This is the 11th blog entry I've posted in May, which is a pace I probably won't be able to keep up.
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The Strep Throat Fairy visited K at school Friday, and he came home with a fever. (Kevin, not the Strep Throat Fairy.) He has some antibiotics now, and is feeling a lot better.
There has been a lot of illness and flu going around this spring. J tells me that there were days at her middle school recently where over 100 students were out sick. Yikes.
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The Greek Orthodox Church near our house (down Scio Church) is having their annual Ya'ssoo Festival this weekend. I can hear the music from here, but I don't understand the words.
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M had a soccer game today, and it was quite exciting. He had two shots on goal, and one appeared to go into the goal, but the referee didn't call it a goal so it didn't count. The kids on M's team who were nearby swore it was a goal and said we were most certainly robbed. Since they are impartial observers, I will believe them.
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Last night was M's last soccer practice of the season, and the custom is to have a game between the kids and the parents. It was a lot of fun, although I pulled a muscle in my side during the game.
Soccer is for the young.
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Dinner Time = Fun Time
Today at dinner we had a few laughs.
We were discussing the fact that Hershey (one of our cats) is deaf. K asked what would happen if a cat was blind.
K: Would he have a dog?
Mom: A dog?
M: Yeah, you know, a dog to help him see.
Mom: Oh, a dog!
M: He could have a chihuahua.
Mom: A chihauhua?
M: You know - a chihuahua. It's like a dog.
It's true. There are similarities between chihuahuas and dogs. And the image of a chihuahua being a seeing-eye dog for cat is funny. Hershey would probably outweigh it by 5 pounds. Comedy gold!
Later, after both kids did an impromptu multiplication problem at the table:
K: Is there any dessert?
Mom (impressed with the math): Sorry, there's only dessert for dumb kids.
M (with big dopey face): Me dumb.
Maybe you had to be there...
We were discussing the fact that Hershey (one of our cats) is deaf. K asked what would happen if a cat was blind.
K: Would he have a dog?
Mom: A dog?
M: Yeah, you know, a dog to help him see.
Mom: Oh, a dog!
M: He could have a chihuahua.
Mom: A chihauhua?
M: You know - a chihuahua. It's like a dog.
It's true. There are similarities between chihuahuas and dogs. And the image of a chihuahua being a seeing-eye dog for cat is funny. Hershey would probably outweigh it by 5 pounds. Comedy gold!
Later, after both kids did an impromptu multiplication problem at the table:
K: Is there any dessert?
Mom (impressed with the math): Sorry, there's only dessert for dumb kids.
M (with big dopey face): Me dumb.
Maybe you had to be there...
Weekend Update
We went to Chicago this weekend and saw the Harry Potter exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. It was well done. They had costumes from all the characters, props, magic wands, quidditch equipment, and so on. If you're a fan of the movies, you'll recognize most of the items and get to see them up close. If you're not familiar with the movies, they have some video screens showing scenes from the movies that are relevant to the items nearby. My favorite parts were the animated portraits and seeing the magic wands up close.
A few years ago, we saw a similar exhibit with props and costumes from the Star Wars movies, which we all liked.
Our kids are Harry Potter fans and are reading the books, but we're having a problem with the movies. The first few are rated PG, but the next ones are rated PG-13. They get pretty scary, and since the PG movies are already plenty creepy, we're reluctant to let them see the next ones. Some of the characters like the Death Eaters are scary, even for adults.
J is working in a middle school media center (formerly known as a "library") and she says this is common for book series aimed at youth readers - they start off written for middle/high school, and they get more serious and more violent/scary/adult as they go. Harry Potter books start with a little violence and death, and incorporate more and more as they go along. This is because a book series has to grow with its readers - as those middle and high school students read the next book in the series, they aren't interested in reading more books aimed at younger readers - they want grown-up themes and situations. The Twilight books are another recent example -the first book is OK for middle school readers, but subsequent books have more serious things happening, such as naked people hugging and such, things that are not considered appropriate for middle schoolers. This is a dilemma for new readers whose parents may not want them reading the newest books in the series, but it's aimed at faithful readers who have been with the books at the start.
It's too bad they can't make two different versions of the books - one milder version for new readers, and the more grown-up version for older readers.
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I signed up on MentorNet as a potential mentor for a college student. I was just matched with a student, so it will be interesting to see what happens. Most of the communication goes through email, so it does not take a lot of time.
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I'm looking forward to a relaxing Memorial Day, I hope everyone is taking it easy and getting outside to enjoy the weather!
A few years ago, we saw a similar exhibit with props and costumes from the Star Wars movies, which we all liked.
Our kids are Harry Potter fans and are reading the books, but we're having a problem with the movies. The first few are rated PG, but the next ones are rated PG-13. They get pretty scary, and since the PG movies are already plenty creepy, we're reluctant to let them see the next ones. Some of the characters like the Death Eaters are scary, even for adults.
J is working in a middle school media center (formerly known as a "library") and she says this is common for book series aimed at youth readers - they start off written for middle/high school, and they get more serious and more violent/scary/adult as they go. Harry Potter books start with a little violence and death, and incorporate more and more as they go along. This is because a book series has to grow with its readers - as those middle and high school students read the next book in the series, they aren't interested in reading more books aimed at younger readers - they want grown-up themes and situations. The Twilight books are another recent example -the first book is OK for middle school readers, but subsequent books have more serious things happening, such as naked people hugging and such, things that are not considered appropriate for middle schoolers. This is a dilemma for new readers whose parents may not want them reading the newest books in the series, but it's aimed at faithful readers who have been with the books at the start.
It's too bad they can't make two different versions of the books - one milder version for new readers, and the more grown-up version for older readers.
-----
I signed up on MentorNet as a potential mentor for a college student. I was just matched with a student, so it will be interesting to see what happens. Most of the communication goes through email, so it does not take a lot of time.
-----
I'm looking forward to a relaxing Memorial Day, I hope everyone is taking it easy and getting outside to enjoy the weather!
Science Olympiad Results!
We are proud to announce that M's Science Olympiad team won second place in its event on Saturday at the Washtenaw Elementary Science Olympiad. His event was called "Estimania." He was one of three students on his event's team. This picture is M outside Skyline High School, Ann Arbor's new high school, where the Olympiad was held.
The website for the organization is here.
He got to go up on the stage at the awards ceremony and get his medal. M's school also had the honor of winning the overall first prizes for 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades. Hats off to all the Lawton Olympians!
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The day after the Science Olympiad, M performed The Caisson Song at his piano recital. It went off without a hitch. All of the students at the recital did a great job. M has come a long way and is really enjoying music. We sometimes have to tell him to stop singing so loudly with his piano pieces, and we try to limit his whistling. But he has the music gene, and there's only so much we can do.
Cable Boxes and Persistence of Vision, Part Deux
I wrote a while back about cable boxes and the ways Comcast could present commercials even when fast forwarding through a show. The persistence of vision idea certainly doesn't make it easy for them, and assumes they're displaying the ad on their own cable box. I thought of a few more ways they could cheaply advertise.
When you're fast forwarding, the sound stops - you can watch the picture go by, but you can't hear anything. Since the audio isn't being used at this time, Comcast could play a short audio message. It would stop when you stopped fast forwarding. It could figure out what you're watching and customize the message for you. For example, if you’re watching “Lost”, an overwrought, entirely confusing drama that takes place on an island, there might be a quick audio message “See Gilligan’s Island reruns on TNT, weekdays at 4 pm”. If you’re watching Desperate Housewives, you’d get “Bovine Flu hits Michigan – story at 11 on Action News”.
