The wedges, the four of them, were beaten and battered front and rear. Before anything else, they needed to be made right.
The four were more or less identical three pound splitting wedges. Three of them have been around since forever; I don't know where they originally came from. The fourth one I found on the side of the road last year; I literally reached down and picked it up while stuck in stop-and-go traffic on Beast.
They all exhibited a certain degree of mushrooming. The mushrooming is the main focus of my efforts. I remember a few decades ago, splitting with a mushroomed wedge and a sledge hammer on a cool Vermont fall day. There was pinging sound, and I felt a sting in my bicep. There I found a hot chip of steel, hooked with a little barb, stuck in my skin. I was lucky; people have been killed by flying bits of wedge shrapnel.
So I grabbed the hand grinder and set to work. Four objects, four facets, four edges, two facets. A section of log served as the workbench; my workpiece was held in place by another wedge and braced by my foot. A spray of orange sparks splashed faintly across the log and my shoe in the brilliant fall sunlight.
The deformed metal slowly burned away, transformed into a hundred thousand tiny grains of oxide hanging on the air. The facets of the wedge slowly reemerged as brilliant gleaming silver planes, intersecting as crisp sharp angles. When the facets were all plane, I ground the corners away, leaving gently rounded intersections less prone to deformation and mushrooming.
Grind, turn, grind, turn, grind. The world around me disappears, focusing down to the intersection of a rapidly rotating abrasive wheel, a three pound chunk of steel, a spray of orange sparks, the desired geometry. The hazard of deformation reduced, utility can be addressed.
A splitting wedge does not have or need a cutting edge, like an ax. It works by separating wood fibers; it is less effective if it cuts those fibers instead. But, a blunt edge will not make that first bite into the end grain; it will take more effort and more time. So some edge is desirable, and unlike the reshaping of the deformed metal at the blunt end, restoring the narrow end takes but a pass or two with the grinder.
Deformation removed, edges restored, the wedges are returned to their original form. I take them inside, scrub them down, and warm them over the stove to thoroughly dry them. I then repaint the sides a bright red to make them stand out in the litter and clutter of a woodyard, where the native dull color of steel seems to blend right into the background.
Four objects, four facets, four edges, two facets. Meditation done, now the work can begin.
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Monday, May 06, 2013
I heard the news today, oh boy
I was reading an article today about fracking, in particular about the experiences of landowners adjacent to properties where fracking has taken place. Often these landowners receive no financial benefit from the sale of the gas produced there, either because of some sneaky dealing with the previous owners, strong-arm tactics by the gas companies, or simply their reluctance to sell the drilling rights. As an acquaintance used to say, "All of the onus, none of the bonus..."
One story mentioned a man who had working in one of the incidental positions related to fracking--he washed the mats that surrounded the drill sites once they were done drilling and were taken up, in preparation for trucking them to the next site.
The man developed a debilitating skin condition from having his feet in the chemical-laden wastewater, and after seeing forty doctors, was no closer to a cure or palliation. He is unable to work.
This is not even a remotely remarkable story in this day and age. But what literally made me gasp out loud was the byline of the story--Clearville, Pennsylvania.
For a brief time, a million years ago, Clearville was my mailing address. It is a beautiful area in south-central Pennsylvania, maybe fifteen miles above the Mason-Dixon line as the crow flies, not near anything in particular. It lies among the many long north-south ridges of the Appalachians as they begin the sinuous turn eastward that defines the topology of central Pennsylvania. Much of the land hosts state forests that came into being during the depression, when farm after farm failed and reverted to neowilderness. It makes for good hunting and fishing land, and as I recall, is flush with wild blueberries in the summer. It also lies atop the infamous Marcellus shale, the home of our benighted culture's mad 21st century gold rush.
Gobsmacked, I looked a little deeper into what's going on with fracking and that little slice of Pennsylvania with which I have a passing familiarity.
Turns out that fracking is all over the map there, and people getting sick from it is just the beginning. While Clearville was my postal address, the actual location was a tiny little crossroads even closer to the Mason-Dixon and farther from anything of consequence. And it turns out that little hamlet was the scene of a natural gas compression station fire in 2010 that required the evacuation of over 40 homes in the middle of the night.
My first thought was "There are actually over 40 homes in Artemas? Really?" My second thought was how heartbreaking is was that Artemas now hosted a natural gas compression station.
Even back in the day, natural gas was a thing there. There was an old capped well atop the property; locals talked about how in exchange for allowing (old-school) drilling on their property, they received free gas stoves, heat and refrigerators (yes, you can make cold by burning gas) and from time to time you could hear the sound of a drill rig off in the distance on a cool summer night.
But a compression station running 24/7, right there...that's another matter.
It was a really, really quiet place; the kind of place where airplanes were generally absent from the sky, where you heard the wind and the rain coming for minutes before they arrived, where birdsong was common and plain to hear, where a car coming along the long gravel road was never a surprise.
The two streams and spring nearby ran cold and clear. I guess that's all changed now, and that change can't ever be undone by us or our children or our children's children. I'll just try and keep it in my memory, how it was. And as much as I abhor folks who randomly quote scripture, it seems very Genesis 25:25-34 to me.
