Do psychopaths need screwdrivers?

I am always somewhat bemused that not everybody loves working on machines and as for the psychologists and medical types, well that is really just witchcraft to me. Why anybody would choose to spend their days trying to fix such an unwieldy machine as the human body is utterly beyond me, although I am grateful that some choose this path. If the complication and absurdities of the human machine are not enough, I mean who would put a nerve in the porcelain that they intend to use as a crushing machine, there is the interface my god it makes Apple look sensible!

In order to understand what is happening within the machine that is the human body a lot of the diagnosis is performed by interfacing directly with the owner. There are no sensible fault codes, no logs to download, just a blithering idiot telling you “it’s like a sharp pain on the inside”, hopeless. And that is just the medical side, if we turn to those who work on the CPU then the interface is even more ethereal. There are no simple test points you have to diagnose the problem by picking trends out of huge data dumps and even these are not given freely. To extract the data dumps you need to keep applying random passwords until you hit lucky and pretty much the entire memory is dumped, in no order, in a stream of nonsensical drivel. The output isn’t produced in .csv format or anything that can be usefully interrogated later oh no it is sent straight to the speaker with no back up. Who would code a CPU like that? The closest equivalent is the infamous windows blue screen of death but even that stays fixed on the display so you can actually read it in your own time.

Now you may wonder what got me to thinking this, I shall share the reason but please don’t tell anybody. I tried another of these dumbass questionnaire things and it confirmed, as they all seem to, that I am a psychopath, you will appreciate now why I am telling you in confidence. There are various reasons why I am considered to be great psychopath material but in this case it was my preference for machines over people and I think that unfair. Preferring machines is simple logic and I am an Engineer of course.

This weekend I spent some time playing with a failed vending machine, it takes credit but does not vend, there is no support material available. To start with I identified the relay that operates when the vend is requested, since it was a micro relay it had to be controlling some larger relay because the motors are 240v. Finding the hidden box that contained the transistors switching the motor feeds I discovered that there was only one set and, since service mode worked the fault did not lay there. The next area to check was the relays on the main board, since there are three, but to test these involved soldering test wires to the coils and powering them up on the bench, all worked ok. Having traced most of the circuit on the PCB I now know that there is only one motor feed and in vend mode it is switched by a light beam detecting the vend. I have located the correct connector and added test wires to it so that I can replace the board and check the inputs in situ which is the next task.

Now some of you read the previous paragraph and glazed over, my apologies to you, some of you are questioning the order of my approach and just why those relays needed testing and you my friends are apparently psychopaths, it’s ok I wont tell anybody. How anybody cannot find pleasure in reverse engineering and diagnosis is beyond me, unlike a human all of the inputs are logical, well presented and unambiguous you simply need to understand how the designer chose to use or derive them. Now if that makes us, see the way I included you there, psychopaths then so be it but a quick check of history will tell you that more doctors maliciously and intentionally kill than Engineers, just saying.

 

It’s only when you look

Following the doctor’s instructions I purchased a blood pressure measuring device and have been using it daily. The theory is that I have white coat syndrome so the stress of a clinician measuring my BP actually causes it to rise, go figure. I am told that the ideal BP is 120/80, this seems to be widely acknowledged so I have no reason to doubt it. I am also told that the lower number is more of a concern than the higher one, not so sure on this but it is irrelevant for my purposes. I have taken half a dozen readings and cannot get my BP below 160/115 which is undeniably high. A quick web hunt told me that I should call 911 and not drive myself to hospital because of the risk of heart attack at the wheel, yes it was American. On reflection I realised that when I was in hospital my BP was fine so this is not the gradual decline of age and lifestyle.

I think that my elevated BP could be for a number of reasons. The first is the initials “PRC” written on my BP tester, we all know that things made in China are notoriously unreliable so perhaps it is just making stuff up. Since my doctor recommended this machine as it is “what we use” clearly his machine would also be made on the cheap and it is not unreasonable to assume that it is suffering the same fault….. The second thing is the reconstruction of my wrists. I know that I didn’t lose any veins or important parts but when I was in hospital my forearms were left open following the compartment syndrome this lack of constraint must have reduced my BP. Now that we are all sealed up along with the various additional pieces of metal there is less space, presuming that I have the same volume of blood less space must equal higher pressure.

