OT heater controls

I've had mostly similar experiences with IT personnel even to the point that some would lie if they felt any part of their image might be threatened. The exceptions where the really smart guys who had managed to work their way into a supervisory position.

In college a buddy of mine (pretty smart fella) who had an on again off again computer service business invited me to come help him put on a demonstration. He would periodically reserve the meeting room in the basement of the library for the "Yuma Computer Club" and put a notice in the newspaper. We were using parallel laplink, and serial null modem cables to transfer data from PC to PC. No big deal today when you can transfer gigabyte video files from your cell phone to your PC with blue tooth, but it was a bid deal back then when network cards were crazy expensive and many PC users were kids who saved their allowance and Christmas gift money to buy a second or third generation old used PC so they could dial up a BBS.

The Yuma Computer Club was real and it was a fiction at the same time. It did create a social connection between some people who might otherwise never have met, but my buddy would just call a meeting and setup a demo for something to get his business face in front of new people. It was always "open invite, all are welcome, demos will be done," and there was never any club business like minutes, or votes or anything like that.

At the meeting where we were doing the PC to PC data transfers on the cheap this kid name Craig came in with his mom in tow. I think she just came to make sure it was what it said it was, because I don't recall her hanging around. Craig sucked up everything we had to teach in seconds the first time often before we finished explaining it. I could tell we bored him pretty quickly, but he was polite, listened, and watched as we finished our demo and let people ask questions. I'm modestly smart. My buddy is pretty smart. I could tell Craig could suck knowledge out of a rock.

I didn't run into Craig a lot. I might have seen him on some of the BBSs, but I don't know what his handle was.

One day not to many years later Craig walks into my office and asks if I can run network cable. Sure. Its cable. Anything I don't know I can learn. He says, well I need a licensed contractor to run 200 arcnet drops in the MCAS Yuma adversary squadron building. We did the job on schedule, and that's when I bought my first real network cable tester. Craig was running his own computer business by then and he seemed to know his way around pretty well. He might have been 17 or 18.

it was a big job for me. $8.5K in 1995. I had net terms from all my vendors, and I figured we'd have it done in 2 weeks. The job went fine, there was some question over certification until I handed them certification reports on a disk and then we submitted to get paid. It was Craig's job so he was the one who invoiced it. I invoiced him.

The job wasn't to bad except for having to wait for somebody to open the door to the building every time we came in. The doors were posted no photography and a few other things, but nobody gave us a second look. They just opened doors for us. The Russians would have paid dearly for photos of the chalk boards in some of the rooms. I don't remember the details of anything that was on the boards, but I do recall some of what types of data was written. Speeds, air frame G capabilities in various maneuvers and vectors, etc. Stuff that could be learned from observation, and theoretical limits both. Honestly I didn't really look at any of it except to be surprised it was posted in empty meeting rooms.

We didn't get paid, and we didn't get paid, and we didn't get paid. I had vendors screaming at me to get paid, and one of them cut off my credit permanently. I was calling Craig regularly. I didn't know if he played me or what. One day he walks into my office, and tells me he doesn't know what to do. McDonald Douglas (yes I am naming those sorry bastards) was just ignoring him. Being a licensed contractor I have one super power. I can file a lien against the physical property involved if I don't get paid. We sat down and wrote a polite succinct, and rather forceful lien notice letter to... The Commandant of the Marine Corps informing him that one of his contractors was refusing to pay us, and had been ignoring us for months. We would be filing a lien against his air station. Now I know we can't foreclose on a us military base, but we could still file the lien and it would be a huge black eye for the Marine Corp.

I told Craig if he mailed that letter its likely he would never do another job for McDonald Douglas, and maybe not for any military contractor or us military service. He said, it didn't matter if he couldn't walk into my office and ask for help when he needed it. It wasn't too long (maybe a week) before Craig came down to my office and handed me a check. He said he had received it Fed-Ex overnight.

I know what Craig said, but I figured that was a pretty unpleasant experience. I faced backlash in a couple of my vendor relationships over it for years. I didn't think I would ever see Craig again. Only a few years later he calls me up again.

Craig was the head IT guy for a consortium to provide among other things IT for about 40 schools. He wanted to open purchases orders on dozens of schools and have me do all their small jobs cabling, maintenance, and repairs. He's the one who asked me to get that high school registration center up and running I posted about previously. He was never the least but threatened by me, and didn't mind me talking with his bosses, or school administrators if he wasn't handy. I did eventually screw that up (my fault) for not kissing the ass of a political above him, but well that happens.

