Sunday, May 10, 2015
Miki has a friend...
My mom asked for a photo of the barn...
Folks around here, when they hear me call this building “the barn”, immediately assume we've got horses or the like. I'm going to have to start calling it “the shed” or some such thing. Maybe “kuur”, which is Estonian for shed (and pronounced like “coor” in English).
I know what a kuur is because I once spent the night in one :) In the late '90s I was on a business trip to Tallinn, Estonia. I stayed over the weekend, rented a car, and drove to Hiiumaa island. I had planned to stay at a small hotel in the city of Kaina, but when I got there it was completely full – and after a half hour of the staff helping me check with other hotels, they were all full as well. Furthermore, the last ferry had already left for the mainland. I thought I'd be sleeping in my (tiny!) rental car, but a woman on staff, who spoke some English, offered to let me stay in their kuur. They also let me use their bathroom to take a bath (no shower!), and fed me breakfast in the morning. I had to endure a death by 10,000 questions from their two children, about 8 and 10, both of whom spoke passable English and knew far more about Hollywood than I did :)
The A-10 “Warthog” is the finest close air support aircraft ever built...
Marines I know who have seen combat in Afghanistan have a reverence for this airplane and its pilots that has to be experienced to understand its profundity. The reason is simple enough: the A-10's magnificent close air support capability has, quite literally, saved hundreds and hundreds of American lives at the tip of the spear...
Paraprosdokians...
Paraprosdokians... According to Wikipedia:
searching for more. Reading through a few dozen of these was a very pleasant
way to burn a few minutes! A few I particularly enjoyed:
A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence, phrase, or larger discourse is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part.I ran across some examples at Maggie's Farm this morning, and that got me
searching for more. Reading through a few dozen of these was a very pleasant
way to burn a few minutes! A few I particularly enjoyed:
If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.
You're never too old to learn something stupid.
Some cause happiness wherever they go. Others whenever they go.
I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.
Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.
ScanSnap IX500 trick...
ScanSnap IX500 trick... We've been paperless here for a few months now, thanks to our ScanSnap IX500 scanner and DEVONThink software. In general, I've been very pleased with the arrangement – and with a few month's practice, all the steps now seem very easy and straightforward.
There's one little thing, though, that's been driving me slightly crazy: long receipts, such as those giant ones from the grocery store, or the Home Depot receipts with a book's worth of text printed at the end. The scanner would stop after about 18" of receipt, reporting an error. That happened to me for a half dozen attempts until I realized it was simply the length. After that, I started cutting the longer receipts into short sections (never needed more than two), and scanning them separately. But it was a pain in the neck!
A few days ago, after suffering through another of those, I decided to Google the problem. Wouldn't you know it? In seconds I found a ridiculously simple solution. Here it is: instead of just clicking the blue button on the scanner to start the scan, hold it down for a few seconds until it blinks, then release it. That's it! This morning I scanned a 31" long receipt, with no issue at all.
I have no idea why Fujitsu decided to make that a special mode on the scanner. You'd think that decision could be automated. But there it is. The solution is simple enough, and works great...
There's one little thing, though, that's been driving me slightly crazy: long receipts, such as those giant ones from the grocery store, or the Home Depot receipts with a book's worth of text printed at the end. The scanner would stop after about 18" of receipt, reporting an error. That happened to me for a half dozen attempts until I realized it was simply the length. After that, I started cutting the longer receipts into short sections (never needed more than two), and scanning them separately. But it was a pain in the neck!
A few days ago, after suffering through another of those, I decided to Google the problem. Wouldn't you know it? In seconds I found a ridiculously simple solution. Here it is: instead of just clicking the blue button on the scanner to start the scan, hold it down for a few seconds until it blinks, then release it. That's it! This morning I scanned a 31" long receipt, with no issue at all.
I have no idea why Fujitsu decided to make that a special mode on the scanner. You'd think that decision could be automated. But there it is. The solution is simple enough, and works great...
Morning walk...
The dogs really like these after-rain walks. You can tell that the smells are intensified for them – they eagerly dash hither and yon, chasing the wisps their noses catch. Me, I just smell the wet earth from the alfalfa fields we're walking past.
For some reason the dogs were completely disinterested in the earthworms this morning. Even Race, who ate about a hundred of them a few mornings ago, just completely ignored them. Weird. Maybe they weren't too digestible :)
Mo'i (with the green leash) is speed-regulated by the slope of our path. On the steeper uphill parts, we're walking at a lazy human pace. On the level bits, we're making a kind of normal human pace. On the downhill stretches, we're zipping along at a brisk pace. It feels like I could model his pace in software very easily, by assuming a certain amount of friction, mass, and a little locomotive force. The other two, were they controlling the pace, would have us at a flat-out run no matter what the slope was. The model for them would be even easier: a fixed speed!
How they made...
I remember this movie for an odd reason. I saw it in a theater on the Mare Island Navy base, while I was attending computer technician school there in the early '70s. There's a scene in the movie where a broad landscape is visible under a gorgeous blue sky. For one brief cut, there's a jet contrail visible at one side – and about a dozen of us caught it at the same moment and laughed out loud in the theater. A fun moment...
