There are plenty of ways to get hurt while working on the Railroad and after 17 years I managed to stumble on every possible way to get injured.
I was still a brand new employee with only a few weeks on duty when I suffered my first injury. I took a big swing at a spike I had not set properly and never saw it come straight back and hit me in the mouth so hard it knocked my hard-hat off. I turned around expecting to find some jerk behind who knocked my hat off but instead only found blood dripping from by lip and one tooth pushed in. It took 6 hours to get to a medic and by then it was too swollen to get stitches but on the bright side, it left a good scar.
My most common injury was smashing the ring finger on my right hand between the rail and the hammer handle. There was a specific rule against reaching across the rail to prevent that very injury but it was too much trouble to step over the rail and back so I kept breaking that rule and my poor finger. The Doctor said there is nothing to do with a broken finger, just tape it up.
I once hit my head on a rail I had loaded in the back of the gang truck only a few minutes earlier. It stopped bleeding long before it stopped hurting and that was when I started wearing my Hard Hat all day every day and never regretted it, and I never had any more head bonkers.
I always considered a sliver to be the smallest of all injuries, until I got one in my eye; twice! The first one was made of steel and the Doctor said we should let my body absorb it rather than risk going in to extract it and sure enough, a few days later it stopped hurting and I never thought about it again.
Then a year later while doing the same hand-adzing cleanup after a derailment I got another splinter in the same eye even though I was wearing safety glasses both times. I figured this one would go away like last time but when it was still hurting worse than ever over a week later I went back to that same Doctor who said this sliver was made of cedar wood and cannot be dissolved by the human body like the solid steel, so he had to perform minor surgery to relieve the pain.
My most dramatic injury was being hit by a broken "dead-head" spike that flew out from Tie-Adzer machine in Tunnel 13 back in July 1984. I had metal armored leggings for protection but somehow in the dark of the tunnel that spike found its way to my ankle and took me to the ground like a gunshot. It took less than an hour to get to a Doctor which was impressive considering how far out we were but there was nothing he could do since there was no broken bone. I was back to work in a few days but it took months to stop limping and it still hurts to this day.
By far the worst of all my many injuries was the broken back from lifting a derailed motor car. I was patrolling by myself and was in a hurry to make it to the nearest spur track to clear a train. I was stuck on the switch frog and the train was coming around the corner, any reasonable person would have walked away, but I had to give one last lift with all my effort in a panic attack aided by adrenaline and was able to clear the switch just in time. Afterward my relief was short lived as both legs started going numb from the effort.
Before that I used to laugh at guys with back injuries but after that I never laughed again. By the time it was all over and done I had two different major surgeries called laminectomies where they remove the bulging part of the spinal disk. It helped get me walking again but I will always have numb legs.
So the back injury turned out to be a career ending move, and I ended up going to school to be a computer geek. Thank goodness I work in a cube where there are fewer ways to get hurt.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Curious Case #4: The Personnel Problem
We got a call from Daryl the Dispatcher with a special request for our services at a company called Toll Free Support who made their mark by offering toll free tech support to the callers while charging the backend company either by the minute or by the call.
Last year we helped setup their two big accounts, Intel and IBM, so we already knew the people. The Intel contact was nice lady named Li Xu and the IBM contact was Radjendiramane Venkatachalapathy. We called him Radj and we called her...Li. Right off the bat Charlie took a liking to Li but seemed to resent Radj for making us type so many characters in an email address.
Intel was one of the companies that paid by the call and IBM paid by the minute. There were two databases, one for the total phone calls taken every day and another for the written reports entered by the workers. Intel didn't care about the written reports, they only looked at the phone call totals. IBM on the other hand only wanted to see nice long written reports justifying the minutes and never asked to see the phone call numbers.
The two databases came up with the same numbers every day but it was clear there was something wrong due to the large number of complaints from dropped calls and people who swore they had called before but there was no record of them in either database. It may seem primitive now but they had no reason to compare the two databases. It would be hard to do anyway because the two didn't share the same data types and it would have taken lots of work to make the simple comparison.
We spent our first day walking the main floor where all of the tiny cubes were lined up in a big "L" shape with a row of offices all along one wall where the senior Level 3 experts were still just as crowded with three people in a small office, but it was still an office. Charlie soon lost interest on the main floor and from the second day on concentrated on the offices where he easily disarmed each group as he asked how they liked the products they were supporting while offering advice on how to handle tough situations.
He also kept talking Li into taking us to lunch onsite at the Intel campus a few blocks away, which first happened when we went for training at the beginning of the contract. I didn't think the Intel cafeteria was that good but Charlie couldn't get enough.
We finally got back from lunch on the fourth day when Charlie announced he had solved the mystery. Once again he walked straight up to the problem knowing the majority of the users on the open call floor had already been eliminated it had to be the people in the offices. All he had to do was get them talking and sure enough they were so proud of their achievements they couldn't help but brag even if it meant exposing their crime.
It all started quite a while back with only two workers. Dennis was on the Intel team and several times a day he would take the time to enter a written report, but the rest of the time with the easy calls he just took the next call and kept going with no written reports. Meanwhile, several times a day Christine would get flustered and double-click her phone which would dump one caller and skip to the next and then later she would take the time to enter two reports anyway. The dropped call didn't last the required two seconds and would not register in the days totals which is why they were cancelling each other out. He had calls with no reports and she had reports with no calls.
They were both successful in their own group, Dennis taking big numbers of calls albeit without written reports and Christine was famous for such great written reports though there were no calls to go with them. Because of their success they were each given an office with two assistants who in turn each soon learned the same bad habits and before long there were six experts adding to the overall problem.
In truth all of the guilty users figured the Company knew what was going on all along. And even though the Company now knew the truth beyond a doubt the only steps they took was to have Christine's team to stop taking calls and start writing reports for Dennis and his crew. We gave a recommendation to make the two databases compatible and start including all calls in the phone report, even those lasting less than two seconds.
Afterward Charlie told me he knew the solution on the first day but it took four trips to the Intel cafeteria to finally get his fill.
Last year we helped setup their two big accounts, Intel and IBM, so we already knew the people. The Intel contact was nice lady named Li Xu and the IBM contact was Radjendiramane Venkatachalapathy. We called him Radj and we called her...Li. Right off the bat Charlie took a liking to Li but seemed to resent Radj for making us type so many characters in an email address.
Intel was one of the companies that paid by the call and IBM paid by the minute. There were two databases, one for the total phone calls taken every day and another for the written reports entered by the workers. Intel didn't care about the written reports, they only looked at the phone call totals. IBM on the other hand only wanted to see nice long written reports justifying the minutes and never asked to see the phone call numbers.
The two databases came up with the same numbers every day but it was clear there was something wrong due to the large number of complaints from dropped calls and people who swore they had called before but there was no record of them in either database. It may seem primitive now but they had no reason to compare the two databases. It would be hard to do anyway because the two didn't share the same data types and it would have taken lots of work to make the simple comparison.
We spent our first day walking the main floor where all of the tiny cubes were lined up in a big "L" shape with a row of offices all along one wall where the senior Level 3 experts were still just as crowded with three people in a small office, but it was still an office. Charlie soon lost interest on the main floor and from the second day on concentrated on the offices where he easily disarmed each group as he asked how they liked the products they were supporting while offering advice on how to handle tough situations.
He also kept talking Li into taking us to lunch onsite at the Intel campus a few blocks away, which first happened when we went for training at the beginning of the contract. I didn't think the Intel cafeteria was that good but Charlie couldn't get enough.
We finally got back from lunch on the fourth day when Charlie announced he had solved the mystery. Once again he walked straight up to the problem knowing the majority of the users on the open call floor had already been eliminated it had to be the people in the offices. All he had to do was get them talking and sure enough they were so proud of their achievements they couldn't help but brag even if it meant exposing their crime.
It all started quite a while back with only two workers. Dennis was on the Intel team and several times a day he would take the time to enter a written report, but the rest of the time with the easy calls he just took the next call and kept going with no written reports. Meanwhile, several times a day Christine would get flustered and double-click her phone which would dump one caller and skip to the next and then later she would take the time to enter two reports anyway. The dropped call didn't last the required two seconds and would not register in the days totals which is why they were cancelling each other out. He had calls with no reports and she had reports with no calls.
They were both successful in their own group, Dennis taking big numbers of calls albeit without written reports and Christine was famous for such great written reports though there were no calls to go with them. Because of their success they were each given an office with two assistants who in turn each soon learned the same bad habits and before long there were six experts adding to the overall problem.
In truth all of the guilty users figured the Company knew what was going on all along. And even though the Company now knew the truth beyond a doubt the only steps they took was to have Christine's team to stop taking calls and start writing reports for Dennis and his crew. We gave a recommendation to make the two databases compatible and start including all calls in the phone report, even those lasting less than two seconds.
Afterward Charlie told me he knew the solution on the first day but it took four trips to the Intel cafeteria to finally get his fill.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Your Favorite Band Sucks
When I first heard this little piece of philosophy it seemed trivial and I laughed it off but after a while it started to sink in and the real power showed through as I realized the various subtleties of the phrase as it lingered in the back of my mind. It reminded me of one of those perfect bombs that kills all the people but doesn't destroy any houses.
Imagine an archaeologist deciphering ancient writings and they come across this quote saying that their favorite band sucks, what a slap in the face from across the eons of time. How could they know our favorite band sucks unless they had the same power of Nostradamus to predict the future.
Let's face it, sooner or later every band sucks...at some bad concert, or after their tabloid scandal or just plain human beings getting older. It is impossible to maintain that peak performance and that always makes the star appear to be burned out when it is still shining as bright as the others.
Everyone knows if you listen to a favorite song one too many times it somehow looses that special factor and then it is just another ex-favorite. This is a variation on the theme called, "Your Favorite Song Sucks". From there it is a short path to your favorite celebrity, favorite movie, favorite sport…. by golly every thing sucks if you look close enough.
The only safe thing is to have no favorite. And if you accidentally break your own rule and find yourself with a favorite for goodness sake don't tell anyone. Keep your favorites secret and then only you will know when they start to suck.
Don't let someone else tell you when your favorites are no longer yours anymore. Beat them to the punch and stop liking stuff in advance before they ever become favorite in the first place. That will solve the problem once and for all.
Imagine an archaeologist deciphering ancient writings and they come across this quote saying that their favorite band sucks, what a slap in the face from across the eons of time. How could they know our favorite band sucks unless they had the same power of Nostradamus to predict the future.
Let's face it, sooner or later every band sucks...at some bad concert, or after their tabloid scandal or just plain human beings getting older. It is impossible to maintain that peak performance and that always makes the star appear to be burned out when it is still shining as bright as the others.
Everyone knows if you listen to a favorite song one too many times it somehow looses that special factor and then it is just another ex-favorite. This is a variation on the theme called, "Your Favorite Song Sucks". From there it is a short path to your favorite celebrity, favorite movie, favorite sport…. by golly every thing sucks if you look close enough.
The only safe thing is to have no favorite. And if you accidentally break your own rule and find yourself with a favorite for goodness sake don't tell anyone. Keep your favorites secret and then only you will know when they start to suck.
Don't let someone else tell you when your favorites are no longer yours anymore. Beat them to the punch and stop liking stuff in advance before they ever become favorite in the first place. That will solve the problem once and for all.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Spacebird and Astrowhale
Spacebird started out different from all the other birds in his flock and while they were all famous for flying high, he was always flying higher than the rest and higher still building up the resistance needed to go further and further out there even though there was no compelling reason. That is until he got there.
Astrowhale started life as a freak among freaks who could dive deeper than any of the others in his pod and they were the deepest of all the deep diving whales. After a while he could stay down longer than ever and started mapping out places no living whale had ever gone before and he had no obvious reason for going there. But then again, in the end it turns out that it is worth the trip.
After years of reaching their respective extremes these two unique individuals represented the two limits of the bandwidth of life on earth and the same dumb luck that led to their mutual existence also somehow managed to align the moon and the stars just right and the two animals achieved a geosynchronous orbit at just the right latitude and longitude to create a harmonic resonance between Spacebird, Astrowhale and the nearest satellite. Dish Network specifically half way between channel 9646 and 9647, you can Google on how to tune it in.
So eventually Astrowhale had to come up for air and even Spacebird comes down to fish once in a while so it was inevitable that they should meet in person, face to face, beak to beak so to speak, as it were. After that it was only a matter of time before they developed a symbiosis that miraculously increased the abilities of each other by virtue of their mutual pre-existing satellite hookup.
Next thing you know the internet got ahold of the data feed showing the travels of our heroes and that led to the first major discoveries of the unknown at the edges of our world. This was the turning point when folks got their first glimpse of the Trench Slugs and Plasma Plankton.
Trench slugs are 400 foot long monsters at the bottom of the ocean that won't register on visual or temperature scanning but there they are and Astrowhale just loves provoking them into casting off their supply of purified proteins. The baby slugs are the size of a school bus but only 6 inches tall due to the high pressure.
