- Expense Report for Chicago Trip
- Edit Report for Sean
- Return McDonnell’s call
I have ADHD. (I Worked From Home Because The Light Was Red.) It’s actually pretty bad. I’m not a coffee drinker, so I take 120 mg of caffeine every morning. That’s about the same amount in a 44 oz Coke or Pepsi. I used to drink a lot of soda, but I started to lose the battle of bulge. (How I Lost 30 lbs And Why You Can’t.) But, even with a mild stimulant, my ADHD will, at times, paralyze me. I will be stuck in indecision.
Fortunately, my employer wants me to not be frozen. The company wants me to be doing work. I say “fortunately” because if I didn’t have an incentive, I’d be tempted to stay stuck. But, I need to get unstuck. And I have a strategy for it.
In comedy, jokes are written in threes. A joke with only one part might sound slightly funny. A joke with two parts sounds unbalanced. A joke with three parts, even if it’s not a great joke, will sound complete to the audience. For example, a friend, in hearing I had 13 kids, told me the following joke.
There are certain signs that will let people know you have a large family. For example, if you’ve ever had food delivered to your house on a pallet. That’s a sign of a large family.
If they wore nametags at your wedding. That’s a sign of a large family.
If you have to check your girlfriend against Ancestry.com to make sure you’re not dating a relative, that’s a sign of a big family.
There’s something about threes.
In photography, pictures that are the most appealing are divided into thirds. For example, if you are taking a picture that includes the horizon, you want the horizon line to be at either the 1/3 or 2/3 point on the picture. If you put it at the 1/2 way point, it looks odd.
The horizon is at about the 2/3 mark.
The horizon is about at the 1/3 mark.
So, when I need to get unstuck, I pick three. Three things that I need to do next. I might have 20 things that need to be done that day. But, I can’t focus on 20. Twenty will simply confuse me and keep me from doing anything. Instead, I’ll pick three things out of that list.
Ideally, I’ll pick the three most important. I often don’t. Because, it’s not about the items on the list. It’s about getting unstuck. It matters less what I do and more that I do something.
In addition to picking three things, I’ll pick a timeframe. Typically it will be an hour, but sometimes it’s as short as 15 minutes. Other times I’ll set my tasks for the entire afternoon. (If reduce email in my inbox is a task it can take all afternoon.)
There’s one more critical piece to my “Three Strategy.” I must write them down. I put them in a simple list with a “-” in front of them.
– Expense Report for Chicago Trip
– Edit Report for Sean
– Return McDonnell’s call
The “-” is important. When I finish the task, I put a line through it to turn it into a “+” sign. I love plus signs. If I have to move it to the next day, I’ll add another “-” and a “>” to turn it into an arrow “=>”. That way, I’ll know when I look back at my notes for the day if I completed a task (plus sign) or carried it over (arrow.) I also know if I didn’t work on it that day.
Are they the three most important things in my life at that moment? Maybe not. But, they help me accomplish the most important thing in my life at that moment; getting unstuck.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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Maybe I’m simply in denial about my motivation. . .But, then I wonder if I’m in denial about being in denial. How would I know?
I’ve spent my fair share of time in a therapists office over the years. I guess having 13 kids will do that for you. Our society still has a problem with mental health issues. It’s odd, to me. We would never think less of someone who caught the flu for going to the doctor to get it treated, or someone who broke their leg, going and getting it set by a doctor. And yet, if someone experiences depression we somehow think they should just suck it up. If someone needs to deal with a particularly troubling emotional issue, we tend to consider them a bit of a wimp for seeking professional help.
Physician, heal thyself.
Or, in this case,
Patient, fix it yourself.
I’m not sure why I never really struggled with the idea of therapy. Maybe, it was because I was more enlightened about the mental health profession. (Probably not, but that sounds sort of “nobel.”) Or, maybe it’s because I have family members who have struggled with mental health issues and I’ve seen the improvements as they got professional help. Or, maybe I just don’t care that much what people think.