Edit: Apparently I conflated two parts of the story. The man who got sick was elsewhere in Pennsylvania; the Clearville incident involved a number of horses and other livestock who sickened and had to be put down. But the basic gist remains the same. A beautiful state is being destroyed to obtain a commodity whose price just keeps falling, just so we can ship it elsewhere in the world.
One story mentioned a man who had working in one of the incidental positions related to fracking--he washed the mats that surrounded the drill sites once they were done drilling and were taken up, in preparation for trucking them to the next site.
The man developed a debilitating skin condition from having his feet in the chemical-laden wastewater, and after seeing forty doctors, was no closer to a cure or palliation. He is unable to work.
This is not even a remotely remarkable story in this day and age. But what literally made me gasp out loud was the byline of the story--Clearville, Pennsylvania.
For a brief time, a million years ago, Clearville was my mailing address. It is a beautiful area in south-central Pennsylvania, maybe fifteen miles above the Mason-Dixon line as the crow flies, not near anything in particular. It lies among the many long north-south ridges of the Appalachians as they begin the sinuous turn eastward that defines the topology of central Pennsylvania. Much of the land hosts state forests that came into being during the depression, when farm after farm failed and reverted to neowilderness. It makes for good hunting and fishing land, and as I recall, is flush with wild blueberries in the summer. It also lies atop the infamous Marcellus shale, the home of our benighted culture's mad 21st century gold rush.
Gobsmacked, I looked a little deeper into what's going on with fracking and that little slice of Pennsylvania with which I have a passing familiarity.
Turns out that fracking is all over the map there, and people getting sick from it is just the beginning. While Clearville was my postal address, the actual location was a tiny little crossroads even closer to the Mason-Dixon and farther from anything of consequence. And it turns out that little hamlet was the scene of a natural gas compression station fire in 2010 that required the evacuation of over 40 homes in the middle of the night.
My first thought was "There are actually over 40 homes in Artemas? Really?" My second thought was how heartbreaking is was that Artemas now hosted a natural gas compression station.
Even back in the day, natural gas was a thing there. There was an old capped well atop the property; locals talked about how in exchange for allowing (old-school) drilling on their property, they received free gas stoves, heat and refrigerators (yes, you can make cold by burning gas) and from time to time you could hear the sound of a drill rig off in the distance on a cool summer night.
But a compression station running 24/7, right there...that's another matter.
It was a really, really quiet place; the kind of place where airplanes were generally absent from the sky, where you heard the wind and the rain coming for minutes before they arrived, where birdsong was common and plain to hear, where a car coming along the long gravel road was never a surprise.
The two streams and spring nearby ran cold and clear. I guess that's all changed now, and that change can't ever be undone by us or our children or our children's children. I'll just try and keep it in my memory, how it was. And as much as I abhor folks who randomly quote scripture, it seems very Genesis 25:25-34 to me.
Edit: Apparently I conflated two parts of the story. The man who got sick was elsewhere in Pennsylvania; the Clearville incident involved a number of horses and other livestock who sickened and had to be put down. But the basic gist remains the same. A beautiful state is being destroyed to obtain a commodity whose price just keeps falling, just so we can ship it elsewhere in the world.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Technologies, appropriate and not
I work in I.T., and spend a fair amount of time considering the intersection between technology and those who use it. Generally, this is a barren, ugly, benighted no-man's land of frustration and wasted time. So my mind keeps going back to Schumacher's concept of "appropriate technology"—which seems to have almost no relationship to information technology, as far as I can tell, with its obsession with smart phones, busy farkles, angry birds and augmented realities.
But it's a good jumping off point for considering my personal relationship with technologies, and those devices that strike me as 'appropriate technologies.' Many years ago, I considered 'technology' to equal 'tools,' and tools to represent the intersection or interface between the human body and a problem needing solving.
In that spirit, I would like to give credit to those tools which, in my mind, represent the most perfect solutions to the problems they are designed to address. These are the few devices which I have selected carefully, have owned for many years, and which in general, always make me happy when I use them. They are:
But it's a good jumping off point for considering my personal relationship with technologies, and those devices that strike me as 'appropriate technologies.' Many years ago, I considered 'technology' to equal 'tools,' and tools to represent the intersection or interface between the human body and a problem needing solving.
In that spirit, I would like to give credit to those tools which, in my mind, represent the most perfect solutions to the problems they are designed to address. These are the few devices which I have selected carefully, have owned for many years, and which in general, always make me happy when I use them. They are:
- Stihl Chainsaw. The most amazing force-multiplier I've ever used.
- 2003 BMW R1100s (and, by extension 1983 BMW R80ST)
- Troy-bilt rototiller, ca. 1974
- Skil worm-drive circular saw.
- Craftsman wood chisels. Even after the kids sculpted stone with them.
- Buck Multi-tool. For some reason, I've never seen a Leatherman I liked nearly as much or that did such a fine job, even though the Buck tool is a little...sui generis.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Deepwater Horizon
I have little of value to add to the discussion of the environmental devastation happening in the Gulf of Mexico right now. But I find myself thinking about one little human aspect of this tragedy I have not heard discussed by anyone among the countless talking heads, hired guns, prognosticators, shills and apologists.
There is a cadre—their number now reduced by eleven—who stood briefly on the threshold of a professional and personal milestone, an achievement that cannot be diminished by what so immediately and horrifically followed. This team of people successfully drilled a hole into the earth over two miles deep, from a drilling platform floating on the ocean's surface a mile above (a total of 18,000 feet from drilling deck to the bottom of the hole) —a drilling platform held in its place only by the constantly adjusted nudges of its computer-controlled thrusters.