Plasma plankton is nearly invisible and uses direct heat from the sun along with the ambient friction at the outermost layers of the atmosphere to grow microscopic animals that need neither air nor water to complete photosynthesis around the smallest dust particles. No one ever bothered to look there yet let alone capture a sample. But good old Spacebird could collect them until they became visible glowing on the video feed the same way Astrowhale was able to generate light at depth by using the local ambient florescence.
Next Chapter in the Adventures of Spacebird and Astrowhale; Gamma Ray Light Worms and Sea-Floor Super Smelters.
Astrowhale started life as a freak among freaks who could dive deeper than any of the others in his pod and they were the deepest of all the deep diving whales. After a while he could stay down longer than ever and started mapping out places no living whale had ever gone before and he had no obvious reason for going there. But then again, in the end it turns out that it is worth the trip.
After years of reaching their respective extremes these two unique individuals represented the two limits of the bandwidth of life on earth and the same dumb luck that led to their mutual existence also somehow managed to align the moon and the stars just right and the two animals achieved a geosynchronous orbit at just the right latitude and longitude to create a harmonic resonance between Spacebird, Astrowhale and the nearest satellite. Dish Network specifically half way between channel 9646 and 9647, you can Google on how to tune it in.
So eventually Astrowhale had to come up for air and even Spacebird comes down to fish once in a while so it was inevitable that they should meet in person, face to face, beak to beak so to speak, as it were. After that it was only a matter of time before they developed a symbiosis that miraculously increased the abilities of each other by virtue of their mutual pre-existing satellite hookup.
Next thing you know the internet got ahold of the data feed showing the travels of our heroes and that led to the first major discoveries of the unknown at the edges of our world. This was the turning point when folks got their first glimpse of the Trench Slugs and Plasma Plankton.
Trench slugs are 400 foot long monsters at the bottom of the ocean that won't register on visual or temperature scanning but there they are and Astrowhale just loves provoking them into casting off their supply of purified proteins. The baby slugs are the size of a school bus but only 6 inches tall due to the high pressure.
Plasma plankton is nearly invisible and uses direct heat from the sun along with the ambient friction at the outermost layers of the atmosphere to grow microscopic animals that need neither air nor water to complete photosynthesis around the smallest dust particles. No one ever bothered to look there yet let alone capture a sample. But good old Spacebird could collect them until they became visible glowing on the video feed the same way Astrowhale was able to generate light at depth by using the local ambient florescence.
Next Chapter in the Adventures of Spacebird and Astrowhale; Gamma Ray Light Worms and Sea-Floor Super Smelters.
Railroad Days: Snow Removal - Day 3
So there we were spending the night in the Spreader derailed in an avalanche waiting for rescue for the third time this week. The work train engines showed up around 4am and we all started getting ready to dig out the Spreader starting a daylight. We had some flashlights and two big flood lights but for safety reasons we decided to wait plus we wanted to eat and be ready. On the train was Hobart Kent the Division Engineer, basically number two in command below the Superintendent. Having a Big Shot like Hobie onsite made everyone stand a little taller trying to make points with the upper management.
Long before daylight we were all out there ready to start the big dig out. The spreader was off the tracks, but the wheels were not down below the rails as they would be in a regular derailment but instead this time the wheels were floating in the air a couple of feel above the rails suspended by the outstretched wings on either side. I was more than surprised to think we would have to dig out by hand. I came from the System Steel gang where we used machines not brawn, but the old timers just laughed and started in with their shovels making giant sized steps in the snow bank going up the hill faster than I could complain about it.
One thing for sure, shoveling snow sure is lighter than shoveling the track ballast. It's almost fun by comparison. And once you get shoveling in a rhythm even the coldest wind becomes a cooling breeze to keep the sweat under control until you finally find the perfect balance between blizzard and balm. Before long we were spending more time moving snow we had already moved once and even the old timers were starting to look discouraged but just then the gang from Crescent Lake showed up unexpectedly from out of no where and behind them was Larry Shadd on the D9 cat, the only piece of equipment that could move snow better than the spreader.
When asked why he hadn't called ahead to let us know he was coming, the Foreman Bob Wilbanks told Ray Smith the Roadmaster that he didn't want to get our hopes up until he knew he was going to make it through. The real reason he didn't call was because they would have told him not to come because there is a rule against letting the cat run on top of the rail through the tunnel but now the deed was done no one was going to say no. Within an hour the cat had cleared enough snow from the cut to let the spreader open it's wings again and finally land the wheels on the track again.
In the last three days we had been stuck on this hill three different times, first on the Motor Car then on the Flanger and now on the Spreader. That was more than enough and we just wanted to get back to the relative comfort of the company housing at Fields. Then just as quickly as the snow had stacked up it was suddenly shrunk by a sudden wave of warm rain that knocked out all the ice followed by calm skies and some sun to complete the effect of the storm ending. We were back home in time for dinner that night as the trains started rolling at full speed both ways. The gas was back on for all switch heaters and the electricity was back on and the generator turned back off.
It was one of those times you never forget.
Long before daylight we were all out there ready to start the big dig out. The spreader was off the tracks, but the wheels were not down below the rails as they would be in a regular derailment but instead this time the wheels were floating in the air a couple of feel above the rails suspended by the outstretched wings on either side. I was more than surprised to think we would have to dig out by hand. I came from the System Steel gang where we used machines not brawn, but the old timers just laughed and started in with their shovels making giant sized steps in the snow bank going up the hill faster than I could complain about it.
One thing for sure, shoveling snow sure is lighter than shoveling the track ballast. It's almost fun by comparison. And once you get shoveling in a rhythm even the coldest wind becomes a cooling breeze to keep the sweat under control until you finally find the perfect balance between blizzard and balm. Before long we were spending more time moving snow we had already moved once and even the old timers were starting to look discouraged but just then the gang from Crescent Lake showed up unexpectedly from out of no where and behind them was Larry Shadd on the D9 cat, the only piece of equipment that could move snow better than the spreader.
When asked why he hadn't called ahead to let us know he was coming, the Foreman Bob Wilbanks told Ray Smith the Roadmaster that he didn't want to get our hopes up until he knew he was going to make it through. The real reason he didn't call was because they would have told him not to come because there is a rule against letting the cat run on top of the rail through the tunnel but now the deed was done no one was going to say no. Within an hour the cat had cleared enough snow from the cut to let the spreader open it's wings again and finally land the wheels on the track again.
In the last three days we had been stuck on this hill three different times, first on the Motor Car then on the Flanger and now on the Spreader. That was more than enough and we just wanted to get back to the relative comfort of the company housing at Fields. Then just as quickly as the snow had stacked up it was suddenly shrunk by a sudden wave of warm rain that knocked out all the ice followed by calm skies and some sun to complete the effect of the storm ending. We were back home in time for dinner that night as the trains started rolling at full speed both ways. The gas was back on for all switch heaters and the electricity was back on and the generator turned back off.
It was one of those times you never forget.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Bigger Than An Elephant
Back in the late '90's I worked at a small hi-tech call center called 800 Support. They had recently changed their name from 900 Support because 900 numbers were synonymous with phone sex at that time. Changing the name didn't change the culture. We had a small budget for our Company picnic and had to settle for a Clown as our entertainment. There was lots of talk in the social committee meetings about how we could easily have a better picnic next year. The big Blow-Up slide was the clear favorite in the unofficial voting.
Then we arrived at Cook Park to find the place is full because Intel is also having their Company Picnic at the same time. We were limited to a small corner of the park with our Clown while Intel got the rest of the park for their Petting Zoo, Carnival equipment and best of all an Elephant for the kids to ride. Talk about picnic envy, we were wanting to crash that party for sure.
We kept wondering what they would do to top that picnic next year. What could they possibly get that is bigger than an Elephant? A Whale might be bigger but the kids can't ride. It's like the escalating Birthday Party for kids that go from costume themes to the famous Clown again and it can only end with a Pony to ride for entertainment. But what do you get the year after the Pony? A herd of Ponies? Clowns on Ponies? Ponies on Clowns?
The next year we couldn't even afford the cost of a full picnic so we had to settle for a Bowling trip and all the people complained that last year was better. That was when the Social Committee turned into the anti-Social Committee and we ended up with no picnic the year after that.
There was a time when we were jealous of Intel and their Elephant but then it turned into proof of their excess. We finally realized you can't live up to last year so don't even try. Now days most people are happy to go Bowling but I am still dreaming of the day we get a Dinosaur for our next Company Picnic. Nothing could be bigger than a Dino.
Then we arrived at Cook Park to find the place is full because Intel is also having their Company Picnic at the same time. We were limited to a small corner of the park with our Clown while Intel got the rest of the park for their Petting Zoo, Carnival equipment and best of all an Elephant for the kids to ride. Talk about picnic envy, we were wanting to crash that party for sure.
We kept wondering what they would do to top that picnic next year. What could they possibly get that is bigger than an Elephant? A Whale might be bigger but the kids can't ride. It's like the escalating Birthday Party for kids that go from costume themes to the famous Clown again and it can only end with a Pony to ride for entertainment. But what do you get the year after the Pony? A herd of Ponies? Clowns on Ponies? Ponies on Clowns?
The next year we couldn't even afford the cost of a full picnic so we had to settle for a Bowling trip and all the people complained that last year was better. That was when the Social Committee turned into the anti-Social Committee and we ended up with no picnic the year after that.
There was a time when we were jealous of Intel and their Elephant but then it turned into proof of their excess. We finally realized you can't live up to last year so don't even try. Now days most people are happy to go Bowling but I am still dreaming of the day we get a Dinosaur for our next Company Picnic. Nothing could be bigger than a Dino.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Railroad Days: Snow Removal – Day2
The kids woke us woke up around midnight because the power was out so I had to go outside to start up the diesel generator and found at least two more feet of fresh snow on the ground. I hated that generator because it sounds like a jet liner landing in our yard all night long but I still managed to get a couple more hours sleep before the work starts again.
Ray Smith the Roadmaster was pounding on the door at 4am reminding us to be ready by 5 as that was the end of the required 8 hours rest. Ray didn't make it up the hill on his own, there was no way to drive even the best truck through all that snow. He was following Jimmy Stokes on the Road Grader which was assigned to clear the road from Highway 58 up to Fields and back twice a day if needed for the school kids to make the bus run.
There had been a few trains overnight and they reported heavy ice building up in the tunnels and also the switch heater is out at East Abernethy. Then we got word from the Dispatcher that PGE was asking for a ride up to the pole line. We were glad to help them if it meant turning off that noisy generator so we made room for their snow cat in the Flanger. The last one to arrive was the Company switch heater expert from Eugene.
So we all crowded on board the Work Train, the 5 man gang from fields, the gas guy, the electric company fellows and the regular crew making it standing room only until we dropped off the two PGE's workers and their snow cat. The rest of us had to get off at the switch with the broken heater since the ice was so thick we couldn't proceed.
In nice weather this spot is a beautiful waterfall where you could see all the way to the Highway running along the river thousands of feet below. But now you can't see a hundred feet and it is all a big frozen mess we couldn't pass. The ice hangs off the tunnel ceiling like stalactites in a cave and we had to use the long aluminum poles with ice hook on the end to knock things loose. Without the rail heater the ice was threatening to stop all traffic but the expert got it going and things started draining again.
We made a quick run to the summit and then sat there letting a few trains run each way while we ate our lunches. All the while the temperature was falling along with the snow and the trainmen were reporting rough spots of ice and deep snow. The Work Train had to turn around on the "Y" track so the Flanger can stay in front going down hill.
Then we hit the tunnel-bridge-tunnel combination at milepost 542 where the ice had built up and the Flanger left the rails. All the Engine could do is pull the thing backwards until it hit the tunnel wall or push it forward until it banged into the bridge and finally the Engine crew was granted permission to return to Chemult to meet their relief crew out of Klamath Falls.
That's when the superintendent called for another Work Train to head up the hill with the Spreader . This was a big deal as we hadn't needed it for the last few years but this was officially bad enough to call out the heaviest piece of track equipment in the snow removal arsenal. The Spreader is a giant snow plow on the front with expansive hydraulic wings that can be adjusted to fit the contour on both sides of the tracks. The Work Train consists of two or more Engines and always included the Outfit car where workers can eat and sleep.
It takes at least three operators to move the snow, one for each wing and another for the Flanger blade in front. It takes great skill using the several levers to raise and lower, extend and retract, then set the angle to move the snow with precision and still keep the car on the rails. There had to be co-ordination between the two wings so that even if there was an empty chasm on one side you still had to extend the wing to balance the load.
Pete Gonzalez was the expert at operating the Spreader with more than 30 years on the hill. Pete called all the shots and had ultimate control of everything including the two Engines pushing from behind by using a one-of-a-kind remote control. It was the one exception when the Engineers had to let go of control, but only as long as Pete was pushing snow.
They cleared the way up to where we were stuck and actually used the Spreader wings to lift the Flanger back on the rail. The Flanger was taken down the hill and parked on the spur track at Frazier next to the tool house where we stored our motor car the day before.
Then we headed back up the hill to finish the Spreader work. Once again we made a quick preliminary run to the summit to let a few trains go through in each direction while turning the spreader on the "Y" track. It was getting near dark by now and we took advantage of the food in the outfit car. There were plenty of external lights that allowed the work to continue past sundown.