I’ve often used the broken leg analogy. We would call someone crazy if they refused medical help to fix a broken leg. Crazy. Funny word, that. I have a friend who struggles with bipolar disorder. He collects jokes about “crazy” people. It’s his way of owning the problem. Like the fat kid who makes jokes about being overweight.
You can’t laugh at me, if I’m already laughing at myself. Or, at least you can’t hurt me by your laughter if I’ve already owned the issue myself.
The idea of denial has always kind of fascinated me. I consider myself fairly introspective. But, if I were in denial, that would be a perfectly normal thought, and it would be completely wrong. Alan Turing, the subject of a recent movie staring Benedict Cumberbatch called “The Imitation Game,” was one of the pioneers of computer science. He suggested that a computer could not create a test to validate it’s own performance. In other words, I can’t create a computer operating system that tests to see if the operating system is working correctly.
I’ve greatly simplified his arugment, and probably partially screwed up the definition, but the idea is that systems cannot test themselves. This argument explains why we cannot prove the existence of God, for example. If God exists and he created us and the universe in which we live, he, by definition must exist outside that universe. We, bound by the laws of the universe as we are, cannot test (or prove) that He exists outside of it.
It’s a fascinating theory, and has led to an actual serious discussion about “Is this life one big hologram?”
Turing’s theories also apply to mental health. If I were in denial, how would I know? I typically know why I do things and why I feel certain ways. This isn’t always the case. At times when I can’t articulate the reasons for my feelings, I know I’m not in denial. I admit, “I don’t know why mentioning “Kansas City” makes me angry.” It’s those other times, when someone says,
How come you get so upset everytime I mention Kansas City?
I’m not upset.
You just punched the milk carton.
It was crowding my personal space.
As a manager, it’s extremely important to understand your own motivations, fears, biases and preferences. We’ve all worked for managers at times who were great up until you did that one little thing that suddenly turned them from Dr Jekyl (who was the nice one, by the way) into Mr Hyde.
Or maybe you haven’t. Maybe it’s just me. I wonder if I would know?
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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I have had a nagging fear for the past 7 months. It’s stayed with me every day, often lurking in the back of my mind only to come rushing out at a moments notice to remind me that all is not right in my world.
I had only one ignition key for my car.
I know what you’re thinking,
Rodney, that’s a silly thing to be worried about. Just go get a copy made.
I did. I took my lone ignition key to the Lexus dealership. They wanted $45 to make a copy. Okay. It’s a little steep, but my peace of mind is worth that.
Sorry, Mr. Bliss. We can’t do it.
What do you mean?
Your key is too worn for my machine to make a copy. If you’ll bring me the VIN and the registration I can look up the key code for you.
Thanks. . .I’ll get back to you.
If I took the VIN, which is the Vehicle Identification Number and the registration showing that I actually am the owner, the Lexus dealership would not be able to make a key. Because the key code is tied to the VIN. But, the ignition system isn’t original. The ignition system came for a different car. So, the dealership could look up and make a key for the old ignition, but it wouldn’t work in this one.
I continued going about my life hoping against hope that I didn’t lose my keys. There was also the added inconvenience of everytime my lovely wife wanted to use my car instead of the 15 passenger van that she normally drives I had to give her my key. And then I had to get it back.
The doors are fine. I have multiple keys for the doors and the trunk. That’s because those came off of still a different Lexus. The door key and the ignition key don’t match.
Have you ever worked with someone truly extraordinary? Someone who is so good at what they do that they don’t even realize it’s unusual? I’ve worked with them occasionally. It’s both an exhilarating and a humbling experience. Exhilarating because it’s amazing to watch someone who is truly an artist, and humbling because I’m not sure I’ll ever get that good at anything.
Generally, when I work with these people, they honestly don’t understand that they are exceptional. They consider themselves good at their jobs, of course, but it would surprise them that someone thinks they are exceptional.
I went to a locksmith to get a key made for a car that a friend gave me. I’d been to the Chrysler dealership and armed with the title and the VIN number, gotten the key code. I took that to the locksmith and they cut me a new key. I happened to ask,
I wish you guys did Lexus keys.
