IEEE Consultants' Network of Long Island

Stupidity - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

These following two stories are true. In their aftermaths, I really found myself wondering about the thought processes by which I had been confronted.

Case 1:

I'd made a prototype model of an RF amplifier which was housed in a sheet metal enclosure and that amplifier was working pretty well. One day, I took it from the lab over to my desk and left it next to my phone while I attended to some other matters. When I got back a few hours later, the amplifier was gone. Someone had taken it away and left behind no note or anything else. I had no idea what had become of it and yet I still needed it.

A week or two later, I spotted my amplifier on somebody else's desk roughly four cubicles away and it (the amplifier, not the desk) was piled to the rim with cigarette butts, ashes and used matches. I spoke to the guy whose desk I'd come to and he said "Oh yeah. I thought it was an ashtray and I needed one."

Smoking was allowed back then.

I told him it was an operational engineering prototype, I took it back, I spilled out the debris, I used an air hose to blow out the remaining dust and then, back in the lab, thank goodness, it still worked.  (Whew!)

Case 2:

We were buying wideband transformers from this one supplier and some of the received units did not work. We decided to make a test fixture for Incoming Inspection to use and when the next shipment arrived, the test fixture identified several transformers out of a fairly large lot that were no good. Those that were tested as good later worked well in their intended application which just happened to be the above amplifier.

A couple of months later, another shipment of transformers arrived and I got a phone call from Incoming Inspection asking me what they should do to test the newly arrived stuff. I said to use that same test fixture just as before, only to be told that the fixture had been taken apart because its components were needed for a different project.

It took me a few minutes to process that input.

I cobbled some various stuff together to make another fixture and we got that second lot of transformers tested too. Just like before, some of them were bad and those that tested okay worked properly when installed in amplifiers.

Shortly afterward, I left the company. Sometimes I wonder what happened after my departure.

Tesla Drivers - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Are the Tesla drivers trying to tell us something?

 

Contrails - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

In the midst of some beautiful weather, I looked up at the sky and saw something I'd never noticed before.

There was a single jet aircraft exhaust trail, a contrail, that spanned the sky over a large field of view and just to my viewing right, the shadow of that contrail could be seen on some diffuse clouds.

The sun was in just the right place to make this scene viewable.

At the URL  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrail  , we find the text: "Persistent spreading contrails are suspected to have an effect on global climate."

In the above photograph, the shaded area of the diffuse clouds is blocked from sunlight by the contrail which I surmise means that the shaded area is at least somewhat cooler than the illuminated area. That difference is going to have some kind of effect, however small. However, if we add up lots of contrails, maybe that effect isn't so small after all.

Just thinkin'.

Eye Dilation - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E.

An ophthalmologist dilated my pupils in the course of an eye exam and as I was leaving the office, it was a bright and sunny day which rendered me pretty much unable to see anything.

My wife did the driving.

When I got home, I decided to measure my eye recovery using a series of photographs. I came up with the following results:

Restoration of pupil diameter seems to have been a rather slow process for the first seven (6.82) hours. However, when it came to be supper time, I didn't take the next photograph until a little more than two hours later. Clearly however, (no pun intended) the restoration effect was more abrupt during those last two hours than it had been through the prior seven.

The possible lesson in all this is that if one has such an exam, one might feel that four hours or so would be enough elapsed time to resume certain activities such as driving. These results suggest that might not be true.

I therefore recommend erring on the side of caution.

Spoilage - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

I once found an item on Microsft News about a New York tourist being arrested in Hawaii for violating  quarantine vis-a-vis the COVID-19 situation.  In that item was the following URL, now off line, but which had held the photograph below: 

Now please look at this second picture, a still screenshot from a YouTube video of Annette Funicello singing her song "Pineapple Princess": 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h02oh5Ri4Y0 at 2:14/2:26

Now look again at the first picture and grieve for the spoilage of that once spectacular view.

At least we can still enjoy the song.

Objectivity - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

I have some hearing loss. It isn't enough to be a major nuisance, but it has over the years caused some minor misunderstandings.