Pete had warned that the last time he saw it this bad there were avalanches in the deepest cuts and we had better make two passes rather than cut too deep and leave a gap for things to fall from above. Instead of being a warning for prevention it turned out to be a prediction of what would happen and right on queue we started spreading snow in the first big cut west of Cruzette and were immediately buried in an avalanche from above.
The Engines had plenty of power to pull themselves out of the way but they couldn't budge the spreader...they soon got permission to go back to Chemult and trade train crews leaving us there alone in the snow with the spreader. Inside the Outfit car it was nice and warm, plenty of food, even free cigarrettes.
It was getting past 9pm again and we had worked hard all day so we took time to rest as best we could while waiting for the Engines to return with fresh crews. We talked at length as to whether we should get overtime or not if we slept on the work train or in the Outfit car attached to the snowbound Spreader. The last thing we heard over radio was the electricians had the power back on and made it down the hill OK.
Next up, Railroad Days: Snow Removal - Day 3
Ray Smith the Roadmaster was pounding on the door at 4am reminding us to be ready by 5 as that was the end of the required 8 hours rest. Ray didn't make it up the hill on his own, there was no way to drive even the best truck through all that snow. He was following Jimmy Stokes on the Road Grader which was assigned to clear the road from Highway 58 up to Fields and back twice a day if needed for the school kids to make the bus run.
There had been a few trains overnight and they reported heavy ice building up in the tunnels and also the switch heater is out at East Abernethy. Then we got word from the Dispatcher that PGE was asking for a ride up to the pole line. We were glad to help them if it meant turning off that noisy generator so we made room for their snow cat in the Flanger. The last one to arrive was the Company switch heater expert from Eugene.
So we all crowded on board the Work Train, the 5 man gang from fields, the gas guy, the electric company fellows and the regular crew making it standing room only until we dropped off the two PGE's workers and their snow cat. The rest of us had to get off at the switch with the broken heater since the ice was so thick we couldn't proceed.
In nice weather this spot is a beautiful waterfall where you could see all the way to the Highway running along the river thousands of feet below. But now you can't see a hundred feet and it is all a big frozen mess we couldn't pass. The ice hangs off the tunnel ceiling like stalactites in a cave and we had to use the long aluminum poles with ice hook on the end to knock things loose. Without the rail heater the ice was threatening to stop all traffic but the expert got it going and things started draining again.
We made a quick run to the summit and then sat there letting a few trains run each way while we ate our lunches. All the while the temperature was falling along with the snow and the trainmen were reporting rough spots of ice and deep snow. The Work Train had to turn around on the "Y" track so the Flanger can stay in front going down hill.
Then we hit the tunnel-bridge-tunnel combination at milepost 542 where the ice had built up and the Flanger left the rails. All the Engine could do is pull the thing backwards until it hit the tunnel wall or push it forward until it banged into the bridge and finally the Engine crew was granted permission to return to Chemult to meet their relief crew out of Klamath Falls.
That's when the superintendent called for another Work Train to head up the hill with the Spreader . This was a big deal as we hadn't needed it for the last few years but this was officially bad enough to call out the heaviest piece of track equipment in the snow removal arsenal. The Spreader is a giant snow plow on the front with expansive hydraulic wings that can be adjusted to fit the contour on both sides of the tracks. The Work Train consists of two or more Engines and always included the Outfit car where workers can eat and sleep.
It takes at least three operators to move the snow, one for each wing and another for the Flanger blade in front. It takes great skill using the several levers to raise and lower, extend and retract, then set the angle to move the snow with precision and still keep the car on the rails. There had to be co-ordination between the two wings so that even if there was an empty chasm on one side you still had to extend the wing to balance the load.
Pete Gonzalez was the expert at operating the Spreader with more than 30 years on the hill. Pete called all the shots and had ultimate control of everything including the two Engines pushing from behind by using a one-of-a-kind remote control. It was the one exception when the Engineers had to let go of control, but only as long as Pete was pushing snow.
They cleared the way up to where we were stuck and actually used the Spreader wings to lift the Flanger back on the rail. The Flanger was taken down the hill and parked on the spur track at Frazier next to the tool house where we stored our motor car the day before.
Then we headed back up the hill to finish the Spreader work. Once again we made a quick preliminary run to the summit to let a few trains go through in each direction while turning the spreader on the "Y" track. It was getting near dark by now and we took advantage of the food in the outfit car. There were plenty of external lights that allowed the work to continue past sundown.
Pete had warned that the last time he saw it this bad there were avalanches in the deepest cuts and we had better make two passes rather than cut too deep and leave a gap for things to fall from above. Instead of being a warning for prevention it turned out to be a prediction of what would happen and right on queue we started spreading snow in the first big cut west of Cruzette and were immediately buried in an avalanche from above.
The Engines had plenty of power to pull themselves out of the way but they couldn't budge the spreader...they soon got permission to go back to Chemult and trade train crews leaving us there alone in the snow with the spreader. Inside the Outfit car it was nice and warm, plenty of food, even free cigarrettes.
It was getting past 9pm again and we had worked hard all day so we took time to rest as best we could while waiting for the Engines to return with fresh crews. We talked at length as to whether we should get overtime or not if we slept on the work train or in the Outfit car attached to the snowbound Spreader. The last thing we heard over radio was the electricians had the power back on and made it down the hill OK.
Next up, Railroad Days: Snow Removal - Day 3
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Railroad Series: Slow Order
We were standing around the warming fire during our 7:30Am Safety Meeting at Milepost 568 between Black Butte and Edgewood when we got a call to stop tamping ties in the Montague yard and get on over to the branch line to help the nearby section gang clear a slow order. We hated tamping by hand and were glad to go but we got there only to find out the slow order was a curve full of low joints that had to be tamped by hand.
Mike Anzo was the Section Foreman on the gang in Mt. Shasta and I had the one in Weed so it was natural for us to end up competing to be the best new Foreman in our District. We worked together on urgent issues and this slow-order limiting all trains to 5 Mph had to be removed today or else. We had to wait for a train to go by and even at that slow speed you could see the boxcars rock and roll as they hit the low joints.
We were both young whippersnappers in our early 20's from two different schools, his Dad was a cat-skinner and they lived in company housing since the day he was born where I was a new comer from the system steel gang. I was schooled by the book and he did things off the cuff in the old school way. I was the expert when it came to installing new rails or ties but when it came to maintaining the existing track structure I still needed some schooling and Mike was pleased to show off.
The first point of discussion was replacing the old cinder ballast with new heavy grade gravel. I assumed since it was cinder to begin with we had to keep that standard but Mike had his Dad haul in several truck loads of gravel that would fix this curve for good. This made the guys even madder because we had been tamping red cinder rock which is light as sugar compared to the heavy gage gravel which was so much harder to tamp we would have to use tamping bars instead of shovels and that meant a whole new set of sore muscles for that night.
Then we argued about the elevation of the hi-side rail. The official ballast chart said 1 inch maximum but the book of rules said a curve that sharp needed 2 inches. I was all for leaving things the way they were until we got the official order but Mike was more than willing to change things on his own authority. Then next point of contention had to do with the rail joints. The standard was to tighten the bolts first and then do the tamping but Mike insisted on raising first and then tightening. I didn't even argue that one since it was not mentioned in the book of rules and it seemed to make sense.
We broke for lunch and both gangs were still chowing down when the 30 minute lunch ended and I was calling for everyone to get back to work but Mike told me to take it easy even though it was clear we were no where near half way done. I already knew Mike made lots of money working overtime and assumed this would be another case but then his Dad showed up unexpectedly again this time with a full sized tamping machine that would make it easy for us to finish early without breaking our backs.
The next item that came up did get us to arguing about how high we should hump the joints. The old guys had shown me how to go to level with the track jack and then a notch or two at most above level but good old Mike liked to really hump the joints higher than I ever would. He figured the bump after should be the same size as the dip before since the ballast needed to get packed down by the train. We settled on "sky high" as the upper limit.
We watched another train rocking and rolling over the same track after our work and there was no difference from this morning maybe even worse, but sure enough a week later it was smoother than ever. I started out all mad and insulted for being shown up so many times in one day but I couldn't bring myself to keep it up since I was having so much fun learning new tricks. I had to admit Mike really did know what he was doing.
Mike Anzo was the Section Foreman on the gang in Mt. Shasta and I had the one in Weed so it was natural for us to end up competing to be the best new Foreman in our District. We worked together on urgent issues and this slow-order limiting all trains to 5 Mph had to be removed today or else. We had to wait for a train to go by and even at that slow speed you could see the boxcars rock and roll as they hit the low joints.
We were both young whippersnappers in our early 20's from two different schools, his Dad was a cat-skinner and they lived in company housing since the day he was born where I was a new comer from the system steel gang. I was schooled by the book and he did things off the cuff in the old school way. I was the expert when it came to installing new rails or ties but when it came to maintaining the existing track structure I still needed some schooling and Mike was pleased to show off.
The first point of discussion was replacing the old cinder ballast with new heavy grade gravel. I assumed since it was cinder to begin with we had to keep that standard but Mike had his Dad haul in several truck loads of gravel that would fix this curve for good. This made the guys even madder because we had been tamping red cinder rock which is light as sugar compared to the heavy gage gravel which was so much harder to tamp we would have to use tamping bars instead of shovels and that meant a whole new set of sore muscles for that night.
Then we argued about the elevation of the hi-side rail. The official ballast chart said 1 inch maximum but the book of rules said a curve that sharp needed 2 inches. I was all for leaving things the way they were until we got the official order but Mike was more than willing to change things on his own authority. Then next point of contention had to do with the rail joints. The standard was to tighten the bolts first and then do the tamping but Mike insisted on raising first and then tightening. I didn't even argue that one since it was not mentioned in the book of rules and it seemed to make sense.
We broke for lunch and both gangs were still chowing down when the 30 minute lunch ended and I was calling for everyone to get back to work but Mike told me to take it easy even though it was clear we were no where near half way done. I already knew Mike made lots of money working overtime and assumed this would be another case but then his Dad showed up unexpectedly again this time with a full sized tamping machine that would make it easy for us to finish early without breaking our backs.
The next item that came up did get us to arguing about how high we should hump the joints. The old guys had shown me how to go to level with the track jack and then a notch or two at most above level but good old Mike liked to really hump the joints higher than I ever would. He figured the bump after should be the same size as the dip before since the ballast needed to get packed down by the train. We settled on "sky high" as the upper limit.
We watched another train rocking and rolling over the same track after our work and there was no difference from this morning maybe even worse, but sure enough a week later it was smoother than ever. I started out all mad and insulted for being shown up so many times in one day but I couldn't bring myself to keep it up since I was having so much fun learning new tricks. I had to admit Mike really did know what he was doing.
Pieces of Fight
No two fights are ever exactly alike but they all have certain things in common. These then are the various parts and pieces necessary to carry on a decent fight. Whether it be the Worlds Nations at war or a married couple at the dinner table every fight will always contain some of these required components.
The sequence is not absolute but generally follows the usual pattern. Some contestants will always jump straight to their favorite device and stick with it to the bitter end while others think the secret is covering as many of the steps as possible. Some fights go straight to the end and some get stuck in the middle in a repeating circle. Once the gloves come off all bets are equally off along with the rules.
The understanding...
They say you only hurt the one you love and so you can only fight with someone with whom you have an understanding of some sort from which there can be an event that will lead to the fight.
The misunderstanding...
The fight begins with one party acting as the victim of some wrong to which they must respond. Even if both parties already know in advance what the other will do it still feels good to act all insulted and surprised.
The mistake…
In every argument there is always something said that is soon regretted but instead of stopping to apologize we invariably ratchet up the heat with another shot across the bow. The mistake and the misunderstanding are often the same thing.
Defending the mistake…
So we defend the mistake no matter how ridiculous and that leads us down a pitiful path on the way to the next steps on the list. Normally we would not defend such a silly mistake but that would be a normal conversation. During a fight we are required to defend any mistake, that's what makes it a fight.
Shifting the blame…
It starts with denial and then gets worse through the series of sub-distractions that make up the blame shifting category including the top two; sarcasm and insult. Admit it, you know we all do it. Telling an even bigger lie is an excellent way to change the subject.
Loud Voice…
Each person has their quiet mean voice followed by their Loud Voice. Usually that's enough because no one wants to resort to the dreaded Louder Voice which leaves no other choice but the Loudest Voice and after that there are no more weapon left in the arsenal and that means:
The Blowout…
Sooner or later one or both parties give up and move on. There needs to be a dramatic end or else it feels like there never really was a fight, so this is one of the required steps. Once the dust settles from the blowout it’s time for:
Licking wounds…
Which tastes bad so we rush to:
Reconciliation…
If there is no makeup then there will be no more fights. Most fighters would rather keep their option for another engagement down the road.
Unfortunately, having this parts list doesn't make you any better at fighting but at least it gives you a program guide so you can tell where you are if you get lost during your next fight.
The sequence is not absolute but generally follows the usual pattern. Some contestants will always jump straight to their favorite device and stick with it to the bitter end while others think the secret is covering as many of the steps as possible. Some fights go straight to the end and some get stuck in the middle in a repeating circle. Once the gloves come off all bets are equally off along with the rules.