Carrot vs. stick...
Carrot vs. stick... A new study (which I can't help but be skeptical of, simply because it's a psychological experiment!) backs up my own experience as a manager: to modify behavior, punishment works better than reward.
In all my regretted years as a manager and executive, I tried a great many ways to motivate my employees to do what I wanted them to do. Most of these ways were various reward schemes (bonuses, stock options, recognition, etc.).
While these schemes were sometimes effective for a while, they were plagued with problems. The biggest of these problems were that the reward was quickly seen as an entitlement by many people, there was no real general agreement on the criteria for the reward, and a certain class of people (usually about a quarter of them) would immediately start figuring out how to game the reward system to get what they didn't deserve. Every single time, the reward system turned into a management nightmare, and was ineffective anyway. Much time and money was utterly wasted.
On the other hand, I once implemented a remarkably effective punishment system. If any of my ex-employees are reading this blog, all I have to do is say “Mr. Monkey” and they will instantly remember the whole thing. Mr. Monkey was a stuffed monkey with a comically stupid expression on his face. Each week I awarded the monkey to the engineer or technician whom I judged to be the least effective that preceding week. The recipient had to display the monkey on the top of their cubicle wall, and they weren't allowed to hide it. Everybody in the company knew about the monkey, and who had received it – and even why. All this took no work on my part – the news spread by osmosis in moments after each award. I didn't award it for making mistakes – we all do that – but rather for poor work, causing friction on the team, etc. There was only one monkey; I collected it from the previous winner before awarding it to the new winner. My team had 30 to 35 people on it over the period I used the monkey, and nobody wanted to get the monkey. On many occasions I actually heard people refrain from a behavior (say, checking in some horrible code), saying something like “I have to fix this, or I’ll get the monkey!” I never had a problem with people thinking the award was unfair, nor did I have people trying to game the system. It actually worked, over the entire 18 month period I employed it.
As it happened, the job where I used the monkey punishment was the last management or executive role I ever had. I was laid off from that job, and the company failed shortly thereafter. I went from there to a purely engineering job, and never had any opportunity to repeat the experience. I wish now that I had learned the lesson earlier in my career.
I had another experience in the early '80s which should have taught me the lesson. At the time I was an engineer working for a small company in San Diego, with about 200 employees. One of the executives there was nicknamed “The Hammer” because he “brought the hammer down” regularly on misbehaving employees – and it worked. To cite one example he was famous for: he had a rule regarding meeting attendance. If you accepted an invitation to a meeting, you were expected to show up on time. The first time you were late, you got dressed down in front of the entire meeting. The second time you were late, you were fired right then and there. To my knowledge, exactly two employees were fired (one of them a senior manager) – and every meeting at that company started on time. That has never happened to me at any other company I've ever worked at or with. Late-starting meetings are a standing joke everywhere for their tremendous time-wasting. We were all frightened of The Hammer, but somehow I missed the underlying lesson that his methods worked...
In all my regretted years as a manager and executive, I tried a great many ways to motivate my employees to do what I wanted them to do. Most of these ways were various reward schemes (bonuses, stock options, recognition, etc.).
While these schemes were sometimes effective for a while, they were plagued with problems. The biggest of these problems were that the reward was quickly seen as an entitlement by many people, there was no real general agreement on the criteria for the reward, and a certain class of people (usually about a quarter of them) would immediately start figuring out how to game the reward system to get what they didn't deserve. Every single time, the reward system turned into a management nightmare, and was ineffective anyway. Much time and money was utterly wasted.
On the other hand, I once implemented a remarkably effective punishment system. If any of my ex-employees are reading this blog, all I have to do is say “Mr. Monkey” and they will instantly remember the whole thing. Mr. Monkey was a stuffed monkey with a comically stupid expression on his face. Each week I awarded the monkey to the engineer or technician whom I judged to be the least effective that preceding week. The recipient had to display the monkey on the top of their cubicle wall, and they weren't allowed to hide it. Everybody in the company knew about the monkey, and who had received it – and even why. All this took no work on my part – the news spread by osmosis in moments after each award. I didn't award it for making mistakes – we all do that – but rather for poor work, causing friction on the team, etc. There was only one monkey; I collected it from the previous winner before awarding it to the new winner. My team had 30 to 35 people on it over the period I used the monkey, and nobody wanted to get the monkey. On many occasions I actually heard people refrain from a behavior (say, checking in some horrible code), saying something like “I have to fix this, or I’ll get the monkey!” I never had a problem with people thinking the award was unfair, nor did I have people trying to game the system. It actually worked, over the entire 18 month period I employed it.
As it happened, the job where I used the monkey punishment was the last management or executive role I ever had. I was laid off from that job, and the company failed shortly thereafter. I went from there to a purely engineering job, and never had any opportunity to repeat the experience. I wish now that I had learned the lesson earlier in my career.
