15 Aug 2015

And Then An Answer….

Caratacus, I hesitate to say it but the message wot's somewhere could be one of ever advancing years. Why these undoubtedly cleaver computer kids can’t figure out a way of informing the users of their products what will happen, when it may happen, what to do to help the process and what not to dick with truly amazes me.

Back in the day, a couple of young engineers, why are they always young? came out to the rig with the usual goofy idea put together with AutoCAD, for us to implement. The majority of goofy ideas where eventually implemented as we had all learned, during our fist couple of trips working in the ‘patch’, that saying such-an’-such idea wouldn’t work and/or couldn’t be done, was not an option. “That’s a goofy idea but we’ll do our damndest to make it work.” That was the only response the OIM expected, whatever his personal thoughts of the idea, and the very infrequent failures were accepted as all involved, hands-on, no scientific calculators involved, had given it their very best shot to try to make it work.

Back to the young bucks visit. We were in the galley discussing the latest goofiness when one of the guys mused aloud, “You know, all these young engineers are so damn smart they could tell you the cubic capacity of that jar of pickles at a glance; but not one of ‘em will have a clue how to get the lid off.”

If he’d heard that somewhere before, or if it was spontaneous
I’ve no idea, but I’ve never forgotten it and have quoted a version of it before. As they say, it works on so many levels.

To round it all off, here's a bit I've also posted before, a goodly while ago, which fits quite well. How sad is that; copy and paste from your own site. However, again, it works so well on so many levels.

  1. When you don’t know what you’re doing, do it neatly.
  2. Experience is directly proportional to the quantity of equipment destroyed.
  3. Past experience is always true, never be misled by present facts.
  4. In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.
  5. Do NOT believe in miracles, RELY on them.
  6. Teamwork is essential. It allows you to blame someone else.
  7. Recording of data is also essential. It indicates you have been doing something.
  8. No matter what result is anticipated, someone will always fit facts to it.
  9. No matter what happens, there will always be someone who believes it happened according to their pet theory.
  10. The probability of an event occurring is inversely proportional to its desirability to occur.
  11. Half the quantity, which, when added to, subtracted from, divided into, multiplied by the result obtained experimentally that will give the correct result, is known as a constant.
  12. Experiments must be reproducible; they should always fail in the same way.
  13. If an experiment works, you are probably using the wrong equipment.
  14. An experiment may be considered a success if no more than half of the data needs to be discarded to obtain agreement with your pet theory.
  15. For neatness, always draw the curves first then plot the data.
  16. If an experiment is a complete failure, it should be used as a bad example.

Summary;
When in charge; Ponder
When in trouble; Delegate
When in doubt; Mumble

Quote;  Thomas Baehr.

"Most times your computer is not responding as you expected - first try to find out if the "ERROR" is not sitting right next to the computer."

2 comments:

Caratacus said...

Indeed so, I am grateful to m'learned friend! With advancing years one certainly is open to Universal Truths, one of which is, "If Something Works, PLEASE leave it the **** alone". But the human urge to tinker and beggar about with stuff in a timeless quest to reinvent the wheel remains undimmed. For my sins I have been engaged in combat of one sort or another through my adult life, unarmed and armed, and I have observed that there are certain sorts of weapons which have achieved their zenith of perfection at some point in the distant past and been revered ever since. The katana is one example, the fist another. Similar examples abound in many other fields of human endeavour. Even Nature recognised millions of years ago that the shark cannot be improved upon and let it be ...

The "young bucks" you mention imagine that everything can be improved and refined and they are the very people to do it. O Yes. And they throw themselves at the task with the joyful abandon of a gang of puppies chasing each other around the garden ... and the silly old beggars who should keep them in check and stop them costing us all a great deal of money are transfixed with a sort of slack-jawed admiration which bodes ill for all concerned.

Forgive me, mon ami, it is late, I've had a sharpener or two and I tend to view the likes of Thomas Baehr with a pensive stare.

Mac said...

Caratacus,
I agree with all you say and the latest gimmick I see mentioned in some car adverts only confirms what us old folk must be thinking. That is, that, in time, young folk are going to take 'automatic breaking' as a 'given' and put all their trust in it and just carry on texting. "Hay, it's got auto breaking, right? What can possibly go wrong?" I hope I'm wrong but....