They succeeded. Safely. They reached the oil-bearing formation that was their target, and they prepared it for its eventual entry into production, somewhere in the near future. But then, this man...
...decided caution was a luxury BP could no longer afford, time was of the essence, and it was too expensive to delay any further. He decided—over the objections of the professionals who had, for seven long years, run theNostromo Deepwater Horizon without a lost time accident—to remove the drilling mud that kept the enormous pressures in that oil-bearing formation in check, and replace it with the much less dense seawater.
The chain of command who personally decided it was more cost-effective in the long run to destroy the Gulf of Mexico than it was to run the Deepwater Horizon as the professionals said it should be run would likely fit comfortably in a Ford Aerostar without so much as their thighs grazing. And you can bet not a one of them will face any personal or professional consequences as a result of their benighted cost-benefit analysis. They may face a few uncomfortable moments under the spotlights of a congressional hearing room, but their lavish emoluments will have ensured that whatever bark, it will not be followed by any bite. In a few short years, they will once again find themselves, conscienceless and blameless, atop their professions.
Yet the survivors of the Deepwater apocalypse, those traumatized and brutalized wage-slaves (yes, the same roughnecks, riggers, cooks and clerks who were held incommunicado aboard ship for fifty hours until they signed releases denying injuries or knowledge of the events leading up to the disaster) will always carry with them the legacy of that awful night. Will they be willing or able to work in their profession again? Will they be cursed by their association with this disaster? Are they marked? Will they ever be able to speak with pride of their accomplishment, of their immense achievement, without an uncomfortable silence falling across the room? Will they become demonized for the havoc unleashed by their hubris? Will anyone want to listen to their stories? Will they be believed? Will they tell their children, or their grandchildren, where those scars came from?
We do not know who the "Carter Burke" is in this case. But he surely exists in flesh-and-blood, and his real name is known to some. And yes, he is the one man who made THE one decision that, against the better judgement of his peers, resulted in this catastrophe. In a just world, that man would be found out and made to wear this event around his neck, his albatross, for all the world to see for every waking moment of the rest of his miserable life.
Addendum: The reference to the Nostromo is not quite right; it's a bit of a conflation. The crew of the Nostromo, with the exception of Ripley, were all dead. It was the Sulaco that carried the Colonial Marines and Carter Burke to their doom. But you get the point.
There is a cadre—their number now reduced by eleven—who stood briefly on the threshold of a professional and personal milestone, an achievement that cannot be diminished by what so immediately and horrifically followed. This team of people successfully drilled a hole into the earth over two miles deep, from a drilling platform floating on the ocean's surface a mile above (a total of 18,000 feet from drilling deck to the bottom of the hole) —a drilling platform held in its place only by the constantly adjusted nudges of its computer-controlled thrusters.
They succeeded. Safely. They reached the oil-bearing formation that was their target, and they prepared it for its eventual entry into production, somewhere in the near future. But then, this man...
...decided caution was a luxury BP could no longer afford, time was of the essence, and it was too expensive to delay any further. He decided—over the objections of the professionals who had, for seven long years, run the
The chain of command who personally decided it was more cost-effective in the long run to destroy the Gulf of Mexico than it was to run the Deepwater Horizon as the professionals said it should be run would likely fit comfortably in a Ford Aerostar without so much as their thighs grazing. And you can bet not a one of them will face any personal or professional consequences as a result of their benighted cost-benefit analysis. They may face a few uncomfortable moments under the spotlights of a congressional hearing room, but their lavish emoluments will have ensured that whatever bark, it will not be followed by any bite. In a few short years, they will once again find themselves, conscienceless and blameless, atop their professions.
Yet the survivors of the Deepwater apocalypse, those traumatized and brutalized wage-slaves (yes, the same roughnecks, riggers, cooks and clerks who were held incommunicado aboard ship for fifty hours until they signed releases denying injuries or knowledge of the events leading up to the disaster) will always carry with them the legacy of that awful night. Will they be willing or able to work in their profession again? Will they be cursed by their association with this disaster? Are they marked? Will they ever be able to speak with pride of their accomplishment, of their immense achievement, without an uncomfortable silence falling across the room? Will they become demonized for the havoc unleashed by their hubris? Will anyone want to listen to their stories? Will they be believed? Will they tell their children, or their grandchildren, where those scars came from?
We do not know who the "Carter Burke" is in this case. But he surely exists in flesh-and-blood, and his real name is known to some. And yes, he is the one man who made THE one decision that, against the better judgement of his peers, resulted in this catastrophe. In a just world, that man would be found out and made to wear this event around his neck, his albatross, for all the world to see for every waking moment of the rest of his miserable life.
Addendum: The reference to the Nostromo is not quite right; it's a bit of a conflation. The crew of the Nostromo, with the exception of Ripley, were all dead. It was the Sulaco that carried the Colonial Marines and Carter Burke to their doom. But you get the point.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Timely Funny
This made me laugh out loud, if for no other reason than I just got a memory upgrade to install in my laptop.
Friday, September 11, 2009
The Penguin Has Landed!
Finally got me a Linux box up and running—Gutsy Gibbon, in case you were wondering.