Another idea that would allow them to show little ads all the time would be to put a small logo or ad at the right or left of the bar that displays when you're playing, pausing, fast forwarding, or doing something else. Since that bar already takes up space at the bottom of the screen, they could fill it in a little more with (say) the Best Buy logo or a picture of Bart Simpson next to the Fox logo.
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I bought some pretzels at work the other day because I needed a snack. The pretzels are the only relatively healthy thing in the vending machine. Since I was hungry, I was hoping to get a good-sized bag. But in my wildest dreams I never imagined that the pretzel company made a size just for me! Hungry Size! How lucky can a guy get?
When you're fast forwarding, the sound stops - you can watch the picture go by, but you can't hear anything. Since the audio isn't being used at this time, Comcast could play a short audio message. It would stop when you stopped fast forwarding. It could figure out what you're watching and customize the message for you. For example, if you’re watching “Lost”, an overwrought, entirely confusing drama that takes place on an island, there might be a quick audio message “See Gilligan’s Island reruns on TNT, weekdays at 4 pm”. If you’re watching Desperate Housewives, you’d get “Bovine Flu hits Michigan – story at 11 on Action News”.
Another idea that would allow them to show little ads all the time would be to put a small logo or ad at the right or left of the bar that displays when you're playing, pausing, fast forwarding, or doing something else. Since that bar already takes up space at the bottom of the screen, they could fill it in a little more with (say) the Best Buy logo or a picture of Bart Simpson next to the Fox logo.
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I bought some pretzels at work the other day because I needed a snack. The pretzels are the only relatively healthy thing in the vending machine. Since I was hungry, I was hoping to get a good-sized bag. But in my wildest dreams I never imagined that the pretzel company made a size just for me! Hungry Size! How lucky can a guy get?
I wonder what the other sizes are?
"Not Very Hungry" Size
"Kind of Hungry" Size
"Dinner's In An Hour" Size
"I Had The Hungry Size But I'm Still Hungry" Size
"If You Eat These You'll Wish You'd Bought The Cheetos" Size
When I Was A Young Warthog, Second Verse, A Whole Lot Worse
For some reason that escapes me, I applied for a job at Wendy’s when I was 17.
I first applied at the Wendy’s on West Avenue (in Jackson), but they didn’t call me back. I heard from some friends that the Wendy’s on Airport Road was hiring, so I went out there and interviewed. They gave me a job right away.
There’s a reason they had problems finding people to work there – there was hardly an apartment or home within a mile of the place. It was brand new, really large, and it even had a basement. But it was pretty far from my house, so I couldn’t easily or quickly get there.
On my first day, they showed me how to make fries. How to rotate them, how to salt them, how to put them into the cardboard sleeves. Every time they needed some fries, the manager would turn to me and tell me what size to give her, then I’d hand them to her. Eventually, I took a few steps over to the front counter and put them on the tray myself.
I had a lot of trouble getting the fries to fit into the sleeve at first. One time I grabbed a few that were flopping over with my fingers and stuffed them into the sleeve. The manager was looking right at me, and shook her head “no”. Standing directly behind her, across the counter, was a woman I knew from church, watching me get reprimanded.
I had a hard time sorting out the orders that were called over the speakers. The front register person would call out the order as it was told to her, and the drive-through speaker barked out the orders at the same time. I couldn’t remember which one needed what, so the people on those lines had to continually tell me what to bring them. After several hours of this, I got better.
Three or four weeks after I started, I got a call from the West Avenue Wendy’s, which was less than a mile straight south of my house. I told the manager at Airport Road that I’d like to transfer to the West Ave Wendy’s. I thought she would be fine with it, since it was the same company. Right? But instead it made her grumpy. Something about all the time they take to train someone just to watch them leave. I told her I was sorry, but that travel to and from work was already a problem, and I was likely to leave anyway. This did not make her feel better, either. There was no pleasing this woman.
Working at the new restaurant was a nice change – I had struggled to learn things at the “old” Wendy’s, but at this new Wendy’s I was able to fit in and do just about anything. On my first day, I was assigned the Product Coordinator position, which ran the gamut from “dropping chicken” (into the fryer, not on the floor) to putting potatoes into the potato oven to washing dishes. I did a good job, and I enjoyed not having the speakers bossing me around from two different directions.
I learned the other positions – salad bar, register, grill, line coordinator, and so on. They taught me how to make change, and were sure that I would do it wrong, since every other trainee on the register did it wrong. Most trainees tried to subtract the total from the amount given, and would get the wrong answer, or stand there for 30 seconds figuring it out. The manager told me to count UP from the total to the given amount, which made sense to me right away.
While I was learning the register, the manager called me in to the office at the end of my shift to count the money. The first time I did this, I noticed he was flipping the bills so they were all facing the same way. I went through my stack and organized mine the same way. When he asked me how much money I had, I didn’t know, because I didn’t realize I was supposed to count it. I was just flipping.
This Wendy’s was a lot smaller than the one I had been at before – it didn’t have a break room or a basement. There was a big walk-in freezer outside the building, and two smaller ones inside. The outside freezer was mostly for buns. The inside freezer was for fries and chicken, and the walk-in fridge had everything else – beef, cheese, vegetables, etc. When it was hot outside, it was even hotter inside, and we could duck into the fridge for a minute to cool off.
We had rules for where things had to go in the fridge – the ground beef (which was indeed fresh, never frozen) was always to be stored on the bottom shelf along with the raw chicken. You can’t store anything below raw chicken.
Work was sometimes fun, sometimes drudgery. It depended on who was working that day. Some people were good workers and did their jobs and helped each other out. As you would expect, we had people who would refuse to do parts of their jobs (such as wash dishes) and we’d end up doing them ourselves because we needed the dishes and didn’t want to argue. (I was afraid of a few of my coworkers, so I figured out what they would not help me with, and I didn’t bother asking them.) For the most part, though, I liked my coworkers, and we were able to have fun and tell jokes and trade gossip while still getting our work done. Once I got used to a position, it was easy to do, even if we were really busy. Making sandwiches became automatic (mayonnaise, ketchup, pickle, onion, tomato, lettuce, in that order, or white/red/green/white/red/green. Mustard is added directly to the patty, or the cheese if it’s a cheeseburger.) Running the grill became automatic, and running the register was easy after doing it for 15 or 20 hours. (Interesting fact: When preparing a cheeseburger, the grill operator melts the cheese directly on the grill, then lifts it with the edge of a spatula and drapes it over the patty.) It didn’t matter whether we had 100 customers or twelve, there wasn’t much a customer could to do stump us. As an adult, I learned this was the beauty of a well-run franchise, with all the roles defined and the stations set up to make things as easy as possible.
I learned to walk flat-footed, like walking on ice, because it was not unusual for the floor to be a little greasy or wet. One of my coworkers slipped and fell backwards once, and her head bounced on the floor. She was OK, but there was only so much they could do to keep the floor dry. That same coworker fell victim to a money changing scam a year later, and I realized I was fortunate to have never had a money problem for all the hours I spent at the register.
