The Moon in the Man

I started out this article as an indictment against our modern world because we are so lame that we couldn’t keep up the Space Race of the 1960’s but I soon realized we have plenty of good reasons not to spend so much money for so little real value. The truly amazing thing is that we did manage do to it back then. We were different then as we surely are different now but there is still enough of a common thread for us to appreciate each other.

I don’t want to sound like one of those conspiracy theory people who think we never went to the moon and just faked it at Area 51. That would have been harder than the real thing. I do believe we went. I just can’t believe we will ever do it again.

That was the last time we could do it. We barely had the technology and the money did hurt at the time but we were ready and willing and miraculously able. Today we have too much technology and we can’t even keep the space shuttle going, we could never make it back to the moon let alone beyond. We lost a certain required skill that is missing today and we need to get it back. Let’s go ahead and call it is; crazy. We were all crazy back then but it worked better than this.

Something was different back then…certainly the economy but more than that, we felt empowered to dream big and do great things. It’s not like the world was young and innocent because I was there and it was not. Maybe it was the last time we could comfortably be our selves before we grew up and stopped doing childish things, like flying off to the moon.

How many people are still driving a 1980’s model, only NASA. And no plan for an upgrade… I’m not asking for a billion dollar budget but right now there are back yard enthusiasts sending up more interesting launches than the US Government. So it will have to be private business to push us to the next level. It seems like the Mission to the Moon was the last time the two political parties could agree on anything and maybe it could be the next thing to bring them together again.

Gold Mining in the Year 2050

During the great depression of 2025 the State of California tried in vain to find the mother-lode gold in an effort to restart the economy and finally balance the budget at the same time. They used all the latest technology and mapped out the likely spots but every test came back negative and in the end they admitted they were still no better off than searching for a “needle in a haystack”.

25 years later we are ready to try again and this time the chief engineer on the project promises it will be more like finding a “trombone in a haystack”. My job was to setup super microwave signal sources on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada between Reno and Las Vegas so that we could pick up those signals on the other side of the mountains in the foothills between Sacramento and Fresno. Instead of searching for Gold we soon found ourselves searching for granite outcroppings, underground water and any other source that might act as a good receiver.

Eventually we were able get detailed images at some depth it was never in the places we wanted. Every time we tried to zoom in on our favorite spots we had trouble finding solid rock to bounce our signals off and ended up testing in smaller distances at shallow depth just to get any readings. We were trying every frequency of every spectrum and poking around with every conceivable detection method.

One hot summer day I wiped the sweat from my forehead and then leaned up against a tree and to my surprise I started hearing the sweet music of a positive hit in my headset after nothing for days. Then the signal disappeared when I let go of the tree and even though I could get the signal back by touching the tree again my brain refused to accept to conclusion that a tree could carry my signal better than the ground. Luckily I had a co-worker who specialized in biology and he could explain how the root system was like an upside down antennae positioned perfectly in my ground loop and capable of picking up signals in materials which had been silent for all our attempts.

This was the first real breakthrough and after that we were able to create maps that consistently returned impressive images from %90 of our deep viewing. That was when we started getting a picture of things much deeper than the 1 to 10 miles we had been viewing, now we were seeing down to 100 miles and got the first glimpse if the deep drop-off and the heavy pull on the plates directly below Yosemite valley.

By using the latest Global Positioning Sonar Enhanced Lasers guided by Google Universe Interplanetary Triangulations we were able to pinpoint the mother lode once and for all. That was when we started getting some interesting results from the probes. And that is the next chapter in this series: Gold mining 2050: Chapter Two – Deep Pocket Drones.

Railroad Series: Chapter 8 How to Change a Rail

The most basic railroad maintenance task is changing a broken rail. It only takes 10 minutes if you are in the train yard where you can drive right up with a boom truck but if the broken rail is in an inconvenient location where you have to get permission and the rail won’t fit then the 10 minute job can turn into an all day job; with overtime.

Most broken rails are reported by track inspectors who will give the exact location down to the hundredth of a mile with details on the size and length of rail needed. The worst case was a broken rail reported by trainmen who are famous for getting the milepost wrong so it can take a while and sometimes footwork to find it. Once you know the size and length of rail needed, you then have to get a rail from the nearest stockpile and move it to the location which more often than not means hand loading the rail with rail tongs onto a hand car and manually push in to the worksite.

After you have all the material it’s time to get permission to remove a rail. On the main line you can simply call the dispatcher on the radio and he “gives time” and the trains will stop until you call back with the mandatory “In the clear”. On the branch lines there is no dispatcher and you have to put up flags according to the book of rules. There are no excuses when it comes to safety so we were required to put out three flags in each direction along with a “ torpedo” explosive device to get the engineers attention that there was a flag ahead. Even if there were no trains coming, we could get fired if we didn’t so we always put up one yellow flag, two miles away and then a red flag a quarter a mile from the broken rail and finally a green flag to tell the train they were past the break. Those three flags had to be duplicated for trains coming in the both directions. Putting up the flags could take an hour if the dirt was hard and you had to dig or collect a pile of rocks.