I know, I know, we've gone through “Hardy Heron,” “Intrepid Ibex,” “Jaunty Jaguar” and are now up to “Karmic Koala.”But hey, the disc I had on hand was GG, and it's painful to download operating systems over the party-line telegraph system we've got back here in the woods. So cut me some slack, at least it's a start.
So far, the only really techly part was getting the available NTFS drives formatted to FAT32 for linux to read, which only took a little bit of magic—and that, I was able to take care of within the XP administrative tools. Imagine that!
Once I get it configured and ready to roll, I'm loading Fog, and turning it into my very own ghosting server for backing up our XP machines. Yippee! (...and maybe a media server, if I can cram another hard drive into the case.)
Wish me luck.
I know, I know, we've gone through “Hardy Heron,” “Intrepid Ibex,” “Jaunty Jaguar” and are now up to “Karmic Koala.”But hey, the disc I had on hand was GG, and it's painful to download operating systems over the party-line telegraph system we've got back here in the woods. So cut me some slack, at least it's a start.
So far, the only really techly part was getting the available NTFS drives formatted to FAT32 for linux to read, which only took a little bit of magic—and that, I was able to take care of within the XP administrative tools. Imagine that!
Once I get it configured and ready to roll, I'm loading Fog, and turning it into my very own ghosting server for backing up our XP machines. Yippee! (...and maybe a media server, if I can cram another hard drive into the case.)
Wish me luck.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
No more "...nice bright colors..."
No more greens of summer. Kodak has announced it is discontinuing Kodachrome.
Right now, there is one laboratory in the world that still processes Kodachrome film, "Dwayne's Photo" in Parsons, Kansas.
This makes me sad for a couple of reasons.
First, a year or so ago I shot half a dozen rolls of analog film for the first time in ages, and I thoroughly enjoyed the process of taking real pictures, especially just watching the world go by through a long lens for minutes on end. There is a huge qualitative difference to analog photography versus digital photography, and despite the massive disparity in cost, I miss analog.
Second, when I first got a decent camera as a young man—not a Nikon, but a Nikkormat—I shot both Kodachrome and Ektachrome, mostly slides, and I confess to preferring Ektachrome for its slightly different color rendition. But I went through many rolls of both.
Third, "Kodachrome" is one of those songs that pretty much always makes me happy when I hear it:
Sigh. Sic transit gloria mundi.
"Kodachrome" lyrics by Paul Simon. Kodachrome, Nikon and Nikkormat are trademarks of their respective owners.
Right now, there is one laboratory in the world that still processes Kodachrome film, "Dwayne's Photo" in Parsons, Kansas.
This makes me sad for a couple of reasons.
First, a year or so ago I shot half a dozen rolls of analog film for the first time in ages, and I thoroughly enjoyed the process of taking real pictures, especially just watching the world go by through a long lens for minutes on end. There is a huge qualitative difference to analog photography versus digital photography, and despite the massive disparity in cost, I miss analog.
Second, when I first got a decent camera as a young man—not a Nikon, but a Nikkormat—I shot both Kodachrome and Ektachrome, mostly slides, and I confess to preferring Ektachrome for its slightly different color rendition. But I went through many rolls of both.
Third, "Kodachrome" is one of those songs that pretty much always makes me happy when I hear it:
When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school,
Its a wonder I can think at all
And though my lack of education hasn’t hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall
Kodachrome, they give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera, I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away
If you took all the girls I knew when I was single,
And brought them all together for one night,
I know they’d never match my sweet imagination
And everything looks worse in black and white
Kodachrome, they give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera, I love to take a photograph,
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Sigh. Sic transit gloria mundi.
"Kodachrome" lyrics by Paul Simon. Kodachrome, Nikon and Nikkormat are trademarks of their respective owners.
Friday, June 05, 2009
A Saab story
Our current four-wheeled ride is a ten-year old Saab 9-3, by far the ritziest automobile we have ever owned. In fact, it is uncharacteristically ritzy by a long shot, the reason being that we didn't buy it. Our wonderful daughter, in need of a replacement for Gus the Jetta, found such a bargain online that it made more sense to buy more car than pay the same for less car.
Now wonderful daughter has moved on to an automobile-free lifestyle and turned her interest in the Saab over to us, leaving us the proud owners of a car that...we never really picked.
Now, it is a beautiful car, a wonderful car, and a far nicer car in many ways than I would ever have bought for myself, knowing my proclivity for spilling sticky stuff, and gouging upholstery with sharp-cornered objects, and my general disregard for taking good care of nice things.
It has heated leather seats, fog lights, wipers for the headlights, all kinds of neat touches. But it also has some...quirks. I mean, annoying, designed-in, intentional features that drive me absolutely insane and make me want to ask the Saab engineers "What exactly were you thinking, Sven?"
The first inkling of this peculiar design attitude came early on. We would park the car, turn it off, and then hear a peculiar rustling noise from deep inside the dashboard...the sound an old cassette tape makes when it's rewinding and is just about to slam to a stop, a papery rattling rushing sound, that would only stop on its own after a few minutes no matter what we did.
I finally tracked it down to an inconspicuous opening in the dash which I had assumed to be decorative. Oh, no...it was a sensor intake for the "Automatic climate control system;" the noise was made by a small impeller in the dash that sampled the temperature of the cabin air. I stopped the noise by simply jamming the innards of an old pen into the impeller blades, and as the French put it, WA-LA.
