IEEE Consultants' Network of Long Island

Lots of Loose Cables - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

There is a big problem afoot in this area. Utility workers are leaving loose cables dangling down, even an entire electronic assembly of some kind at one location. As a result, I believe that passersby are being endangered.

In case you haven't seen it yet, please read the essay on EDN at: Loose Cables 

So far, I have identified and notified the town of dozens of addresses where such danger exists. At this writing, my most recent communications with the town were as follows:

These are addresses which I sent to the town:

Merely fixing the sites I report would not prevent the continued utility worker misconduct that has led to these dangers.

This looks like a major problem. We will see where this leads.

Musical Preferences - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

My confession: I don't like most of the music of Beethoven or Chopin or Liszt or  Mozart or Tchaikovsky or Mahler or .......  

While these and other composers are revered all over the world for their musical works which have given generations of people great pleasure, I just don't share in that pleasure and I intensely dislike being compelled  to listen.

Although there are certain specific works which I do enjoy such as Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov (especially the 1964 recording that was conducted by Leopold Stokowsky), Bach's Mass in B-Minor, the opening passage of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata (Yes, Beethoven.) and Pachelbel's Canon by Johann Pachelbel, do my likes balance my dislikes?

The world seems to tell me "no".

Whenever the topic comes up, I get asked questions like "But why don't you like ......." which is not really an inquiry into my preferences as much it's my being scolded for being an immature clod with an inadequate and juvenile attention span and a further judgmental assertion that I am in dire need of redemption, re-education and perhaps even psychiatric remediation. Think "the three R's". Of course, no classical music aficionado ever means to say that to me in a "bad" way.

Actually, I spent thirteen wonderful years as part of a choral group called The Armand Sodero Chorale and the sound of a harp is quite pleasing to my ear. However, I find the sound of a violin to be somewhat grating, even the finest Stradivarius.

I have been discovered to have some hearing deficits. Most notably, I have frequency response notches in my right ear's hearing at 3 kHz and 6 kHz. That plus some other hearing issues may have their consequences, but that doesn't matter to my detractors.

When my mother-in-law was alive, she and my wife enjoyed attending concerts at Lincoln Center. Having attended many such concerts myself and having disliked most of them, it became my practice to chauffeur them to Lincoln Center and to have a newspaper handy with which to occupy myself during each concert while I waited in the lobby, reading and doing the puzzle page. I didn't own a smartphone at the time.

I could hear the concert music coming through the lobby's muffled loudspeakers so I knew when it was time to go meet them as concerts ended. Encores would fool me now and then, but the basic strategy was sound. (Yes, pun intended.)

Now, if you'll please excuse me, I feel like listening to some songs as recorded by Ed Ames and Petula Clark.

More Sightings - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Seen at a local supermarket:

 

Wanna buy a used car? (Same grocery store's bulletin board.)

 

Spotted at a garden supply store and no, he did not want to make friends:

 

Somebody really loves Shakespeare:

 

I needed to contact Verizon's customer service for some reason so I dialed and got put on hold. I turned my phone's speaker on while waiting and busied myself with something else. Suddenly, I looked up at the phone display and saw that I'd been kept waiting on hold for over an hour.