My work schedule varied from week to week. My typical school-day shift would start at 4, and ended at either 7:30 or 11:30. Sometimes it was 7:30-11:30. Wendy’s closed at 10:30 on school nights, and closing took an hour. It was not unusual for me to close two or three nights a week. When I turned 18, the manager who did the schedules noticed it, and scheduled me to close three nights in a row the following week – Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I told him that I couldn’t do that – I still had to go to school and it was helpful if I was awake for my classes. He agreed not to close me two nights in a row from then on. Many of the other high school students who worked there were not allowed to close on school nights, so he scheduled me as much as possible to close. My parents obviously didn’t love me, or they would have set the same rule for me.
I didn’t have a favorite job, but to my surprise, the drive-through register job was fairly easy. If it got really busy, someone would come over and help make drinks, and even take orders while I stuck my head out the window and took money. If it wasn’t busy, I’d make the drinks myself. The people who put things into the bags were usually good enough that I didn’t have to carefully check their work, which made the drive-through register one of the easiest jobs. Working in the back room was pretty good too – as long as you followed the schedule for when to put more potatoes in the oven, and listened for someone telling you they were running out of chicken, you could decide what needed to be done. I could help the girls working on the salad bar, or mop a floor, or do dishes. (It was always girls doing the salad bar.) On weekends, and during the summer, I was sometimes scheduled at 7 am to open the store. We’d make taco salads, mix up chili, move new pans full of patties up to the front, refresh the cheese bin, fill up the condiments, and so on. It was pretty easy work, and it was fun because there were no customers. Then we’d open at 10:30, and I’d run the grill until lunch was over.
My least favorite thing to do was to take the grease buckets out and dump them into the bins at the back of the parking lot. These days, that kind of grease will run your car, but back then all it did was smell terrible and get on your clothes. Being a teenager, most of the hard, physical work didn’t bother me at all, other than being boring (see my recent post about working at Melling.)
I learned the important insider tricks while I was there. When we had a break, we were given a 50% discount on food, so I’d make the most of that. I learned that wrapping the large chocolate chip cookies in foil and putting them in the potato oven for a few minutes made them nice and gooey. I learned that a little of the frosty mix we poured into the machines was a nice snack. Dipping gooey chocolate chip cookies into a frozen Frosty was, as comedian Rich Hall would say, “a big fat donkey ride to heaven.” Depending on the manager on duty, we were allowed to order a burger at break time, then go back and it make it ourselves, so I’d pile mine up with pickles and onions. We used to have wheat buns (excuse me – multi-grain buns) and I loved those. I was disappointed when they got rid of them.
(As an aside, I filled out a health survey form for MSU when I was about to start my freshman year. They asked how many times I ate fast food each week, and I selected the option “6 or more”. When I got my health assessment back from them, one of their suggestions was “Eat fast food less often.”)
I made some good friends when I was there – I still remember some of their names and occasionally ran into them for years after. We had some fun, and I think the managers were willing to put up with a little of it as long as everything got done. A coworker and I once asked the manager if we could roll up our (short) sleeves because they were getting in the way of our muscles. The manager made us flex our biceps so he could see the problem. We both made our best muscles and he let the other guy roll up his sleeves and told me to keep mine straight. I tried to explain that just because the other guy had arm fat doesn’t mean he had bigger muscles than I did, but I didn’t get anywhere. We also had a manager who would let us start closing on “bar time”, a reference to the common bar practice of setting clocks 10 minutes fast to allow for the extra time needed to shoo drunks out at closing. We’d ask if we could close “bar time” and start discreetly dismantling the salad bar early and scrubbing the grill.
For a while, there was a guy who worked there who claimed he could create a cleaning agent for any kind of mess. You’d tell him you had to mop up Thousand Island that had spilled, and he’d say “I know what will work for that!” and he’d throw some soap packets and other things into a mop bucket and present it to you. One day he decided that ammonia and bleach would work to clean up some stain or another, and we had to clear out of there for a while because of the fumes. His enthusiasm exceeded his abilities.
All things considered, it was a pretty good job. I met a lot of people and had some fun. I got some experience dealing with different people, working together as a team, and being able to focus on multiple things at once.
I first applied at the Wendy’s on West Avenue (in Jackson), but they didn’t call me back. I heard from some friends that the Wendy’s on Airport Road was hiring, so I went out there and interviewed. They gave me a job right away.
There’s a reason they had problems finding people to work there – there was hardly an apartment or home within a mile of the place. It was brand new, really large, and it even had a basement. But it was pretty far from my house, so I couldn’t easily or quickly get there.
On my first day, they showed me how to make fries. How to rotate them, how to salt them, how to put them into the cardboard sleeves. Every time they needed some fries, the manager would turn to me and tell me what size to give her, then I’d hand them to her. Eventually, I took a few steps over to the front counter and put them on the tray myself.
I had a lot of trouble getting the fries to fit into the sleeve at first. One time I grabbed a few that were flopping over with my fingers and stuffed them into the sleeve. The manager was looking right at me, and shook her head “no”. Standing directly behind her, across the counter, was a woman I knew from church, watching me get reprimanded.
I had a hard time sorting out the orders that were called over the speakers. The front register person would call out the order as it was told to her, and the drive-through speaker barked out the orders at the same time. I couldn’t remember which one needed what, so the people on those lines had to continually tell me what to bring them. After several hours of this, I got better.
Three or four weeks after I started, I got a call from the West Avenue Wendy’s, which was less than a mile straight south of my house. I told the manager at Airport Road that I’d like to transfer to the West Ave Wendy’s. I thought she would be fine with it, since it was the same company. Right? But instead it made her grumpy. Something about all the time they take to train someone just to watch them leave. I told her I was sorry, but that travel to and from work was already a problem, and I was likely to leave anyway. This did not make her feel better, either. There was no pleasing this woman.
Working at the new restaurant was a nice change – I had struggled to learn things at the “old” Wendy’s, but at this new Wendy’s I was able to fit in and do just about anything. On my first day, I was assigned the Product Coordinator position, which ran the gamut from “dropping chicken” (into the fryer, not on the floor) to putting potatoes into the potato oven to washing dishes. I did a good job, and I enjoyed not having the speakers bossing me around from two different directions.
I learned the other positions – salad bar, register, grill, line coordinator, and so on. They taught me how to make change, and were sure that I would do it wrong, since every other trainee on the register did it wrong. Most trainees tried to subtract the total from the amount given, and would get the wrong answer, or stand there for 30 seconds figuring it out. The manager told me to count UP from the total to the given amount, which made sense to me right away.
While I was learning the register, the manager called me in to the office at the end of my shift to count the money. The first time I did this, I noticed he was flipping the bills so they were all facing the same way. I went through my stack and organized mine the same way. When he asked me how much money I had, I didn’t know, because I didn’t realize I was supposed to count it. I was just flipping.
This Wendy’s was a lot smaller than the one I had been at before – it didn’t have a break room or a basement. There was a big walk-in freezer outside the building, and two smaller ones inside. The outside freezer was mostly for buns. The inside freezer was for fries and chicken, and the walk-in fridge had everything else – beef, cheese, vegetables, etc. When it was hot outside, it was even hotter inside, and we could duck into the fridge for a minute to cool off.
We had rules for where things had to go in the fridge – the ground beef (which was indeed fresh, never frozen) was always to be stored on the bottom shelf along with the raw chicken. You can’t store anything below raw chicken.