Nonetheless at the age of 40 it is a pertinent time to look at health and I guess I could make some improvements. I checked my BMI and I am overweight, having snuck into that bracket by 0.2 BMIs so hardly significant. More significant is seeing Stace over the weekend who greeted me with “your fat” bless her.As of last week I am following Gav’s version of the 5 and 2 diet; that is to say I am following the 4 and 3 diet so that Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are low intake days. I think I have given the knee enough of an easy ride and it’s time to restart running if the knee disagrees then I may be following this with limping but hey ho. Will this have an effect on my BMIs? I have no idea. My BP? Equally clueless especially when a woman at work explained that she can effectively dial up any value she wants when she is tested.

It’s all in the balls, bouncing or shrinking

As you all know I love living in a small coastal community and can find seemingly endless reasons why; today I have another to share with you. Out here our GPs haven’t been criticised by overly sensitive patients or sued by ambulance chasing no win no fee crooks they are as nature intended. Today I had to see the GP to see if we can work out why I seem to be finding ever more reasons to flush, I thought it good to check before I get mistaken for a 12-year-old in a lingerie aisle! We started out with a sociable hello and then moved to the reason for the visit. I explained that the flushing is becoming more common and that I have ruled out alcohol (thank god), food and laundry detergent so I can’t actually associate it with anything it seems random. My exercise level was discussed, my blood pressure was taken and then my GP summed up his thoughts.

“You’re probably changing into a girl” said with a straight face to a patient that he has seen once in 8 years. I laughed and said that would I would need some fashion help if that was the case and the response was “are your balls shrivelling up?” having assured the doc that this was not the case he conceded that this was a flawed diagnosis. He explained that it was probably nothing, reeled off a couple of things that were of no concern and then threw in that it could be some long sounding word ending in tumour. I suggested that the latter didn’t sound like something I wanted and he emphatically agreed. Symptomatic treatment would be achieved by beta blockers whilst he ordered up blood and urine tests. Doc went on to explain what beta blockers do and asked again if I did any sport because “I play table tennis and darts, I am OK but with a beta blocker I am a winner” I assured him that there were no drugs that he could prescribe that would result in me taking up a sport before he sounded a caution “if you were to get chased by a lion then you wouldn’t react quickly and the lion might get you” This last warning was offered with a sincere look of concern and I almost expected him to produce a lion before I assured him that I had no plans to visit the jungle.

I like to think I had the last laugh when he mentioned that a very common side effect of beta blockers is cold hands “so it will make raynauds worse then?” he checked the notes and asked how bad the raynauds was nowadays, I assured him that it was much better than when I was younger. Did I still get the colour changes he asked, oh yes and the spasms but not like when I was younger. The raynauds itself was not a concern because “if it makes it too much worse we can stop the beta blockers” but what foxed him, and hadn’t occurred to me, is that raynauds is the reverse of flushing. Raynauds is a vasoconstriction condition that results in loss of blood flow to the extremities where as flushing is caused by vasodilation. That both conditions exhibit at different times pointed to a control issue but unfortunately that particular circuit is located at pretty much the centre of the brain so kind of difficult to recalibrate.

I left him to his musing and returned to the reception, made blood appointment and collected the urine sample bottle to fill over the weekend, the last part was not what I expected. No small sample pot for me oh no they want a couple of litres. Apparently this is a 24 hour deal where you have to collect everything for said period, given it is the weekend I nominate Sunday so that I can deliver the sample on Monday. Luckily I live close enough to the pub to pop home so wont have to hide the bottle up somewhere!

 

 

 

It’s all in the angle

Sometimes I look at the world and wonder how those of you that don’t have an Engineering logic cope with it. To us the world is a series of challenges none of which cannot be solved. That is not to say that we do not suffer frustration and annoyance but that any problem can be solved is, to us, a simple matter of fact.

As some of you will recall my oven failed recently and, despite best efforts, I was unable to source a replacement element. I was reassured when my landlord reported that their agent had a struggle to find a replacement as well. Apparently they resorted to opening every box and comparing dimensions before settling on an alternative that would fit. My mate collected the part and I installed it yesterday evening.