But then the Saab guy (not Sven, but the local Saab guy who I like so well I've bought him a powerboat and paid for his kids to go to college) tells me this is not an optimal solution, as the ACCS will get confused about what's really going on in the car. So about half a spray can of contact cleaner and a little bit of WD-40 later, the impeller quiets down.
Now, you may have noted the mention above of the Automatic Climate Control System. In the old days, this was known as "The heater" and, if you were posh, "The Air Conditioner," or if less posh, "Roll the Fricking Windows Down." Nothing so downscale for the 1999 Saab 9-3 owner.
There is not a "Heater" or an "Air Conditioner." Hell, at this point, there's not even a "Roll the Fricking Window Down" for 25% of the car (fixing that = grad school for the Saab guy's daughter). There's a console with many cryptic icons, and arrows, and diagrams, and a 'red' arrow and a 'blue' arrow, all united by a small, dysfunctional LCD display. There are several sensor intake points, there is a sunlight sensor (!!) on the dash, there is an "Auto" button, and an "Off" button, but apparently there isn't a "I'd-like-to-handle-this-by-myself-thank-you-very-much" button.
No, for the 1999 Saab 9-3* driver, the only choice is to suggest to the ACCS what you'd like to feel, and let it interpret that however it may. I say interpret, in the sense of 'interpretive dance,' because what you think you are telling it, and what it renders, are frequently so widely disconnected that if defies credulity.
And part of the problem is trying to comprehend the information provided to you--the driver, or perhaps, the middle management of the ACCS--via the tiny and corrupted LCD display.
Saab appears to have a thing for LCD displays in the 1999 9-3. They must have seemed like a good idea at the time, very cutting edge. (And in Saab's defense, they still employed good old analog gauges--big ones, three of them--for the information that really matters: Speed, RPM, and a triple fuel-temp-turbo dial. ) But as we all have come to realize in time, LCD displays fail (predictably) in unpredictable ways, pixel by pixel. Our erstwhile microwave began depixilating during a series of power flickers brought on by a hurricane, and for the majority of its life, displayed information in an ever-coarsening dialect of Klingon.
The Saab at this moment is somewhere in the same progression. Sven, et al., elected to provide all kinds of important, but non-critical, information via an LCD display mounted high on the console. Even better, many system warnings appear there every time you start up, and a light notifying you of this crucial information lights up in the critical data area alerting you; you must manually clear the display to turn the warning off.
But it is almost always gibberish, missing those crucial pixels that let you infer one consonant or numeral from another, so you are reduced to primitive guesswork to elicit this vital information. In the best of circumstances, to view all the information available, you must toggle through a combination of button pushes to go to specific menus and obtain specific data--which is then, of course, displayed in gibberish.
Did I mention that the 9-3 Owner's manual runs to over 220 pages? You might as well bind it on all four edges and stamp "DO NOT READ" across the cover as expect anyone to bother trying to glean any relevant information from it. Charles Dickens—paid by the word—managed to define Christmas As We Know It in fewer pages.
Saab made its name building excellent and feared fighter jets for Sweden. Now I am not current on the exploits of the Swedish Air Force, but I can hardly imagine a fighter pilot, closing fast on an unseen enemy at 30,000 feet, having to look at his head-up display, then "...okay, menu, menu, up arrow, up arrow, enter, missile...no, not seat height, back, back, menu, menu..."
So when the 1999 9-3 wants to tells us something important, a little chime goes off, the display-warning-light lights up, and the console shows us something like this: "lU_] [ -+ChTHULU-#ptHaGN!!ia!ia!end]" which, really, is not very helpful. And there is the inherent humor in trying to decipher a cryptic, yet presumably somewhat important, or possibly urgent, message, IN A MOVING MOTOR VEHICLE.
Eventually, we will likely sell this car, because we have more vehicles than we really need, and frankly, this little gem--which is wasted on people like me, (pearls before swine and all that) will fetch a lot more than any of our other vehicles would. But the next time I am looking for a car, I will prize above all things:
1.) Analog gauges
2.) Analog window cranks
3.) An analog 'heat' dial
4.) An analog 'cold' dial (if the clunker has an airconditioner at all)
5.) Total absence of LCD displays
*At this point, can I just simplify the designation and call it a Saab 6?
Now wonderful daughter has moved on to an automobile-free lifestyle and turned her interest in the Saab over to us, leaving us the proud owners of a car that...we never really picked.
Now, it is a beautiful car, a wonderful car, and a far nicer car in many ways than I would ever have bought for myself, knowing my proclivity for spilling sticky stuff, and gouging upholstery with sharp-cornered objects, and my general disregard for taking good care of nice things.
It has heated leather seats, fog lights, wipers for the headlights, all kinds of neat touches. But it also has some...quirks. I mean, annoying, designed-in, intentional features that drive me absolutely insane and make me want to ask the Saab engineers "What exactly were you thinking, Sven?"
The first inkling of this peculiar design attitude came early on. We would park the car, turn it off, and then hear a peculiar rustling noise from deep inside the dashboard...the sound an old cassette tape makes when it's rewinding and is just about to slam to a stop, a papery rattling rushing sound, that would only stop on its own after a few minutes no matter what we did.