Work was sometimes fun, sometimes drudgery. It depended on who was working that day. Some people were good workers and did their jobs and helped each other out. As you would expect, we had people who would refuse to do parts of their jobs (such as wash dishes) and we’d end up doing them ourselves because we needed the dishes and didn’t want to argue. (I was afraid of a few of my coworkers, so I figured out what they would not help me with, and I didn’t bother asking them.) For the most part, though, I liked my coworkers, and we were able to have fun and tell jokes and trade gossip while still getting our work done. Once I got used to a position, it was easy to do, even if we were really busy. Making sandwiches became automatic (mayonnaise, ketchup, pickle, onion, tomato, lettuce, in that order, or white/red/green/white/red/green. Mustard is added directly to the patty, or the cheese if it’s a cheeseburger.) Running the grill became automatic, and running the register was easy after doing it for 15 or 20 hours. (Interesting fact: When preparing a cheeseburger, the grill operator melts the cheese directly on the grill, then lifts it with the edge of a spatula and drapes it over the patty.) It didn’t matter whether we had 100 customers or twelve, there wasn’t much a customer could to do stump us. As an adult, I learned this was the beauty of a well-run franchise, with all the roles defined and the stations set up to make things as easy as possible.
I learned to walk flat-footed, like walking on ice, because it was not unusual for the floor to be a little greasy or wet. One of my coworkers slipped and fell backwards once, and her head bounced on the floor. She was OK, but there was only so much they could do to keep the floor dry. That same coworker fell victim to a money changing scam a year later, and I realized I was fortunate to have never had a money problem for all the hours I spent at the register.
My work schedule varied from week to week. My typical school-day shift would start at 4, and ended at either 7:30 or 11:30. Sometimes it was 7:30-11:30. Wendy’s closed at 10:30 on school nights, and closing took an hour. It was not unusual for me to close two or three nights a week. When I turned 18, the manager who did the schedules noticed it, and scheduled me to close three nights in a row the following week – Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I told him that I couldn’t do that – I still had to go to school and it was helpful if I was awake for my classes. He agreed not to close me two nights in a row from then on. Many of the other high school students who worked there were not allowed to close on school nights, so he scheduled me as much as possible to close. My parents obviously didn’t love me, or they would have set the same rule for me.
I didn’t have a favorite job, but to my surprise, the drive-through register job was fairly easy. If it got really busy, someone would come over and help make drinks, and even take orders while I stuck my head out the window and took money. If it wasn’t busy, I’d make the drinks myself. The people who put things into the bags were usually good enough that I didn’t have to carefully check their work, which made the drive-through register one of the easiest jobs. Working in the back room was pretty good too – as long as you followed the schedule for when to put more potatoes in the oven, and listened for someone telling you they were running out of chicken, you could decide what needed to be done. I could help the girls working on the salad bar, or mop a floor, or do dishes. (It was always girls doing the salad bar.) On weekends, and during the summer, I was sometimes scheduled at 7 am to open the store. We’d make taco salads, mix up chili, move new pans full of patties up to the front, refresh the cheese bin, fill up the condiments, and so on. It was pretty easy work, and it was fun because there were no customers. Then we’d open at 10:30, and I’d run the grill until lunch was over.
My least favorite thing to do was to take the grease buckets out and dump them into the bins at the back of the parking lot. These days, that kind of grease will run your car, but back then all it did was smell terrible and get on your clothes. Being a teenager, most of the hard, physical work didn’t bother me at all, other than being boring (see my recent post about working at Melling.)
I learned the important insider tricks while I was there. When we had a break, we were given a 50% discount on food, so I’d make the most of that. I learned that wrapping the large chocolate chip cookies in foil and putting them in the potato oven for a few minutes made them nice and gooey. I learned that a little of the frosty mix we poured into the machines was a nice snack. Dipping gooey chocolate chip cookies into a frozen Frosty was, as comedian Rich Hall would say, “a big fat donkey ride to heaven.” Depending on the manager on duty, we were allowed to order a burger at break time, then go back and it make it ourselves, so I’d pile mine up with pickles and onions. We used to have wheat buns (excuse me – multi-grain buns) and I loved those. I was disappointed when they got rid of them.
(As an aside, I filled out a health survey form for MSU when I was about to start my freshman year. They asked how many times I ate fast food each week, and I selected the option “6 or more”. When I got my health assessment back from them, one of their suggestions was “Eat fast food less often.”)
I made some good friends when I was there – I still remember some of their names and occasionally ran into them for years after. We had some fun, and I think the managers were willing to put up with a little of it as long as everything got done. A coworker and I once asked the manager if we could roll up our (short) sleeves because they were getting in the way of our muscles. The manager made us flex our biceps so he could see the problem. We both made our best muscles and he let the other guy roll up his sleeves and told me to keep mine straight. I tried to explain that just because the other guy had arm fat doesn’t mean he had bigger muscles than I did, but I didn’t get anywhere. We also had a manager who would let us start closing on “bar time”, a reference to the common bar practice of setting clocks 10 minutes fast to allow for the extra time needed to shoo drunks out at closing. We’d ask if we could close “bar time” and start discreetly dismantling the salad bar early and scrubbing the grill.
For a while, there was a guy who worked there who claimed he could create a cleaning agent for any kind of mess. You’d tell him you had to mop up Thousand Island that had spilled, and he’d say “I know what will work for that!” and he’d throw some soap packets and other things into a mop bucket and present it to you. One day he decided that ammonia and bleach would work to clean up some stain or another, and we had to clear out of there for a while because of the fumes. His enthusiasm exceeded his abilities.
All things considered, it was a pretty good job. I met a lot of people and had some fun. I got some experience dealing with different people, working together as a team, and being able to focus on multiple things at once.
What's Up With All The Big Watches?
There was a Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoon that was a play on “Jack and the Beanstalk.” The giant in the story was wearing a wristwatch, which turned out to be a grandfather clock strapped to his wrist. I won’t go into the physics of why that wouldn’t work (cartoons and physics are perpetually at odds with one another) but I have been reminded of this grandfather clock “wristwatch” lately as I’ve been looking for a new watch.
I have been searching for one I can wear to soccer games, around the house, to keep track of how long the hamburgers have been on the grill, and so on. Ideally, this new watch would have a stop watch function, and at minimum it would have a rotating bezel I could use to keep track of minutes. It can’t be too fancy or too cheap, something in the middle would be great.
I came across this watch, and it looked really neat. It’s a little more than I would want to spend, but it’s so attractive I kept going back to it to take another look at it.
Open this link and look at the dimensions of the watch.
http://www.fossil.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=12052&catalogId=10052&departmentCategoryId=30001&categoryId=211555&productId=22086196&N=0&Ns=p_weight0p_order_history1&rec=1&pn=c&imagePath=CH2573&utm_medium=product_image====================
It’s 44mm across. I asked M to use his estimating and math skills to figure out how many inches that was, and the answer is about 1.75 inches. Which doesn’t sound very big at first. But take a ruler, hold it up to your wrist, and imagine you are wearing a watch that is almost two inches across. That’s a HUGE watch. In fact, most of the men’s watches for sale these days are gigantic. I tried on some watches last winter at a department store, and I couldn’t make myself buy one, even though they were nice-looking. They’re too big!
