James L Adams—People and Products

Mechanical Failure of Electrical Things

 When working in aerospace, I at one time was the supervisor of an electronics packaging group.  Packaging in this case meant the mechanical design of electronic equipment —structurally, thermally, chemically, whatever— and the group was tasked with figuring out how to cut the weight from electronics subsystems and improve integration of the system.   When first asked to do this, I was reluctant, because electronics never were my main love.  But what I realized more and more clearly as I worked on the job, is that although solid state electronics components themselves are surprisingly reliable, (once they have gone through a bit of usage) in use they fail mechanically, often because of mechanical inputs, either from the environment or from people assembling, testing, and maintaining them.  Even if this is not the case, if electronic devices are expected to do physical work, they need not only an input (which can be from an electrical device), but an actuator which allows them to effect the physical world.  Such actuators are often a combination of electrical and mechanical (solenoids, electric motors, etc.) and exhibit traditional wear and anger at contaminating particles, and require such things as lubrication and controlled loads and temperatures. So it was an excellent assignment, because we could work on challenging mechanical problems that neither the electronic nor the traditional mechanical engineers were spending much time on.

 I also became much more aware of the fact that given enough complexity and usage, electro-mechanical systems will fail.  And there is a good possibility that they will fail at some point if they are not designed with the humans who produce and use them in mind, because not only do things break, but people (and even robots) screw up. I have many memories of examples of this—a flight spacecraft, built and assembled in clean rooms, showing clear signs of one of the technicians having eaten a sandwich containing tomatoes over one of the electronic packages—a contract technician at the Cape actually putting two male connectors together enough to blow up a science instrument on another flight vehicle (thought to be an impossibility).

 I mention this, because I suspect that the seemingly miraculous success of digital devices, both in performance and profit, has caused us to give less attention to this.  Perhaps it is not only because electrical engineers would just as soon not work on mechanical problems and vice versa, but also because technology has been changing so fast that many devices are essentially thrown away in a relatively short time (Apple hopes it is a year).

  We hear more and more about autonomous cars.  But they certainly have not been in use long enough to have good data on their behavior when operated and maintained over long period of time by typical people. I tend to keep my automobiles for 10 to 15 years and 150,000 to 200,000 miles.  I expect to have minor problems with them in that time period and buy them replacement parts, but not to have a failure capable of killing me. And so far they have done that, partially due to the many years of experience and testing we have invested in them.

 How many autonomous cars have been run in traffic for even 200,000 miles?  One of the last two “incidences” my wife and I have had with cars was due to a neighbor backing rapidly out of a tree-and-fence lined driveway into my innocent wife, who was driving down the adjoining street. If the cars were autonomous, would its sensors have been able to detect the other car? Which one would have stopped?  Both of them?   The other was due to an almost new front tire delaminating while in heavy traffic moving rapidly on a very high bridge.  This required a bit of quick decision making with little data.  Neither of us had experienced such a thing.  We had to decide when and where to get off the road, which was difficult because there was no turn off lane, and neither of us was sure what was happening to the car and whether it would continue in its present bumpy and veering mode, or go into a more catastrophic one.  I am told that autonomous cars will be better than we are, but would they know what to do in uncommon failure modes such as this?

 As another example of electrical failure over time, my previous pick-up was mechanically both reliable and fairly rugged, but as it acquired miles, it began to have failures in electrical components such as coil packs and solenoids.  By the time I gave it to my brother’s farm after 125,000 miles, I had given up on many of its push-button operated features.  The buttons would push, but the features wouldn’t operate.  To make matters worse, accessing the faulty actuators was sometimes a nightmare (the rear-most coil pack and spark plug, the window and door-lock actuators), with the result that I looked hard to find a replacement vehicle with a minimum of such things.  I succeeded and love my new one (even though it is too big) because it has very clever long-used devices such as cranks on the windows and keys to lock and unlock doors.

 And then, of course, there are the interactions with electrical systems that grossly overestimate the capability of humans.  An example was the almost catastrophic Three Mile Island nuclear plant shut-down many years ago—the report of the study committee (the Kemeney Report) portrays a very believable situation in which operators trained only in normal conditions (the way we learn to drive) made all the wrong responses when behavior became abnormal.  Would computers have done better?  Only if all failure modes could have been quantified and predicted.