Oh? We can copy Lexus keys.
Well, this one is pretty worn.
I need to order a blank for it, but come back on Tuesday and we’ll give it a try.
Yesterday was Tuesday. The locksmith took my key and disappeared into the back room to copy the key. I was expecting either to pay for a key that he cut that didn’t work, or more likely, have him tell me that it was too worn out.
Hey, can I get your door key? I want to test this ignition key.
Sure. The car is a bit of a Frankenstein monster, it’s got parts of three different cars.
Well, it’s going to be even more of a Frankenstein since this key blank was for a Kia.
And with that he started the engine. I was surprised. Pleased, but surprised.
I’m impressed. The Lexus dealership couldn’t make a copy.
Really? That’s weird. At first my machine wouldn’t read it, but then, I’ve seen this first point gets a little worn, so I pulled that point up 3 steps and the it spit the code right out.
He saw the key on top and recognized it as the key on the bottom.
As you can see, these keys are not simple. They involve lots of cuts. It was nothing to this locksmith to tweak the reader until he teased out the correct code. And he was genuinely surprised that it was considered extraordinary. On top of that it was $10 cheaper than the dealership was going to charge me.
I’m grateful for trades people who are so good at their jobs that they don’t realize how extraordinary they are.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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Hunting, car steering issues, computer software and pin factories
They all go together. . .soft of.
My son-in-law is a hunter. One night my daughter called,
Dad, I’ve made these really yummy bacon-wrapped, sour cream stuffed, jalapeño venison medallions. But, we are just too stuffed to eat any more. If I bring them over will you eat them?
Sure.
When she arrived, my other kids were attracted by the aroma.
What are those?
Grown-up food!
They were delicious. Very few people need to, or even get to eat the food they’ve killed themselves. We quit being a hunter-gather species a long time ago. But, we could right? Just like my son-in-law, I could go out and attempt to shoot my own food. Why don’t we?
Specialization, or what I call the build vs buy decision. It’s quicker and easier for us to let people who specialize in food production grow and kill our food. And based on my experience watching my friends who are hunters, specialization is a little more consist in providing food as well.
In software design there is always a tradeoff between build and buy. You can build your own program, or you can go buy one. The software you buy is called off-the-shelf. For example, I don’t know of any company that would attempt to build their own Office suite or word processor. It is going to be cheaper for them to buy Microsoft Office, or download Open Office. It makes no sense to build your own.
However, I do know many companies that choose to build their own tools. Because, while it’s cheaper to buy some software, off-the-shelf software isn’t very configurable. It’s a trade off between the inexpensiveness of buying vs the flexibility of building exactly what you want.
Some companies think it’s cheaper to build their own. Typically these are not software companies. These are companies are are not run by program managers. These are companies that have never built software before. It’s always more expensive to build it yourself. And when you buy, you can take the money you save and use it elsewhere in your business. Buy from companies that specialize in making software.
Adam Smith, the 18th century philosopher used a pin factory analogy to explain the benefits of specialization. If a single person had to do all the work to make a pin, he would be lucky to create a dozen or so per day. But, if we build a pin factory and we let some people specialize in cutting the pins to length, and others sharpening the point, and still others blunting the top, a pin factory can turn out many thousands of pins per day.
The pin factory is simply another iteration of the build vs buy decision. In this case, each worker is essentially “buying” the partially completed pins from the guy further up the line.
My car was behaving badly. It was weaving all over the road like a drunken sailor. Given my experience of the past several months, my first thought was to “build” a solution myself. I started checking forums and searching the internet for
96 LEXUS ES300 EXCESSIVE PLAY IN STEERING
I got lots of hits. As I read through them, one theme was emerging: rack replacement. The rack is a very expensive piece of equipment. It’s about $900 for a new one. That doesn’t include labor. A rebuilt one is still $600 plus the work to put it in. And the work looked hard.
I worked on getting the rack out of the junk Lexus in my driveway.
Even with the engine removed I was having a tough time even getting a wrench on the bolts.