The trickiest part is making the new rail fit. All rails are supposed to be 39 feet long but in the field they rarely are. If it just a little too long you can bang the existing rail-ends on either side to gain up to an inch of slack. If the rail is too short you can actually make it grow an inch or two by using a hot rope. The hot rope is made of asbestos and soaked in diesel oil and when stretched out along the rail and lit on fire makes a smoky light show in addition to the rail stretching. Once the fire goes out, the hot rope can be coiled up again for indefinite reuse. I never did figure out how to make a cold rope.

If the rail is too long or too short by more than an inch or two then you have to cut in a short stub rail called a Dutchman. Cutting can be done with a torch, motorized hack-saw and even with a sledge hammer and rail chisel. Any time you have to saw you will have to drill holes for the bolts. The drill had a motorized version that would break down and we would end up using the two man hand powered drill. It would take 5 full minutes of turning that crank to get one hole drilled with both laborers insisting they were doing all the work. No matter how big the hole, the bolt still had to be bent to make it fit which leaves the threads striped and that one bolt can end up being quite a time consuming detour.

The boss expects every rail to be changed in 10 minutes or less and can never understand why it sometimes takes all day and overtime. In spite of all that, changing a rail is still one of the easiest chores on the list of maintenance duties, mostly because there is no digging with the pick and shovel. There is plenty of pick and shovel work when it comes to changing broken cross ties. That is the next chapter in the Railroad Series.

The System’s Analyst Chapter Two: The Curse of the Systems Analyst

Here it is, the Bottom Line on top: Never take a job with “anal” in the title. If your job has an anal in it anywhere chances are you will end up acting or feeling like one.

When you finally get good at being an analyst you can’t help but go too far and end up over-analyzing everything. You know you have gone too far when you start questioning basic things like what day it is or what time it is, even though you just looked at your calendar or watch. Then in an effort to compensate you head toward the other extreme where you skim over everything and ignore all the details in a recurring vicious cycle. Your relatives, friends and co-workers will be sure to let you know when you are analyzing too much or too little by starting many of their sentences with “No one cares…” or “Wait a minute…”.

The analyst is cursed because everyone assumes they know it all. Engineers get to specialize in just one thing but analyst are supposed to cover everything. If we knew it all we would have a better job than this! People also assume you will do anything and expect you to cover everything from the Enterprise Infrastructure down to the paper towels in the restroom. They will also accuse you of reading all their data or listening to their calls even though you can’t keep up with your own email and phone calls. Again, if we were that sophisticated we would find better stuff to snoop.

All your co-workers and customers will assume you are available anytime, especially vacations and holidays. They are allowed to be freaked out during the disaster but you have to stay cool. Worst of all, everyone assumes you want to help them with their friends, relatives and acquaintances for any and all issues and projects. In the same conversation where they were complaining about being overworked they will freely assign you non-company related tasks and never think twice.

The analyst usually works. You have to be self-motivated and not rely on others for help while at the same time you must also work well with others as part of the job. This creates a bi-polar response where the analyst can’t get along with the other team members when they are working on a team of one. Sometimes a Systems Analyst has been around so long they need to separate them from the herd so they reassign them as Senior Systems Analyst. It’s not a promotion, just a distinction so the other regular analysts will know to leave him alone.

If I had it to do all over again, I would get me an honest job without any anal in it.

Interview with a Dishwasher

My first real job was washing dishes at Jerry’s Restaurant in Susanville Ca, paying $1.35 an hour. There was no job interview, the training was free for anyone interested. Most of the other dishwashers treated the work as drudgery and I gave that a try but I couldn’t do it. I was 14 and loved the big washing machine and the challenge of a stack of dishes up over my head. Sure I got embarrassed when I had to mop the floor in front of my school mates but when I got back in the kitchen I was king and soon became one of the best dishwashers at the place.

That was when I got to thinking what it would take to be the best dishwasher ever. I figured there must be a fancy restaurant someplace in New York or Paris where they really do have a job interview for dishwasher. Then I fell into the habit of practicing for that interview so I could become the best in the world, as if there were an Olympics for dishwashers. After that the drudgery became great fun as I perfected the art, if that is possible. After a month I got promoted to Fry Cook and I was never as good at cooking as I was at the dishwashing and I missed that feeling of confidence, but you can never go back once you start up the ladder of success.

Later on in my career I was often required to interview candidates at a hi-tech call center where we had a high turnover due to smart people who didn’t want to do the dirty work. We were having trouble with people passing the interview with flying colors only to fail at the actual job of helping customers or debugging issues in the lab. All our candidates were equally qualified technically but after they got hired they couldn’t grasp the team concept, or the required self-motivation and working outside the comfort zone.