On the other hand, a hubcap-sized watch might be useful. For example, these watches do tell time very well. You can see the time from farther away than a normal watch, which helps if you have failing eyesight. You could use your giant watch as a weapon in case you are approached by a mugger. You can point it towards the sun to make big circular reflections on the walls and floor to tease your cats. I’m not sure, but you may be able to store a small snack inside it. And a watch like this could be helpful if you are in a court of law attempting to prove that you own a watch – the jury will believe you, because they will see your huge watch, and be able to hear it ticking from across the room.
I have been searching for one I can wear to soccer games, around the house, to keep track of how long the hamburgers have been on the grill, and so on. Ideally, this new watch would have a stop watch function, and at minimum it would have a rotating bezel I could use to keep track of minutes. It can’t be too fancy or too cheap, something in the middle would be great.
I came across this watch, and it looked really neat. It’s a little more than I would want to spend, but it’s so attractive I kept going back to it to take another look at it.
Open this link and look at the dimensions of the watch.
http://www.fossil.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=12052&catalogId=10052&departmentCategoryId=30001&categoryId=211555&productId=22086196&N=0&Ns=p_weight0p_order_history1&rec=1&pn=c&imagePath=CH2573&utm_medium=product_image====================
It’s 44mm across. I asked M to use his estimating and math skills to figure out how many inches that was, and the answer is about 1.75 inches. Which doesn’t sound very big at first. But take a ruler, hold it up to your wrist, and imagine you are wearing a watch that is almost two inches across. That’s a HUGE watch. In fact, most of the men’s watches for sale these days are gigantic. I tried on some watches last winter at a department store, and I couldn’t make myself buy one, even though they were nice-looking. They’re too big!
On the other hand, a hubcap-sized watch might be useful. For example, these watches do tell time very well. You can see the time from farther away than a normal watch, which helps if you have failing eyesight. You could use your giant watch as a weapon in case you are approached by a mugger. You can point it towards the sun to make big circular reflections on the walls and floor to tease your cats. I’m not sure, but you may be able to store a small snack inside it. And a watch like this could be helpful if you are in a court of law attempting to prove that you own a watch – the jury will believe you, because they will see your huge watch, and be able to hear it ticking from across the room.
When I Was A Young Warthog
Don't worry - I'm not going to sing the song from "The Lion King". However, I did hear the song "Like a Rock" by Bob Seger on the radio when I was driving home from work today. It always reminds me of the summer I worked at Melling Tool in a factory making oil pumps. Here's a link to their website.
The other MSU student used to stop by my house and drive me there. He was a leadfoot, and he told me the reason the frame of his SUV (Ford Bronco, maybe) was bent was because he had rolled it once going too fast around a curve. I believed him.
The factory was set up up with a number of different assembly lines, each with a big steel tub full of iron blanks at one end, and a big steel tub of finished pumps at the other. The blanks were roughly the outer shape of the finished product, and were solid iron.
There were a few lines that had huge machines at the front - they were operated by the most senior guys. The operator would put a blank into the machine, clamp it in, then push a button. The machine would spin to the right and take the blank to its first stop, usually a milling machine or a drill press. As the new blank spun to the right, a blank which had been passed through several other stations arrived back at the operator's position and was removed. This pump was removed and passed down the line to the next person.
I never saw a college student beat a full-timer in the bolt competition. I was smart enough not to accept a challenge in the first place. I knew I'd never win.
They also played tricks on the college students. One guy brought a piece that had left my station and told me one of the holes was too small. He said I need to go ask the foreman for a Hole Expander. I went over to the foreman and said "Someone's playing a joke on me, but I can play along. I'm supposed to ask you for a hole expander." I pointed to the hole and held it up for him to see. He laughed at me, and told me to go back and keep working. The guys on the line were satisfied they had tricked me, and I hoped that the trick-playing was over and they'd go after someone else next time. It was in good fun, of course, and overall the employees were really nice guys. Many of them supported their families with their job, and they were hard workers and understood how important it was to pay attention to details and safety.
It was a very hot summer that year, and rained very little. The full-timers told us if the temperature on the floor got to 110 degress, they'd call off work for the day. It never did - they were always able to get a fan running or open the doors to get the air moving. It was plenty hot, though. Working around all the machines, and wearing jeans and boots, there was no way to stay cool. The first couple of weeks there, I lost a lot of water weight from sweating. I came home with rust all over my shirt - lots of sweat, combined with tiny bits of iron flying from one machine or another. It made an interesting pattern.
When I would come home from work, I'd shake out my hair outside the house, then take a bath. In retrospect, I should have just hosed myself down outside and changed into new clothes in the garage. There were some ways we could keep clean if we wanted - there was a white cream of some kind we rubbed on our arms which prevented the real grime from taking hold - at the end of the shift, it was easy to clean off, and it kept our arms and the backs of our hands clean for the most part. Some of the guys went to the little bins of kerosene that were posted at various places and used it to clean out their fingernails. (I don't remember why the kerosene was there, I think it was to rinse off parts. I never used it for any of the positions I worked.) In the final analysis, there isn't much we could do to stay clean, though. It was a hot, dusty place, and dust finds its way wherever it wants.
It was a noisy place too, and Melling provided little foam earplugs. Some people didn't use them, of course, but I knew I should. I learned to put them in halfway - enough to block out the real screeching noises, but not so far that I couldn't have a conversation with the person next to me or across from me.
When we worked on the same line day after day, we would rotate jobs. Each day we would move one space down the line and man the next station. We would look forward to the day we would use the compressed air to spray out the pumps - that was easy, and you didn't even have to look at what you were doing. Some of the jobs were tough - putting the gears in, meshing them, then putting them on the motor and running them was something that was hard to do consistently. The guy who gave me a ride to work missed some time that summer because he had pushed down on the gears while the motor was running, and tore up the palm of his hand. We all gave them a tap with our palms to get them to seat properly while the motor was running, which we weren't supposed to do, but he didn't tense up his hand enough to keep the skin out of there. Some pumps didn't have gears that meshed in the middle, and those were no problem to put together - the gear just dropped in.
When we rotated jobs, we'd ask the last person who did it if there were any shortcuts. They would tell us the trick if there was one: "Put that part in first, hold it with your finger, then put the other part in." Or: "Put the left gear in first, let it drop, put the pump on the motor, then put in the right gear." There were a few guys who didn't want the advice - they preferred to struggle along and figure out their own tricks. I didn't understand them then, and I still don't.
It was a men's world for sure. There were no women in the shop, except for once a week, when the cleaning ladies would walk to the back to empty the garbage can or something. Even though they did not resemble the women you'd typically expect men to whistle at, a lot of the men whistled at them anyway.
The Melling family, or the Melling companies, owned the car driven by Bill Elliott, who, at the time, was the best driver in NASCAR. He won the Winston Cup Championship that year. They brought over his car, or one just like it, to the parking lot and we all got to go out and Ooh and Ahh over it. I know very little about cars, so I just Oohed and Ahhed at appropriate times and left it at that. We were all given two free tickets to MIS to see a race, so my friend, Craig, and I went out to MIS, accompanied by a few packs of foam earplugs. Craig and I yelled at the top of our lungs to each other for a few hours (one cannot talk to one's friends at a race), got massively sunburned, took a nap in his car to wait out the traffic, then went to Ella Sharp to do some golfing.
Working 40-hour weeks was new to me - I had worked some long days at my previous job at Wendy's, but never like these. Working at Wendy's did prepare me somewhat for the heat, though; standing between the grill and the fryers on a July day was not for the feeble. I think I surprised myself at how well I held out, and how much stamina I had at that job, standing all that time in boots, and putting up with the heat. When you're 20 and healthy, it's not that hard.