I dreaded the thought of trying to get the “bad” rack out of my other car. Finally, I decided to “buy.” I thought,
A mechanic’s shop will diagnose my problem for free.
I took it to a place that specializes in tires and suspension. The mechanic spent five minutes looking at my car.
Your struts are bad.
Huh?
Your shocks have failed. You are riding around on springs. That’s why it’s swaying on the road.
Swapping out the shocks is a much easier job than swapping out the rack. Had I persisted in my “build” plan, I would have spent hours (days, probably) swapping out a part and at the end still have not solved the problem. This is one of the cases I’m glad I decided to “buy” advice rather than “build” my own solution, even if I bought it for free.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2015 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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The CIO called me on Monday morning.
Rodney, the head of the Family Search organization couldn’t get into email over the weekend.
Our logs show it was up all weekend.
Well, something isn’t right. Figure it out.
Problems are not always what they seem. Often a problem in one area shows up as a symptom somewhere else.
My car saga continues. Last week I noticed that the steering had become “loose.” There was a lot more play in the steering wheel, meaning I had to turn it farther before the car would respond. It kind of freaked me out the first time it happened on the freeway. I was sure I was headed for the truck in the next lane. In one of my favorite movies, “Always” the pilot runs out of gas just short of the airstrip.
Oh good. I was rusty on panic.
It felt like that.
Being a confirmed “car guy,” my first thought was to go look online for a similar problem and solution. I found lots of articles and most of them pointed at replacing the rack. You’ve heard of rack and pinion steering? There’s an actual part in your car called a rack. I watched a 30 minute video on how to remove it. The video was 30 minutes, the process looks like it took a couple of days.
I still have a junked Lexus in my driveway. I could pull the rack off the junk one and replace the rack in my car. I tried getting the rack off. The junked Lexus doesn’t have an engine. I had plenty of room to work. I couldn’t get it off. I can’t imagine trying to get it off with the engine in place.
My car is still drivable, so I didn’t worry too much about the problem. I worked on it a little every few days, with very little success. Then, last week I finally decided to get it checked out at a mechanic shop. I figured they would diagnose it for me for free.
Your struts are bad.
Excuse me?
The struts in the back have totally failed. You are riding on the springs alone. That’s causing the steering issue.
That made no sense to me. I had a steering problem, the suspension seemed fine. And yet, I might as well try fixing the problem he diagnosed. New struts are about $150 a piece and I needed two. However, old struts, like say, off a junked red Lexus were mine for a Saturday’s worth of labor.
The mechanic was right about the struts being bad. They looked like they had been shot; hydraulic fluid all over them, the rubber boots blown apart. Replacing them with the ones from the red Lexus took most of Saturday afternoon. Once I got everything put back together, I took it for a test drive.
Amazing. The steering was back to normal.
I figured out what happened. When the struts failed and the car started running on just the springs, it lowered the rear of the car. That made the front come up slightly and the front tires no longer had as good a grip. So, something completely unrelated had caused the problem.
It’s what we found on the email outage. My team quickly diagnosed the problem.
It wasn’t us.
What do you mean?
Well, the email servers were up, but the front-end servers were unavailable.
Meaning?
Our servers were accessible, but no one could get to them. One of the system further downstream died.
What do people use the front-end servers for?
Mostly just to access email.
Finding root cause is always a challenging task. Don’t assume that the symptoms relate the underlying cause. This idea is why I spend so much time on outage bridges with my current teams. I’m one of the peopel who understand the big picture. It helps when troubleshooting to understand how all the pieces of the car tie together.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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Two seemingly unrelated events happened last week.
First, my sunroof got stuck open.
Pushing the close button simply went
(click, click, click)
Second, the Autumn monsoons arrived a month early.
This presented a problem, as you might imagine. I’m not sure if I solved it properly or not.
For the past six months, I’ve had a junked Lexus sitting in my driveway. It’s even up on blocks. It’s sort of a high-rent redneck look. However, as readers of this blog are aware, I’ve been restoring/repairing/fixing up a Lexus and pulling parts from the junked one.