I finally tracked it down to an inconspicuous opening in the dash which I had assumed to be decorative. Oh, no...it was a sensor intake for the "Automatic climate control system;" the noise was made by a small impeller in the dash that sampled the temperature of the cabin air. I stopped the noise by simply jamming the innards of an old pen into the impeller blades, and as the French put it, WA-LA.
But then the Saab guy (not Sven, but the local Saab guy who I like so well I've bought him a powerboat and paid for his kids to go to college) tells me this is not an optimal solution, as the ACCS will get confused about what's really going on in the car. So about half a spray can of contact cleaner and a little bit of WD-40 later, the impeller quiets down.
Now, you may have noted the mention above of the Automatic Climate Control System. In the old days, this was known as "The heater" and, if you were posh, "The Air Conditioner," or if less posh, "Roll the Fricking Windows Down." Nothing so downscale for the 1999 Saab 9-3 owner.
There is not a "Heater" or an "Air Conditioner." Hell, at this point, there's not even a "Roll the Fricking Window Down" for 25% of the car (fixing that = grad school for the Saab guy's daughter). There's a console with many cryptic icons, and arrows, and diagrams, and a 'red' arrow and a 'blue' arrow, all united by a small, dysfunctional LCD display. There are several sensor intake points, there is a sunlight sensor (!!) on the dash, there is an "Auto" button, and an "Off" button, but apparently there isn't a "I'd-like-to-handle-this-by-myself-thank-you-very-much" button.
No, for the 1999 Saab 9-3* driver, the only choice is to suggest to the ACCS what you'd like to feel, and let it interpret that however it may. I say interpret, in the sense of 'interpretive dance,' because what you think you are telling it, and what it renders, are frequently so widely disconnected that if defies credulity.
And part of the problem is trying to comprehend the information provided to you--the driver, or perhaps, the middle management of the ACCS--via the tiny and corrupted LCD display.
Saab appears to have a thing for LCD displays in the 1999 9-3. They must have seemed like a good idea at the time, very cutting edge. (And in Saab's defense, they still employed good old analog gauges--big ones, three of them--for the information that really matters: Speed, RPM, and a triple fuel-temp-turbo dial. ) But as we all have come to realize in time, LCD displays fail (predictably) in unpredictable ways, pixel by pixel. Our erstwhile microwave began depixilating during a series of power flickers brought on by a hurricane, and for the majority of its life, displayed information in an ever-coarsening dialect of Klingon.
The Saab at this moment is somewhere in the same progression. Sven, et al., elected to provide all kinds of important, but non-critical, information via an LCD display mounted high on the console. Even better, many system warnings appear there every time you start up, and a light notifying you of this crucial information lights up in the critical data area alerting you; you must manually clear the display to turn the warning off.
But it is almost always gibberish, missing those crucial pixels that let you infer one consonant or numeral from another, so you are reduced to primitive guesswork to elicit this vital information. In the best of circumstances, to view all the information available, you must toggle through a combination of button pushes to go to specific menus and obtain specific data--which is then, of course, displayed in gibberish.
Did I mention that the 9-3 Owner's manual runs to over 220 pages? You might as well bind it on all four edges and stamp "DO NOT READ" across the cover as expect anyone to bother trying to glean any relevant information from it. Charles Dickens—paid by the word—managed to define Christmas As We Know It in fewer pages.
Saab made its name building excellent and feared fighter jets for Sweden. Now I am not current on the exploits of the Swedish Air Force, but I can hardly imagine a fighter pilot, closing fast on an unseen enemy at 30,000 feet, having to look at his head-up display, then "...okay, menu, menu, up arrow, up arrow, enter, missile...no, not seat height, back, back, menu, menu..."
So when the 1999 9-3 wants to tells us something important, a little chime goes off, the display-warning-light lights up, and the console shows us something like this: "lU_] [ -+ChTHULU-#ptHaGN!!ia!ia!end]" which, really, is not very helpful. And there is the inherent humor in trying to decipher a cryptic, yet presumably somewhat important, or possibly urgent, message, IN A MOVING MOTOR VEHICLE.
Eventually, we will likely sell this car, because we have more vehicles than we really need, and frankly, this little gem--which is wasted on people like me, (pearls before swine and all that) will fetch a lot more than any of our other vehicles would. But the next time I am looking for a car, I will prize above all things:
1.) Analog gauges
2.) Analog window cranks
3.) An analog 'heat' dial
4.) An analog 'cold' dial (if the clunker has an airconditioner at all)
5.) Total absence of LCD displays
*At this point, can I just simplify the designation and call it a Saab 6?
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Isolation, Solitude, Solace
I spend most of my waking hours alone. My job is a solitary one, both in the essential nature of the work, in my approach to it, and mostly because I am a "sole practitioner" in a small organization. In places where I have worked before, the nature of the job was more collaborative, with many people working in parallel. I am accustomed to having a strong and talented group to work with, sharing each other's strengths and covering for each other's weaknesses.
But now I find myself working alone, literally behind a locked door, in a windowless and timeless underground space flooded floor-to-ceiling and corner-to-corner with incessant white noise and shadowless white light.
I no longer have the collaborative cohort I grew to depend on, and though I have many interactions with people throughout the day, for the most part the interactions are transitory and shallow. In the end I remain a solitary worker behind both a barrier of physical substance and a more substantial gulf of communication and the absence of understanding.