The understanding...
They say you only hurt the one you love and so you can only fight with someone with whom you have an understanding of some sort from which there can be an event that will lead to the fight.
The misunderstanding...
The fight begins with one party acting as the victim of some wrong to which they must respond. Even if both parties already know in advance what the other will do it still feels good to act all insulted and surprised.
The mistake…
In every argument there is always something said that is soon regretted but instead of stopping to apologize we invariably ratchet up the heat with another shot across the bow. The mistake and the misunderstanding are often the same thing.
Defending the mistake…
So we defend the mistake no matter how ridiculous and that leads us down a pitiful path on the way to the next steps on the list. Normally we would not defend such a silly mistake but that would be a normal conversation. During a fight we are required to defend any mistake, that's what makes it a fight.
Shifting the blame…
It starts with denial and then gets worse through the series of sub-distractions that make up the blame shifting category including the top two; sarcasm and insult. Admit it, you know we all do it. Telling an even bigger lie is an excellent way to change the subject.
Loud Voice…
Each person has their quiet mean voice followed by their Loud Voice. Usually that's enough because no one wants to resort to the dreaded Louder Voice which leaves no other choice but the Loudest Voice and after that there are no more weapon left in the arsenal and that means:
The Blowout…
Sooner or later one or both parties give up and move on. There needs to be a dramatic end or else it feels like there never really was a fight, so this is one of the required steps. Once the dust settles from the blowout it’s time for:
Licking wounds…
Which tastes bad so we rush to:
Reconciliation…
If there is no makeup then there will be no more fights. Most fighters would rather keep their option for another engagement down the road.
Unfortunately, having this parts list doesn't make you any better at fighting but at least it gives you a program guide so you can tell where you are if you get lost during your next fight.
Railroad Days: Snow Removal - Day 1
Snow Removal was a big deal for the gang assigned to Fields Station between Oakridge and Crescent Lake in Central Oregon. Fields is at the end of a steep 7 mile long dirt road that can only be called a thrill ride. The Company provided free housing to the workers willing to put up with the commute. There had already been a few heavy storms in October and November 1988 but the snow had all melted away before long. The storm that started in early December just kept going and soon the snow and ice were piling up.
Elevation makes all the difference when it comes to snow. Oakridge at 1500 feet hardly ever gets more than a few inches at a time and it always soon melts. Fields is at 2500 feet where the snow starts sooner and sticks around longer than the lower elevations. The summit at Odell Lake is just under 5000 feet and the snow gets deep and stays deep.
For the last few weeks we had been cleaning snow by hand with our shovels and brooms keeping the switches clear beyond the reach of the gas powered rail heaters. There are big propane tanks that feed the flame torch heaters attached to the rails for about 75 feet on either side of the swi just enough to keep the switch open at both ends of the various sidings along the way. Our job was to clear a space for the train to dump any snow they might be plowing before filling the switch.
We started our day as usual cleaning each switch as we worked our way up the mountain following trains from switch to switch as we had been doing for weeks. We were making good time since the wind was blowing and the snow was light and dry so it could never get high enough to cover the top of the rails before it blew away. Then around 10am the wind stopped and the snow was coming straight down in a thick blanket.
By lunch we only had two of the 6 sets of switches done compared to the last few days when we had been eating lunch at the summit. It was obvious today would be overtime if we didn't get help from above, meaning the gang from Crescent Lake would have to come down help. We were encouraged for a minute when we heard over the radio that they were on the way but then we got word that the snow was piling up down the hill where it usually rained so now we would have to go down to help after we finish on top and it would still be overtime.
Then the heavy snow started and before we knew what to do our motor car was stuck. We could not go up or down the tracks and we were forced to hole up in the warming shack at the west end of the siding at Cruzette waiting to be rescued. We had radio contact with the dispatcher and he said there would be one last train coming down the hill and then no more after that, all trains are stopped until further notice. Our best chance was following that last train down the hill but we were on the siding and had to dig our way out by hand and then it was too late to catch up with the train. The snow was coming too fast and falling back on us in the cuts and soon we were stuck again.
We made a brief effort to shovel our way out but it was obvious that we were worse off than ever. Now we were stuck between sidings and would present a hazard if another train did come. We discussed taking the motor car off the rails but that would be a last resort. So instead we made our way to the nearest tunnel and built a warming fire near the entrance where we had stashed diesel fuel and wood for such situations. It was already 3pm and the sun goes down early that time of year and we only had a couple of small flashlights which are not much help during a blizzard at night. Everyone took stock of the leftovers in their lunch box as we prepared for the worst.
Then we heard the good news, the work train was on the way with the Flanger. The Flanger is a single 40 foot custom car with a snow plow on the front that just fit over the rails with one Train Engine to push it along up to 40 miles an hours. Now we could finish the run from Oakridge to the Summit and back in less than four hours. Once they cleared a path to our stranded motor car we were able to take it back down the hill to the motor car shed at the east end of Frazier. It was a warm and comfortable relief to finally climb aboard the Flanger where there were supplies to go along with the stove.
There were only two positions for the Flanger blade, up and down. There was one big red button to toggle the position and the operator had to know just when to go up in order to miss the switches, road crossings, rail greasers and other locations that were marked with red reflector posts positioned to stick out of the deepest snow. It was not uncommon for the flanger to derail but it was easy to put back due to specially equipped outriggers that kept it from going to far off the rails.
We made it up to the summit and back to Fields by 9pm and they were already calling for the Flanger to make another run back on top. The Superintendent even got involved and told us to take our 8 hours rest since the weather report was calling for even heavier snow tomorrow. The Flanger and crew went all the way to Oakridge to spend the night in the Motor Lodge while the rest of us returned to our Company housing in Fields.
We were dog tired but It was a fitful night of sleep knowing what was coming the next day. And that will be the next chapter in the series of stories about Railroad Days : Snow Removal Day 2.
Elevation makes all the difference when it comes to snow. Oakridge at 1500 feet hardly ever gets more than a few inches at a time and it always soon melts. Fields is at 2500 feet where the snow starts sooner and sticks around longer than the lower elevations. The summit at Odell Lake is just under 5000 feet and the snow gets deep and stays deep.
For the last few weeks we had been cleaning snow by hand with our shovels and brooms keeping the switches clear beyond the reach of the gas powered rail heaters. There are big propane tanks that feed the flame torch heaters attached to the rails for about 75 feet on either side of the swi just enough to keep the switch open at both ends of the various sidings along the way. Our job was to clear a space for the train to dump any snow they might be plowing before filling the switch.
We started our day as usual cleaning each switch as we worked our way up the mountain following trains from switch to switch as we had been doing for weeks. We were making good time since the wind was blowing and the snow was light and dry so it could never get high enough to cover the top of the rails before it blew away. Then around 10am the wind stopped and the snow was coming straight down in a thick blanket.
By lunch we only had two of the 6 sets of switches done compared to the last few days when we had been eating lunch at the summit. It was obvious today would be overtime if we didn't get help from above, meaning the gang from Crescent Lake would have to come down help. We were encouraged for a minute when we heard over the radio that they were on the way but then we got word that the snow was piling up down the hill where it usually rained so now we would have to go down to help after we finish on top and it would still be overtime.
Then the heavy snow started and before we knew what to do our motor car was stuck. We could not go up or down the tracks and we were forced to hole up in the warming shack at the west end of the siding at Cruzette waiting to be rescued. We had radio contact with the dispatcher and he said there would be one last train coming down the hill and then no more after that, all trains are stopped until further notice. Our best chance was following that last train down the hill but we were on the siding and had to dig our way out by hand and then it was too late to catch up with the train. The snow was coming too fast and falling back on us in the cuts and soon we were stuck again.
We made a brief effort to shovel our way out but it was obvious that we were worse off than ever. Now we were stuck between sidings and would present a hazard if another train did come. We discussed taking the motor car off the rails but that would be a last resort. So instead we made our way to the nearest tunnel and built a warming fire near the entrance where we had stashed diesel fuel and wood for such situations. It was already 3pm and the sun goes down early that time of year and we only had a couple of small flashlights which are not much help during a blizzard at night. Everyone took stock of the leftovers in their lunch box as we prepared for the worst.
Then we heard the good news, the work train was on the way with the Flanger. The Flanger is a single 40 foot custom car with a snow plow on the front that just fit over the rails with one Train Engine to push it along up to 40 miles an hours. Now we could finish the run from Oakridge to the Summit and back in less than four hours. Once they cleared a path to our stranded motor car we were able to take it back down the hill to the motor car shed at the east end of Frazier. It was a warm and comfortable relief to finally climb aboard the Flanger where there were supplies to go along with the stove.
There were only two positions for the Flanger blade, up and down. There was one big red button to toggle the position and the operator had to know just when to go up in order to miss the switches, road crossings, rail greasers and other locations that were marked with red reflector posts positioned to stick out of the deepest snow. It was not uncommon for the flanger to derail but it was easy to put back due to specially equipped outriggers that kept it from going to far off the rails.
We made it up to the summit and back to Fields by 9pm and they were already calling for the Flanger to make another run back on top. The Superintendent even got involved and told us to take our 8 hours rest since the weather report was calling for even heavier snow tomorrow. The Flanger and crew went all the way to Oakridge to spend the night in the Motor Lodge while the rest of us returned to our Company housing in Fields.
We were dog tired but It was a fitful night of sleep knowing what was coming the next day. And that will be the next chapter in the series of stories about Railroad Days : Snow Removal Day 2.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Curious Case #3: The Password Problem
With all the free work we had been doing to pay back our competitors it was time to actually make some money and I made sure to find work at my job for Charlie to come in at least once a week but in between I had asked Daryl the dispatcher to keep any eye out for any guaranteed money opportunities and that was how we ended up at the home of the CEO of a local Sports Shoe magnate who kept having problems logging into certain systems.
It took two days leading up to the visit working out the details with his Executive Assistant a fascinating lady named Sparkle Silverfox. I couldn't help asking how her parents came up with that name and she laughed explaining how they had named her Elizabeth Hamilton but she had changed it on her own back in the '70s. I should have known she was the old hippie and not her parents but she didn't look that old. We could tell she was the perfect fit for the equally eccentric CEO.
On the appointed Tuesday we were told the meeting would begin between at 1 PM but we already knew enough to expect a delay and spent the time waiting at a nearby Sandwich shop which was the only thing close to his secluded mansion hidden way up in the hills . While we waited I did battle with my favorite foot long meatball, while Charlie had to agonize over the entire menu before finally compromising with himself by ordering 6" each of Turkey and Tuna.
When we finally stood next to the CEO and watched him login for the first time we were surprised at how long it took to login. Charlie jumped right in saying "Whoa, what're you doing writing a book? No one should have a password that long, it's just too much typing. " The Chief Executive was indignant at first explaining how he had important data to protect and needed the strongest possible security.
I was starting to get uncomfortable but Charlie found a way of turning the tension into a learnable moment for all of us by explaining with complete sincerity that when it comes to passwords the strength is not in the length, but in the special characters and avoiding dictionary words. No one ever thought to question the big boss on how long his password should be but Charlie gave him the training he needed. We went on in detail how Passwords are used in different "namespaces" for example; LDAP for Windows, NIS for unix and sometimes a home grown web page will use a local list of people and passwords . That was the problem in this case when the program could not process that long password.
The discussion included a viewing of his own Company intranet web page for proper password management where it says the password must be exactly 8 characters. The Chief Exec was determined to change that policy so we knew we had to convince him once and for all that it wouldn’t matter anyway. We had him telnet to a terminal and forced him to type only the first 8 characters of his super long password and sure enough it let him login thereby proving that all those extra password characters were a waste of time.
The solution was simple, change the password one more time following the rules and things worked as expected and we went on our way. You can imagine my angry response later on when Daryl said the CEO refused to pay the bill since we didn't actually fix anything. Charlie didn't seem to mind and acted like it was no big deal while I took it as a personal insult until I found out later Charlie had a date with Sparkle Silverfox and that’s why he felt properly compensated.
Monday, June 6, 2011
The Dog Ate My Resume
We had a Geometry teacher in High School who was well liked for telling great stories and giving easy grades but if a student asked a hard question his famous response was "I missed that day at school." After a while we got to thinking he must have been very sickly or delinquent for all the days he missed but we never thought to question his teaching skills, he just didn't know the answer. His main job was Basketball Coach but he had to teach other classes to make his pay and Geometry was on his schedule even if it wasn't his strong suit. At least he was honest.
Back in the first grade I did get sick and miss a day of school and when I got back the next day the teacher took time out to help me catch up with the previous day's work which consisted of one word: pie. Seriously that was a day’s work for a first grader in my day. That was the last time they ever helped me catch up on stuff that was missed. You didn't have to miss a whole day to miss the lesson, it could be anything from daydreaming to dyslexia, the results are the same.
Then later on in life I caught myself using that same lame excuse and I realized that using the ‘missed day at school’ routine was more trouble than good, so then I had to take time out of my adult life to unlearn that teacher's bad habit. That was when I first started looking for other bad things I might have accidentally learned along the way but how do you know it's wrong before it has been revealed? Everything still looks OK so there is no easy way to know which is the wrong idea.