Last Sunday, as the threat of rain loomed, I went back to the Lexus-well one more time. The manual explained that there were several pieces that could go wrong with a sunroof. (Apparently they are kind of finicky.)
The motor could fail, the relay could fail or the circuitboard could fail.
To be safe, my neighbor and I decided we’d replace all three. I priced out the repair, $1000 minimum to have it done professionally. In fact, the DIY (do-it-yourself) sites warned people off trying to fix sunroofs themselves.
Ha! They didn’t have a spare parts car. Getting the parts out of the spare Lexus was easy. I’m not planning on saving the ceiling fabric.
It was no trouble to gather the parts.
The circuit board is inside this little plastic holder.
This is the new relay.
And here’s the motor. As you can see, scratch a Lexus and underneath you’ll find a Toyota with illusions of grandeur.
Getting those parts into my car without ripping out the ceiling fabric was a trick. It involved two of us, sitting in the front seat with our wrist bent backward as we reached up inside the ceiling. Lots of little screws to attach and electrical attachments.
All together it was about three hours from the time we started pulling parts out of the old Lexus until we were finished. And it worked. The sun had long set when we were to the point where I asked my neighbor and his adult son if they wanted to go out and test it.
Sure, let’s go.
We had fixed the instrument panel earlier. I was enjoying the ability to see all the dials without squinting.
Yeah, that’s very cool looking.
And you want to see something else cool? Watch this!
(click, click, click)
I swear I’m not doing that on purpose. It’s really broken again.
Every system engineer has been there. You have a persistent error that you finally think you have fixed. And then, after hours of work, it immediately breaks again.
It’s frustrating. And worse than frustrating, my sunroof was stuck open again.
It was then that we realized we may have been too smart for our own good.
You know the one thing we didn’t swap out?
The switch?
Yeah.
It literally took less than 5 minutes to swap out the switch.
The lightbulb even worked. And so did the sunroof. We just stared at each other. I ventured a weak cover statement.
I’m positive all that other stuff that we just spent three hours changing out was probably broken too.
Yeah. I’m sure it was.
He didn’t sound convinced. And neither did I.
Sometimes it pays to try the simple things first.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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If it moves and it shouldn’t, use duct tape.
If it doesn’t move and it should, use WD40.
Not only is this “conventional wisdom” wrong, it is spectacularly wrong, both in home repairs and computers.
First, let’s establish the fact that it’s ducT tape, not ducK tape. It is useless for taping ducks, and I’m not even sure why you would want to attempt that. But, duct tape is a staple of every home workshop. And I admit, I have a roll sitting on a shelf in my garage. Duct tape is designed to tape ductwork.
The metal work that connects your furnace and air conditioner to the vents around your house is called ductwork. And, according to popular Hollywood movies it is the easiest way to break into even the most secure facility. Typically it is made from sheet-metal that has been cut and bent into a square or round shape and runs from the furnace to every room in your house.
The duct-work has to be built in sections. Where these sections connect to each other there is the possibility of air escaping. Escaping air means escaping heat and cooling. To prevent that, technicians will put tape over the seams. That’s literally what duct-tape was developed for; to tape the seams on duct work so that air doesn’t escape.
BTW, it’s terrible for that. They tested it at Berkeley.
“We tried as many different kinds of duct sealants as we could get our hands on. Of all the things we tested, only duct tape failed. It failed reliably and often quite catastrophically,” Max Sherman, head of the Energy Performance of Buildings Group in Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD)
But, we aren’t using duct tape to patch our ductwork. We are using it to tape boxes shut. It kind of sucks at that too. Use clear packing tape. We are using it to cure warts. Nope, doesn’t do that well either. Use liquid nitrogren. In fact, the thing duct tape adheres to the best is other duct tape. So, if you’re using it to tape a box, make sure you go all the way around the box and reattach the tape to itself. (Or use packing tape.)
Yesterday, July 8th, was not a good day for technology. United Airlines had to cancel all their flights for a couple of hours while they sorted out a software “glitch.” The Wall Street Journal’s web page (www.wsj.com) went down. And probably most troubling of all, the New York Stock Exchange had to halt trading because the computers fouled up.
