Mild Mannered Engineer

Customers...

2011-09-05T15:28:00.001-04:00

Is the Customer Always Right?

That is an old adage that many business owners adhere to and the mantra predicated onto those who have the luck of being the first contact with customers, be it retail or technical support.

I beg to differ though.

Having spent some time on retail at an ubiquitous electronics franchise, I have to say that of all the customers that walked in the store door, maybe 20% at most deserved the respect from the sales clerk - the rest were obnoxious worthier than thou vociferous illiterate ignorants that demanded audophile performance at a Bose level from a $14.95 AM/FM alarm clock radio, and then blamed the clerk for selling them a lemon.

Then there is the Tech Support customer.

Got a call today from a decidedly ranting woman complaining that she had bought an Internet radio and that all of the sudden there was a message on it: "not compatible with the stream" or something like that. Apparently she had talked to someone else on our support team, when I asked her to tell me to what extent she had spoken with my colleague she immediately went to a "is there anybody else that knows about this that I could talk to?". It's labor day 2011 and I am the guy in charge of the deck...

The discussion went instead into her trying real hard to find someone else to talk to as apparently I knew nothing about her problem - kind of felt my 25+ years in radio talked down to in a rather disrespectful manner, still tried to explain to her that I was alone and no one else would be in until tomorrow and as I asked what model/brand radio she had, the woman hung up leaving me talking half sentence out. She was on a short fuse and never allowed for an intelligent exchange of information that would have helped resolve the problem.

The customer is NOT always right.

Educated customers usually are, those I cater to with enthusiasm - best return business ever.
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Soldering Tutorial

2011-04-12T21:10:00.001-04:00

I have done a few impromptu seminars on proper soldering techniques, wish I could have had access to this guide back then, it would have made a technical subject easier to understand by those without a dedicated electronics background.

While there are quite a few number of soldering tutorials freely available on the Internet, this one compiled by Jeff Keyzer has the leading edge to be one presented as a comic book.

Proper soldering is one of those kills often overlooked by many tech department managers. In a day where almost any type of cable can be purchased ready made, soldering one up is not a task that comes often, but being more an issue of when than if ever, it pays to have those in charge of servicing anything electronic to be able to do a proper job right at the first try, horror stories on cold and shorted out solder joints abound... some equipment is too precious (and expensive) to have it fail due to a poor solder joint.

Click on this link to retrieve the PDF version of the book. Following to the MightyOhm blog you will find various versions of this and even one with no text added, suitable for those who wish to translate the text into the target language of their choosing.

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iPhone vs Blackberry vs Android

2010-11-08T18:16:00.005-05:00

Being a technical person and in turn very much into gadgets, the one piece of modern day technology that I really don't care much about are 'smart' cell phones.

A cellphone for me is a tool to reach out and TALK to someone, everything else that has been added on top is unnecessary and merely a ploy to milk more money out of the consumer for services they don't really need, but have been rather brilliantly marketed into thinking they do: texting, social networking, picture & video sharing and of all things playing arcade games on those tiny squint-your-eyes screens.

Don't get me wrong, I see the awesome results of applied engineering from several fields into Apple's iPhone and I'll be the first to applaud it, that one gadget has forced other companies to also try to engineer their best into their products; however, what I am not convinced of is the value of such engineering into a product that doesn't answer a need but artificially creates an endless thirst for one: the eternal loop of I-gotta-have-it upgrading, juicy profit margins for the vendors and the carriers non whit standing.

When I gave a cell phone to my son I issued him with one of the basic ones. I need the phone to work as it should in an emergency without worries of the battery being depleted because he was texting, playing games or listening to music on it. For the entertainment side of things he has a GameBoy and an iPod... always the right tool for the right job.

Having said that, I found the entry on www.csectioncomics.com very amusing to say the least:

click image for a bigger version of it

and speaking of late adopters, here's how everyone else sees 2G users:

True... true...
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Comfortably Numb

2010-08-08T18:30:00.000-04:00

In the never ending study of Good Engineering Practices one often comes close to unique solutions to common problems that defy all rules established by proper thinking processes, case in point:

The story goes that the soldering pencil holder base got its attachment tabs at the bottom broken, then it could not be secured to the control box to have the whole station as a one piece setup. A crafty soul - a full fledged Broadcast Engineer no less - decided it would be a good idea to strap the holder on top of the control box using a wide tie wrap band.

