IEEE Consultants' Network of Long Island

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.

Noticing A Few More Things - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Maybe ten years ago, just outside of the Conference Center building at Planting Fields Arboretum, a tree was severely cut back with the apparent intention to do away with it, I think. All that was left as I recall was a twig and a leaf.

But!!! Look at it today. Some comeback, wouldn't you say? I don't know what species it is, but I call it The Lazarus Tree.

 

In that same Conference Center, we recently attended a meeting of The Long Island Horticultural Society. After the meeting's lecture, a raffle was held of a pretty spectacular (to my eye) set of plants at the end of which, there were plants still left over. Members were then invited to simply go to the table at one end of the room and just take whatever they'd like.

The term "feeding frenzy" came to mind, but I saw a lot of folks really enjoying themselves.

I noticed this thing on a back street in a small town in upstate New York. It looks ike a handmade sewer grating, not exactly a work of art, but fully practical and functional.

 

I've been scanned at the airport, but never at the grocery.

I might have been insulted if I took this message at face value.

 

The second fortune cookie insert seems to confirm the first one. Both were opened at the same dinner.