.

That changed again in 2009. Long story short, since then we've hired a number of people for support positions who WFH all but two weeks out of the year because they live far enough away that commuting isn't an option, and moving wasn't feasible or desirable to them. VPN access and VoIP phones make this possible. Each spring and fall, we have an "All hands on deck" week where everyone is in the office. We haven't officially cancelled the one scheduled for May, but it's looking more and more likely...

-Uwe-
 
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DV52

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^^^ Uwe: to quote one of your country's lesser known philosophers (or, to be more correct, his mother) - Ain't life "a box of chocolates"?

I'm not sure what event initiated the butterfly effect - but I suspect that you would never have predicted the buying your first VW vehicle and discovering that funny looking connector under the dash would have resulted in the even stranger device that we all respectfully call VCDS. Was it luck, brains, intuition or what Bruce might call "Kismet" (given his predilection to believing in a deity) - I don't know, but aligning all the dots that must have been required to get to present day Ross-Tech has to be a one-in-a-billion long shot!!

Don
 
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Uwe

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I suspect that you would never have predicted the buying your first VW vehicle and discovering that funny looking connector under the dash would have resulted in the even stranger device that we all respectfully call VCDS. Was it luck, brains, intuition or what Bruce might call "Kismet" (given his predilection to believing in a deity) - I don't know, but aligning all the dots that must have been required to get to present day Ross-Tech has to be a one-in-a-billion long shot!!
Well, my first VW was a 1977 Mk.1 Golf, 1.6 liter that I bought well-used at the end of 1982. I can assure you it did not have the purple connector we've come to know and love. My second was a 1984 GTI. My third was a 1989 GTI-16V. Meanwhile my wife had a 1985 Jetta followed by an MBZ 190E 2.3. All of these cars had some variant of the Bosch CIS fuel injection system, and all you needed to trouble-shoot that were pressure gauges and a multimeter. I did most of the work on these cars learned my way around those cars and the systems in them pretty well... ;)

-Uwe-
 
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Jacek

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Uwe it was the time of the yellow wire under the hood and sign codes. The good old days are not what the new cars are now.
 
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Uwe

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The good old days are not what the new cars are now.
Yeah. In the good old days, I could replace a timing belt in well under an hour. Now the engines have timing chains, which theoretically should never need to be replaced, but the reality is that they often don't last any longer than a belt did, and fixing any issue with those chains is an all day job. :facepalm:

But we digress from the topic of this thread.

-Uwe-
 
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Jack@European_Parts

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Absolutely correlates Don does it not?

Fear is always more powerful short term, than greed too, that's why so much false hope is had & when the masses see buy to cover as a rally!

VERY VERY dumb....?

Don't trade with margins, right?
Don't sit idle in a corner long position jerking off either unless that's your game?

I bought a car from the black pool, with the black swan and it's black on black & it gets down!
Fitting huh?
 
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Bruce

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Glad that I serve at Ross-Tech and in support of Uwe Ross. Uwe puts our people ahead of whatever drove Rutledge to ignore the CDC for the 15,000 employees who could have worked from home.. Bet others could have had reduced hours too..

With the fear of being labeled a "suck up", all I can say is, "Thanks for doing the right thing boss!"
 
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DV52

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^^^Uwe: hmm.......I suspect not!

Whilst I agree entirely that the Charter CEO's directive was wrong, I'm minded that we should cut Mr Rutledge some slack because he is saddled with the same disability that infects us both: he is an engineer - and as a consequence, he will see the world in black-and-white!!

It must be hard being both an engineer and a CEO because in the latter role, staff (and society in general) expects that he will be empathetic - which simply does-not-compute !!;)

Perhaps this example is nothing more than a classic case of the "Peter principle" in action?

Don
 
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