I transit this place of isolation on Beast. When I come and go, again, I am alone in that uniquely peculiar aloneness of the motorcyclist—without the insular shell of a car and all its womb-like connotations. I travel alone, but clamped to the outside of my vehicle and exposed to the world in all its varied harshnesses.
But when I ride, it is different; I am not isolated—I am simply alone.
This is solitude, the quiet of being in one's own space and time, absent the droning harshness that fills your ears even when no voices are speaking to you. I ride, and there is white noise, but of a different timbre. It is the wind around me, and I am holding a conversation with it—sometimes we argue, sometimes we agree. But so far, I have always had the last word and have always won any arguments.
From time to time, I listen to music while I ride. Music cheers me, fires me up, helps the miles pass more freely and I fancy at times it makes me a better, more focused, more artful rider. Other times, I cherish a quiet ride and wear earplugs to attenuate the roaring wind. The solitude of the helmet is an interesting world to inhabit; it is pleasant if you are good company and the mood is sunny and bright; yet I know myself to be pretty poor company when my thoughts are bleak and dark. These moody thoughts stew inside the helmet, making the ride is less enjoyable and the riding poorer for the distraction.
Fortunately, more often than not I find solace in that quiet place, where I flow through time and space with the dulcet voice of the wind for background music. A resting, a restoration, a calming that both prepares me for the day to come and offers relief from the day past.
Isolation, solitude, solace. Not the same things at all.
But now I find myself working alone, literally behind a locked door, in a windowless and timeless underground space flooded floor-to-ceiling and corner-to-corner with incessant white noise and shadowless white light.
I no longer have the collaborative cohort I grew to depend on, and though I have many interactions with people throughout the day, for the most part the interactions are transitory and shallow. In the end I remain a solitary worker behind both a barrier of physical substance and a more substantial gulf of communication and the absence of understanding.
I transit this place of isolation on Beast. When I come and go, again, I am alone in that uniquely peculiar aloneness of the motorcyclist—without the insular shell of a car and all its womb-like connotations. I travel alone, but clamped to the outside of my vehicle and exposed to the world in all its varied harshnesses.
But when I ride, it is different; I am not isolated—I am simply alone.
This is solitude, the quiet of being in one's own space and time, absent the droning harshness that fills your ears even when no voices are speaking to you. I ride, and there is white noise, but of a different timbre. It is the wind around me, and I am holding a conversation with it—sometimes we argue, sometimes we agree. But so far, I have always had the last word and have always won any arguments.
From time to time, I listen to music while I ride. Music cheers me, fires me up, helps the miles pass more freely and I fancy at times it makes me a better, more focused, more artful rider. Other times, I cherish a quiet ride and wear earplugs to attenuate the roaring wind. The solitude of the helmet is an interesting world to inhabit; it is pleasant if you are good company and the mood is sunny and bright; yet I know myself to be pretty poor company when my thoughts are bleak and dark. These moody thoughts stew inside the helmet, making the ride is less enjoyable and the riding poorer for the distraction.
Fortunately, more often than not I find solace in that quiet place, where I flow through time and space with the dulcet voice of the wind for background music. A resting, a restoration, a calming that both prepares me for the day to come and offers relief from the day past.
Isolation, solitude, solace. Not the same things at all.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
A Wetback in my own space
Epiphany time.
I work in information technology, doing customer support mostly, and have done a variation of that for the last five years or so. I am a server monkey and a mouse jockey, and as an english major, I try my best to translate technology into plain English so everyone can just get their jobs done and go home. These technology things, after all, are just tools, the means to an end—not the end in themselves.
I am not overly enamored of technology; I like to think of myself as 'technology agnostic,' but I have a grudging respect for what computers et al can enable. For example, I truly believe the internet is mankind's greatest creation—a massive collaborative "hive mind" in the best possible sense. I can only peer "...through a glass, darkly..." at what phenomenal possibilities lay before us. I am confortable with technology in my life, but don't think of myself as cutting edge.
But that's not the epiphany. This is the epiphany: I am a wetback in my own space.
This dawned on me when I ran into one of the users I support, incidentally a non-native english speaker. Apropos of nothing, they launched into a generic (e.g., not directed at any particular incident or problem) tirade against computers specifically and technology in general. Taken aback by the abruptness of this outburst and lacking any meaningful context in which to frame it, I began to respond, but using discretion and good sense, I held my tongue. And for some reason, the encounter made me recall long-forgotten classes from middle school, where I gained a feeble and cursory knowledge of this person's native language.
This made me realize a foreign language is a good analogy, if it is not a direct comparison, for the place of technology in our lives. Technology has slowly seeped into our lives, arriving subtly and incrementally without our awareness, involvement or consent; it echoes the presence of "the other"—those who are not like us, who we suddenly realize are everywhere. We are struck by technology like we are struck by the proliferation of signs we cannot read lining the shopping centers where we grew up shopping with our parents. I saw a great quote recently about technology and generational change, the gist of which went something like "...We only hold passports to this brave new world; our children are its citizens."
Like many threatened and insecure Americans, technophobes resist and resent the intrusion of this new and foreign idiom onto their turf. They will not concede to learn the simplest phrases, the "hellos" and good-byes," the most basic phrases that enable human discourse; they are proud of their ignorance and refuse to become conversant. They insist, they demand, overtly or otherwise, that the 'other' must concede to them and conform to their ways—never the other way around.