I didn't go back the following summer - I landed a programming job instead at MSU and stayed there.
Stay tuned for the next verse of "When I Was A Young Warthog".
When I was 20 and finishing my second year of college, my brother let me know about the summer job he had just landed at a factory in Jackson. He was going to work on an assembly line putting together oil pumps, and make good money doing it. I think the pay was around $7.50 an hour, which was great for 1988. Since MSU was on the quarter system, I didn't finish the school year until the beginning of June. This meant that there were no day shift jobs available when I got out, but they did offer another MSU student and me a second-shift job, which we took.
The other MSU student used to stop by my house and drive me there. He was a leadfoot, and he told me the reason the frame of his SUV (Ford Bronco, maybe) was bent was because he had rolled it once going too fast around a curve. I believed him.
The factory was set up up with a number of different assembly lines, each with a big steel tub full of iron blanks at one end, and a big steel tub of finished pumps at the other. The blanks were roughly the outer shape of the finished product, and were solid iron.
There were a few lines that had huge machines at the front - they were operated by the most senior guys. The operator would put a blank into the machine, clamp it in, then push a button. The machine would spin to the right and take the blank to its first stop, usually a milling machine or a drill press. As the new blank spun to the right, a blank which had been passed through several other stations arrived back at the operator's position and was removed. This pump was removed and passed down the line to the next person.
Depending on the demand, we were assigned to a different line. We might spend two weeks on the same line, or sometimes only a day or two on a line before being moved. If someone called in sick or was on vacation, someone would be pulled over to fill in.
We did a lot of different things with the pumps as we assembled them - we sometimes put them on a lathe and pushed a button, and the lathe would automatically cut out a perfect stalk for the pump to attach to some other part. We had compressed air booths where we sprayed the shavings out of the newly-milled spaces. We put gears into the holes, then pressed them onto motorized stands to spin the gears together and seat them to the bottom of their compartment. We put springs inside holes and pressed caps onto the holes. We used compressed air wrenches to bolt the tops onto the pumps. We clamped the pumps into little booths that had multiple machines that worked on the pump at the same time - one from the top and one from the right.
We had to clean up the floor at the end of the night, since it was covered with iron shavings. We filled wheelbarrows with shavings and dumped them into a big bin at the back of the shop to be picked up by the iron recycling truck. Any bad pumps that hadn't been finished or weren't done to the right specifications were thrown in here as well.
The fact that there were a number of college students at the factory in the summer annoyed some of the full-time employees. They felt a little like the students looked down on the them, so they would challenge the students to bolt races. Starting with a pile of pumps, you would have to mount one on the bench, put a top on it, and put 4 bolts in. The guy with the most pumps done was the winner. In order to put the bolts in, you first had to start them with your fingers, and after having handled thousands of bolts, I can start a bolt better than the average person.
I never saw a college student beat a full-timer in the bolt competition. I was smart enough not to accept a challenge in the first place. I knew I'd never win.
They also played tricks on the college students. One guy brought a piece that had left my station and told me one of the holes was too small. He said I need to go ask the foreman for a Hole Expander. I went over to the foreman and said "Someone's playing a joke on me, but I can play along. I'm supposed to ask you for a hole expander." I pointed to the hole and held it up for him to see. He laughed at me, and told me to go back and keep working. The guys on the line were satisfied they had tricked me, and I hoped that the trick-playing was over and they'd go after someone else next time. It was in good fun, of course, and overall the employees were really nice guys. Many of them supported their families with their job, and they were hard workers and understood how important it was to pay attention to details and safety.
It was a very hot summer that year, and rained very little. The full-timers told us if the temperature on the floor got to 110 degress, they'd call off work for the day. It never did - they were always able to get a fan running or open the doors to get the air moving. It was plenty hot, though. Working around all the machines, and wearing jeans and boots, there was no way to stay cool. The first couple of weeks there, I lost a lot of water weight from sweating. I came home with rust all over my shirt - lots of sweat, combined with tiny bits of iron flying from one machine or another. It made an interesting pattern.
When I would come home from work, I'd shake out my hair outside the house, then take a bath. In retrospect, I should have just hosed myself down outside and changed into new clothes in the garage. There were some ways we could keep clean if we wanted - there was a white cream of some kind we rubbed on our arms which prevented the real grime from taking hold - at the end of the shift, it was easy to clean off, and it kept our arms and the backs of our hands clean for the most part. Some of the guys went to the little bins of kerosene that were posted at various places and used it to clean out their fingernails. (I don't remember why the kerosene was there, I think it was to rinse off parts. I never used it for any of the positions I worked.) In the final analysis, there isn't much we could do to stay clean, though. It was a hot, dusty place, and dust finds its way wherever it wants.
It was a noisy place too, and Melling provided little foam earplugs. Some people didn't use them, of course, but I knew I should. I learned to put them in halfway - enough to block out the real screeching noises, but not so far that I couldn't have a conversation with the person next to me or across from me.
When we worked on the same line day after day, we would rotate jobs. Each day we would move one space down the line and man the next station. We would look forward to the day we would use the compressed air to spray out the pumps - that was easy, and you didn't even have to look at what you were doing. Some of the jobs were tough - putting the gears in, meshing them, then putting them on the motor and running them was something that was hard to do consistently. The guy who gave me a ride to work missed some time that summer because he had pushed down on the gears while the motor was running, and tore up the palm of his hand. We all gave them a tap with our palms to get them to seat properly while the motor was running, which we weren't supposed to do, but he didn't tense up his hand enough to keep the skin out of there. Some pumps didn't have gears that meshed in the middle, and those were no problem to put together - the gear just dropped in.
When we rotated jobs, we'd ask the last person who did it if there were any shortcuts. They would tell us the trick if there was one: "Put that part in first, hold it with your finger, then put the other part in." Or: "Put the left gear in first, let it drop, put the pump on the motor, then put in the right gear." There were a few guys who didn't want the advice - they preferred to struggle along and figure out their own tricks. I didn't understand them then, and I still don't.
It was a men's world for sure. There were no women in the shop, except for once a week, when the cleaning ladies would walk to the back to empty the garbage can or something. Even though they did not resemble the women you'd typically expect men to whistle at, a lot of the men whistled at them anyway.
The Melling family, or the Melling companies, owned the car driven by Bill Elliott, who, at the time, was the best driver in NASCAR. He won the Winston Cup Championship that year. They brought over his car, or one just like it, to the parking lot and we all got to go out and Ooh and Ahh over it. I know very little about cars, so I just Oohed and Ahhed at appropriate times and left it at that. We were all given two free tickets to MIS to see a race, so my friend, Craig, and I went out to MIS, accompanied by a few packs of foam earplugs. Craig and I yelled at the top of our lungs to each other for a few hours (one cannot talk to one's friends at a race), got massively sunburned, took a nap in his car to wait out the traffic, then went to Ella Sharp to do some golfing.
Working 40-hour weeks was new to me - I had worked some long days at my previous job at Wendy's, but never like these. Working at Wendy's did prepare me somewhat for the heat, though; standing between the grill and the fryers on a July day was not for the feeble. I think I surprised myself at how well I held out, and how much stamina I had at that job, standing all that time in boots, and putting up with the heat. When you're 20 and healthy, it's not that hard.