There is nothing complicated in the installation, 7 screws and a few wires and all done. Following the install the oven was dead, nothing at all. Some head scratching reminded me that the fan had worked previously but now there was nothing, no fan, no heat and no light. I checked for a supply and then suddenly realised I must have set the timer arrangement in the recent dismantle. Now the timer on this oven hasn’t worked since I moved in and it’s an old rotary number arrangement. The buttons are long lost and the symbols, not that I know what they mean, are cracked and illegible.

So now I was faced with the catering equivalent of the DaVinci code. I took some pliers and rotated the stalks but nothing much happened so I reverted to type. I removed the oven and dismantled it until I had the timer out then I put a meter between the contacts and twisted some more, still to no avail. Time for another approach, I dismantled the shell of the timer unit to identify the cam that operated the power contacts. From here it was just a case of working backwards through the timer to generate the appropriate inputs. With a satisfying bleep from the meter I reassembled and refitted the cooker and tested it.

That’s the reassuring thing about Engineering, we know that there is always a way* and if you haven’t found it then you’re just looking at it wrong.

* it goes without saying that the female of the species is excluded from this statement

Engineering dinner failure and hey its only pain

I don’t believe that we educate and manufacture Engineers, some of us are just born this way. There is a strange desire deep inside of us to understand how things work and how to improve them and it never leaves us. Most children will try to open toys to see what happens inside don’t be too concerned this, of itself, doesn’t indicate an Engineer, the difference is that we don’t stop. The thing with Engineers is that we see the world differently to everyone else, everywhere we look there is an opportunity to change something.

It really never turns off, like a filter lens we just see an Engineer’s view of the world. Despite the pain from my wrists I could no more pass a screwdriver to somebody than I could eat sand. I have adjusted the way that I hold various tools to accommodate the necessary movements because tools are an extension of me, giving them up would be akin to amputation (and we know I beat that). I spent a few hours Saturday running a new CCTV feed for a friend and thoroughly enjoyed the task. This was not a major activity, we had already run the cable. just termination and fault-finding. The original installer had used nasty compression BNC connectors so I replaced with crimped but the replacements were too small so I had to solder the centre pin. Adapting from crimped to solder and successfully terminating all channels made me smile and now you can shake the connectors without disturbing the image.

Having tested the new camera locally I installed it and there was no image, voltage was present at the camera but no image. Some fault-finding revealed that the relatively short run didn’t need baluns, we used Cat 5, some more soldering resolved the issue. We are talking a few hours work, not heavily physical or even particularly taxing, but I enjoyed this because I changed something and that is what Engineering is about. It is 2 pm now as I write this and I am just starting to beat the pain that kept me awake last night and has crippled me all morning. That’s the thing with working with your hands it reminds you, and them, that things are not perfect. The great thing about an Engineering mind-set is that although I have struggled all morning and will remain in pain for a day or so yet  the sense of achievement, of beating physical material, is sufficient reward.

In another example of the Engineer’s mind let me share with you the dinner that I cooked on Friday. I had purchased one of those ‘cook in packet’ pieces of fish, I love fish but hate the smell that lingers after cooking it. Everything went wrong when I read the instructions, apparently the pack would inflate and then ‘our special release valve will open’. I studied the packet but could find no evidence of any such special valve, where was it hidden? how did it work? Now those that know me will readily picture me sat in front of the microwave as if it was a cinema screen, I wasn’t missing this. As my potatoes boiled over I watched the packet inflate and knew it would be soon. There was, of course, no special vent the seam simply gave way and released the steam, I watched until the end but that was it, just a weakened seam.

To most people who would be the end of the issue but I was devastated. I had several theories as to how this complex steam release valve would work and none of them were correct, they had cheated me. I can genuinely say that my meal was not as enjoyable because I felt cheated by the delivery method, only an Engineer can eat a meal whilst distracted by the packet that it came in! I considered the options of purchasing more packets to see if this was a one-off or complaining that the packet was ‘not as described’ but, given the delivery driver experience, chose to sulk instead!