 Such mechanical weaknesses in electrical systems can be found at all levels.  Stanford University has many buildings and large conference and class rooms, in which people who not only work at Stanford, but come from all over the world, give talks.  I am one of them, and the room scheduling is done by a combination of a large computer and people who represent individual fiefdoms (and no, they do not always coordinate or agree), so I am often finding myself in rooms I am not familiar with.  These days, of course, people tend to use large numbers (often too many) graphic images, usually in some format such as Power Point, and usually stored in their powerful portable computer, because these rooms tend to be equipped with built-in projectors, but not computers.  The rooms do tend to be equipped with what are called smart panels, which typically contain  the necessary electronics, buttons, switches, and lights to integrate one’s portable computer, microphones, lights,or whatever with the room. they are certainly simple compared to one's computer and the equipment in the room.

 But my impression from using them, is that these panels are all different, usually without good instructions on how to use them (instructions are usually written by IT people who assume they shouldn’t be necessary and the rooms do not come equipped with these IT people) and unlabeled wires, (often coming from under the rug or other mysterious sources). Some screens are controlled by a switch, and others automatically when the projector is switched on, window covers may or may not be synchronized with the projector, and if one’s computer is on the odium, it often blocks the buttons, switches, and lights.

  If I have never used it, I routinely visit the room I will use the day before my talk, and typically spend 15 minutes to a half hour figuring it out, sometimes failing and looking for someone who uses it often.  Even if I have used it, I arrive at my talk ridiculously early because undoubtedly some one else will have used the room and left it in a different state than it was in the day before, especially if they have been able to physically access the projector.  People still don’t seem to realize how the computer and the projector interact, so they fiddle with the manual projector controls, which of course are also not standardized.  I often end up with several VIP types trying to help me figure out the AV system (often to their consternation with little success), but I guess it introduces an interactive and informal atmosphere to the session.

 I used to complain mightily when the standard slide projector (the Kodak Carousel) was almost universal.  The remote was often missing, slides could drop out if the retaining ring was not securely fastened to the drum, etc. etc. etc.  But at least the projectors varied little from year to year and did not attempt to interact with all other equipment in the room, and after one learned their foibles, one could show slides almost anywhere. I almost want them back, because I have a sneaky feeling that such things as “smart panels” will not be standardized in my lifetime, and of course, they are not smart at all.

 

 

 

  

 

The internet, Distraction, Addiction, and Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

 As I mentioned in a couple of my previous posts, there appears to be a tsunami of books critical of the internet under way.  I am setting about reading some of them, since being at Stanford and in Silicon Valley, I live among the priests and generally hear only praise for it and its potential.  To suggest that the internet is becoming less useful because of the overwhelming and often low quality if not useless) information it contains is somewhat like wandering through the Vatican wearing a sign proclaiming that there is no God.  But I am not an internet atheist.  In fact I use it a lot for reasons ranging from doing research for writing (even though everyone is aware that using URL’s as a source is rather ridiculous, because the content in them changes and they go away), through watching videos my friends tell me to watch on YouTube (and I do), to finding tomorrow’s weather prediction,   And oh yes, I have this blog , and am on Twitter, Facebook, and Linked in, although I at this point I am not exactly sure why—so maybe I am an agnostic.  More about that in a later post.

  I recently finished The Distraction Addiction, by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang.  More details can be found under recommended books at the left side of this blog.  The author is a scholar-writer-researcher-futurist, who as the title of the book indicates, is extremely interested in the importance of attention and the cost of distraction on getting things done and enjoying life.  He draws from sources ranging from cognitive psychology to Buddhism.  I very much enjoyed the breadth of the book, which can be inferred from the subtitle “Getting the Information You Need and Want Without  Enraging Your Family, Annoying Your Colleagues, and Losing your Soul”.

 The author has a good sense of humor and a good writing style, but this is not a comic book.  And it is far from an anti-internet rant. The author and his family are obviously eager and informed users, even bonding by playing computer games together after dinner.  But instead it is a book of reasons why it is necessary to consciously control ones attention and limit distraction in this day of ever increasing opportunities to escape into endless communication, videos, surfing, and other such activities.  The book is both fun to read and thought provoking.  It reminds us that there are tremendous resources and very bright people tempting us toward seemingly being busily, if not frantically,  involved with each other and the world, but maybe neither accomplishing as much as we might that will affect ourselves or others in the longer term, nor taking proper advantages of other ways to enjoy life   The author calls his approach contemplative computing.  He not only reminds us of the traps of existing with the internet, but suggests ways to better avoid them, including such things as digital sabbaticals and taking advantage of software such as Freedom,  He clearly feels that we should be more mindful of the mind, as do I.  The internet is a formidable attack on our very valuable, but already limited attention.