That’s when I hit on the idea of using the dishwashing interview. Dishwashing is the solution I argued. In one simple real-time test we get to see if the interviewee is willing to jump in and take care of the dirty work. We can see in a minute if they have the right organizational skills, manual dexterity and most of all; humility.

Of course they never let me drag a candidate back to the break room to watch them wash the dishes but it sure made for some good debates and it might actually have improved our interview process. Most of all, I was hoping it would improve everyone’s attitude when it comes to doing the dishes but the truth is; nobody likes doing the dishes.

The Trillium Thief

The last two years before we moved from Portland to Sacramento my wife was determined to keep us healthy by taking regular hikes along the 22 miles of trails in Forrest Park. These trails are very steep and the forest is quite wild, yet it’s right there off 23^rd street in downtown Portland, though it feels like being out in the middle of nowhere. We saw many natural wonders on those trails and one day there were a bunch of pretty little three-petal flowers in bloom so I picked one.

Then on the way back to the car we were confronted by a self-appointed Park Ranger. “You’re not supposed to pick that flower!” We stopped short in the trail dumbstruck, me standing there like Yogi Bear with the pilfered picnic basket. “Those are Trillium flowers and they only bloom once every 7 years, don’t you know?” Again we stood in silent disbelief hoping to avoid criminal prosecution. “So now what should we do?” was my best effort at a clever response. She must have heard the remorse in my voice as she suddenly and silently turned to go as if her job was done.

Back at the car I felt like a murderer with a dead corpse. Should I leave it there or take it along home and risk further punishment. They might have a road block already setup… There was no way to enjoy the spoils of my stolen booty now. I should have known better. This wasn’t my first experience with rare flowers. The Mountain Lily grows in the high sierra where I grew up and we had to drive miles to see even one and then for only one week each summer. We scorned the city slickers who dared to pick one and now I was the ignorant despoiler. The only difference is there were lots and lots of trillium out that day.

The Trillium incident reminded me of my evolution from blood thirsty big game hunter in my youth to passive picture shooter in my later years. I am no vegetarian by any means but I can’t bring myself to kill the animals anymore. I had to quit because they kept looking back at me, but I remember thinking, “…at least I can still fish”. And then later on even the fish were looking back at me and I had to quit fishing, but I could still squash a bug. But no, even the insects finally got a good look at me and it’s come down to the flowers; I can’t even kill a Trillium without feeling bad. Now I can’t even kill time without looking over my shoulder at the clock.

Civil War Story - Chapter 1: Who Shot Stonewall Jackson

I never meant to kill General Jackson, I swear it was an accident. At least that’s what I keep telling myself after all these years, but there were plenty of reasons to suspect I might have done it on purpose. We spent years fighting together and we rarely saw eye to eye on any decision, but we had respect for each other and none of our quarrels ever came to violence. All the same, if there had been a trial, it’s hard to say how the jury might have voted.

Colonel Jackson and I first met in Winchester when I was working as Roadmaster on the B&O railroad out of Martinsburg. I always called him Colonel because that was what he went by when we were stationed together long before the beginning of the war. I never did take to calling him Stonewall because the first time I ever heard that usage it was in a derogatory tone as if to say he should have moved to help during the battle of Bull Run but instead he stood still, like a stone wall. I still called him Colonel even after he got promoted to General but only as an inside joke and never to his face.

The oldest of all reasons for me to have any quarrel with the Colonel was when he took a fancy to my favorite girl and he ended up getting all the dances, if you catch my drift, but that was all way back before the Gold Rush. For all that, neither of us ended up with her and she was gone and married by the time the war started so that was an old wound at best and certainly not one worth killing for all those years later. I wasn’t even close to being jealous back then.

I will admit to a being a little jealous of his later success and maybe a small portion of anger when I had to leave my railroad job behind to help him and his Army of Virginia by way of acting as Aide-de-Camp in charge of transportation when I preferred to stay on back at the roundhouse but as there were no trains or tracks left anyway and I felt I could do no better than agree to his terms. But in this case as the others there was no grievance bad enough to make me purposely kill the best Officer in the Confederacy.

I will acknowledge I was angry when the Colonel came through our section of track and tore up every rail and spike so they could build new lines in the Richmond area at the beginning of the war. I got over being mad because we had enough extra material to rebuild and I accepted it as an equaling of resources, so to speak, but I could not accept it when they came through again one year later and this time they stole most of our best railroad engines. Then came the last straw when he burned down the bridge at Harper’s Ferry; twice!

It is also true that on the very night of his death at the battle of Chancellorsville I had argued with the Colonel at length not to keep fighting after dark while he insisted on rushing ahead to “…out-flank them again!” That was how we got separated in the heat of the battle and I got turned around in the darkness convinced he was behind me so the riders coming fast must be those damn Yankees and I had to protect his retreat, but instead my shot was the fatal wound for the poor Colonel. But it was all purely unintentional, circumstantial. It was an accident I swear.