Technology happens to be my language in this situation—yes, my second language only, of which I speak a certain dialect and with a pronounced accent—and I am marked by it. The resentment towards technology that so many harbor is almost palpable and it washes over me: I am tainted by association. Interactions are transactional in nature; conversations are bookended with a cold evaluation of what technological obligation I have yet unfulfilled with the speaker.
I must respectfully tug my forelock and shuffle. Whether this relates to our common environment or is tied to some personal interest is irrelevant; I am the annoying little man who mows the lawn, edges the walk, blows the leaves away with the whining blower early of a Saturday morning, sheds the drywall dust from his paint-spattered coveralls in line at the 7-11.
The language I speak divides me from those around me.
I work in information technology, doing customer support mostly, and have done a variation of that for the last five years or so. I am a server monkey and a mouse jockey, and as an english major, I try my best to translate technology into plain English so everyone can just get their jobs done and go home. These technology things, after all, are just tools, the means to an end—not the end in themselves.
I am not overly enamored of technology; I like to think of myself as 'technology agnostic,' but I have a grudging respect for what computers et al can enable. For example, I truly believe the internet is mankind's greatest creation—a massive collaborative "hive mind" in the best possible sense. I can only peer "...through a glass, darkly..." at what phenomenal possibilities lay before us. I am confortable with technology in my life, but don't think of myself as cutting edge.
But that's not the epiphany. This is the epiphany: I am a wetback in my own space.
This dawned on me when I ran into one of the users I support, incidentally a non-native english speaker. Apropos of nothing, they launched into a generic (e.g., not directed at any particular incident or problem) tirade against computers specifically and technology in general. Taken aback by the abruptness of this outburst and lacking any meaningful context in which to frame it, I began to respond, but using discretion and good sense, I held my tongue. And for some reason, the encounter made me recall long-forgotten classes from middle school, where I gained a feeble and cursory knowledge of this person's native language.
This made me realize a foreign language is a good analogy, if it is not a direct comparison, for the place of technology in our lives. Technology has slowly seeped into our lives, arriving subtly and incrementally without our awareness, involvement or consent; it echoes the presence of "the other"—those who are not like us, who we suddenly realize are everywhere. We are struck by technology like we are struck by the proliferation of signs we cannot read lining the shopping centers where we grew up shopping with our parents. I saw a great quote recently about technology and generational change, the gist of which went something like "...We only hold passports to this brave new world; our children are its citizens."
Like many threatened and insecure Americans, technophobes resist and resent the intrusion of this new and foreign idiom onto their turf. They will not concede to learn the simplest phrases, the "hellos" and good-byes," the most basic phrases that enable human discourse; they are proud of their ignorance and refuse to become conversant. They insist, they demand, overtly or otherwise, that the 'other' must concede to them and conform to their ways—never the other way around.
Technology happens to be my language in this situation—yes, my second language only, of which I speak a certain dialect and with a pronounced accent—and I am marked by it. The resentment towards technology that so many harbor is almost palpable and it washes over me: I am tainted by association. Interactions are transactional in nature; conversations are bookended with a cold evaluation of what technological obligation I have yet unfulfilled with the speaker.
I must respectfully tug my forelock and shuffle. Whether this relates to our common environment or is tied to some personal interest is irrelevant; I am the annoying little man who mows the lawn, edges the walk, blows the leaves away with the whining blower early of a Saturday morning, sheds the drywall dust from his paint-spattered coveralls in line at the 7-11.
The language I speak divides me from those around me.
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Making it up as we go along
We set up a task force of twenty in an unused office with phones and computers, set up on molded plastic folding tables. Because we had pretty much used all the hardware we had on hand and were scraping the bottom of the barrel, the group got stuck with the last of our old mouses—dirty, worn roller-ball mouses which didn't work well on the slightly textured surface of the plastic tables.
So I had to go and hunt down my stock of mousepads that had I grabbed out of the trash several months ago, leftover promotional items from a defunct department. For some odd reason, these mousepads were hugely oversized, 13" by about 9"—a veritable football field from a mouse perspective, and certainly too large to work well in the crowded quarters of the cramped little office.
So now I had to hunt down a paper cutter (...who has a paper cutter nowadays in the era of the paperless office? We do—it's right next to the electric typewriter, the dictaphone, and the Edison Wax cylinder player...look just below the carbon paper) and cut each mousepad in half.
Problem solved; everyone could now use their mouse properly.
They don't teach you things like that in IT school; they don't teach you things like that in Manager school . You just make it up as you go along.
So I had to go and hunt down my stock of mousepads that had I grabbed out of the trash several months ago, leftover promotional items from a defunct department. For some odd reason, these mousepads were hugely oversized, 13" by about 9"—a veritable football field from a mouse perspective, and certainly too large to work well in the crowded quarters of the cramped little office.
So now I had to hunt down a paper cutter (...who has a paper cutter nowadays in the era of the paperless office? We do—it's right next to the electric typewriter, the dictaphone, and the Edison Wax cylinder player...look just below the carbon paper) and cut each mousepad in half.
Problem solved; everyone could now use their mouse properly.
They don't teach you things like that in IT school; they don't teach you things like that in Manager school . You just make it up as you go along.
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