Zeynap Tufekci wrote an article that brilliantly ties the software failures to “virtual duct tape.” The idea that instead of fixing our software problems properly, we are simply applying some digital duct tape to keep them running. And, just like duct tape is going to fall off your ductwork, and your cardboard boxes, and your fingers (without removing your warts), the digitial duct tape is going to fail. Yesterday was simply a taste of things to come.
But, in the choice between misusing duct tape and misusing WD40, it’s the “lubricant” that is the more dangerous, both in computers and in home repairs.
There are two approaches to computer security. It used to be that we opened up a system and only locked down the portions we didn’t want anyone to access. Today, we take the opposite approach. We lock down everything and only allow access on an as needed basis. This approach leads to a lot of “false positives,” where people who need access can’t get it.
That’s frustrating. As IT guys, we understand that. And believe me, want to help you do your job. We don’t like being the bottleneck. However, we need to avoid using WD40 on the problem. In other words, we can’t simply say, “Well, let’s just remove the restriction and hope that people do the right thing.” It won’t happen. For example, if you connected an unprotected, unpatched computer to the internet, you will become infected in the amount of time it would take to download your security patches.
The security guys are there to keep your data and your computers safe. If we applied digital WD40 and simply opened the firewall ports and removed the security restrictions, you would be able to quickly get to whatever systems you wanted. The downside is that you would instantly become infected.
But, what about home repairs? WD40 is okay for them, right?
No. And misusing it at home is just as dangerous as misusing it in your IT systems. WD40 is not a lubricant, despite what the can says. It is a degreaser and water displacer. In fact, the “WD” stands for Water Displacement. So, if you needed to dry out a piece of electrical equipment, you could spray it with WD40 and it would completely push out or displace the water. And, if your hands are covered with grease, spray a little WD40 on your hands and the grease will come right off.
But, WD40 also evaporates. If you have a sticky hinge, and it’s stuck because it got a bunch of gunk, dust and dirt in it, when you hit it with WD40, the grease and the dirt will be displaced, but it has nowhere to go. Once the WD40 evaporates, the gunk is still there and your hinge is going to be worse than ever.
I have a friend who repairs classic pinball machines. As you can imagine, there are lots of moving parts. The inside of a pinball machine is also a fairly dirty, dusty environment. I asked him about WD40 and pinball repair.
The people who repair their machines with WD40 are making it worse. The machine is going to run for a little while, but in a few months, it’s going to seize up and they are going to have to clean and repair it all over again.
So, what do you use instead?
Any good silicone based lubricant will work. It will both lubricate the parts and seal out any dust. And it doesn’t evaporate.
So, conventional wisdom isn’t always right. And if you think about it, silicone is the same stuff that makes sand. Who’d have thought that sand made a better lubricant than WD40?
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
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LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2015 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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I didn’t realize it at first. Had I remembered my programming classes, I would not have wasted two days last weekend breaking my car. And once again, my neighbor had to save me.
The repair I was attempting was pretty simple. My instrument panel was missing some lights. Okay, it was missing A LOT of lights.
No problem. I’ll just pop the panel out, repair it and pop it back in. Piece of cake.
Yeah, it didn’t go that smoothly. Getting the panel out was actually pretty easy. There are some plugs you have to pull out of the back. THOSE were a pain. Literally, my finger tips are still numb three days later, but other than that, it popped right out.
That’s where the problems began. My first problem was I got lazy. I looked at the back of the panel. To change the bulbs I needed to get access to, I was going to have remove 23 screws and then pull out over 30 bulbs and test them to see which were burnt out.
You know what would be easier? Using a spare. I had not one, but two spare instrument panels.
I soon learned that the other panels had just as many burnt out lights as my panel; more in fact. But, I really didn’t want to go to the trouble to disassemble the panel. I picked the best of the three and decided it was good enough.
It wasn’t.
On the test drive I discovered that the speedometer didn’t work on this panel. Meanwhile the original panel, with burnt bulbs and a working speedometer was in the trash where it had some solvent had been spilled over the back of it.