 

 

 

Barns, Owl Poop, Forklifts, and Bird Netting

As I have mentioned in previous posts, one of my hobbies is rescuing old heavy machinery.  I find it or make it missing or broken arts, get it running, and paint it reasonably well. But I am not a true restoration person, in that I do not restore them to the condition in which they left the factory.  Nor do I care much about serial numbers, the historical details of their development, or their provenance. I restore them to be fully functioning old machines.  True restoration people, however, tell me they are grateful to me for saving them until they can be be truly restored

 I also use many of them.  As an example, several years ago I acquired a small underappreciated forklift and restored it to fully working condition.  My wife and I are now dependent on it, because not only could I not lift and position many objects having to do with my machine hobby without it, but we use it to care for our yard, which has been happily growing for 100 years,  The photograph is of us trimming one of our hedges.  It would be miserable work with a ladder.  With the forklift it is both fun and entertaining to our neighbors and others who pass by.

 As I also mentioned, I have my larger and more controversial projects of this sort at a good friend’s farm in California’s Sacramento Valley. We made a deal at one point that he would allow me to squat on a corner of his land with a small house for no rent providing that I fixed up the house, built a barn (which would obviously belong to the farm), and maintain a store of Scotch for us to drink when I am there.  I go there fairly often because it is an excellent cultural change between the liberal politics, crowds, and Priuses of the S.F. Peninsula, and the open spaces, more conservative people, and F-150 pickups of the valley.  It helps understand the U.S.A.

 When I built the barn, I used old power poles that my friend had allowed the power company to dump on his land and galvanized tin roofing that he had acquired.  I built it high enough to handle an antique harvester that is some 16 feet high, and big enough to hold a number of pieces of equipment.  It is a swell barn.  The photograph at the right shows a view of it.

 But when I built it, my friend suggested I attach an owl box , since the owls that would live in the box would eat the rats and mice that would otherwise chew up the wiring in my vehicles.  This sounded good to me, so I built one and nailed it at the highest  point of a wall, and it was almost immediately taken over by owls,  which are truly fascinating beings.  But what my friend didn’t tell me, is that owls, although wise and beautiful, love to sit on the truss beams of barns and dump large amounts of two types of material on the ground. 

One consists  of dark, hard lumps a couple of inches long, which contain the non-digestible remains of the small animals they eat,  and which they then disgorge.  These are somewhat innocuous, proof that the owls are doing their duty, and in much demand from primary school teachers because they can slice them up and gross out their students by letting them examine them under microscopes.

 But the other type is often referred to as “shit from hell”.  It consists of copious white blobs which are very difficult to remove from what they hit and seem to remove the paint from anything on which they remain for a time.  As my projects become more finished, I have been covering the machines with large plastic tarpaulins to protect them from this vicious material, but 20 by 30 foot tarpaulins are a drag to handle and must be tied down thoroughly because the valley is known for serious winds.

 So I decided that the owls, although obviously useful in holding down the rodent population, and smarter and more talented than I (they can not only see at night, but turn their heads almost 180 degrees and fly through small holes, and as we all know, are wise.) had to go.  I put “getting rid of barn owls” into my browser, and was coldly told that one can’t—it is illegal to kill them (which I didn’t want to do anyway) and they are smarter than you (which I already knew).  But I figured that if they could not roost over the floor of the barn, they would not relieve themselves on the floor as much.  So I decided the problem was to prevent them from getting above the beams.  My friend had a couple of large (15 ft by 20 ft) pieces of shade cloth he was not using, and suggested we hang this on the bottom of the roof beams so the owls could not fly to the top of the beams. 

 Now fork lifts enter the scene again.  When I built the barn I had access to a scissor lift that would reach the roof of the barn.  It was no longer available.  My friend has a real forklift, such as the one in the photo at the left , which weighs on the order of 15,000 pounds and can lift 8,000 pounds up 15 feet.  Since I weight much less than 8,000 pounds, and could reach the roof from a platform 15 feet in the air, he was able to drive me around and up and down while I attached the shade cloth with staples. 