One sure thing: It works, the whole setup moves along as one piece.

The risk? it will only be a matter of WHEN the moment arrives when some techie decides to wet the cleaning sponge and have a minor slip up, with water running into the vents of the control unit; it doesn't matter if the controller is powered up or not as the AC is always present at some point inside. Next thing you know the least of the problems could be a triggered circuit breaker due to the short circuit, but as Murphy's Law would have it: the risk is far too great to cause greater damage, even bodily harm.

One those solutions that needs to be pointed at and brought up to attention of the technical personnel in charge of those tools. Don't do as its shown. Never.

Live up all times to the part of being a good engineer.
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Vintage Computing: TEAC FD-55FV

2010-05-17T19:42:00.003-04:00

Recently I finished installing two new (never used!) floppy drives on my Tandy Color Computer System, these were meant as an upgrade to the original disk drive unit: a full height 5 1/4" double density single sided unit. One of those weekend projects.

I had been looking to do this for a while now, and as time went on it was getting more difficult to find the suitable half height DSDD 40 track capable drives at a decent price - the prices on Ebay for pulled units are most of the time unfair but that's the usual price to pay for oddities of the computing world in modern days.

One good moment I saw a posting for a set of three Teac FD-55FV brand new units, the price couldn't be beat: $10.00 for all three (plus shipping). The reason for this stems from the fact that these drives are 80 track 720K 5 1/4" units, not many vintage 8 bit computers are capable of using them - for certain the disk controller in my CoCo could not.

The units can be retrofitted for 40 track operation - finding the information was not easy, ended up reading some pages stored on a German server, all in all it was enough to know what to do. This post provides for some visual cues on what to look for if any reader ever encounters him or herself under such situation.

What we need to locate is resistor R19 on the main board of the drive:

The resistor needs to have one of its ends lifted from the board. Some may prefer to nip either end but that would render a retrofit back to original condition more troublesome - a little effort now can save some headaches later if it's decided to jump back to 80 tracks operation.

It will be easier to desolder one end of R19 if we remove the board, remove the two white edge connectors clearly seen in the picture above. There are three screws holding the it to the frame, but first we need to disconnect three small blocks from underneath the board:

R19 is located between an IC and a cap, some FD-55FV boards might be populated a little different depending on the production run - on some I have seen a transistor mounted right in front of R19, the particular board revision I had was completely open:

Carefully desolder one end and lift it. An enterprising hobbyist will see that attaching a small switch between the lifted end and the board connection point will permit an on-the-fly switchover 40/80 tracks, a suitable mounting will have to be provided for the switch though. In my case I don't see going to 80 tracks ever so I just left the resistor as shown:

Once this was done I installed the board back on the drive frame, set in all the pulled connectors and verified the Drive Select jumper settings. When Radio Shack released the first CoCo drive systems they decided to do the drive select by pulling teeth out of the 34 pin connectors, I replaced the stock ribbon cable with a normal straight thru drive cable (no cable twist as with the IBM PC type) and do the DS with the jumpers provided on the drive interface board.

Both drives were promptly installed in the full height case and a quick test revealed I had a perfectly working dual drives unit. Needless to say I am a happy camper.

Please remember that the drive model discussed here is the Teac FD-55FV-13-U (FD-55FV for short). As noted above, some board revisions will look different - I don't think I need to go with great detail to put a disclaimer here on what to expect if anyone out there embarks on a similar project. Get as much information as possible before heating up the soldering iron.

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Toyota - Connecting the dots

2010-03-17T13:53:00.000-04:00

The following article was sent to me by a former automotive industry colleague. Written by Greg Hutchins of Quality Digest, I believe is worth reading to anyone involved at any level in Quality System Administration duties...

Toyota—Connecting the Dots
And still not getting the whole picture

Time to review our own areas of influence.

Escalation

2010-02-11T06:23:00.001-05:00

An amusing take at escalation procedures in R&D enterprises - but applies to almost any type of engineering organization or department.

Not many companies have a proper escalation policy established - if there is one at all. That oversight only helps to create an environment prone to confusions and a share of Larry, Curly and Moe situations:

Upon a setback, you'll see everybody scrambling to get something done, anything, with more than one element in the team effectively running into each and every wall there is to run into... loss of time, loss of opportunities... waste. That can kill a company.

