We are an “ah hoc” team thrown together for this development project. I am Robbie, and I am a contract engineer specializing in electronic sensors. There is our resident geek, Markie who handles the electronics end of things. Mr. Cho stops by from time to time as he is the representative of the company who actually manufactures the product. Marlene, the designer is in charge of making sure that everything is tasteful and attractive. And there is “J” who is our intern and general good sport about things.
What is that we are developing? Well, I thought it was a tasteless joke when I was told during the interview. We are developing a new and improved version of women’s panties with a moisture sensor! The sensor sends a signal wirelessly to a set of earrings that have very very tiny little discrete lights that get brighter and brighter the more “wetness”. Pretty crazy huh? Well apparently not all that crazy since the first version sold like hotcakes in a hungry lumberjack camp.
The whole idea behind the product is that it levels up the playing field between men and women. Men are pretty obvious when they are aroused (Are you having that banana for lunch, the one you are keeping in your front pocket?) but of course women aren’t. By the time a man can really find out for sure that a woman is aroused, well it just doesn’t matter does it. The real trick to the product is the panty gusset where the sensor is located. It is made of a special fabric that wicks the moisture away rapidly so that it provides a continuous accurate reading. Some women have even reported a not unpleasant “cooling” sensation due to this.
So the owner, “WK” is now developing this improved version where the design of the panties and the earrings match. In fact, Marlene came up with several alternate designs so it looks like there will be several different styles going to market.
The “favorite” design is a white lace panty that has a floral design pattern to the lace, and the earrings have that same design in kind of an open white enamel metal. It was a real challenge getting the electronics and the tiny tiny battery integrated in those earrings, but the prototype turned out really well. It is funny, the whole project has gone in my mind from “absurd” to “erotic” to now an interesting technical challenge so that I don’t really think of it as “panties” anymore. The new sensor is much better as it can stay in the panties right through the wash as long as you don’t use bleach or fabric softener, so we are really meeting the design objectives and should get the promised bonus.
However, we have run into a snag! A very big snag that we can’t seem to find.
Let me back up a second and tell you about “J”. “J” is a young lady (and very cute by the way) who is studying engineering at a local university. She is also extremely bright and has been a real asset to the team. Even more importantly, she has been willing to be our product “tester”! The way that works is “J” goes off to an unused cubicle and watches porn while we monitor the signal from another part of the office. I know, who ever heard of a summer job where you get paid to watch porn! She also has a little knob that she twists the more aroused she becomes so that we can correlate the sensor signal to her more subjective feelings. Sounds a little kinky doesn’t it, but for us it has now become routine.
So after about four months of development we were ready to make the presentation to “WK”. We all gathered in the conference room with samples, drawings, cost projections, etc.; and “J” even wore a set as well. All was going very well, “WK” was impressed. That was until the “snag” showed up. The little lights in “J”’s earrings were doing an impression of a lighthouse they were lit so brightly. So we decided there must be some problem with the electronics and cancelled the rest of the meeting.
Back to testing only to find that everything seemed to work just fine. We just couldn’t find a bug in the system. We monitored sensors. We monitored how the electronic package in the panties took the signal, processed it, and sent it wirelessly to the earrings. We watched the signal going to the earrings, and we put the chip in the earring on the test stand to see how it was taking the signal and turning it into voltage to the light. We could find nothing wrong.
So we decided that it may have been a transient flaw caused by a loose connection in the prototype circuit, and decided it was time to hold the meeting once again.
Everyone was there as before plus Mr. Cho also came with a new version of the panties now with lace trim. “WK” arrived and was his usual genial self. I guess that he is pushing on sixty, about six foot two, and one hundred ninety pounds with a shaved head and a gray little beard. He is dressed in his normal jeans and a starched white long sleeve shirt. And the meeting was going well. Until that is, the point at which “WK” picked up the panties and was looking very closely at them. Turns out that he is nearsighted, so in order to look at the detail that Mr. Cho was telling him about he took off his glasses and brought the panties close to his face in order to see.
It may have started earlier but since I wasn’t directly involved with “WK” and Mr. Cho’s discussion I happened to glance at “J”. Sure enough, the little lights in her earrings were starting to glow and as I watched the intensity started to increase. I tried to get her attention to see what was going on, but she was transfixed by “WK”’s discussing the details of construction. So before someone else noticed, I decided to do the honest thing and stop the meeting yet again.
Now things were starting to get serious as it looked like we were going to go way beyond schedule. To make matters worse, our little “J”, our product tester was going back to school next week so that meant starting at the beginning trying to “calibrate” a new tester. And like before, despite yet another round of tests we couldn’t find the problem.
So the weekend passed and now it was just Marlene, Markie, and me. Who would have thought that it would be Marlene who would figure it out. Marlene who wouldn’t know a circuit from a piece of gravel. We had been discussing what had happened at the last meeting when Marlene jumped up and ran back to the “porn cubicle”. After a few minutes she returned with the biggest grin. She had solved it!
“I don’t think the problem is on your end guys”, Marlene started to explain. “Remembering the meeting got me to thinking, so I went and looked at the browser history. When we first started testing it turns out that ‘J’ watched pretty much standard porn. But by the end, she was watching almost nothing other than ‘old / young’. I think our little ‘J’ has a thing for ‘WK’! I think the panties and earrings work just fine. What didn’t work was ‘J’ not telling us what was happening. When ‘WK’ put those panties to his face, I think our ‘J’ was thinking that those were the panties she had on. Although, I guess I too would have had trouble; right in the middle of that meeting looking over at ‘WK’ and saying, ‘You are making me very wet’.”
So the panties and earring are now in production. And I have learned a lesson which is “if there is a human involved somehow, check that first”.
In case anyone has ideas, I hereby copyright the idea of panties with wetness sensor; and the matching panties and earrings. Let me know if you are interested in manufacturing!