IEEE Consultants' Network of Long Island

Vaccination Refusal - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

It was once a common theme in sci-fi movies (mostly 1950s era) that aliens invading Earth would be driven off by humanity forsaking inter-societal hostilities in order to unite against the common enemy.

Today, we have actually endured such an alien invasion which goes by the name Covid-19. Has humanity united against it? The answer is NO. Dissent, partisanship, rumor, xenophobia and all manners of invented fears and falsehoods have inestimably diminished humanity's effort to repulse the invasion.

A recent news report cited a hospital at which all of the incoming Covid-19 patients then arriving were persons who had not received vaccination. Some of those patients were quite gravely ill. I do not recall if any of them had died, but the conclusion to be drawn was inescapable..  

You have the legal right to refuse vaccination, thus jeopardizing your own medical status, but you do NOT have the moral right nor the ethical right to refuse vaccination for whatever feeling of self-satisfaction you may gain from such refusal.

Your refusal not only places your own medical status in danger, it endangers the health and the lives of other people, of other members of this society, who share the same civic environment which you yourself occupy.

To those who have thus far refused vaccination:  You are capable of doing better.

Car and Train Crash - John Dunn, Consultant,, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

The following URL is from msn.com and depicts a tragic car and train crash.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/three-people-are-dead-and-three-children-injured-after-a-vehicle-was-struck-by-a-train/ar-AALtW2d?li=BBnb7Kz

From this URL and several kluged-together screen shots, we have the following:

The male driver, a female passenger and a ten year old child all died. Three other children were reported as being in critical condition. Although the investigation was stated as "ongoing", I cannot help but see this horror as the result of driver stupidity. 

I can recall from some years ago, the same stupid move of someone driving across a train track and "around the gate" having caused a similar car and train crash on New South Road in Hicksville, NY. I can also recall an incident where I personally witnessed a car being driven across a train track and "around the gate" going northbound on Main Street in Mineola, NY. In that case, the driver got away with it.

The abysmal fact of modern life is that stupid people will continue to exist. Their "around the gate" behavior will continue to be repeated over and over again and will continue to result in losses of life, but perhaps that loss of life could be lessened by modifications to gated track crossings.

This situation is facilitated by the physical possibility of maneuvering a vehicle past a downed crossing gate:

The addition of a second gate arm could block this move:

While some aggressive dunce might breach a dual arm gate arrangement anyway such as by speeding up like h--l to get through before gate closure, I think there might be an overall diminution of such tragedies as reported above.

Comments?

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

A dermatologist once gave me a container of a skin care product. I later looked at the label's ingredients list and was alarmed to discover the following:

The first item in the list of ingredients is butane.

This extremely flammable hydrocarbon that is used in lighters and butane torches is supposed to go on my skin???

As far as I'm concerned, this product will be treated as a hazmat.

The cover on the container remains sealed. It will remain in this household only until I find the proper way to dispose of it.

An Offended Robocaller - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

The following voice message was left today by a robocaller:

"(A few seconds of silence.) Sorry. You did not reveal yourself to be human. Goodbye."

It took me several minutes to recover from laughing before I could type this.

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

It's just about ten years since I started going on line with blog posts. It started here with The IEEE Consultants Network of Long Island (LICN) to which was added about eight years ago, the trade journal EDN under the banner "Living Analog". Between the two of them, there are so far nine-hundred-sixty essays on line, many of them on technical topics and many others which are non-technical.

Much commentary from readers has ensued, often providing additional insights to the topics at hand. Sometimes however, malice arises. My work was once called "crap", misconceptions of circuit theory have been wrongly asserted and so forth.

I have long suspected that the hoped for reactions sought to be elicited from me would be along the following lines:

 

 

The above is only partly tongue-in-cheek. Quite a few years ago, I got banned from one LinkedIn group when I described the vulnerability of RFID to surreptitious interrogation. The last time I looked, that ban was still in effect, but today, credit cards are often recommended to be carried in foil pouches.

I am not perfect. I do now and then err and when that is discovered, I welcome polite correction.

Someone once informed me that I erred regarding the shape of a di-methyl-ether molecule. The underlying thesis of that essay on dielectrophoresis was still correct, but that detail was apparently off.

It has happened before and it will surely happen again. So be it.

Medical Communication Tools - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

A pair of hand-held flags, puffs of smoke, drumbeats, telegraphs, flashing lights and other tools have each served well in their respective time frames and milieus for communication purposes. Then in the year 1876, we were introduced to the telephone. This too became a useful communication tool despite the modern day abuses by robocalling telemarketers.

The advent of the internet further expanded our communication tool kit. Included therein are services used by medical offices to send "important" messages to patients. It has become my opinion that such systems are being misused, not by intent, but as a result of casual incompetence.

As a case in point, consider the following very urgent message that once came my way from a medical office:

I could not imagine what this piece of drivel was intended to convey. It not only need not have been sent, it should not have been sent.

My doctors have been using several different medical messaging services. I have nothing kind or charitable to say about any of them. I hate them all. (The services, not the doctors.)

Sometimes I cannot get to my messages because my user name isn't recognized or my password isn't recognized and when I try to correct those problems, corrective procedures fail.

In one case when my user name was not being accepted, I tried all kinds of variations. I tried going with a space and without, going with capitals letters and without, going with a number and without, and every single one of them was rejected. I never did manage to access that message and in the end, it didn't matter. I simply kept my next appointment at the proper day and time and the message's non-delivery was never discussed.

Sometimes I come across an identity verification scheme where I have to receive a code number at my e-mail address which I must then enter into the message service page to continue on to the vital message awaiting my attention. Now and then that vital message turns out to be a reminder of an appointment I need to keep on a particular day and hour during the following week but once it turned out to be for an appointment that I had kept several days before.

I guess it's a measure of successful security that Vladimir Putin never intercepted that data.

I would someday like to see common sense be more commonly applied to using these message channels but I really don't think it's ever going to happen.

Buyer's Remorse, Refrigerator - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Our old refrigerator of forty years service gave up the ghost recently and we needed to replace it. Unfortunately, the replacement we chose has turned out to have many negative traits.

 It is hoped that if you yourself are looking at something new, the descriptions below will help you avoid the mistake(s) we made.

The model we chose has two "French Doors". When just one door is opened, I find that the other door is an obstacle to reaching anything on the shelves. Also, when the doors close, the left side door is prone to slamming itself shut due to spring loading that causes any glass bottles or jars on that door's shelves to loudly and disconcertingly slam into one another. Nothing made of glass can be placed there. By comparison, the right side door is prone to closing only partially unless one remembers gives that door an extra push.

In short, neither door simply closes itself securely without taking a deliberate caution that a distracted cook may forget to take at this or that awkward moment.

If just the right door is opened, the still closed left door blocks a vegetable drawer from being fully opened. If you need to get a carrot out from the back of that drawer, you have to open both doors which may not be convenient if you happen to have your hands otherwise full.

Note too that this refrigerator does not have a meat bin. That seems to have been a complete oversight which we hadn't noticed at the store.

Another issue is that when just the right door is opened and the internal LED lights turn on, EMI static comes up that utterly overwhelms our radio. If you open both doors, the static level goes down but it can still be heard. My impression is that Part 15 rules of the FCC seem to have been given short shrift.  

In summary, on a satisfaction scale of one to five, I personally give this refrigerator a one-half. I only hope that these observations will keep someone else from making the same purchase decision.