James L Adams—People and Products

Outstanding Products – The Joy of Beautifully Built Scale Model Trains

My favorite uncle, Ed Cooley, spent his career first as a machinist and finally as the shop foreman of Hunter Douglas Co. I worked summers in the shop when I went to school, and was in awe of his knowledge (even though he never finished high school) and ability. After retirement he built custom machines, and even though I was by then an engineer and pretty good at making things, I couldn’t compete with him.

 He had always loved trains, and one of the things he built was an extraordinarily accurate steam-driven model (7-1/2 inch gauge —distance between tracks) of a Pacific locomotive with tender. It took him two years part-time to build it and was accurate down to the handles on the valves in the cab.  It would have taken me five years and would not have been nearly as accurate.

 There is a large track layout in Riverside California named after Joe Hunter, who was my uncle’s boss and also a railroad fan, and each Sunday Ed would take his train to the track and haul carloads of kids (both young and old) around the track layout.  They loved it, and so did Ed.  Ed was certainly not alone. There are many people who have built such things, many track layouts, and even more people who like to ride them (usually free).  I concluded at the time that these trains were outstanding products.  The people who ride them have a wonderful time, and the builder not only has a great time building  and running them,  but also receives tremendous positive feedback from the people who ride them and who watch the show.

 I have been tempted to build one, but have never been willing to devote the necessary time to doing so to the standards I would like.  But I have had a few friends who have done so and I had the pleasure of watching a couple of them in action yesterday on an extensive track layout built by Jacques Littlefield, who was one of my students and who achieved fame by amassing a huge and beautifully restored collection of military vehicles, but unfortunately died a few years ago.  These two people,  who were good friends of Jacques, have built exquisite models and were running them along with trains belonging to a number of people in the San Francisco area who have made or otherwise acquired them. 

 The photo above shows Bill Boller with his locomotive and cars (cover story in Live Steam Magazine) at speed with passengers. The one below shows Peter Mosely with his locomotive.  It was a magnificent day, the Littlefield ranch is spectacular, and I had a wonderful time wandering around, watching the trains, admiring the craftsmanship, talking to people, and saying goodbye to the tank collection, which is going to cross the country and join the Collings collection of historic airplanes.  The result will be amazing, but I hate to see the tanks go, because the collection has been part of my life for a long time.  Fortunately the trains will remain.

 And I had my mind expanded by a person named Ron Siechen, who had a minimalist electro-mechanical driven engine pulling a couple of simple cars.  He unloaded it, put it on the track and immediately began pulling kids around without needing an hour to get the steam pressure up and the skill necessary to operate the steamers.  At first I was not so impressed by it, but it was so simple to operate and he was willing to let other people drive it (he is instructing Dick Denicola, the father-in-law of one of my sons, in the photo to the right), and at the end of the day, loaded it and drove away an hour before the steamers were able to do so.  I realized the joy of simplicity, low cost, and the even greater pleasure kids (once again both young and old) got from being allowed to drive it for a short distance in addition to being able to ride it.

 But if I were to play the game, I would probably go for steam and for scale accuracy.  The results are spectacular, especially if your life span has overlapped the age of steam locomotives.

 

 

 

 

 

Non-Digital Writing Tools

 I have just returned from spending a week at my Sacramento Valley hide-away working on my old machinery, and on a couple of books.  The weather was beautiful (spring time in California), and I am now feeling terrific—partly because I got a lot done, partly because I love to work on old machinery, and partly because I was outside.

  I came to realize some time ago, that screens (as in movie, computer, projection, pad, phone, etc) do not like the outdoors.  The picture is degraded by sunlight and the device forming the picture would rather be dropped onto a carpet rather than onto rocks or into water.   Unfortunately, I like being outdoors, and I do not like trailing long extension cords to power such devices, whether directly or through batteries.  Computers are indoor things, especially if one needs a screen large enough to be able to work on two full-sized pages simultaneously. Therefore I often tend to resort to more vintage equipment, i.e. pencils or pens and paper, because they work very well outside.