I may not be sure how much bad stuff I did learn but once I got to looking I found all kinds of stuff that I didn't learn. Simple things that would seem obvious to anyone like, How to think. I never had that class, no how to guide, no FAQ , nothing. There should be memory tricks to make things easier to remember, and exercises to remember better. How to smell, how to listen, how to look and see, these were all taken for granted but I can tell I am still not using those skills to the full potential. The brain is such a powerful tool but there is no user manual. It feels like I’m not getting all the features and benefits.
Another variation on the "missed that day at school" is this similar excuse " They didn't teach that at my school". This puts the blame on the teacher, the principal, the school board or even the student body, anybody but the student themselves. Using these excuses is like carrying on the old tradition of the dog ate my homework, then he ate my resume and now the dog ate my career.
Back in the first grade I did get sick and miss a day of school and when I got back the next day the teacher took time out to help me catch up with the previous day's work which consisted of one word: pie. Seriously that was a day’s work for a first grader in my day. That was the last time they ever helped me catch up on stuff that was missed. You didn't have to miss a whole day to miss the lesson, it could be anything from daydreaming to dyslexia, the results are the same.
Then later on in life I caught myself using that same lame excuse and I realized that using the ‘missed day at school’ routine was more trouble than good, so then I had to take time out of my adult life to unlearn that teacher's bad habit. That was when I first started looking for other bad things I might have accidentally learned along the way but how do you know it's wrong before it has been revealed? Everything still looks OK so there is no easy way to know which is the wrong idea.
I may not be sure how much bad stuff I did learn but once I got to looking I found all kinds of stuff that I didn't learn. Simple things that would seem obvious to anyone like, How to think. I never had that class, no how to guide, no FAQ , nothing. There should be memory tricks to make things easier to remember, and exercises to remember better. How to smell, how to listen, how to look and see, these were all taken for granted but I can tell I am still not using those skills to the full potential. The brain is such a powerful tool but there is no user manual. It feels like I’m not getting all the features and benefits.
Another variation on the "missed that day at school" is this similar excuse " They didn't teach that at my school". This puts the blame on the teacher, the principal, the school board or even the student body, anybody but the student themselves. Using these excuses is like carrying on the old tradition of the dog ate my homework, then he ate my resume and now the dog ate my career.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Curious Case #2: The Printing Problem
The hardest part of running the Columbia Interlocking Services company was figuring out how to get paid when we were acting as sub-contractors for one of our own competitors. We had tried everything from cash under the table to IOU's but after a few broken promises that led to bad feelings we ended up using our friend Daryl the Dispatcher to keep track of hours and jobs.
That's how we got the call from Daryl saying there was an easy chance to make up for some of the hours we owed to Northwest . It wasn't always us saving them and we recently needed their help on a big job not to mention always borrowing their van for the big stuff like that Cisco 9300 switch that wouldn't fit either one of our cars.
Northwest was the original contractor who then called in the guys from Solution Integrators who together spent the first 4 days gathering data and by the end of the week they were calling us in desperation, specifically Charlie. Luckily we were already done working for the day and promised to come over after lunch. Charlie wanted to go back to the All You can eat buffet to fill his plate with crawdads but we had been there twice in a row already and I insisted on the Burnt Bun burger joint where you can build your own creation, my favorite is guacamole bacon burger with no cheese.
We arrive at the customer site, a service company called Timberlodge, along with a rush of workers returning from lunch as we were escorted through the security system to a conference room where all us consultants were gathered to finally get to the bottom of the issue. I was hoping to break the ice with their main guy who had a big tag on his shirt that said he is the Computer Manager whose name is MAURICE so I gave him my best hand shake along with a "Glad to meet you 'Moreece'," but right away he says "That's how they say it in France but where I comes from it's 'Morris". I made sure to correct myself out loud and made a silent promise to call everyone Buddy.
In the meeting room are all the documents collected showing the logs and reboot times. There are 150 users on these 20 servers providing remote services for every department across the entire campus. The reboots were random and hit all the servers at various different times with only one recurring pattern every day between 2:10 and 2:20pm. The logs were not much help but so far all of the Analysts were blaming the servers but not Charlie. Right away he was more interested in the users.
There were two groups preparing for the coming reboot at 2:15pm. Half the team headed for the server room to see if they can notice some coincidence with the AC or power while the rest will stay in the Crisis Room watching the server consoles to see if the verbose logging they setup might isolate the issue.
Those were good ideas but not for Charlie, he went straight out to the user cube farm and started talking with the area Leaders. He found that half the users come back from lunch at 1Pm and the others at 2pm. Following a hunch he went to the printing station located at the center of the area where the 2pm lunch crowd would have just returned. I asked him what he was up to and he said, "If the answer was in the server room they would have found it by now."
Then at the appointed time Charlie raised his finger in triumph pointing at the sound of a distant user shouting out in frustration; "Crap, every time I print, I loose my server session." Following the sound we found the user coming towards us and the printers. We introduced ourselves to Sharon who had long suffered this problem and even filed a ticket once but had since learned to live with it.
Sharon always knew it was weird that she had to start a new server session so often but since the print jobs did go through successfully no one ever made the connection between printing and server crashing until Charlie heard her print. It turns out she has an old Unix workstation that uses a malformed print command that caused a panic in the process on the other end.
We never did fix the issue, we just got her to print from another machine. The guys from Northwest were so pleased they offered to take us out for beers so we had to go and listen how they had done all the real work. I kept trying to get Charlie the credit he deserved but every time he told the story the most important part was "How that girl cussed!"
That's how we got the call from Daryl saying there was an easy chance to make up for some of the hours we owed to Northwest . It wasn't always us saving them and we recently needed their help on a big job not to mention always borrowing their van for the big stuff like that Cisco 9300 switch that wouldn't fit either one of our cars.
Northwest was the original contractor who then called in the guys from Solution Integrators who together spent the first 4 days gathering data and by the end of the week they were calling us in desperation, specifically Charlie. Luckily we were already done working for the day and promised to come over after lunch. Charlie wanted to go back to the All You can eat buffet to fill his plate with crawdads but we had been there twice in a row already and I insisted on the Burnt Bun burger joint where you can build your own creation, my favorite is guacamole bacon burger with no cheese.
We arrive at the customer site, a service company called Timberlodge, along with a rush of workers returning from lunch as we were escorted through the security system to a conference room where all us consultants were gathered to finally get to the bottom of the issue. I was hoping to break the ice with their main guy who had a big tag on his shirt that said he is the Computer Manager whose name is MAURICE so I gave him my best hand shake along with a "Glad to meet you 'Moreece'," but right away he says "That's how they say it in France but where I comes from it's 'Morris". I made sure to correct myself out loud and made a silent promise to call everyone Buddy.
In the meeting room are all the documents collected showing the logs and reboot times. There are 150 users on these 20 servers providing remote services for every department across the entire campus. The reboots were random and hit all the servers at various different times with only one recurring pattern every day between 2:10 and 2:20pm. The logs were not much help but so far all of the Analysts were blaming the servers but not Charlie. Right away he was more interested in the users.
There were two groups preparing for the coming reboot at 2:15pm. Half the team headed for the server room to see if they can notice some coincidence with the AC or power while the rest will stay in the Crisis Room watching the server consoles to see if the verbose logging they setup might isolate the issue.
Those were good ideas but not for Charlie, he went straight out to the user cube farm and started talking with the area Leaders. He found that half the users come back from lunch at 1Pm and the others at 2pm. Following a hunch he went to the printing station located at the center of the area where the 2pm lunch crowd would have just returned. I asked him what he was up to and he said, "If the answer was in the server room they would have found it by now."
Then at the appointed time Charlie raised his finger in triumph pointing at the sound of a distant user shouting out in frustration; "Crap, every time I print, I loose my server session." Following the sound we found the user coming towards us and the printers. We introduced ourselves to Sharon who had long suffered this problem and even filed a ticket once but had since learned to live with it.
Sharon always knew it was weird that she had to start a new server session so often but since the print jobs did go through successfully no one ever made the connection between printing and server crashing until Charlie heard her print. It turns out she has an old Unix workstation that uses a malformed print command that caused a panic in the process on the other end.
We never did fix the issue, we just got her to print from another machine. The guys from Northwest were so pleased they offered to take us out for beers so we had to go and listen how they had done all the real work. I kept trying to get Charlie the credit he deserved but every time he told the story the most important part was "How that girl cussed!"
Friday, May 20, 2011
Curious Case #1: The Power Problem
The first real job that came along for Columbia Interlocking Services was at a small software company called Forest Park that had several racks of servers and one rack kept having servers burn out the motherboard. The service provider would come and replace the motherboard and then later it would happen again, sometimes on another server. It was just they kind of mystery we loved.
Charlie was coming onsite for our regular Tuesday morning consulting anyway so it was convenient to take the afternoon off to handle this new challenge. Usually we go straight to lunch and then go the customer after but this was a cold call on a hot issue and we decided we better go right away.
The traffic was light but it still took 30 minutes to complete the 4 mile trip door to door and that was enough time for us to argue over the music, best route, window position and what was for lunch. Charlie said he thinks my car has a spark plug that is misfiring but it all seems good to me.
We get to the place and find that two of the Nasties from Northwest have already been here and replaced all the power components in the server room: power strip, cables, and even had an electrician onsite to change the circuit breaker just to eliminate suspects. Then last night another server gets smoked and now this morning their CEO is ready to fire somebody.
We met their local IT leader named Harish which I made the mistake of pronouncing with two syllables when he rudely interrupts to correct me by blurting out; "Harsh!". At first I thought he was describing his personality but then I realized that was how he said his name. In spite of my recent training in international cultural sensitivity I agreed to use his pronunciation. We have a policy not to argue with clients.
First thing Charlie does is stand in back of the problem rack and check each cable starting at the bottom making sure each was plugged in all the way even though he knew they had just replaced them all. About half way up he stops and says "Here it is" in a matter of fact voice. He is holding up a network cable to everyone’s amazement when we were so sure the problem was power related, no one had looked at the network.
It turns out there had once been remote network device in this rack that required power over the Ethernet cable. This unusual setup originally required a red cable with a yellow label showing it was not a standard link. Somewhere over the years the cable was removed and eventually someone plugged a regular network cable into the powered injected jack. Amazingly the server would work for a while before failing so no one thought to blame the network cable until Charlie said he could feel the power in the cable.
Harish didn't believe it until we proved it with a power meter. It was only 5 Volts of Direct Current but enough to finally kill the machine. In hindsight it is easy to blame the service provider for replacing the motherboard without providing the root cause but these motherboards have the network adapter built-in which makes it more vulnerable and harder to debug compared to servers with a separate network adapter card.
Later on we were at the Flower Blossom restaurant filling our plates from the All You Can Eat buffet while pretending we knew how to use chopsticks. I had a better grip than Charlie but we both ended up with forks to finish our plates. That's when Charlie told me the rest of the story about how he fell off the power line pole after accidentally connecting himself to the wrong two wires. It smoked both his gloves then burned all the hair off the top of his head and it never did grow back. But it did leave him with the uncanny ability to feel electricity.
Charlie was coming onsite for our regular Tuesday morning consulting anyway so it was convenient to take the afternoon off to handle this new challenge. Usually we go straight to lunch and then go the customer after but this was a cold call on a hot issue and we decided we better go right away.
The traffic was light but it still took 30 minutes to complete the 4 mile trip door to door and that was enough time for us to argue over the music, best route, window position and what was for lunch. Charlie said he thinks my car has a spark plug that is misfiring but it all seems good to me.
We get to the place and find that two of the Nasties from Northwest have already been here and replaced all the power components in the server room: power strip, cables, and even had an electrician onsite to change the circuit breaker just to eliminate suspects. Then last night another server gets smoked and now this morning their CEO is ready to fire somebody.
We met their local IT leader named Harish which I made the mistake of pronouncing with two syllables when he rudely interrupts to correct me by blurting out; "Harsh!". At first I thought he was describing his personality but then I realized that was how he said his name. In spite of my recent training in international cultural sensitivity I agreed to use his pronunciation. We have a policy not to argue with clients.
First thing Charlie does is stand in back of the problem rack and check each cable starting at the bottom making sure each was plugged in all the way even though he knew they had just replaced them all. About half way up he stops and says "Here it is" in a matter of fact voice. He is holding up a network cable to everyone’s amazement when we were so sure the problem was power related, no one had looked at the network.
It turns out there had once been remote network device in this rack that required power over the Ethernet cable. This unusual setup originally required a red cable with a yellow label showing it was not a standard link. Somewhere over the years the cable was removed and eventually someone plugged a regular network cable into the powered injected jack. Amazingly the server would work for a while before failing so no one thought to blame the network cable until Charlie said he could feel the power in the cable.
Harish didn't believe it until we proved it with a power meter. It was only 5 Volts of Direct Current but enough to finally kill the machine. In hindsight it is easy to blame the service provider for replacing the motherboard without providing the root cause but these motherboards have the network adapter built-in which makes it more vulnerable and harder to debug compared to servers with a separate network adapter card.