Follow, if you will, the path of the discussion from the bottom of the org chart all the way to the top:

Programmer to Team Leader:

"We can't do this proposed project. **CAN NOT**. It will involve a major design change and no one in our team knows the design of this legacy system. And above that, nobody in our company knows the language in which this application has been written. So even if somebody wants to work on it, they can't. If you ask my personal opinion, the company should never take these type of projects."

Team Leader to Project Manager :

"This project will involve a design change. Currently, we don't have any staff who has experience in this type of work. Also, the language is unfamiliar to us, so we will have to arrange for some training if we take this project. In my personal opinion, we are not ready to take on a project of this nature."

Project Manager to 1st Level Manager :

"This project involves a design change in the system and we don't have much experience in that area. Also, not many people in our company are appropriately trained for it. In my personal opinion, we might be able to do the project but we would need more time than usual to complete it."

1st Level Manager to Senior Level Manager :

"This project involves design re-engineering. We have some people who have worked in this area and others who know the implementation language. So they can train other people. In my personal opinion we should take this project, but with caution."

Senior Level Manager to CEO :

"This project will demonstrate to the industry our capabilities in remodeling the design of a complete legacy system. We have all the necessary skills and people to execute this project successfully. Some
people have already given in house training in this area to other staff members. In my personal opinion, we should not let this project slip by us under any circumstances."

CEO to Client :

"This is the type of project in which our company specializes. We have executed many projects of the same nature for many large clients. Trust me when I say that we are the most competent firm in the industry for doing this kind of work. It is my personal opinion that we can execute this project successfully and well within the given time frame."

Seen anything familiar up there?
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Ham Radio Tower Ban in San Diego

2010-01-30T13:00:00.000-05:00

Was reading through my daily LinkedIn article feeds and came about the following post:

“We interrupt our continuing narrative about spectrum utilization for a breaking news story!”

There are other articles in that blog that may interest the readers.

That'll be all for now!
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Windows Errors

2010-01-07T03:33:00.001-05:00

Running over the smorgasbord of MS Windows updates ( the first batch of 2010) over a rather large of computers under my jurisdiction, I found the following list of Windows Errors an adequate read to smile a bit while the hourglass keeps on spinning:

WinErr 001: Windows loaded - System in danger
WinErr 002: No Error - Yet
WinErr 003: Dynamic linking error - Your mistake is now in every file
WinErr 004: Erroneous error - Nothing is wrong
WinErr 005: Multitasking attempted - System confused
WinErr 006: Malicious error - Desqview found on drive
WinErr 007: System price error - Inadequate money spent on hardware
WinErr 008: Broken window - Watch out for glass fragments
WinErr 009: Horrible bug encountered - God knows what happened
WinErr 00A: Promotional literature overflow - Mailbox full
WinErr 00B: Inadequate disk space - Free at least 50MB
WinErr 00C: Memory hog error - More Ram needed. More! More!
WinErr 00D: Window closed - Do not look outside
WinErr 00E: Window open - Do not look inside
WinErr 00F: Unexplained error - Please tell us how this happened
WinErr 010: Reserved for future mistakes by our developers
WinErr 011: Window open - Do not look outside
WinErr 012: Window closed - Do not look inside
WinErr 013: Unexpected error - Huh ?
WinErr 014: Keyboard locked - Try anything you can think of.
WinErr 018: Unrecoverable error - System destroyed. Buy new one.
WinErr 019: User error - Not our fault. Is Not! Is Not!
WinErr 01A: OS overwritten - Please reinstall all software.
WinErr 01B: Illegal error - You are not allowed to get this error. Next time you will suffer a penalty for that.
WinErr 01C: Uncertainty error - Uncertainty may be inadequate.
WinErr 01D: System crash - We are unable to figure out our own code.
WinErr 01E: Timing error - Please wait. And wait. And wait. And wait.
WinErr 01F: Reserved for future mistakes of our developers.
WinErr 020: Error recording error codes - Additional errors will be lost.
WinErr 042: Virus error - A virus has been activated in a dos-box. The virus, however, requires Windows. All tasks will automatically be closed and the virus will be activated again.
WinErr 079: Mouse not found - A mouse driver has not been installed. Please click the left mouse button to continue.
WinErr 103: Error buffer overflow - Too many errors encountered. Additional errors may not be displayed or recorded.
WinErr 678: This will end your Windows session. Do you want to play another game?
WinErr 683: Time out error - Operator fell asleep while waiting for the system to complete boot procedure.
WinErr 815: Insufficient Memory - Only 50,312,583 Bytes available.
WinErr 912: Purchase a new copy of Windows today. Old license void. Windows has been deleted.