Okay, fine. I’ll just go back to the original.
Except that the original panel no longer worked. The solvent was shorting out all sorts of it.
I know what I’ll do. I’ll swap out the circuit board from a working one on my original one.
And that’s when it literally blew up.
There’s a concept in programming called “atomic.” It’s the idea that something has been reduced or simplified as much as it possible can. For example, if you are creating a program and you need to display a button on the screen, you can position the button, and give it text, but you cannot crack open the button code and change the inner workings of it. You can use the button control, but you cannot modify it.
At least you aren’t supposed to. I ran into a problem with this concept when I worked at Microsoft on the Accessibility team. We were trying to expose controls like buttons and dropdown lists, in fact all the controls, for screen readers for the blind.
So, while a button might be labelled CANCEL, if that button were partially covered by another window, we wanted to only expose the part that was visible. To do that, we had to break the atomic aspect of the button control. It wasn’t good enough to ask simply for its name, we had to ask for only part of the name; the visible part.
The guys writing the controls hated us. They wanted to put a big strong wrapper around their control to prevent people from doing exactly what we were trying to do. Because if you get inside the button control and you happen to mess something up, you could break all the buttons in a program.
And that’s what happened with my car. I pulled out the circuit board (that green filmy thing) out of one display panel and dropped it into my original display panel.
And that’s when it broke. By “blew up,” I mean that I broke it badly enough that I could no longer fix it. I literally shorted out some of those thin connectors. I didn’t realize that until my neighbor came over on Sunday to help me try to fix my car before I had to go to work on Monday.
Rodney, see that spot where you can see the copper showing through?
Yeah.
That’s your problem. You aren’t supposed to see copper. You probably shorted it out when you swapped the circuit boards.
You can fix it, right?
Now that I know the problem, absolutely
The instrument panels were interchangable. They each took the same three connectors on the back. They fit perfectly into the dash. They were identical in every aspect. . .UNTIL I cracked open the cases. I broke the atomic aspect of the panel. As I looked at them, they even had different part numbers.
While my neighbor was soldering a jumper around the burnt spot, I went through and tested every bulb.
Over half were bad. I then replaced every bulb on my original panel. We put it in place and thanks to the fact that we actually did the work required, this time it lit right up.
A funny side note, the odometer is part of the instrument panel. So, my car started the weekend with 252,000 miles. On Saturday when I put in the replacement panel, I instantly added 35,000 miles. The new panel odometer was 287,000. I think shaved those 35K miles back off as I put the original panel back in.
My gas milage for the weekend was awesome.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2015 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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The Stadium of Fire is a firework celebration held in Provo, UT for the past 35 years. Over the years they’ve had some remarkable performers, The Osmonds started it, but country acts like Alabama, Toby Keith, Carrie Underwood, Reba have graced LaVell Edwards stadium over the years. My family got me a ticket for Father’s Day.
This year, marked a change in direction to more of a classic rock format. Journey was the headliner.
I would have rather seen more of the opening acts.
We are a celebrity culture, and the IT world is no different. We clamor to get a picture or an autograph with a famous person, while walking right past someone who is probably just as interesting. It’s why we have headliners.
IT guys love to go to conferences. Too many of them happen in Vegas, in my opinion, but that’s another post. Every conference will have a series of speeches called Keynotes. The keynote speaker is typically someone from industry who has something interesting to say. And the keynotes are very entertaining. The speakers are almost always well polished and people who are “in the know.” Getting a Tim Cook from Apple, or a Brian Krzanich, CEO of Intel, who is the keynote for 2015 CES, is a win-win. The show gets a big name to pull in attendees and the attendees get to possibly hear some new bit of research from a company.
I rarely attend keynotes. I’m not much of a rah-rah type of guy, and I’d just as soon read the announcements the next day on the web. The keynotes are crowded and overly scripted. You know what I love? I love to talk to people. Anyone can be interesting if you are willing to ask the right questions and listen. I find people interesting. I’d much rather spend a half hour in a booth talking to a guy who invented a new widget than sit in a 15,000 seat auditorium and listen to a CEO tell me about what’s coming to our industry over the next five years.