 Looked good, but the owls were able to fly in one side of the area we had covered, sit on the beams, and dump through the shade cloth, which transformed their poop into a wider stream which more effectively covered everything down below.  So I purchased a large amount of plastic bird netting, which is cheap, and does not hurt birds.  It comes compressed into large rolls (I used 15 foot wide by 100 feet long ones), and as my friend drove me around (and up and down) I sealed off (I hope) the entire access to the beams.  Then we drank Scotch.  Incidentally, I am now dependent on this fork lift, since I am restoring (saving?) a large two-stroke diesel engine with five foot diameter flywheels and with a weight of 6800 pounds.  Since it is sitting on blocks, I have no way to move it but this fork lift.

 Have I won my battle with the owls?  Probably not.  They will probably tear the netting loose at the edge, chew holes in it, or hire wood peckers to bore through the walls.  Or they will move to a nearby tree and laugh as the rats and mice chew the insulation off of  the wires in the vehicles within the barn.

 But going head to head with owls is a good retirement activity, because it is comparably challenging to being a professor at Stanford.  And it reminds me of technology such as fork lifts and bird netting, which one does not see much of in Silicon Valley.   Without such traditional technical products,  I would have to admit that owls are more sapient than we homo sapiens.

The Internet, Critical Books, and People

In my last post I mentioned that there is a noticeable increase in criticism of the Internet, and mentioned a few books as examples.  Today, to my amazement, the entire Book Review section of the November 3 New York Times was devoted to books about this topic, only one of which I have read —more to order.  You can see the reviews here, as well as a short article that is worth reading entitled “Is Tech Lit An Oxymoron?”. The books reviewed are not all negative about the Internet in general and social networking in particular, but there is a good bit of that.  This is not surprising, since many, if not most writers appreciate the book rather than the tweet and generally view the internet responsible for such things as the near disappearance of small book stores, the dire economic straits of traditional publishers, and the encouragement of brevity in writing at perhaps the cost in style, argument, and general story telling. 

 One of the books reviewed, by Alice Marwick, apparently singles out a marketing person named Gary Vaynerchuck for particular criticism.  Probably coincidentally, he is featured as the cover article entitled “Riding the Hashtag” in the business section of the same issue of the paper.  It is here.  He is apparently eagerly sought as an expert at Internet marketing and although he is clearly becoming famous and making money, his chosen work is about as far as how I want to spend my time as I can imagine.

 I have been using computers for a long time, beginning with using a large IBM mainframe to solve structural and thermal problems in aerospace in the 1950’s, although I must admit I was restricted to giving the problems to programmers, and certainly was not allowed to touch the machine.  And I am reasonably competent with contemporary hardware and soft ware .  But I retired from active duty on the Stanford faculty before smart phones and social networking became the rage.  I obviously have a cell phone, which seems to be a social requirement, but I still do not have a smart phone, because they seem to convert the owner into a constant sender and checker of e-mail and text messages, surfer of the internet, user of apps, etc.   I prefer to constrain such activities to a specific time each day, in order to not be interrupted doing other things that are very important to me. Unfortunately I am about to test my self discipline by getting a smart phone, in order to escape going mad using the brand new three-layer security system on Stanford’s network— a task which is simplified through use of a smart phone app.  But that is another story.

 As I also mentioned in my last post, two or three years ago I began social networking—this blog plus Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin— but have not gotten strongly involved because of a great deal of ambivalence on my part.  So far I have been more a watcher than a participant.  I have ”friended” some of my actual friends, am followed by people on Twitter, although I have not tried to attract followers, and I have some contacts and have joined some groups on LinkedIn.   I can see its benefits, but I neither comfortable with nor willing to spend the time trying to attract and communicate with a large following, and many people I would like to communicate with more are not actively involved in social networking.  In addition although I understand the importance of marketing in a capitalistic system, I think people who are constantly marketing themselves or their goods are a pain (I get enough of them on my phone and in print and TV ads) and they are plentiful in social networking.  Also, I gain a lot more from personal interaction with fewer people who are working on the same kind of problems I am interested in, than I do from a large crowd of people I have never met.  And since I feel guilty not spending more time with the friends I have, I am not looking for new ones.   I also prefer communication formats that allow more time than is popular with Internet communications.  On the positive side, I must admit I am fascinated by the affect of the Internet and social networking on people, and I can probably see it more clearly as a participant. Maybe I fall in with the book people.

 That is why I am glad to see a wider variety of thinking about social networking becoming available in the form of books and articles.  I need to decide whether to devote more time and energy to social networking or to quit.  It has its good side, and will improve, but I have other activities on my agenda.  And the type of deeply thought-out and hopefully substantiated opinions found in books helps me decide such things. As I read the books, I will post more details and my own reactions to them.