I guess all those have things well covered.

Happy 2010!
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Humor - IT Industry Pick Up Lines

2009-10-08T03:01:00.006-04:00

What do the ladies that dedicate themselves to the Information Technology sector have to endure, working in an industry full of Nerdy males...

Top 10 Pick-Up Lines IT Ladies are Sick of Hearing

10). I bet you know how to turn software into hardware
9). You must be really good at World of Warcraft, because when I saw you, I was like WoW.
8). I'm a C++ programmer, and you know what they say about us, we know how to use our pointers.
7). Have you ever been rendered in 3D before?
6). Want to come back to my place and and see my blog?
5). You're so beautiful, you've made my Stack overflow
4). You can run your fingers on my keys any day
3). You know what they say about desktop programmers? We use more ram and have bigger disks
2). I'm a Telecom developer, and I have lots of sockets experience

and the number 1 pick up line IT ladies are sick of hearing is:

1). You had me at "Hello World"
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WiTricity

2009-09-02T18:55:00.004-04:00

Eric Giler heads WiTricity, a startup with a product straight out of science fiction: wireless electricity, beamed from a base station to your electrical devices. The technology was developed by an MIT team led by theoretical physicist Marin Solja (who won a MacArthur "genius"grant last year). Now, WiTricity is one of several startups developing tech to safely transmit power through the air - and potentially untether our electronic age.

The technology at the core of WiTricity's approach is called magnetic coupled resonance, which can provoke an energetic response at a distance between two coils, one powered, the other not. If the two coils are correctly tuned to one another, energy flows from the connected one (installed, say, on the ceiling of a room) into the other (inside, say, your laptop).

Here's the presentation of the near-to-market invention that may soon recharge your cell phone, car, pacemaker:

Felix The Flying Frog

2009-06-01T14:23:00.000-04:00

A Parable About Modern Management

Author unknown

Once upon a time, there lived a man named Clarence who had a pet frog named Felix. Clarence lived a modestly comfortable existence on what he earned working at the Wal-Mart, but he always dreamed of being rich. "Felix!" he said one day, hit by sudden inspiration, "We're going to be rich! I will teach you to fly!"

Felix, of course, was terrified at the prospect. "I can't fly, you twit! I'm a frog, not a canary!"

Clarence, disappointed at the initial response, told Felix: "That negative attitude of yours could be a real problem. I'm sending you to class." So Felix went to a three-day course and learned about problem solving, time management, and effective communication - but nothing about flying.

On the first day of the "flying lessons," Clarence could barely control his excitement (and Felix could barely control his bladder). Clarence explained that their apartment building had 15 floors, and each day Felix would jump out of a window, starting with the first floor and eventually getting to the top floor. After each jump, Felix would analyze how well he flew, isolate the most effective flying techniques, and implement the improved process for the next flight. By the time they reached the top floor, Felix would surely be able to fly.

Felix pleaded for his life, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. "He just doesn't understand how important this is," thought Clarence. "He can't see the big picture."

So, with that, Clarence opened the window and threw Felix out. He landed with a thud. The next day, poised for his second flying lesson, Felix again begged not to be thrown out of the window. Clarence opened his pocket guide to "Managing More Effectively," and showed Felix the part about how one must always expect resistance when introducing new, innovative programs.

With that, he threw Felix out the window-THUD! On the third day (at the third floor), Felix tried a different ploy: stalling. He asked for a delay in the "project" until better weather would make flying conditions more favorable.

But Clarence was ready for him: He produced a time line and pointed to the third Milestone and asked. "You don't want to slip up the schedule, do you?" From his training, Felix knew that not jumping today would only mean that he would have to jump TWICE tomorrow. So he just muttered, "OK, yeeha, let's go." And out the window he went.

Now this is not to say that Felix wasn't trying his best. On the fifth day he flapped his legs madly in a vain attempt at flying. On the sixth day, he tied a small red cape around his neck and tried to think "Superman" thoughts. It didn't help. By the seventh day, Felix, accepting his fate, no longer begged for mercy. He simply looked at Clarence and said, "You know you're killing me, don't you?"

Clarence pointed out that Felix's performance so far had been less than exemplary, failing to meet any of the milestone goals he had set for him. With that, Felix said quietly, "Shut up and open the window," and he leaped out, taking careful aim at the large jagged rock by the corner of the building.