I had another experience in the early '80s which should have taught me the lesson. At the time I was an engineer working for a small company in San Diego, with about 200 employees. One of the executives there was nicknamed “The Hammer” because he “brought the hammer down” regularly on misbehaving employees – and it worked. To cite one example he was famous for: he had a rule regarding meeting attendance. If you accepted an invitation to a meeting, you were expected to show up on time. The first time you were late, you got dressed down in front of the entire meeting. The second time you were late, you were fired right then and there. To my knowledge, exactly two employees were fired (one of them a senior manager) – and every meeting at that company started on time. That has never happened to me at any other company I've ever worked at or with. Late-starting meetings are a standing joke everywhere for their tremendous time-wasting. We were all frightened of The Hammer, but somehow I missed the underlying lesson that his methods worked...
Mark Steyn is back...
Mark Steyn is back ... from whatever evil thing is disturbing his health, and he's got a corker of a piece. It's on the Garland shooting and related topics, and you really should read the whole thing. A paragraph as a teaser:
It'll be a long time before you see "Washington Post Offers No Apology for Attacking Target of Thwarted Attack" or "AP Says It Has No Regrets After Blaming The Victim". The respectable class in the American media share the same goal as the Islamic fanatics: They want to silence Pam Geller. To be sure, they have a mild disagreement about the means to that end - although even then you get the feeling, as with Garry Trudeau and those dozens of PEN novelists' reaction to Charlie Hebdo, that the "narrative" wouldn't change very much if the jihad boys had got luckier and Pam, Geert Wilders, Robert Spencer and a dozen others were all piled up in the Garland morgue.
Progress in Paradise...
Progress in Paradise... Still operating under the delusion that our friends were showing up today, yesterday I finished re-doing the electrical outlets and switches in the living areas upstairs. I also repaired a couple of wall-hanging items that had originally been installed with screws-in-wallboard (don't do it, people!) and had since come loose. Debbie decided this was a good moment to do something we'd already planned to do: buy higher quality fixtures for the bathroom. She ordered it all on Amazon, and it will be here next Tuesday. Something tells me I'll turn into a plumber on Wednesday :)
In the afternoon I was feeling lazy, so I went out to the barn and finished the cat-dish holder project I'd started a few days ago. The finished article is in the photos below, sitting our our kitchen cabinet before we took it down to the cattery. I made this entire thing from a single black walnut board, 50" long, 5 ½" wide, and ¾" thick. The top I made by gluing four boards together, with a top layer that had grain at 90° from the bottom layer. While this isn't the best thing aesthetically, it has the advantage of being almost warp-proof. Since this is a water bowl, I figured the wood was practically guaranteed to get wet, so I'd better pay attention to that. I also finished it with a penetrating oil finish, the better to protect the wood in the first place. To get the hole in the middle for the water bowl, I mounted the square glued-up board onto my lathe with a big chuck, and used a parting tool to cut out the center. That was amazingly easy! The legs were a different sort of challenge. You can't really tell from the photos, but they're made from two glued-together boards, this time with parallel grain. I started with a glued up board 8" long, 5½" wide, and 1½" thick. I sawed that down to four pieces, each 3¾" long, and 1½" square in cross-section. I mounted those as spindles in the lathe, and turned them down to the shapes you see here. One thing you can't see: the top of each leg has a ½" diameter tenon that fits into a ½" diameter hole I drilled into the bottom of the flat part to fix each leg. I'm quite happy with the result. Not bad for a starter project, from a single $11 Home Depot board!
In the afternoon I was feeling lazy, so I went out to the barn and finished the cat-dish holder project I'd started a few days ago. The finished article is in the photos below, sitting our our kitchen cabinet before we took it down to the cattery. I made this entire thing from a single black walnut board, 50" long, 5 ½" wide, and ¾" thick. The top I made by gluing four boards together, with a top layer that had grain at 90° from the bottom layer. While this isn't the best thing aesthetically, it has the advantage of being almost warp-proof. Since this is a water bowl, I figured the wood was practically guaranteed to get wet, so I'd better pay attention to that. I also finished it with a penetrating oil finish, the better to protect the wood in the first place. To get the hole in the middle for the water bowl, I mounted the square glued-up board onto my lathe with a big chuck, and used a parting tool to cut out the center. That was amazingly easy! The legs were a different sort of challenge. You can't really tell from the photos, but they're made from two glued-together boards, this time with parallel grain. I started with a glued up board 8" long, 5½" wide, and 1½" thick. I sawed that down to four pieces, each 3¾" long, and 1½" square in cross-section. I mounted those as spindles in the lathe, and turned them down to the shapes you see here. One thing you can't see: the top of each leg has a ½" diameter tenon that fits into a ½" diameter hole I drilled into the bottom of the flat part to fix each leg. I'm quite happy with the result. Not bad for a starter project, from a single $11 Home Depot board!
So last night...
So last night ... as I was about to go to bed, our phone rings. It's our old friend, Jim B. With his wife Michelle, we were expecting him to arrive for a visit today – until he sheepishly told us that he gave us the wrong date by email! He was off by an entire week – they're not due until next Sunday!
When we were in the U.S. Navy together, he was known as “the goat”. There's a reason why he had that nickname :)
When we were in the U.S. Navy together, he was known as “the goat”. There's a reason why he had that nickname :)