Under the care of an ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialist, I took a series of hearing tests over a period of several years which confirmed my hearing deficit but which thankfully showed my hearing deficit to be stable which meant that I wasn't getting any worse.

For each test, I sat in a soundproof booth wearing headphones while listening as directed by an operator whom I could see through a plate glass window.

Each time when I arrived for testing, the booth was being attended by someone different so, to be polite, I would ask that person's name and each time I was politely answered.

Politely each time except once when this one young woman, in response to my inquiry, became very offended and responded to me in a raised voice with "I am DOCTOR .......".

My question had apparently been taken as some kind of an insult. That was not my intention. Still, the test was conducted as planned and the results were subsequently forwarded to the ENT specialist.

I later asked my ENT if a hearing aid might offer some benefit. He didn't think it would help, but if I wanted to pursue the idea, I could ask the doctor who had just tested my hearing, the same person whom I had just unintentionally offended.

I declined because, to be utterly frank, I had lost all trust in that person's objectivity.

I would not have trusted that woman's judgment.

 

Franklin Tree, Part 2 - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Several years ago, I wrote about the Franklin Tree. The one I saw back then was, and still is, in the Clark Botanic Garden in Albertson, NY.

Please see: 

http://licn.typepad.com/my_weblog/2014/04/the-franklin-tree-john-dunn-consultant-ambertec-pe-pc.html

I thought back then that the Clark Botanic Garden specimen was the last of its kind, but not so. There is another Franklin Tree in Planting Fields Arboretum in Oyster Bay, NY.

What really caught my attention was that this one was in flower in late September.

Just thought I'd like to share it.

Knotty Stuff - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

When tying up a package or just when just tying a couple of things together, a square knot is very commonly the knot of choice. A square knot looks pretty much like the following:

Coming straight out of the scouting manuals, this knot is very well known. However!

This knot under the right circumstances can come undone. That was pointed out one time when I was in a group discussion with several people, three of whom were dentists. They were Joe, Max and Lenny and this issue of knots was very important to all of them on a professional level as dental procedures often involve having to tie knots using very thin threads..

A far more secure knot can be made per the following sketch:

As all three dentists agreed, by making two interlocking loops on each side instead of just one loop, the resulting knot is far less likely than the simple square knot to spontaneously undo itself.

As Max put it, "When I make my knots, I want them to stay tied."

Right now, I have to tie up some old newspapers for the recycling collection truck which will be coming by tomorrow morning..

Presentation - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

On occasion, I have noticed circumstances where a presentation, having been accepted by a customer or a client, may differ quite remarkably from fact. One such example came to my attention when as a teenager, I had a job as "Stage Electrician" at two summer camps , one camp for the boys and the other for the girls.

Each camp has a "social hall" with a stage, with stage lights and with a sound system that included a collection of Electro Voice 664 microphones.

The picture below is taken from    http://www.coutant.org/ev664/   in which there is descriptive text for this microphone that includes the phrase "Uniform from 60 to 15,000 Hz" as descriptive of the microphone's frequency response.

Camp personnel included a husband and wife, each of them a teacher, who informed me with great emphasis and pride that these microphones were the finest high fidelity microphones ever made.

I had found a folder in the electrician's tool shed with the microphone's specifications written out and I saw the frequency response. This microphone was not designed with high fidelity in mind. It was designed for public address service. However, since the lowest and highest frequencies to which it needed to respond were of children's voices during their weekly stage shows, these microphones were very well suited indeed.

How come? These microphones were always easily accessible to campers of all ages. Now and then a microphone would get dropped or bounced to the floor from some rather significant heights. None of them were ever damaged by such mishandling.

In hindsight, I think these microphones were rugged enough to have survived use as blacksmith hammers. In summer camp service, that was a major virtue indeed.

I never corrected what seemed to have been some misinformation that was deliberately conveyed to those two teachers. Someone before my tenure had chosen well and had also made the right political move(s) in getting these microphones accepted as something that they really were not.

Presentation had overshadowed fact.

I didn't care.

Purged Pictures - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

When e-mails arrive here, they almost always arrive with pictures deleted like seen here.

Why is this happening and how can I make it stop happening?