 

Drunk elephant wipes toilet seat with cash

I read this weekend in the Publican that Stafford police are unhappy that of the public houses they tested all were positive for cocaine. According to the some police chief this was indicative of the licensed trade’s failure to address the drugs problem and in his opinion this was why the licensed trade took up so much of the police’s resources. In case any of you have read this press release which no doubt originated in the Guardian of the Independent I thought that I should put your minds at rest. Clearly the ludicrous amount of braid and other shoulder accessories  has affected this woman’s head. It seems to be the case in most walks of life that attract shoulder candy, perhaps it has a high mercury content? Either way it is a good rule of thumb that the more rope on a person’s shoulders the less sense in their head.

But lets examine the detail of this stunning revelation and see what a normal mind makes of it. At this point can I suggest that anybody adorned by shoulder spaghetti leaves us because they wont understand a word that follows. The fact is that every pub that the Staffordshire force swab tested proved positive and that is indeed indicative of the prevalence of drugs in society. There is no routine testing, the police do not have to test you once a year like a drugs MOT these are random checks carried out when the police chose. In short these tests form one of the many justifications for police overtime. There’s a budget saving straight away, we all know that the use of drugs is widespread so stop checking. Spending money confirming this is taking money away from important matters like checking that the fridge light does indeed go off when you close the door.

There is no mention of where the swabs were taken, but it would be wise to suggest that it was toilets. For some reason people that ‘enjoy’ sniffing powder that has generally been smuggled into the country in a person’s bottom seem to like toilet seats. Given the dubious provenance of the product I guess the toilet seat compares favourably, who knows. I do, though, find it odd that the same people that chose to hover over a toilet rather than sitting on it are happy to nostril hoover it, each to their own though. Now if they had swabbed the windowsill or the pool table then they would have grounds to complain since this would indicate that there was some condoning of the activity, or would it? The truth is that these machines read miniscule amounts as a positive trace and lets face it the clever kids at school were not the ones that joined the police so there is no finesse its just positive or negative.

Are drugs consumed in public houses? without a doubt they are, they are also consumed on public transport and in restaurants. If you swab McDonalds toilet seats they will test positive, it is incredibly difficult to control what happens in toilets. Do publicans condone drug use? Of course not, no more than restaurants condone bringing your own food. It is hard enough to earn a living in a pub without your clientele finding alternative ways to enjoy their night that do not put money across your bar.

The shoulder merchant goes on to say that public houses continue to place a “big demand” on police at the weekend, particularly in terms of alcohol-related disorder. Really? You mean the police are not called out to carpet thefts and Appletise fuelled riots? Pubs sell alcohol so when they need the police alcohol is likely to be involved, I don’t hear people condemning the banks because the police deal with mostly theft-related crime.

This braided fantasist goes on to say that dealing with one drunk person can take 17 police officers. Are the police in Staffordshire gnomes? or are the public all martial arts experts? If it takes 17 police officers to deal with a drunk then the issue is clearly with the police. The only place we see 17 police officers together is at the doughnut counter, that’s 4 1/4 persons per limb was this a drunk person or a drunk elephant? It is true that the police are more likely to be called to a pub than to a florists but it is also true that for every £3 you spend in a pub nearly £1.05 is tax, the same is not true for florists and certainly not supermarkets. If you sell less beer in the pubs there is less money to pay the police, biting the hand that feeds you comes to mind.

If we follow the shoulder loon to her logical conclusion then all pubs are bad because they have found traces of cocaine in them. So obviously she wants more resource to study toilet seats in pubs, perhaps even leading to a ban on toilet seats altogether or transparent toilet walls. But I would suggest that we approach this a different way, stop swabbing toilet seats and swab bank notes. It is acknowledged that every note in circulation in the UK has traces of cocaine on it. So lets get captain shoulder bling to investigate the banks, come down hard on them because 100% of their product is contaminated with cocaine. What are the banks doing to stop their notes being used in this way? A lot less than the pubs are doing I can assure you.

Upon reflection I see a corollary here. The next time a publican is asked “can we swab your toilets” his response should be “be my guest I polished the seats and cisterns with a £20 note just before opening”.

Do me a favour please if this post makes any sense to you. Go to your local pub, not the chain but the local independent or tied house, have a pint (or even an Appletise) and tell the publican that you think he’s doing a good thing. It may not be a lot but it will make all the difference to a tired person in a vilified trade at least until I get ‘hug a publican’ day publicised.