 But I use such tools inside as well.  My wife and I have learned to re-cycle our unwanted mail (almost all of it) by keeping  unopened letters in piles in various locations around the house to use for making notes, lists, or whatever. Eventually we re-cycle them like good campus residents. This proves faster and more convenient than constantly trying to remember where our pads or phones are, turning on our lap-tops, or running upstairs to our desk tops.  And pencils and pens are required for certain family traditions.  I lie in bed on Sunday mornings and struggle with the New York Times crossword puzzle.  It is in the rather limp magazine section, the paper is rather slick, and computers are not allowed in the room since due to the time difference, red-hot puzzle people on the east coast have finished the puzzle and put the answer on the web.  Since few people are strong enough not to take advantage of this, computers must be barred.  Due to the nature of the limp magazine and the texture of the paper, high quality pencils are needed, not only to form easily readable words, but because it is often necessary to erase one’s brilliant, but ill fitting entry.

 Unfortunately, it seems as though as we move to computers, the quality of non-digital writing tools is not only not improving, but decreasing.  I have long loved the common wooden pencil with eraser.  But pencil lines seem to be becoming less consistent, and erasers seem to wear out more rapidly and do a poorer job of erasing.  The sample below shows the work of four pencils I picked up from a coffee cup on my desk where I store them.  The ends had has five hard swipes  with the eraser of the pencil that made them. They represented four different brands,.  As can be seen, the lines they made were similar, except for the fourth one, which was fainter, and the success of the eraser went from acceptable to awful.  This is the first time I have ever tried to compare pencils.  The first two were old established brands (Dixon and Faber Castell).  The last two I will not mention, because this is not a scientific comparison.

 The message is that it seems that one cannot simply grab a wooden pencil any more and have it perform as expected.  And in fact, the web is reflecting this by producing much information on them.  See the list of pencil-related web sites here, or just put “pencil blogs” into your browser and ignore such things as eyebrow pencils.

 The situation with so-called mechanical pencils is even more complex because of the many approaches they take to hold the lead (which of course contains no lead – it is a mixture of graphite and clay), feed it, keep it from breaking, etc.  And such pencils tend not to include reasonable erasers. Furthermore good ones cost too much if you tend to lose them and loan them to friends (which I do).  And they are less rewarding to chew and to drum on one’s desktop.

 And then there are pens.  Sharpies make great indelible lines on almost anything, until you neglect to put on the cap, in which case they will rapidly die.  Such is true for most “give away” ball point pens, some of which will come with a retractable feature to protect pockets, and some with a fragile plastic cap that soon disappears.  I am having great luck with a pen entitled Uniball Vision Elite, but it is a bit pricey and tends to run out of ink rather rapidly.  And of course none of the lines from such pens can be erased, and therefore are of limited value for amateur cross word puzzle solvers like me.

 Is the quality of  pencils and pens being neglected as we move toward computers? Is it even going down hill?  A worry to us who like to doodle, make sketches, and work on books in the sunshine.   

 

The Phone Tree, A Usually Bad Product

  Most phone trees, typically computer generated to guide your call to the proper party in an organization, have the following flaws (suggested strategies to combat them in parentheses):

 1.    1.  The organization is subjecting you to a computer, and doesn’t care enough about you to connect you initially to a person. (Let the organization know that you will deal with them if a human calls you)..

2.    2.  The phone tree is too long or has too many branches. (Continually chant “operator, agent, human, help” into the phone until the computer gives up and connects you to a person.

3.None of the choices in the tree seem to have much to do with your problem. (Use above chant).

4.  The computer will first tell you that it is sorry, but there are an unusual number of calls waiting, and don’t hang up, because we very much value talking to you.   You are number 13 in line, and the wait will be approximately (10—20?—30?—50?) minutes. Or the computer will switch you to a phone which is either not answered or connects you to a tape apologizing that no one is there, but your call will be answered as soon as possible.  (hang up and seek an alternate vendor).

5.     5.  The phone call will actually be answered by a human, but they work in a  phone answering service and will only know the answers to "the most frequently asked questions", none of which also have anything to do with your problem. (Politely point out that they are wasting their ability to charm people and speak flawless English, and should demand a raise).

6.     6.  Your call is either immediately answered by a nice person who solves your problem, or you are rapidly switched to one of same. (Compliment them extensively, get their name,  that of their supervisor and the  president of the company, and send them a rave letter, with copies to their boss, the president of the company, and Barak Obama.  If you are wealthy, send them a gift of a round trip airplane ticket to Hawaii).