Felix went to that great lily pad in the sky.

Clarence was extremely upset, as his project had failed to fly, he hadn't even learned to steer his fall as he dropped like a sack of cement, nor had he heeded Clarence's advice to "Fall smarter, not harder."

The only thing left for Clarence to do was to analyze the process and try to determine where it had gone wrong. After much thought, Clarence smiled and said, "Next time, I'm getting a smarter frog!"

So Clarence set out to do this. He advertised in the local newspapers and found hundreds of frogs for the void left by Felix. (Because he had wisely left out the exact job requirement from the advertisement). He selected the ten with the highest fgpa (frog grade point average) and formed a team to accomplish what he had failed to do with Felix.

This team went through the same three day course as Felix and were full of enthusiasm and positive attitude. Feeling that this might be the right time, Clarence told his team what exactly was required of them. It didnt take long for the positive attitude to be replaced by cynicism. However the most outspoken frog of the lot, Peter, (one who had already been marked by Clarence as having distinct upper management qualities) refused to let the apparent difficulty of the task deter him. He quickly formed a sub-committee of five frogs to plan the project and himself started effort estimation. And he also chose Dave and Sam, both of whom he didnt like very much, to be the first to learn to fly.

Needless to say, Dave and Sam didn't live very long. The flying lessons continued with the frogs joining Felix one by one. When only Peter was left, he tendered his resignation to Clarence, stating low employee commitment as his reason for dissatisfaction with the project and joined another company where he was put in charge of training frogs to fly a Mig-21.

Clarence's company, 'Flighty Solutions', was now finding it difficult to convince its customers that their frogs could fly. The marketing team was told to prepare some aggressive marketing strategies to boost the sagging image of the company. A week later they had a meeting with the top level managers in which they outlined their ideas for an advertising campaign.

Concluding a snazzy Powerpoint presentation, the marketing team said "The frogs were in the air from the time they went out of the window to the time they hit the ground. Technically, therefore, they were flying. From our test records, we found that two frogs flew for 5 seconds, three for 7 seconds, and 4 for 8 seconds, which gives us an average of seven seconds flying time per frog. Our new marketing slogan will be 'Fly for seven seconds with Flighty' "

The managers were duly impressed and Clarence set out to recruit a new team.

Traffic Control

2009-05-17T18:27:00.013-04:00

Quick! What does an Industrial Engineer meddle with?

If the first thing that popped into your mind was works in the manufacture industry you're half way in. To make it easy for everyone: an industrial engineer works allocating limited resources to have a system perform in its most optimal fashion; yes it all started within the manufacture world but today IE spans a whole world of disciplines, one of them - and the matter of this post: Traffic Control.

Those who live in high automobile traffic areas have been stuck in a traffic jam too many - my fellow New Yorkers and New Jerseyans (and bordering areas) can attest to the fact. Yesterday morning as I was driving across the Goethals Bridge I couldn't help bu notice the slowness of the traffic flow at the bottom of the bridge, and how it would pick up on top of the arch; this is a phenomenon I have watched carefully not only on the bridges, but the tunnels, the seemingly always-in-repair BQE, the parking lot otherwise called the LIE, the New Jersey Turnpike, the glorious 101 in L.A. and even in the small town south of the border Nogales Sonora México. The conclusions after many observations is that traffic movement follows a mildly complex mathematical model, and the easiest way to envision it is that it acts like a spring... a slinky; that and driver behaviour is apparently universal - more on that later.

Case in point my experience at the bridge (just because it's the most recent): Once I got to the "clearing" where traffic sped up I knew I was not going to see anything identifiable as a cause for the jam, no accident, no closed lanes... nada. You all have heard the traffic report: "such and such highway with an accident cleared but the damage has been done". Examine the following chart developed by Mathematicians at the University of Exeter in the UK:

Click for a BIGGER version
Following steps 1 through 4 you will see the dynamics of the traffic jam. The stall has been cleared and yet the jam will manifest itself ever slightly moving against the traffic direction until eventually clears out due to less cars on the road. The culprit is simply the heavy foot of 90% of the drivers out there... quickly accelerate upon seeing a clearing and slamming on the breaks upon a slowdown:

See those little red lights? seems familiar?.