I didn't go back the following summer - I landed a programming job instead at MSU and stayed there.
Stay tuned for the next verse of "When I Was A Young Warthog".
Cable Boxes and Persistence of Vision
Our DVR remote control has a button you can push that will automatically rewind the show 15 seconds, so if you were having trouble hearing an actor, you can hit the 15-second rewind button and listen to it again. If you fast forward too much when skipping a commercial, you can hit the 15-second rewind button and go back.
But the remotes do not have a 15-second fast forward button. The reason? They don’t want to give you a convenient way to cleanly skip commercials, which are typically multiples of 15 or 30 seconds in length. You can still fast forward through the commercials, but you have to pay attention. TV networks would be very, very unhappy with cable companies if they gave their customers a simple way to skip commercials.
Since many of the networks hate DVRs, they have tried to get agreements with cable companies to not allow fast forwarding. They have also tried to get agreements with cable box manufacturers to allow them (the networks) to broadcast a special signal along with a TV show that tells the cable box that it may not allow fast forwarding during a certain program. For example, if they didn’t want you to be able to fast forward through “The Simpsons”, they would broadcast a special signal that the cable box would have to obey, and the cable box would disallow fast forwarding for that show. They could also add a signal that indicates that the show may not be recorded at all, or a signal that limits the number of times a show may be watched, or a signal that indicates that the show may only be watched in the 24 hours following the original broadcast. Pay-per-view movies already have limits like these, and I'm sure it would be no trouble for them to apply them to regular TV shows.
Instead of fighting fast forwarding, the networks could devise a way to take advantage of it. One way is to sell an advertisement in a long strip at the bottom of the screen, like the tickers on some news channels. It would be set up to display a message very slowly when watching the commercials at normal speed, but will show a legible message during fast forwarding. They could even time it somehow to show a legible message regardless of the speed the commercials are being fast forwarded. By knowing the standard fast forward speeds of the major cable boxes, they could use a computer to calculate a way to show messages that will be legible at different speeds, perhaps by using different colors.
Using persistence of vision (see some links below) you could arrange a series of colored dots or other shapes to produce messages that display correctly at different speeds. A common persistence of vision object is a clock, which consists of a thin arm covered with LED lights which protrudes from a base. The arm waves back and forth like the arm of a metronome. As it moves back and forth, the lights go on and off in a controlled way, and your brain sorts out the lights that are displayed and combines them into numbers. It's kind of like writing a letter with a sparkler - you see the light for a brief time after the sparkler has already moved to another position, because your brain sees it that way. For the clock, the lights "stay" long enough that you can read the time, or the message that it displays.
Some people have applied this idead to bicycle wheels -when you pedal the bike, strips of LEDs on the spokes will turn on and off and appear to draw a picture.
Persistence of vision clock
http://www.innovatoys.com/xp3.htm
Same idea in a mechanical form - a Zoetrope.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoetrope
Bicycle wheel persistence of vision.
http://4north.no-ip.com:8080/micro/
But the remotes do not have a 15-second fast forward button. The reason? They don’t want to give you a convenient way to cleanly skip commercials, which are typically multiples of 15 or 30 seconds in length. You can still fast forward through the commercials, but you have to pay attention. TV networks would be very, very unhappy with cable companies if they gave their customers a simple way to skip commercials.
Since many of the networks hate DVRs, they have tried to get agreements with cable companies to not allow fast forwarding. They have also tried to get agreements with cable box manufacturers to allow them (the networks) to broadcast a special signal along with a TV show that tells the cable box that it may not allow fast forwarding during a certain program. For example, if they didn’t want you to be able to fast forward through “The Simpsons”, they would broadcast a special signal that the cable box would have to obey, and the cable box would disallow fast forwarding for that show. They could also add a signal that indicates that the show may not be recorded at all, or a signal that limits the number of times a show may be watched, or a signal that indicates that the show may only be watched in the 24 hours following the original broadcast. Pay-per-view movies already have limits like these, and I'm sure it would be no trouble for them to apply them to regular TV shows.
Instead of fighting fast forwarding, the networks could devise a way to take advantage of it. One way is to sell an advertisement in a long strip at the bottom of the screen, like the tickers on some news channels. It would be set up to display a message very slowly when watching the commercials at normal speed, but will show a legible message during fast forwarding. They could even time it somehow to show a legible message regardless of the speed the commercials are being fast forwarded. By knowing the standard fast forward speeds of the major cable boxes, they could use a computer to calculate a way to show messages that will be legible at different speeds, perhaps by using different colors.
Using persistence of vision (see some links below) you could arrange a series of colored dots or other shapes to produce messages that display correctly at different speeds. A common persistence of vision object is a clock, which consists of a thin arm covered with LED lights which protrudes from a base. The arm waves back and forth like the arm of a metronome. As it moves back and forth, the lights go on and off in a controlled way, and your brain sorts out the lights that are displayed and combines them into numbers. It's kind of like writing a letter with a sparkler - you see the light for a brief time after the sparkler has already moved to another position, because your brain sees it that way. For the clock, the lights "stay" long enough that you can read the time, or the message that it displays.
Some people have applied this idead to bicycle wheels -when you pedal the bike, strips of LEDs on the spokes will turn on and off and appear to draw a picture.
Persistence of vision clock
http://www.innovatoys.com/xp3.htm
Same idea in a mechanical form - a Zoetrope.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoetrope
Bicycle wheel persistence of vision.
http://4north.no-ip.com:8080/micro/
Taking Things Apart
Lately, whenever some mechanical or electrical object in our house dies, I put it downstairs in the basement until we can take it apart. The boys like to dismantle things to see what’s inside.
M and I took apart an old nightlight he’s had in his room for several years – it has a light inside, and outside are some rotating plastic scenes of underwater life. When it’s running, it looks a little like an aquarium. During the process of taking it apart, we saw how a light socket delivers electricity to a light bulb, how an on/off switch works (using a continuity tester), and how the gears connected to a motor rotated the two underwater scenes in opposite directions of each other. We also took the motor, the switch, and the gears out and put them into a bin of used parts so we can use them for some other project in the future . I’m trying to get M to think of something we can make, maybe a decoration for Halloween.
We took apart an old boom box a while back, and M extracted the cassette player – the buttons with long arms on them, and the mechanical gears, etc. that are used to control the magnetic heads and the motor. This is a neat component because most of it is mechanical – pushing the Stop button down might pop another button up, and some buttons can only be pushed down if you’re pushing a second button down simultaneously (Record and Play). The pause button stays down if you press it once, then returns to the top position when you press it again. If you push the Stop/Eject button and none of the other buttons are down, the tape will eject. It’s all mechanical – there’s no computer driving it.
A while back K and I took apart a remote control unit for a remote control car. It had two rocker switches in it – one for forward/back and one for right/left. We figured out how many different combinations of settings there could be using the two switches. We could also see the path the signals took from the switches to the transmitter by following wires and/or circuit board connections. We turned off all the lights, but we couldn’t see the radio waves going from the remote to the car.
We have a few more things on tap to take apart - a small vacuum cleaner, a couple of broken CD ROM drives, an ink jet printer that stopped working, and another remote control. That should keep us busy for a while.
-------------
I'm intrigued by mechanical things as much as digital things. A clock that runs on gears is a lot more interesting to look at and take apart than a clock that runs off a chip. A clock that runs on gears does something, whereas a clock that runs off a chip just sits there.