Later on we were at the Flower Blossom restaurant filling our plates from the All You Can Eat buffet while pretending we knew how to use chopsticks. I had a better grip than Charlie but we both ended up with forks to finish our plates. That's when Charlie told me the rest of the story about how he fell off the power line pole after accidentally connecting himself to the wrong two wires. It smoked both his gloves then burned all the hair off the top of his head and it never did grow back. But it did leave him with the uncanny ability to feel electricity.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Curious Case # 0 : The Prolog Problem
I met Charlie Pressley at my first hi-tech job after finishing Trade School in '91. He was that old guy from the Phone Department and I was that new guy in the newly formed Network group of the also new Computer department. The rules required technicians work in teams of two so we ended up working together since he was in a department by himself and tradition held that the newest guy in our group had to work with Charlie.
Back in the old days Charlie was the Department lead with people working under him and a big budget to spend money managing five hundred phones and faxes but now all the money was going to the new Network project. Suddenly phones had lost all their all their budget and importance. Charlie ended up working with me as his reluctant helper on loan from another group.
The other teams called us Katz and Pressley but managed to make it sound disrespectful and they made sure we got all the worst jobs. We were working at a mid-size hardware company that was moving from a product line of dialup modems to network adapter cards. Charlie and I spent most of our time pulling cables and punching down connectors in a constant flurry of office moves and cube relocations as the company grew. Occasionally we got called on real issues for the computer group but it was never enough for me.
At first Charlie and I didn't have a lot of respect for each other. I thought he was a crazy old man and he thought I was a young punk. He had these super thick glasses with lots of hair coming out all around his head except in the expected places. He also had a deep voice with a slow delivery that was a little too deliberate leaving an overall bad impression. He didn't think much of me either as I liked punk music and was more interested in setting up Computer Bulletin Boards than learning about phones.
Then a funny thing happened. The more we worked together the more we gradually gained mutual respect which in turn led to our recurring success. As much as I liked taking the credit it became clear that Charlie was the root to the solution for most problems even though he could barely read and write. He was lucky more than anything. He was always stumbling into the stinkiest mess and coming out smelling like a rose.
Then we started getting more and more real jobs assigned to us and to everyone's surprise we became one of the best teams in the department . As we developed a reputation for getting things done we started getting the hardest tickets and that's when I realized just how much help Charlie could be in spite of his limitations. He always made friends with anyone we met along the way and he always told funny stories to keep things going.
There was a recurring debate regarding the correct pronunciation of his name. Charlie insisted it was just like Elvis and sounded like Presley while I kept telling him that the double "s" meant it had to rhyme with "dress" as in Pressley. He ought to know how to say his own name and it just shows how arrogant I was back then and just how little I respected him at first.
Then we started going to lunch every so often and he opened up about his personal life and his various interests such as ham radio, a collection of adding machines and even raising chickens. He brought examples of each the next day in the form of the FAA operators manual, a classic hand powered adder and one dozen fresh brown eggs.
Our lunch evolved from every so often into almost every day as we had more calls to the branch offices. Between rides in the van and meals on the road I started to learn more about how Charlie came up through the ranks over the years. One story told how he got his limp from falling off a telephone pole when he was just starting out as a young lineman and after that he ended up working in the phone switch room.
A few years later we were the top team for troubleshooting and firefighting and finally had some respect in our department. Then the world changed and they laid Charlie off. The old modems weren't selling anymore and the new network cards weren't selling yet so there was a big layoff to save money. All the various computer departments were consolidated into a single IT department and all the phone work was to be outsourced.
Charlie didn't seem to mind and was starting to enjoy his early retirement but I soon found I couldn't get anything done without his help. The first time we got in a crunch at work the boss agreed to pay Charlie one time just to help out. Then it happened again and before long we ended up calling him back to help us on a regular part time basis.
The HR folks suggested it would be easier if Charlie had a business and he asked for my help and that's how we ended up starting a small company together so we could get contract work hours with the Corporate Headquarters. Charlie and I went into business and that led to us getting work on the side with other high tech companies in our area. It was always my intention to go into semi-retirement by contracting so this gave me a chance to practice without having to actually quit yet.
We called our little company Columbia Interlocking Services. Our two main competitors were Northwest Systems Technologies and Solution Integrators Network. We called them the Nasties and the Sinners and they called us the Sissies. We often ended up working on the same jobs after the other guy failed to put out the fire or the customer wanted a second opinion.
We got the same jobs because we all got them from the same dispatcher who had once been classmates with myself and the guys running the Nasties and the Sinners. There was mutual respect among everyone when the only goal was profit and the only enemy was stupid computers.
With our new company all setup and customers waiting we were in the perfect situation to find the best and most interesting of all the challenging jobs in our area. That's how we ended up with the first of our series of unusual incidents starting with Curious Case #1: The Power Problem. That is next week's Chapter.
Back in the old days Charlie was the Department lead with people working under him and a big budget to spend money managing five hundred phones and faxes but now all the money was going to the new Network project. Suddenly phones had lost all their all their budget and importance. Charlie ended up working with me as his reluctant helper on loan from another group.
The other teams called us Katz and Pressley but managed to make it sound disrespectful and they made sure we got all the worst jobs. We were working at a mid-size hardware company that was moving from a product line of dialup modems to network adapter cards. Charlie and I spent most of our time pulling cables and punching down connectors in a constant flurry of office moves and cube relocations as the company grew. Occasionally we got called on real issues for the computer group but it was never enough for me.
At first Charlie and I didn't have a lot of respect for each other. I thought he was a crazy old man and he thought I was a young punk. He had these super thick glasses with lots of hair coming out all around his head except in the expected places. He also had a deep voice with a slow delivery that was a little too deliberate leaving an overall bad impression. He didn't think much of me either as I liked punk music and was more interested in setting up Computer Bulletin Boards than learning about phones.
Then a funny thing happened. The more we worked together the more we gradually gained mutual respect which in turn led to our recurring success. As much as I liked taking the credit it became clear that Charlie was the root to the solution for most problems even though he could barely read and write. He was lucky more than anything. He was always stumbling into the stinkiest mess and coming out smelling like a rose.
Then we started getting more and more real jobs assigned to us and to everyone's surprise we became one of the best teams in the department . As we developed a reputation for getting things done we started getting the hardest tickets and that's when I realized just how much help Charlie could be in spite of his limitations. He always made friends with anyone we met along the way and he always told funny stories to keep things going.
There was a recurring debate regarding the correct pronunciation of his name. Charlie insisted it was just like Elvis and sounded like Presley while I kept telling him that the double "s" meant it had to rhyme with "dress" as in Pressley. He ought to know how to say his own name and it just shows how arrogant I was back then and just how little I respected him at first.
Then we started going to lunch every so often and he opened up about his personal life and his various interests such as ham radio, a collection of adding machines and even raising chickens. He brought examples of each the next day in the form of the FAA operators manual, a classic hand powered adder and one dozen fresh brown eggs.
Our lunch evolved from every so often into almost every day as we had more calls to the branch offices. Between rides in the van and meals on the road I started to learn more about how Charlie came up through the ranks over the years. One story told how he got his limp from falling off a telephone pole when he was just starting out as a young lineman and after that he ended up working in the phone switch room.
A few years later we were the top team for troubleshooting and firefighting and finally had some respect in our department. Then the world changed and they laid Charlie off. The old modems weren't selling anymore and the new network cards weren't selling yet so there was a big layoff to save money. All the various computer departments were consolidated into a single IT department and all the phone work was to be outsourced.
Charlie didn't seem to mind and was starting to enjoy his early retirement but I soon found I couldn't get anything done without his help. The first time we got in a crunch at work the boss agreed to pay Charlie one time just to help out. Then it happened again and before long we ended up calling him back to help us on a regular part time basis.
The HR folks suggested it would be easier if Charlie had a business and he asked for my help and that's how we ended up starting a small company together so we could get contract work hours with the Corporate Headquarters. Charlie and I went into business and that led to us getting work on the side with other high tech companies in our area. It was always my intention to go into semi-retirement by contracting so this gave me a chance to practice without having to actually quit yet.
We called our little company Columbia Interlocking Services. Our two main competitors were Northwest Systems Technologies and Solution Integrators Network. We called them the Nasties and the Sinners and they called us the Sissies. We often ended up working on the same jobs after the other guy failed to put out the fire or the customer wanted a second opinion.
We got the same jobs because we all got them from the same dispatcher who had once been classmates with myself and the guys running the Nasties and the Sinners. There was mutual respect among everyone when the only goal was profit and the only enemy was stupid computers.
With our new company all setup and customers waiting we were in the perfect situation to find the best and most interesting of all the challenging jobs in our area. That's how we ended up with the first of our series of unusual incidents starting with Curious Case #1: The Power Problem. That is next week's Chapter.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Stupid Railroad Sayings
My favorite Stupid Railroad saying is "Keep Your Own Kitchen Clean". This is like minding your own business but even better because it implied a specific task to be completed. It wasn't all rhetorical since kitchens and the duties therein are common topics when traveling workers have to share accommodations . On the actual jobsite it usually meant to stay out of my work area and don't try to make me look bad.
The first Stupid Railroad Saying I ran into on my first day was carved into a wooden plague over the Roadmaster's office door. The writing was ironically comic text that stated "One Thousand 'Atta Boys!' can be wiped out with one 'Oh Shit!'" The plaque included an animated picture of a worker with exclamation points around his head implying he must have done an 'Oh Shit'.
Once one boss would come up with a noteworthy saying it would spread among the other gangs as did this gem, "I'm Trying To Accomplish Something Here and You're Getting In the Way". This saying was soon abbreviated into the first half only which can still imply the second half if properly delivered with a loud voice and a visual glare.
One of the famous sayings was originated when one of the guys mistakenly used the phrase "Put Attention" instead of "Pay Attention" and everyone jumped on board. After a few years even the Superintendent was known to use that translation. If you think about it, it makes more sense to put instead of pay, no one wants to pay for anything.
Some sayings were not original Railroad material but were used so often and scratched into all the tunnels and bridges so they deserve inclusion here as well. "If we were to put everyone's troubles in a pile to be divided equally, most people would be happy to keep their own". Now if it was money, that might be different. Another well used but not exactly Railroad related example, "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool that to speak up and remove all doubt". You can safely write this one but if you say it out loud then you become the story.
Here is the Stupidest Railroad Saying of all, "I was looking for a job when I found this one". We think it wanted to be like that song Take This Job and Shove It, but ended up sounding more lame than lament. Another stupid habit was using the various track parts and maintenance tasks as double entendres like Beavis and Butthead might do. "Loose Nuts" ha ha…"High Spikes" he he... "Low Joints" yuk yuk… "Tampin' Ties" and on it went…
An alternate branch of the stupidity revolved around the endless safety programs. One worker offered up this addition to the Safety Rules, "If you want - to protect your back. Stay away - from the Railroad Track". He was a truck driver and did a good job of just that. If an injured worker received a monetary payoff they were said to have "Hit the Railroad Lotto!"
I hope all these stupid sayings don't land up in your brain the way they have in mine, but just remember the next time you are trying to accomplish something be sure to put attention and keep your own kitchen clean.
The first Stupid Railroad Saying I ran into on my first day was carved into a wooden plague over the Roadmaster's office door. The writing was ironically comic text that stated "One Thousand 'Atta Boys!' can be wiped out with one 'Oh Shit!'" The plaque included an animated picture of a worker with exclamation points around his head implying he must have done an 'Oh Shit'.
Once one boss would come up with a noteworthy saying it would spread among the other gangs as did this gem, "I'm Trying To Accomplish Something Here and You're Getting In the Way". This saying was soon abbreviated into the first half only which can still imply the second half if properly delivered with a loud voice and a visual glare.
One of the famous sayings was originated when one of the guys mistakenly used the phrase "Put Attention" instead of "Pay Attention" and everyone jumped on board. After a few years even the Superintendent was known to use that translation. If you think about it, it makes more sense to put instead of pay, no one wants to pay for anything.
Some sayings were not original Railroad material but were used so often and scratched into all the tunnels and bridges so they deserve inclusion here as well. "If we were to put everyone's troubles in a pile to be divided equally, most people would be happy to keep their own". Now if it was money, that might be different. Another well used but not exactly Railroad related example, "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool that to speak up and remove all doubt". You can safely write this one but if you say it out loud then you become the story.
Here is the Stupidest Railroad Saying of all, "I was looking for a job when I found this one". We think it wanted to be like that song Take This Job and Shove It, but ended up sounding more lame than lament. Another stupid habit was using the various track parts and maintenance tasks as double entendres like Beavis and Butthead might do. "Loose Nuts" ha ha…"High Spikes" he he... "Low Joints" yuk yuk… "Tampin' Ties" and on it went…
An alternate branch of the stupidity revolved around the endless safety programs. One worker offered up this addition to the Safety Rules, "If you want - to protect your back. Stay away - from the Railroad Track". He was a truck driver and did a good job of just that. If an injured worker received a monetary payoff they were said to have "Hit the Railroad Lotto!"
I hope all these stupid sayings don't land up in your brain the way they have in mine, but just remember the next time you are trying to accomplish something be sure to put attention and keep your own kitchen clean.