Human behaviour on this regard is something that no amount of analysis by itself will ever allow a solution to the problem. Poorly set city planners - which lack a good team of industrial engineers if I may interject, proclaim only one or two simple solutions - neither effective: build more/widen the existing roads OR toll the traffic (remember New York's proposed Manhattan access toll?).

As an industrial engineer I see great waste in resources with ill-conceived traffic solutions like a 12 lane wide New Jersey Turnpike, or the use of a zipper on the BQE to alternate rush hour traffic in an attempt to alleviate jams. I won't go into the politics behind those "solutions", that is better left to other venues to discuss. I will however point out a few hints to drivers everywhere, as we all are the cause with MOST impact on the traffic jams:

Maintain a large space ahead of your car, no less than two car lenghts.
Encourage one, two even three cars to merge ahead of you.
If traffic slows to a complete stop, keep that two car-lenght space ahead of you!.
Never "punish" merging drivers by closing your gap.

I find fascinating to observe the mechanics of all this, and I hope that those who read this blog and drive will take an opportunity to analyze it with a clinical eye. Maybe, as it happened to me, your behaviour will change enough to encourage others to follow the simple hints noted above - I do my own little part and I've seen others do likewise - it's easy to spot them once you train your observation senses. If we all follow suit maybe traffic jams would be the exception rather than the norm, and maybe, just maybe we can allocate the resources otherwise wasted in building bigger roads somewhere else were the need is justified.

Be sure to stop by Smart Motorist for more great driving tips.

Going Green?

2009-04-15T20:39:00.002-04:00

The way technology has evolved, the broadcast facility more closely resembles a run of the mill data center. Now computers run the shows, host the schedules, manage the automation, archive and deliver the digital audio, take in remote audio feeds, etc - more often than not all that equipment is hosted in a separate room away from the control rooms and studios. It is easy to see that as far as design goes, the broadcast telecom hub shares the same basic principles as the data center does, and the one I wish to focus attention on for this post is the Air Conditioning System.

Despite that Data Center = Telco Hub relationship, I have found that more often than not, the Telco Hub is setup and made to grow in a haphazard manner, little regard paid to air flow & heat load (current & maximum sustainable expected): BTU-wise the installed capacity of the cooling systems may well exceed the heat load the processing systems will impose on the room, but without due attention to the air flow within the room, you can have the latest and greatest monster tonnage unit servicing a mid-size hub with poor or spotty performance... just think of the electric bill running up to sustain that hungry beast 24 x 7 x 365.

Sun Microsystems set out a very useful guide on Data Center Design, it is a must read and you can find it here.

War Story:

That guide would have come in handy to a facility I visited a while ago (southern Arizona). They had been working with an old FM 1H Gates 1kw FM transmitter in an enclosed transmitter site room using just convection cooling; company decided to go to an HT-10FM (10kW) - no studies were ever done as what type of AC the room would now require, the engineer in charge of the install deemed only necessary to setup an intake fan at floor level and an exhaust fan on the opposite wall, flush top with the ceiling - no vent out canopy over the tube exhaust. The setup worked nice in the winter months, but as soon as spring time made its way the HT-10 begun to trip almost every day come mid morning... that 4CX7500 was putting out a nice blast of air hot enough to roast a chicken well done, if someone had wished to do so, the outpour into the room was more than what the simple ventilation system could handle.

Management must have been on another yellow submarine trip when they had some friend of them suggest an AC unit for the place. Again, all sensible studies were dismissed in an effort to save consulting fees expenses and the brand new 5+ tonnage capable unit with the outlet set right at the intake of the HT10 and the return on the same wall but flush to ceiling - no hood was set over the HT second time around.

Needless to say, the room did get quite comfortable, but the AC unit kept on running 20 x 7 and sometimes 24 x 7 on the hottest days. Not only did the radio station had to setup an upgraded electrical service to feed the HT (and an SX-5A also added to the same site - although being solid state based, its issues with heat were of less consequence), now the AC unit imposed an additional load in the power mains and that reflected IMMEDIATELY on the electric bill that was delivered by the next reading. Talk about sticker shock - I was there at the office with the manager as they were discussing what could be done to solve the problem. It was too late for that, the money that had been saved had long before been surpassed by the first new monthly operational expense, consulting fees to solve it not included.

This was in a Mom & Pop operation south of the border. There will be some readers that may think "troglodites!, that explains a lot". Don't.Go.There --> I've bench marked my share of facilities here in the NY area and their "solutions" (like old fashioned rotating blade fans strewn across crowded rack aisles in support of the AC system) stray away from anything I would call professional.

With the economic tough times those room design shortcomings are sore points hitting the bottom line of operational expenses. To fix them requires more money and usually there is none set aside for such an item.

Moral of all this:

If you're in charge of design or have a say on final approvals, DO your homework before deploying a Telco Hub. The little money you could save by cutting corners today will just swing by and return ten fold as an expense that will badly harm the operation. Not IF, but WHEN.
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Unix Time Conundrum

2009-02-09T18:32:00.004-05:00

This has been buzzing all over the tech forums:

"At 11:31:30pm UTC on Feb 13, 2009, Unix time will reach 1,234,567,890. Where will you be at this momentous second?" - from Bell Labs

And quoting Jon maddog Hall:

This is up-next Friday, February 13th at 18:31:30 EST. If you want to find out what time it will be in your local time, try this Perl script courtesy of Matias Palomec:

perl -e 'print scalar localtime(1234567890),"\n";'

Now if there was any reason to fear Friday the 13th, I think this is it.

That many numbers sequentially in a row representative of time?

Who knows what will stop working?

Will lex(1) cease to work?

Will yacc(1)s?

Everywhere a revolt?

Will the rapture be upon us?

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As the only Unix based system I have to play around is an Eee PC 701 with the latest distribution of Ubuntu Linux for it, I will stay put and check it out while that milestone in POSIX Time is reached.

For the rest of the world, a quick and dirty way to get into the action is to point your browser to:

Cool Epoch Countdown

See you all on Saturday!
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Reset-me Zephyrus

2008-12-10T18:02:00.006-05:00

A while ago I posted a picture of a reseteable Zephyrus tone decoder in my Facebook profile - I received a couple of questions regarding the what for and the how to so here it goes with some detail... the story behind the modification.

In the daily use of the 380 series decoder, having the display latch and hold the status of the last tone received is a no issue, but maybe you're troubleshooting a system in which several tone sequences are used and all tones are the same one - unless you keep a close ear to the decoder board you'll miss the reassuring click of the relay each time a tone is decoded... the 7 segment display remains on the same though. If the circumstances of the testing enviroment impede to be close to the decoder, the latched display will prove to be unhelpful; there is a way to reset it to something else: power cycle the box... convenient for one or two shots but can grow to be a tedious task if the troubleshooting effort requires more attention. There has to be an easier way.

There is. Within the logic of the decoder board there exists an MC14538B Dual Precision Monostable multivibrator. With a just-waiting-to-be-used reset pin. Lacking a schematic for the decoder board I just traced the reset pin I needed from the IC to a convenient point I could safely solder a wire to - that would either be a feed-through eyelet on the board (preferred) or a pin on a support component (a resistor preferably).

For one end of the momentary switch I chose to attach the wire on the "power bus side" end of a 100k resistor as seen on this picture (click on them for a bigger view):

The connection can be made on either side of the resistor, but it is technically wiser to have the contact closure to go through the resistor and not directly onto pin #3 of the IC. The other wire for the switch can go into any conveniently located electrical ground point, and I found a board pass through eyelet right by the 7 segment display suitable for this:

The next task was to play test the modification, before doing anything else. Then clean up the soldering job (the pic above prior to that task ok?). As with all mods, anything done should be very easy to get undone... I doubt Zephyrus would appreciate receiving a unit for service with an undocumented feature installed in.

I had a nice cable hold down clip available and used it to secure the momentary switch to the front end of the board. Whenever I am in need of troubleshooting any of our air chains in regards to the sub audible tones, I just remove the plastic cover on the decoder and press the button every time I need the readout go back to zero.

And this is a bird's eye view of the whole 5 minute retrofit:There you have it. A quick and useful mod.

Should I worry about putting a fine-print footnote that this post makes no guarantees nor endorses undocumented modifications to industrial equipment? that it is the sole responsibility of the person who attempts to perform such modifications and none resides on this blog author nor provider?. I think we're all grown ups here. And good engineers at that :-)

Eleven Pound Pencil

2008-12-05T17:05:00.005-05:00

Barry Gerber wrote a very interesting essay back in March 5 2006, published in the Tom's Guide website and titled: Who Designed This Crap? The Case of the 11 Pound Pencil. I suggest you take a few minutes and read the article (if you haven't done before) - it is extensive as it spans four chapters:

1. The Decision

2. The Execution

3. The Disaster

and a recap and last thoughts as

4. Productivity Increases? What Productivity Increases?

Look around in your own workplace, your department, your desk. How many 11 pound pencils can you identify? There has to be at least one... yes, even in the most tightly controlled world class lean operated environment there will always be at least one - the difference in such environments is that procedures will be in place to allow the involved parties to quickly identify the wasted resource, then efectively dispense solutions to minimize its negative impact and improve the health of the quality system.