The earliest computers were actually ingeniously-designed gear-based mechanical objects. They could be quite sophisticated. It would be fun to build one, and people have built reproductions, but you'd have to know a lot about metalworking.
Similarly, it would be fun to build a car that didn't rely on microchips and on-board computers, like some of the first cars that were built. Not similarly, it would be fun to turn mechanical operations, like steering a car or pressing the brake pedal, into computerized operations.
Mechanical controls like a brake or accelerator pedal in a car can be replaced with electronic equivalents – consider a car equipped with hand controls for someone who can’t use his legs when driving. A steering wheel controls the rack and pinion gears to some extent, but with power-assisted steering, it seems like it wouldn’t be too hard to eliminate the steering wheel and put in a few buttons – maybe a remote control you could hold in your hand to go right or left. How about a Wii controller? Or a cell phone - since people like to talk on the phone while they drive, you could put in voice-activated steering and kill two birds (or pedestrians) with one stone. For example, if you say “Car Left” your car will turn left. That would be handy. So you could talk on your phone to your friend while you’re driving and still steer your car: “I’ll be home from the store in about 10 minutes - CAR RIGHT, CAR RIGHT, CAR STRAIGHT - but I have to tell you about this guy who was blocking the seafood counter with AAAAGH! CAR LEFT CAR LEFT CAR LEFT CAR STOP CAR STOP CAR STOP CAR LEFT CAR LEFT AAAAAGH!”
Maybe it's not such a good idea.
M and I took apart an old nightlight he’s had in his room for several years – it has a light inside, and outside are some rotating plastic scenes of underwater life. When it’s running, it looks a little like an aquarium. During the process of taking it apart, we saw how a light socket delivers electricity to a light bulb, how an on/off switch works (using a continuity tester), and how the gears connected to a motor rotated the two underwater scenes in opposite directions of each other. We also took the motor, the switch, and the gears out and put them into a bin of used parts so we can use them for some other project in the future . I’m trying to get M to think of something we can make, maybe a decoration for Halloween.
We took apart an old boom box a while back, and M extracted the cassette player – the buttons with long arms on them, and the mechanical gears, etc. that are used to control the magnetic heads and the motor. This is a neat component because most of it is mechanical – pushing the Stop button down might pop another button up, and some buttons can only be pushed down if you’re pushing a second button down simultaneously (Record and Play). The pause button stays down if you press it once, then returns to the top position when you press it again. If you push the Stop/Eject button and none of the other buttons are down, the tape will eject. It’s all mechanical – there’s no computer driving it.
A while back K and I took apart a remote control unit for a remote control car. It had two rocker switches in it – one for forward/back and one for right/left. We figured out how many different combinations of settings there could be using the two switches. We could also see the path the signals took from the switches to the transmitter by following wires and/or circuit board connections. We turned off all the lights, but we couldn’t see the radio waves going from the remote to the car.
We have a few more things on tap to take apart - a small vacuum cleaner, a couple of broken CD ROM drives, an ink jet printer that stopped working, and another remote control. That should keep us busy for a while.
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I'm intrigued by mechanical things as much as digital things. A clock that runs on gears is a lot more interesting to look at and take apart than a clock that runs off a chip. A clock that runs on gears does something, whereas a clock that runs off a chip just sits there.
The earliest computers were actually ingeniously-designed gear-based mechanical objects. They could be quite sophisticated. It would be fun to build one, and people have built reproductions, but you'd have to know a lot about metalworking.
Similarly, it would be fun to build a car that didn't rely on microchips and on-board computers, like some of the first cars that were built. Not similarly, it would be fun to turn mechanical operations, like steering a car or pressing the brake pedal, into computerized operations.
Mechanical controls like a brake or accelerator pedal in a car can be replaced with electronic equivalents – consider a car equipped with hand controls for someone who can’t use his legs when driving. A steering wheel controls the rack and pinion gears to some extent, but with power-assisted steering, it seems like it wouldn’t be too hard to eliminate the steering wheel and put in a few buttons – maybe a remote control you could hold in your hand to go right or left. How about a Wii controller? Or a cell phone - since people like to talk on the phone while they drive, you could put in voice-activated steering and kill two birds (or pedestrians) with one stone. For example, if you say “Car Left” your car will turn left. That would be handy. So you could talk on your phone to your friend while you’re driving and still steer your car: “I’ll be home from the store in about 10 minutes - CAR RIGHT, CAR RIGHT, CAR STRAIGHT - but I have to tell you about this guy who was blocking the seafood counter with AAAAGH! CAR LEFT CAR LEFT CAR LEFT CAR STOP CAR STOP CAR STOP CAR LEFT CAR LEFT AAAAAGH!”
Maybe it's not such a good idea.
Pet Peeves, Un-jolly Ranchers, etc.
Pet Peeve:
People who say something is “a fraction” of something else.
For example, “The cost of putting an addition on a house is a fraction of the price of a new house.” When people say fraction, they almost always mean “less than”, yet fractions can express mathematical values greater than one. 122/6 is a fraction. If I said “My company’s revenues are a fraction of my salary”, I would be correct.
Pet Peeve:
Sportscasters who don’t use past-tense speech to describe events that have already happened.
For example, a receiver runs down the field, trips on his own shoelaces, and can’t quite catch the pass. After the play is over, the sports announcer often speaks of the play as if it’s still going on: “Bill, he’s wide open. If he catches that ball, it’s a touchdown.” It should be “If he had caught that ball, it would have been a touchdown.” Even if they’re grammatically right, because they’re using the “present pluperfect tense” or “instant replay time travel tense” or some other English language broom-closet rule, it doesn’t matter. They still shouldn’t talk like that.
Pet Peeve:
Pets dressed like people.
Okay, that’s not one of my pet peeves. That’s the pet peeve of Monica from the TV show “Friends”.
Bonus Gripe!
Bags of Jolly Ranchers should have fewer watermelon candies and more grape.
Fun link!
Click the link below and then click "Enter". When you get to the next set of screens, click "Portfolio" at the top and use the words on the left to see the different creations.
http://www.stephanehalleux.com/
People who say something is “a fraction” of something else.
For example, “The cost of putting an addition on a house is a fraction of the price of a new house.” When people say fraction, they almost always mean “less than”, yet fractions can express mathematical values greater than one. 122/6 is a fraction. If I said “My company’s revenues are a fraction of my salary”, I would be correct.
Pet Peeve:
Sportscasters who don’t use past-tense speech to describe events that have already happened.
For example, a receiver runs down the field, trips on his own shoelaces, and can’t quite catch the pass. After the play is over, the sports announcer often speaks of the play as if it’s still going on: “Bill, he’s wide open. If he catches that ball, it’s a touchdown.” It should be “If he had caught that ball, it would have been a touchdown.” Even if they’re grammatically right, because they’re using the “present pluperfect tense” or “instant replay time travel tense” or some other English language broom-closet rule, it doesn’t matter. They still shouldn’t talk like that.
Pet Peeve:
Pets dressed like people.
Okay, that’s not one of my pet peeves. That’s the pet peeve of Monica from the TV show “Friends”.
Bonus Gripe!
Bags of Jolly Ranchers should have fewer watermelon candies and more grape.
Fun link!
Click the link below and then click "Enter". When you get to the next set of screens, click "Portfolio" at the top and use the words on the left to see the different creations.
http://www.stephanehalleux.com/
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