Can't Talk Now
It's not just a joke about people who can't rub their belly and pat their head at the same time, it's true that the average person has a one track mind when it comes to talking. For some reason, talking is a whole brain process. We can multi-task at most things but It is well known that driving a car while talking on the phone is almost as debilitating as being drunk. Talking takes the whole brain because we are so busy listening for the next word while planning our next response there is no bandwidth left for any other task.
It must go back to our ancient ancestors and we are locked into full attention when we talk. But now in the modern age we can't afford to give all our attention to one thing so unfortunately, talking is the odd-man out. Sorry buddy, you gotta go.
At work I can carry on five simultaneous chat conversations with no stress and trouble with accents from different cultures and there is a written record. But I can still only do one phone call at a time. That's why meetings are so unproductive, only one person can talk at a time. If everyone stayed at their desk and chatted they would get more work done.
Having a conversation is the most intimate way to communicate and it is very good for conveying gestures and other personal feel good type interactions but it is not so good for business. Those gestures and feel-good tricks are only confusing and clutter up the workspace when clear communication is needed.
We are less likely to blurt out in writing something we might regret the way we might do in person. Like when the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz said "Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking." Conversely, some people with nothing to say have done an awful lot of thinking.
That is why we are evolving into people who might prefer to write than fight. Meanwhile I will call back once I write down what I want to say, but I can't talk now, I have to think instead.
It must go back to our ancient ancestors and we are locked into full attention when we talk. But now in the modern age we can't afford to give all our attention to one thing so unfortunately, talking is the odd-man out. Sorry buddy, you gotta go.
At work I can carry on five simultaneous chat conversations with no stress and trouble with accents from different cultures and there is a written record. But I can still only do one phone call at a time. That's why meetings are so unproductive, only one person can talk at a time. If everyone stayed at their desk and chatted they would get more work done.
Having a conversation is the most intimate way to communicate and it is very good for conveying gestures and other personal feel good type interactions but it is not so good for business. Those gestures and feel-good tricks are only confusing and clutter up the workspace when clear communication is needed.
We are less likely to blurt out in writing something we might regret the way we might do in person. Like when the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz said "Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking." Conversely, some people with nothing to say have done an awful lot of thinking.
That is why we are evolving into people who might prefer to write than fight. Meanwhile I will call back once I write down what I want to say, but I can't talk now, I have to think instead.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Hi-Tech Series : Five Nines is for Wimps
Five Nines refers to 99.999% uptime for computers. Uptime is an Industry Standard in the Hi-Tech world that measures the time that a computer system runs between unscheduled down time. Scheduled down times are called maintenance windows while any unscheduled down time is considered an Outage. Two Nines allows for 3 days downtime a year, while Three Nines equals 8 hours, Four Nines is 50 minutes and Five Nines means only 5 minutes downtime per year. Anything more than that is a joke because you can't really measure 5 seconds per year which would eqal Six Nines or 99.9999%.
Most companies are happy to have 99% uptime but some have spent large amounts of time and money in the quest to get to 99.9% and so on in search the holy grail of uptime the infamous five nines: 99.999%. Everyone agrees it would be pointless to go any further. But not my new Boss, oh no, his first remark in the first meeting was: "Five Nines is for Wimps, we are going for 100%." He might as well have said 111% since it is well known you can't get there without spending more than we can afford.
Every new Boss has to make noise like a genius and they always start out with an "All Hands" meeting so they can lay out their agenda. The last new boss was going to make his mark by getting everyone a new laptop. He had the right idea but the wrong brand, we had to switch back to Lenovo after HP couldn't support our needs. HP is better for servers but Lenovo is best for laptops. The boss before that made an equally epic failure when he insisted on upgrading the company Windows version. Once again the right idea but the wrong version; too bad he chose Vista. That was his first and last mistake.
Then there was the Boss who demanded there shall be “No simple outages”. It was true we had suffered a series of avoidable breakdowns but we all knew he should be careful what he wished for and sure enough we stopped all the simple breakdowns and started on the big complicated outages. There was no going back after that and we soon had another new Boss.
This process has been going on all the way back to the Y2k panic at the turn of the Millennium. As soon as things settled down there was a move to switch to linux which we did do in spite of the complaints and protests from the existing unix departments. That new Boss was promoted to Vice President and everyone agreed he was brilliant. Later on that same Boss decided we should get rid of Windows which we did not do in spite of years spent wasting time and money on the effort. He is no longer considered brilliant or Boss.
I'm looking forward to the arrival of the next new Boss because I know it will continue a long standing tradition of starting out with some hair brain scheme that is bound to exasperate and entertain us at the same time.
Most companies are happy to have 99% uptime but some have spent large amounts of time and money in the quest to get to 99.9% and so on in search the holy grail of uptime the infamous five nines: 99.999%. Everyone agrees it would be pointless to go any further. But not my new Boss, oh no, his first remark in the first meeting was: "Five Nines is for Wimps, we are going for 100%." He might as well have said 111% since it is well known you can't get there without spending more than we can afford.
Every new Boss has to make noise like a genius and they always start out with an "All Hands" meeting so they can lay out their agenda. The last new boss was going to make his mark by getting everyone a new laptop. He had the right idea but the wrong brand, we had to switch back to Lenovo after HP couldn't support our needs. HP is better for servers but Lenovo is best for laptops. The boss before that made an equally epic failure when he insisted on upgrading the company Windows version. Once again the right idea but the wrong version; too bad he chose Vista. That was his first and last mistake.
Then there was the Boss who demanded there shall be “No simple outages”. It was true we had suffered a series of avoidable breakdowns but we all knew he should be careful what he wished for and sure enough we stopped all the simple breakdowns and started on the big complicated outages. There was no going back after that and we soon had another new Boss.
This process has been going on all the way back to the Y2k panic at the turn of the Millennium. As soon as things settled down there was a move to switch to linux which we did do in spite of the complaints and protests from the existing unix departments. That new Boss was promoted to Vice President and everyone agreed he was brilliant. Later on that same Boss decided we should get rid of Windows which we did not do in spite of years spent wasting time and money on the effort. He is no longer considered brilliant or Boss.
I'm looking forward to the arrival of the next new Boss because I know it will continue a long standing tradition of starting out with some hair brain scheme that is bound to exasperate and entertain us at the same time.
Friday, April 15, 2011
1960’s : Rich Kid Poor Kid
In PE Class we all had to line up in front of the bleachers for roll call and the kid next to me was named Hal Rowland and next to him was a fellow named Richard Poor so Hal always had to make a joke that he would never get ahead in life because he "was stuck between rich and poor". Every single day he had to bring it up and Richard seemed to dislike it more than I even though the ultimate irony was that the Poor’s did have more money than the Rich’s.
Hal's family was infamous for owning the cow that wandered onto the Highway and caused a terrible car crash that killed a married couple late one night. The victim's relatives sued for damages but the Open Range law said the drivers were liable and they even had to pay for the dead livestock. Talk about adding insult to injury, that made for some juicy gossip and even qualified as big news but it was an awful small town.
That same stretch of road also later claimed the life of Kim Westlake when his car hit some black ice on the way to a track meet early one morning. Kim was my first friend after we moved away from the Lake and he was the guy who showed me around Janesville school where I got to know Hal and it was Kim who first introduced us to Steve Blankenship. Steve was the one who’s Dad had a little farm near the big old empty farmhouse where we got caught shooting owls in the rafters of the barn out back and we all had to run for safety at Steve’s place but his Dad found us and made us go back, apologize and clean the barn and for the rest of the day.
The next year we weren't so lucky when we got nailed for throwing snowballs at cars from the top of the log pile at the mill and this time we had to face our parents at the police station and there were serious consequences, we had to haul hay for two days as punishment. That same Officer pulled us over again a year later and this time he had us red handed in the form of poached ducks, poached in the out of season and no license sense not the cooking poached. This time the punishment was hauling Christmas trees for the landowner and it was two full weekends of freezing cold and brutal work.
We were so sore and tired from our various chain-gang jobs we went home and watched TV where we caught the latest episodes of whatever was on which somehow seemed to ease the pain along with a hot meal and an even hotter bath. Years later there was the original TV series called Roots which spawned a bunch of copycat spinoff series and one of them was called Rich Man Poor Man. To this day any time I see or hear any reference to any of those shows it always reminds me of Hal Rowland who had to stand for roll-call between Poor Rich and Rich Poor.
Hal's family was infamous for owning the cow that wandered onto the Highway and caused a terrible car crash that killed a married couple late one night. The victim's relatives sued for damages but the Open Range law said the drivers were liable and they even had to pay for the dead livestock. Talk about adding insult to injury, that made for some juicy gossip and even qualified as big news but it was an awful small town.
That same stretch of road also later claimed the life of Kim Westlake when his car hit some black ice on the way to a track meet early one morning. Kim was my first friend after we moved away from the Lake and he was the guy who showed me around Janesville school where I got to know Hal and it was Kim who first introduced us to Steve Blankenship. Steve was the one who’s Dad had a little farm near the big old empty farmhouse where we got caught shooting owls in the rafters of the barn out back and we all had to run for safety at Steve’s place but his Dad found us and made us go back, apologize and clean the barn and for the rest of the day.
The next year we weren't so lucky when we got nailed for throwing snowballs at cars from the top of the log pile at the mill and this time we had to face our parents at the police station and there were serious consequences, we had to haul hay for two days as punishment. That same Officer pulled us over again a year later and this time he had us red handed in the form of poached ducks, poached in the out of season and no license sense not the cooking poached. This time the punishment was hauling Christmas trees for the landowner and it was two full weekends of freezing cold and brutal work.
We were so sore and tired from our various chain-gang jobs we went home and watched TV where we caught the latest episodes of whatever was on which somehow seemed to ease the pain along with a hot meal and an even hotter bath. Years later there was the original TV series called Roots which spawned a bunch of copycat spinoff series and one of them was called Rich Man Poor Man. To this day any time I see or hear any reference to any of those shows it always reminds me of Hal Rowland who had to stand for roll-call between Poor Rich and Rich Poor.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Passenger Trains and Pigeons
The poor Passenger Train is almost extinct just like its namesake the Passenger Pigeon. They were both once found in large numbers and then suddenly disappeared. Sure there are some local passenger transit systems for a few well-to-do municipalities but that is the exception and not the rule as all the rest of the cities are stuck with busses or less. For long distance train travel there is only Amtrak and that ain’t much compared to the rest of the world.
The last Passenger Pigeon was a famous bird named Martha who lived and died at the Cincinnati zoo in the year 1914. The decline of the species was dramatic, from billions to none in less than 50 years. The astonishing thing is how many there were when they first started to save them, but still not enough to succeed. You would think having just two birds would be enough to start over again but for some reason there has to be a large number to support the minimum amount to qualify as a sustainable flock. The Passenger Train went through a similar experience over the last 50 years of the 20th Century. By 1950 the number of cars, airplanes and buses carrying passengers had finally equaled the Railroad’s number. It seemed like a fair fight at the time, but it was already too late and the fight was all but over for the poor Passenger Train because it was just not profitable to ship humans compared to the money made by shipping coal, lumber, autos, etc...
By 1970 the Government had to step in and force the railroads to keep the Passenger Train alive in a minimal form with federal subsidy. None of the State Governments cared enough to subsidize and the Carriers had no interest in human cargo so it was only the Federal Government who could save the day. But instead of taking over and making it profitable they put it on a starvation diet of minimal help and left the industry to whither away on life support. Meanwhile Germany and Japan take turns setting new high speed records on their new Passenger Trains and even third world countries spend more on this than America. Canada has one of the all time greatest RR passenger system that is complimented by fully funded local rail passenger solutions. Vancouver has sky trains running by two’s in all directions.
When I first worked on the Railroad there were always special trains for the Big Shots to ride around and inspect the lines and then over the years that train got shorter and shorter until finally it was just a car or two tagged on the end of a regular train. By the time I left the practice fell out of fashion completely as one generation retired and was replaced by the next who would prefer to fly. And if the Big Shots won’t even use their own road for transportation then it really must be dead. Or maybe we just need a new generation of old school kids who are willing to ride a Passenger Train instead of flying.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Dog Food Shopping
If you Google on “dogfooding” you can find out about one of the concepts in Hi-Tech Industry called the Dog Food effect. The idea is that you have to use your own products so you can tell your customers that you know what they are going through because you eat your own dog food, so to speak. The idea is you should be familiar with your own product, something like an updated version of“Practice What You Preach”.
I first heard of this concept when Microsoft was found to be running linux servers and they had to promise to stop the same way Intel can’t run any computers with AMD chips and the Pepsi delivery man can’t be caught drinking Coke. It makes sense up to a point and then it starts to hurt more than it’s worth and people end up cheating to sneak their i-Pad in the door. It’s good to shop local when you can but it’s still OK to go Mall once in a while.
Another related idea is to go “Shopping” for your own product to experience what your users have to go through when they shop for your stuff. When I was taking support calls the shopping amounted to our bosses calling in to us as if they were customers to see how we handled their complaints.