 Interesting, isn’t it, that there are apparently a large number of smart and personable young people who can’t find jobs, and yet organizations seem to want to replace people capable of pleasing their customers and improving their reputation with computers?  A couple of years ago the Stanford registrar’s office changed from a number of people in an office with an open door, who were willing to help students, faculty, alumni, parents, and whoever, to a system that illustrates several of the above problems – and Stanford has a lot of money and is expensive to attend.  Go figure.  But in the University's defense, if you call the main  number, a person still answers.

 I spend reasonable effort in finding organizations that have smart and helpful people answering calls, or even better, identifying the direct phone number, e-mail address, or other way to contact such people, as well as striking up a mild acquaintance with them . It is worth the effort in decreasing the frustrations in life as well as solving problems. Perhaps the most valuable contact is a highly placed administrator who takes care of the president of the organization and with whom you have become a personal friend. 

 Life is too short to be hassled by computers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Product quality, ignition switches, and humans.

 I worked a short time for General Motors some 50 years ago, did not love them then, and do not particularly love them now.  But since we are again going through a familiar dance about the evils of General Motors which includes the media, Congress, attorneys, and various people grieving over the loss of loved ones, we should keep a few things in mind.

 Such dances have benefits, because companies do tend to become complacent about various aspects of product quality in the heat of seeking to increase their profits, stay at least even with their competition, and focus on marketing and growth,  Occasionally they do need to be reminded by the press and public anger that they should tighten up their ship.

 But General Motors sells some 2,750,000 automobiles a year, does business in 140 countries, and has a quarter of a million employees. In an activity such as this, many decisions are made, some of which in retrospect seem wrong.  Also, in a sample of 250,000 people, a few may not have safety uppermost in mind.  Humans are human.

 Each year there are approximately 1.3 million automobile related deaths in the world.  This amounts to 3500 per day, or one every six seconds.  In the U.S. the death toll is about 35,000 per year.  I drove through San Francisco yesterday when a long-distance foot race had the city traffic diverted into strange areas and made most drivers very angry. I then then came home down a jammed freeway with various impatient people trying to beat the crowd.  I think it is miraculous that only 35,000 people in the  U.S. are killed in automobile accidents each year. The equipment is pretty good.  The drivers are the problem.

 It is tragic if 13 people have been killed by faulty ignition swtches, and criminal if information that this was likely to happen was knowingly with-held.  But whether we like it or not, approximately 55 million people die in the world each year ( we will all eventually be one of them), and 2.5 million in the U.S., so 13 deaths, although tragic to family and friends, would have gotten only local media attention, had not the faulty ignition switch been discovered.  So maybe there is a bit of jump-on-evil-G.M. going on because it attracts media attention, offers politicians a platform for righteousness,  and gives frustrated people on the internet a chance to vent on big business, Bush, Obama, Democrats, Republicans, terrorists, or whatever.

 But it is important to remember that people screw up (especially in hind sight and if many of them are involved) and things break—always have, always will (especially if complicated).  Yesterday my relatively new HP scanner/Apple computer combination quit scanning.  I checked the connections, the system settings, rebooted everything, still no luck.  After I finish this post I will uninstall the driver and install a new one.  But it may still not work.  It's failure will not kill me, but this is a relatively simple and mass produced digital system.  I often have trouble with my digital electronics.  Still anxious for automatic cars?

 It is always possible to make more reliable products.  But it costs.  As an extreme example, the Mars Curiosity Rover and the spacecraft that landed it successfully in August 2012, were necessarily built to be highly reliable, and JPL had many years of experience in building reliable planetary robotic spacecraft.  And this was a particularly challenging project.  But the cost for the rover and and associated spacecraft was 1.8 billion dollars and over a decade was necessary to design, develop, and adequately test it.  It survived launching, 9 months in space, landing, and is happily doing its mission.  But 1.8 billion dollars would buy 60,000 General Motors cars at $30,000 each. 

 True, the cost would come down somewhat if a large number of Curiosity rovers and associated spacecraft were built, but extraordinary effort in design, manufacturing and testing each one would still be necessary to ensure that nothing would fail.  The space shuttle received such attention, but remember the o-rings?  Tesla automobiles are receiving unusual care, although a couple of battery incidents have received media coverage, but their relative production is low and their prices are high. if their output and prices approach those of Toyota’s, will they be able to avoid occasionally getting into trouble?

Again, things break and users and producers screw up. Trying to prevent this, or at least minimizing its impact, is a difficult part of the challenge in securing high quality products.