Journey, is obvioulsy a great band. I have Journey’s Greatest Hits CD. I would not have attended a concert just to hear Journey. It’s a lot of work to fight the crowds coming and going, shuffling along with 40,000 other people to find a seat. It wasn’t worth the trip for me.
But, I wasn’t at Stadium of Fire last Saturday to see Journey. The Stadium of Fire Dancers were about 250 girls from all over the west dancing to 1940’s hits and a collection of rock and roll. One of those 250 was a young 16 year old dancer with the last name of Bliss. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t pick her out from my seat near the top of the stadium, I knew that my little girl was performing in front of 40,000 people. I couldn’t have been prouder. The dancers performed three times throughout the evening. They could have danced all night and I wouldn’t have tired of of it.
Another opening act was Caleb Chapman’s Crescent Super Band, a professional high school band. Caleb and I have been friends for years. I’ve never been to one of his concerts. Well, I hadn’t until Saturday. His band plays big band and swing songs. They performed twice. Again, they could have played all night and I wouldn’t have been disappointed.
So, I can mark “Attend a Journey concert” off my bucket list. But, It was really the opening acts that made the show for me. I’ll remember them long after Journey is a distant memory.
Don’t miss talking to the really interesting people because you are trying to get to the famous people.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2015 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Hey Tim, remember when my great-great-great-grandfathers defeated the Germans hired by your great-great-great-grandfathers?
One of my best friends lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. He comes from a long and prestigious lineage in thatbeautiful country. I’ve stayed at his house on occasion, and he’s often visited mine. At one point he called me for directions to my house,
Get off the freeway on exit 175. Go East for about 5 miles and then turn left on State Street. You’ll know the right intersection because there’s a grocery store with a huge American flag. . . or as you would more properly recognize it, the winner’s flag.
Last week was July 4th. To most of the world, (Including Scotland) it was Saturday. To America it was Independence day; a day to celebrate the birth of our nation 239 years ago. In my community, there are few holidays bigger than Independence day. My house sits up on a bench in the foothills. The valley was lit up with aerial fireworks, some from professional shows, many from private citizens.
And yet, to my friends in Britain, it was just another summer Saturday.
Business is international. My company is based in Europe but has offices all around the world. When I call our Service Desk, I’m as likely to talk to someone from the Philippines or India, as I am someone from Salt Lake City or Dallas.
If you have teams in different countries, it’s important to pay attention to the holidays and customs in the countries where your teams live and work. First, of course, you need to make sure you are not scheduling projects or meetings during a holiday. Here in the US, Friday July 3rd was a holiday for nearly everyone. Even if you knew that the 4th of July was a holiday, if you weren’t aware that Americans are taking a day off on Friday, you might end up waiting a REALLY long time for people to join your conference call.
The second reason it’s important to understand the holidays and customs in the countries where your team members live, is that it’s just a nice thing to do. I was working on a project with my friend Tim. We were creating software. He sent me a copy that included the word “licence.” This is obviously a misspelling of the word “license.” I noted that and sent him feedback.
Rodney, “licence” is a perfectly spelled word. It is a noun. The word “license” is a verb. . .in the Queen’s English!
The software was being written in Britain, and Tim let me know in no uncertain terms that we would be using the British spellings. (I’m just glad we didn’t have to worry about what “colour” to make it.) We got a nice laugh out of the differences in our common language, but we left the British spelling.
Each man’s home is his castle. And each citizen’s home should be the greatest place on earth. By remembering the holidays, and figuring out what is important and special about your team’s country, you actually build unity by noting differences. And while Tim and I will joke about which side of the road you should drive on, (if we drive on the right side in America, it must mean you drive on the wrong side in Britain), he understands the high esteem I hold him and his country.
The difference between England and America is that in America we think 100 years is a long time and in England they think 100 miles is a long ways.
(And Tim would point out to me, Scotland is a separate country from England.)
Happy Treason Day.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2015 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved