IEEE Consultants' Network of Long Island

A Little Eye Candy - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Seeing this or that when one is here or there can sometimes be almost eerie. Consider these few examples.

Example 1:

There are two office buildings in Mineola which are joined by a corridor. You might think such a corridor would be located at the ground floors but it isn't. This corridor is on an upper level and is enclosed by blue tinted glass. I find the visual effect is just a bit disconcerting. (Paging Rod Serling.)

Example 2:

We have a tendency to sometimes see things which are not really in the state we perceive. Consider the colored areas in the image below.

It looks like there are two shapes, one red and one yellow which seem to overlap in the orange area, but is the yellow area semi-transparent and placed on top of the red or is the red area semi-transparent and placed on top of the yellow?

Neither is true of course. There are really three areas, the red the yellow and the orange and no interactions are taking place among them. Still, our perception persists and dissertations have been written about this effect which is that most people see the warmer color of yellow preferentially on top of the cooler color of red.

Example 3:

I once tried an experiment with my wristwatch. I placed it on the glass of my scanner and ran the scanner across the watch dial very slowly. The second hand left some interesting traces in the resulting image.

When I drew radial lines from the center of the dial across what looked like a slanted row of dots, I could see that the angular steps taken by the second hand were not all of equal size. Some were larger than the others.

The watch keeps very accurate time so there's no issue there, but the irregularities of the second hand's movement do exist even though they go unnoticed in normal service.

A Missed Business Opportunity? - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Some while back, the sign on the left in the picture below appeared on a utility pole asserting that an apprentice in the real estate business could earn $20,000 per month which would be $240,000 per year.

Wow!!! 

Some time later, a second sign appeared plastered on top of the first sign.

Well, I certainly don't want to "die broke", do I?? I better respond to this offer right away, right?

The last time I looked, both signs had vanished.

I'm glad.

An Assumption of Insecurity - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

I got two bogus phone calls today, robocalls apparently from the same villain(s), one on the house phone and the other on the cell phone. Take a look at the times shown on these two caller ID displays.

These two calls came in quick succession, first on the house phone and then on the cell phone. They bear the same spoofed caller ID, as weird as this one happens to be. That means that these bad guys, whoever they are, acquired the phone records of some office or business with which I have had legitimate dealings via which they have managed to associate and target my two very different phone numbers.

Who knows. Maybe it was a doctor's office. I've often provided both phone numbers to such. The key point of this experience is that someone's contact list, someone's database, got raided and that no such contact list can ever be trusted, either by thee or me, to be secure.

Phone numbers plus any and all other personal data, no matter where stored, no matter how stored, no matter how ostensibly protected, must always be assumed to be insecure. Never mind any assurances that anyone may offer to the contrary.

Just a cautionary note.

Alco Locomotives - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

I found this picture hanging on the wall in a local diner the other day. It is a draftsman's rendering of two locomotives that were built in 1914 by a company called American Locomotive Company (Alco) that was located in Schenectady, NY. It's not such a great photograph what with my unsteady hand on my phone's camera and the unavoidable glow of an incandescent lamp reflecting in the center, but the original drawing itself was very much a work of art.

This drawing being over a century old, it was created entirely by skilled hands. It was created using straight edges, a compass and a French curve by a highly skilled draftsman. All of the lettering was done by hand and there is even a missing period in one of the notes for the lower locomotive.

Nobody is perfect, right?

What really fascinated me though was that these two locomotives were exactly alike except for one thing. The distances between the rearmost drive wheels and the trailing wheels are just two inches different.

That two inch difference carries over to the Total Wheel Base, the Over Couplers and the Over All dimension as well.

I would love to know how that difference came about. Even though they were built in two different shops, I would have thought that the goal would have been to make them exactly the same, but maybe someone made a mistake of some kind.

Nobody is perfect, right?

I guess that's true, but stand in awe Oh Ye of the AutoCad Generation and admire the work of a true master.

The Alcove - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

My late mother-in-law was a patient several years ago at a nearby nursing home which had a small seating area, an alcove, which was for use by visitors and by those patients whose mobility was good enough to give them access. There was a couch, some upholstered chairs and a small wooden chest with a table lamp.

There were usually a few magazines next to that lamp such as Good Housekeeping, WebMD and Sports Illustrated, but to my eye, nobody seemed particularly interested in them. I asked one of the nurses, Ellen, if it would be okay to bring in some other magazines. "Oh, yes!" she said. There was one patient in particular who was a voracious reader and that would be a really good thing for her.

The next time I came in, I brought a foot thick stack of New Yorker back issues plus a few Scientific Americans. As I was carrying them in, I saw this one man, a patient whom I had noticed many times before and who was pretty clearly a stroke victim, sitting in his wheelchair in the alcove and thumbing through a copy of Woman's Day, looking very morose.

This man could not really speak anymore, but when he saw all of the magazines I had with me, he looked up and managed to say "Thank you."

Everybody has certain moments in the course of their lives when indelible memories are formed and this one was one of mine. Distressingly, I never saw that particular man again, but in the ensuing years, I have brought in stacks of magazines for that alcove.  

I'm careful about which publications though. The New Yorker and Scientific American are fine, but I will not bring in any copies of Consumer Reports. I think that most of the patients in that facility are no longer in positions to make purchases and I don't want to remind them of that.

I want them to be diverted from their realities if only for a little while by things which I hope are of interest.

Jumping The Gun for Christmas

Picture taken on November 6, 2018, forty-nine days ahead of the holiday:

A Century of Service - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Several years ago, I visited a Shaker village in northern New Hampshire. I later wrote about that group's work ethic which in short was to do everything so very well that your work would not need to be repeated within your lifetime. That essay is at the following:    Work ethic. 

Recently, a wall switch stopped working at my son's home in Brooklyn and needed to be replaced. That switch dates, so I believe, from when the house was first electrified over a century ago. That switch got pressed "on" and "off" many thousands of times over those ten decades, a very impressive service life.

Just look at this thing! The metal work is of heavy gauge steel and there is a very strong ceramic shell around the switch mechanism itself.

This thing was probably not designed by Shakers, but it certainly met their ideals by outliving its designers and not needing replacement during their lifetime.

I was looking at wall switches in the electrical section of an Ace Hardware the other day.

 

Never Say Yes To A Telemarketer - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

One ploy used by malicious phone callers is to trick their victim into saying the word "yes" so that the sound of that word can be recorded and edited into a phony telephone recording that will sound like you have agreed to purchase whatever crap they want to stick you with.

A couple of examples that have come to my phone were the following.

As aware as I am of this ploy, I might in a weak moment forget myself and fall prey to this. To help prevent that, I have pasted a cautionary warning on my phone where I cannot possibly miss seeing it when I pick up the receiver.

Hopefully, this visual cue will keep me properly alert when the telephone vermin come a-calling.

The Giant Spider - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Do you remember the television program "Night Gallery" and the episode "Arachnophobia"? Read on.

I am very nearsighted. Myopia has been my lot in life since early childhood. With eyeglasses, I can see just fine but without eyeglasses, I can't even find an eye chart hanging on the wall much less read one.

I woke up one night some years ago, perhaps a little bit after dawn, and I saw what looked to me to be an enormous spider clinging to one bedroom wall. I saw this thing as being the size of a cocker spaniel, not moving at all, but just there.

I stood up, I woke up my wife and said to her "Judy, we've got to get out of here, right now!" and of course, she had no idea what I was going on about. "What's the matter?" she asked so I told her what I was looking at and after a moment or two she asked "How can you see that without your glasses?"

The logic of that question brought me out of my dreaming hallucination and the giant spider on the wall simply vanished. I can still remember seeing that happen. It was like watching some special visual effect in an old grade-B movie.

After some explaining, we went back to sleep, but oh boy, what a vivid memory that left behind.

While that spider image was there, I was standing upright in the room, I was fully aware of my surroundings and I was carrying on with a conversation. Except for the illusion, I responded to everything as if I were fully awake.

Have you ever heard someone describe an "out of body experience"? I once knew somebody who claimed to have had that happen. Quite frankly though, given what happened to me, I tend to believe such an experience is/was a dreaming hallucination, similar to my own.

 

Mr. Spock - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

I was once the "Unit Engineer" on a military electronics product, a digital multimeter, which contained subassemblies that needed to be separately tested before being integrated into the product as a whole. Test fixtures and test procedures were to be generated by an assigned test engineer, but I was responsible to review and approve everything. Ultimate responsibility for the end results were all mine and mine alone.

I will not mince words. That test engineer was in my opinion the most untrustworthy and unethical individual I have ever known in the entire course of my fifty-plus years in the electronics industry. The hardware and the paper documentation (There were no personal computers at that time.) were absolute rubbish, yet it was demanded that I affix my signature of approval.

It didn't happen.

Supervisory staff would come and go now and then. My immediate supervisor at the time left the company to go raise livestock in Minnesota  I never did hear back how that worked out, but the testing situation continued getting steadily worse so a big meeting was convened.

At that meeting, my new supervisor offered a remark that the departed supervisor had given preliminary approval to the existing test engineering work product of which I disapproved. The test engineer added "Yeah. That's too bad, isn't it."

There entered into my mind an image of Mr. Spock as I replied "Indeed. It was probably the single most serious mistake of his tenure as section head."

My new supervisor let out an audible gasp and the back of the test engineer's neck turned scarlet. It was quite possible that I might have been physically attacked at that point.

It didn't happen.

Instead, the test engineer was shortly thereafter transferred to another product, a pulse generator, whose hapless Unit Engnieer was totally dismayed. A replacement was assigned to my product, a fellow who I am happy to report was competent, industrious and of the highest integrity.

From that point on, in my arena at least, good things did happen.