When implementing the quality management system at your site or location, the goal is to create a system that works for you and not the other way around. When proper care in the planning is not taken seriously - as it happens oh so sadly more often than not - that quality system will become the most prominent 11 pound pencil in your operation, a resources hog that will eventually run the company down; one of the tell-tale signs of such condition is seeing your staff spending their time and effort on fighting brush fires all day long... no growth perceived beyond band-aid "solutions" to ever present problems.

That is the key element I believe: make the system you implement work for you and avoid ending up with you being the one working to sustain the system. That should be a banner reminding such policy displayed on top of the main entrance to your business areas.

An update was published shortly after the first installment of the 11 pound pencil story, you can read all about it following this link.

The Making of a Good Engineer

2008-12-03T22:12:00.008-05:00

Many people - including some in the professional circuits - take and think of an engineer as a know-it-all person on a specific field, a notion perhaps stemming from the fact that mostly in the past century, a shadow of a well studied individual was cast on whomever made it through the years of college or university education.

I strongly cater to the idea that it is not the schooling what makes an engineer - studying only serves to open up the thinking horizon of the individual, that's it; the real value of an engineer is in a person that knows where to look for the tools and other resources to resolve a problem.

Back in school one of my favorite experiences when facing an exam was when the 'open-book' option was thrown in; I always have seen this a as true test of character for prospective engineers - there were some students that even as they were savvy individuals with a good deal of theoretical knowledge, they got not so brilliant results when faced with a real-world problem that strayed away from the beaten path, a slew of books in hand and yet some solutions escaped them; they did not know how to effectively search for the tools they needed. Then there were the goof-ball types that despite having severe long term memory problems (too much partying out maybe?) managed to whiz by the tests just by effectively applying the resources at hand.

Of my earliest experiences on the wrongly perceived notion about what a good engineer is, was while working at an AM/FM combo radio station. There was a problem with interference from an adjacent channel on the FM operation and the engineer on the task of investigating the problem got hold of a very nifty and top of the line Spectrum Analyzer (lent by a big name garage door openers manufacturer's lab BTW - we had none in our arsenal at that station). I was observing from a distance as he setup the SA and checked the immediate field to our center channel; one of the sales managers walked by and saw the big box, the blinking lights and the live trace on the screen and stood by to see what was going on. A couple of minutes later my friend finished doing the analysis and while printing out the results the manager with some awe asked if we had learned to do this at school - "no" said my friend, "we did not had access to such equipment there, maybe a digital storage scope or two but that was it". The sales guy was a bit dumbfounded about the whole thing and uttered that he thought that the college we had attended to was up to the latest and greatest, which it was not (really)... but the bottom line is that even as that was the first time we ever touched a SA, there were tools on the side to help us out do the job: the user manual and some theory we had gleaned from assorted books and from playing with scopes and curve tracers a couple of years before that.

One of my favorite teachers back in college once told the class: "kids, you have to be ready to face the challenges in your productive life up ahead, be ready for anything; just because you will graduate as Industrial Engineers doesn't mean you won't be able to function in other areas, this what we see here in the classroom only shows you a very narrow approach at a thinking process - you will have to develop and nurture your own. I am a chemical engineer, teaching materials management here and working also as a process engineer making flutes and clarinets". Those words from Mr. Machado - may he rest in peace - left a mark on me, and to this day I deem them as one of the most valued concepts I ever followed up upon.

First Post

2008-12-03T07:00:00.000-05:00

Because I have nothing else better to do and time is of abundance, I decided to open up yet another blog. Have two more where I usually rant about politics and life events, one is in English and the other in Spanish, neither follows the other one in terms of articles posted except on extremely rare instances.

Having recently opened a LinkedIn account I found myself lacking of a proper venue on which to rant about all things engineering, both in the Industrial and the Broadcasting fields... my two passions besides the music. I felt that the content usually dispensed in the other blogs was not up to par to what is expected from a Mild Mannered Engineer so here it is... Mr Engineer at Blogger.

Prepare for round one.