I remember one of these incidents when I was taking support calls for Intel modems where the customer gave the standard complaint about the modems being hard to use and I gave the standard response about having to make system configuration changes and then the guy got mad. I kept my cool but he was angry and demanded a picture of my boss. It seemed like an unusual request but I said I would make the report and then he asked for a picture of the boss with his dog and that was the moment when I should have recognized the joke but they could have kept going asking for pictures of the cat and the pet bird and the even the dentist and I would have kept going along with the joke all day long.
The same concept works with your competitors in the business world where you want to go buy their product and then call their tech support. You should know the look and feel of the other products in your space so you can honestly point out the differences. Similarly you should use equipment from the company you are trying to sell to, we found out the hard way when HP told us we would get no more business until our Sales department switched from IBM to HP laptops. They didn’t like us going to their building with the competitors laptops.
The whole concept of having to eat your own dog food reminds me of the free trade concept of “Buy American” where it sounds alot easier than it is to actually do in reality. My company tries to buy products with our chips but it is impossible to operate with only our own stuff. Besides, I tried eating the dog food when I was a kid and while it wasn’t that bad, I still wouldn’t recommend it as the only diet option.
Monday, March 28, 2011
The Expanding Innerverse
By now most everyone has heard the theory of the expanding universe and while that is a good start toward finally understanding how things work, it turns out the poor scientists are missing the rest of the story and thankfully they have yours truly to reveal the truth at last. Fortunately I am not restrained by the scientific method and am free to use science fiction in proving my theories. Hollywood notwithstanding, here is my latest discovery. It's not just the universe that is expanding but also everything in it, including us human beings right on down to the distance between the electrons and the protons in all our various atoms.
Pause to think; of course it must be true everywhere, how can it only be true in outer space? If we were to stay the same size here on Earth while the rest of the cosmos continues to grow then the distant stars would disappear in a day or two. The fact is we are almost keeping up with the rest of the universe in the expansion process, they just got a big head start on the project.
It is also quaint for us to think we are in charge of everything and that we are somehow exempt from the laws that apply to all the rest of the particles. Just as we once thought our planet was the center of our solar system we are just as naïve to think we can see our expanding universe all the way back to the beginning of time. The further out in space we look is supposed to be further back in time until we finally see the big bang but then wouldn’t things be getting closer together instead of further apart? The only way to see the big bang is by looking inward, not outward, so what we think is looking back in time out in deep space is actually looking ahead.
There never was a big bang in the past, that is just an optical illusion of what is yet to come. It’s quite a shame we don't understand our own inner universe as well as we do the outer one. If there really is a bang that big it would obviously represent the END of the universe not the beginning. We are spinning headlong into space toward the breaking point where our molecules are finally stretched to the limit and we all snap apart into our individual bits and pieces which will look exactly like the beginning of something big and bangy. So we have that to look forward to, unless of course, once again; I could be wrong.
Monday, March 21, 2011
No Way To Run A Government
One of the curious aspects of working on the Railroad was the one of a kind Retirement system . Anyone who works longer than 10 years for any Railroad qualifies for Railroad Retirement which is completely separate from Social Security. Any workers who also had jobs that fall under Social Security are subject to a two tiered formula for calculating just how much the retiree will receive from the two different pension funds.
You might wonder why it is so complicated and root cause goes back to the early 1900's when the US government went looking for a good model to copy while creating a retirement system for the whole country that later became Social Security. Talk about government intrusions, they were trying to force people to be comfortable in their old age.
The Railroad retirement system already had so much money they were able to loan money to the Government system in the 1930's when times got tough and therein lies the beginning of the two tier payback formula.
It wasn't the first time our Government looked to the Railroad Carriers for a template on how to do business. They also copied the Railroad Labor act of 1926 as the model of how to treat the average employee. Back then they weren't considered Union workers, they were just called Government workers, but they were still better off than the average Union worker.
Talk about the US Congress butting into other folks business, they actually passed a law forcing the Carriers to provide certain basic benefits to employees. And what was the very first and foremost of these requirements? Water. It literally took an act of Congress to prove to the world that the workers deserved to have some water to drink.
Later on the demands evolved into more luxurious items such as better wages, overtime, and even paid time off so pretty soon all the workers turned into a bunch of lazy no goods, in the eye of the Company. Sure some workers have a good deal and some few have set a bad example but they are are not all crooks.
So the next time it seems like some union worker is asking for too much then please help decide just how much is too little. Do they at least get some water?
Off to work I go
Every morning before I head out the door on my way to work I have to sing a little song to make sure I remember all my required accoutrements. It goes like this: “Keys, Watch, Wallet, Work-ID, Cell Phone, Blue-tooth, Glasses and Briefcase”. There is no specific tune for the song other than a monotonous la-dee-da-dee-daw… the whole point being to mark the items off the checklist.
This habit came about as the result of many years of forgetfulness and even though I live only a few minutes away from work it still ruins the day when I forget. Every time I ever start to fall out of the habit of singing this little reminder I find myself at work without one of the listed items and soon enough I am singing that same old tune again.
I must have always had a bad memory because I have always had a checklist before I left the house. As a kid all I needed was my pocket knife. Later I got a wallet and that started the first simple list: “Knife and Wallet”. When I got a car I added keys to the list. Then my first day on the Railroad I had to add a hard hat and lunch box: “Keys, Wallet, Knife, Hardhat and Lunchbox.”
When I first started working on the Railroad life was simple but every time I got promoted I had to add more stuff to the list. After I got to be a machine operator I had to get special Railroad approved watch and there was punishment for not having the watch. When I became a Foreman I had to carry a Timebox, a big heavy metal suitcase for protecting important papers along with the two-way Radio for calling the dispatcher. So then the song went: “Keys, Watch, Wallet, Lunchbox, Pocket Knife, Timebox, Hardhat, Radio.”
As the years went by the number of keys kept going up, the wallet got thicker with IOU’s instead of cash and the pocket knife kept getting upgraded every year to the latest Swiss Army version so even though I wasn’t adding any more items to the list, the list of items was still getting bigger none the less. Then I switched over to the Hi-Tech career path and the list started changing again. Here was the longest list of all back in the ‘90’s. “Keys, Watch, Wallet, Glasses, Work-ID, Doorcard, Radio, Pager, Pocket Knife, Cell Phone, Blue Tooth, Brief Case, Lunchbox.”
Then things started to reduce when the Doorcard got integrated into the Work-ID, the Pager went obsolete, the pocket knife morphed into a Penknife, the Radio was replaced by a cell-phone, the Timebox turned into a Briefcase and the watch was no longer needed with a smartphone around. The number of keys on the ring is going down and the wallet is lighter than ever these days.
Someday in my future the list will evolve back into a simple few things; wake up, look down, zip-up. In the end there will be nothing left on the list and no way to know if I forgot something.
Civil War Story – Chapter 4: Mustard
Someone stole my whiskey and cigars! These, my two dearest companions, alcohol and tobacco, now ripped from their safe hiding place in the back of my wagon. All this right under my very nose while I was arguing with the Colonel. My first reaction was to yell at the soldiers but that wouldn't help so I bit my tongue and waited to see just how mad I should get.
This was not the first robbery of my goods when less than a week before someone got away with my supply of mustard. I can barely stand to eat the corned beef and other rancid meat even with the mustard but without any makes me want the whiskey and cigars all the more again. That mustard came all the way from New Orleans and there won't be another batch in stock any time soon.
I couldn’t decide which I missed most, the whiskey, the cigars or the mustard. I had to go a few days with no whiskey or cigars the last time the military blocked our tracks and that was when I first started stocking it away at the depots. Going without drink and smoke can be irritating but going without my favorite food can be downright painful.
So I set a trap for my tormentor and sure enough on the fourth night he came again while I was hiding under a blanket behind the door. As soon as he crawled past me in the dark I pulled the hammer back on my pistol and lit a match at the same time both within inches of his head before he had time to gasp.
He was dressed in dirty brown canvas from his floppy hat clear to his shoes all the same material and condition. He didn't look like any soldier I had ever seen him before but I had the drop on him this time and figured I should let him have it and finally get my first kill.
In the last three days I had seen two cases of senseless killing that had transformed a murderer into a hero and I had assumed I could benefit by joining their club but now that the chance was here I couldn't remember why I felt that way.
I suddenly remembered killing my first deer with a gun at the age of 8 and how I missed my first shot but not my second. My hand was shaking now just as it had back then and I was starting to wonder if I would need two shots again when the culprit turned his head my way.
His eyes were looking back at me and I had a instant feeling as if I knew him. I didn't know his name and I had never seen his face before but I knew he was just like me had once killed his first deer and was now wondering if I would miss my first shot again.
That moment of hesitation turned into forever as I sat frozen watching him slowly back his way out of the wagon as he disappeared into the night. I argued with myself why I couldn’t kill and I argued back to myself that I work for the B&O Railroad and I am no soldier and it's OK that I can't kill. I had expected to brag and benefit from the proof of my killing prowess but instead I never did mention the episode to anyone.
Later on at Chancellorsville that same gun would have no trouble sending a fatal bullet that would find the Colonel without error and I would look back and wonder why it would not kill tonight.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Life Analogies
Forrest Gump's Mom says life is like a box of chocolates and that is a great analogy for a while but after a while a person gets tired of chocolates and yet life still goes on so we have to find something else to compare with life.
There are many existing cliché's where life is like an elevator always going up and down or like a roller coaster and we can’t wait to get off. Life is like a coin, don’t spend it flipping out. Life is like a bad movie, or a good movie whichever fits the situation. Life is just an excuse for paying taxes. Life is like a cakewalk, or a grindstone depending on our mood or the weather.
Life could be like a reality show on TV called Needle In A Haystack. Each contestant will approach the problem with a different strategy and energy level. Some would use the Gorilla logic where they roll around until they get poked while the magnet men will fish for success and the less energetic will whittle away by nibbling one straw at a time.
My favorite analogy for life is a sandcastle building contest. A sandcastle requires constant attention and even then it will fall apart at the slightest whim of the elements. The wind, the high tide and even time alone will tear down the strongest sandcastle and the players must rebuild and refine their skill in the process.
Each person’s sand castle represents their philosophy in life. Some people just turn the bucket over and wait to see how long it takes to turn flat again. Others go for height at any cost and end up wasting their efforts with inevitable avalanches. Then there are those who build in the ranch style and want to overtake as much beach as they can reach.
In the end it is not the castle that matters, it’s the not the actual structure that we remember as much as the fun we had building it and the feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day that tells the story of how we feel about life.
Even if we are sick and tired of building castles in the sand we must still find a way to make life fun. Of course real life is not always like a day at the beach, that's why we need handy life analogies so we can compare the bad times to something better.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Railroad Series: Chapter 12 - In The Clear
One of the few important duties that might fall on the Assistant Foreman was getting time on the radio. This involves calling the Central Dispatcher to request permission to place our Maintenance locks on the two switches at either end of our worksite. The Foreman usually does this but he asked me to do it since the Dispatcher was still mad from yesterday when we were 25 minutes late due the spike driver breaking down and we had to finish by hand.
The Dispatcher gave us two hours to finish and made it known that we wouldn’t get any time tomorrow if we were late again today. I promised to be in the clear on time. According to the official Book of Rules we are supposed to use the full phrase "Clear of the right of way" when the work is complete but after several Official hearings on the matter it was decided that all that’s required is the word "Clear".
I had fifteen minutes to get from the far end of the job site back to the nearest switch, remove the lock and make it back before calling the Dispatcher. The Foreman had the small pickup heading in the opposite direction which left me with the big 20 Man Gang Truck to go the mile and half and back again. It was a narrow steep road with sharp curves and the old gang truck had trouble making it around those corners at anything over minimum speed. Everyone else on the gang knew that critical fact except the new Assistant Foreman. As I careened along the roller coaster road at full speed I was checking the radio, finishing my lunch and planning even further ahead when I hit the sharpest corner and the old clunker bounced up once and froze in mid-air with the trailer hitch high centered on the dirt bank.
The back wheels were dangling in the air and I was busy calculating how long I had to get unstuck and still make it in time. I was already giving up on returning to the job site and decided I would call the dispatcher from the siding as soon as I remove the lock from the switch. Several solutions ran through my mind, call for help, try running on foot, call the Dispatcher and tell him I'm late, give up and have a cigarette...but first I must try my best to make it through unassisted.
I took a track jack out of the back of the truck and managed to move the bumper just enough to make the wheels touch the road again but every time I would get in the cab to drive away the jack would slip and the truck would end up stuck again. With one last look at my watch I decided I would be just as guilty if I was stuck on the other side of the road as this one.
Then I threw all caution to the wind like a young 21 year old might do and I put that old beater in 2nd gear and went back behind to start work with the track jack while the wheels were humming along in mid-air and as soon as those wheels hit the road away went the truck and the jack and me all together heading sideways back down the hill but at the last moment a well-placed stump stepped in and held the jack still which finally forced the truck out in the road where it slowly started chugging up the hill.
I hobbled over and got in the cab just in time to barely miss another truck coming around the corner looking for me but it was too late and the world would never know of my near mistake. I made it to the switch and removed the lock with barely a minute to spare before calling the Dispatcher to let him know we were "In The Clear". I spent the next three days with a sore knee from bob sledding with that track jack which is probably still imbedded in that stump to this day.
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