Craig was smart, recognized what others could do, and let them. More so he didn't seem to let ego get in his way or put unpleasantness off on the wrong people like many others do. Last I heard from his was a post card and a phone call from Europe somewhere. He was still working for the consortium, but all of his work was on a consulting basis and he would remote in if needed. They had him on a retainer as an independent consultant.

I ran across a couple others like Craig. Maybe not quite as smart, but with the right attitude. Herb with Crane Schools (IT for maybe 20 schools), and the guy (I can't recall his name) from Gowan Company. Maybe because as Gowan got bigger and bigger he had to delegate to underlings who were like as you described.

One that blew me away in the wrong way was BOSE. I sold them equipment for their plant in Mexico which I visited once, and I did a big video surveillance job for their warehouse here in Yuma. The job included network monitoring capability, but when it came to the point to setup the DVRs on the network the IT people just refused. They didn't refuse to cooperate. They refused to allow it on the network. They didn't understand it, and they wouldn't even listen when I explained unless they opened up ports or put them in a DMZ there was no outside risk. (Well unless it was hostile Chinese equipment which it wasn't.) They just refused. In just a couple minutes they refused to even talk to me. They were clearly threatened, and I was a bit surprised they didn't even want to tell me why. They just refused.

I walked up the plant manager's office and explained why I couldn't finish the job, and that I was invoicing them anyway. I also documented how his IT people could tie in the equipment for him if they decided to do their jobs. I gt paid in a timely fashion, and had very few service calls. I also did a few additional small jobs adding cameras. Nobody in IT would talk to me at all. LOL.

Yeah, IT guys can act very tribal in a small group or very "everybody is the enemy as individuals," but those who really know what they are doing and really can learn whatever they need to don't seem to be. The people who actually are smart.

I never did another job for the Marine Corps, or a marine contractor, but I did work on base for individual marines a few times. I also did work for the Army, Air Force, Loral Aerospace (for the air force), and another AF contractor, Justice, Customs and through GSA. None of them were because I was on the government contractor bid list. All I got from that were was people trying to take advantage of me or sell me a class on how to be a government contractor. Every job I got was because somebody knew me and wanted me to do the job. A couple times I would get a call that start like this, "Bob, this is Sam. Renew your bid listing. We want you to bid a job." I did receive a few calls from Marine Corps contractors, but I quickly realized they were just fishing for a third bid so they could award it to their sweetheart anyway. I quit wasting my time on them.

As to BOSE. A very senior manager became a personal client a couple years later. He found out I was making molds on the side and asked me about doing mold repair for their production facility in Mexico. I told him I didn't have machines that good, I didn't really know much about that type of mold making, if I did I would probably be just as expensive if not more so than companies who already had all the equipment and infra structure, and I wasn't sure I wanted to deal with guys like his IT department. He asked about my experience, listened, and said, "Price isn't that big of a deal as long as you don't screw us, you will only deal with me or somebody who respects the job you do, and if you ever feel you want to try this call me personally and let me know." That was a long time ago and I don't remember his name, but it made me feel a lot better about BOSE as a company.

That's quite a story, fortunately I don't have any to match that level. At several places IT and I came to an agreement that I wouldn't mess with networked computers and they would let me run my own standalones and small local network without interference. One standalone would act as though you had just plugged a board in hot if you touched a certain control. It was meant to test an IC in development that would permit that. One problem is the new board's uncharged capacitors momentarily shorting the power supply. We also helped develop Power Over Ethernet.

When a networked computer with an easy administrative password that the production crew used for shopping during lunch became too corrupted for IT to clean they declared it standalone and let me do the job. It controlled a critical battery test station, the programmer had quit, and no one had a copy of the code.

Kelly Johnson felt the same way about the Navy, so Lockheed dealt only with the Army Air Corps and then the USAF.

Mitre was created as a private non-profit to at least partly isolate engineers doing Government work from Government interference.

"Government agencies recognized the need to maintain and take advantage of a critical mass of science and technology knowledge not otherwise available in the standard civil-service environment."

---to say it politely.

I still haven't bought a brand new computer and use USB3 on an ExpressCard to transfer the TV video recordings to multi-terabyte drives. These older Dell laptops run Win7 for its HDTV tuner compatible Media Center and take a second 1TB drive for the recordings in the expansion bay, while booting from an SSD. Although the recordings are mainly concerts, musicals, operas etc I'm security conscious enough to not broadcast them on WiFi. Cable company mail and phone ad spam is bad enough without them knowing what I watch. They drive around monitoring for signal leakage and who knows what else. Maybe like in Britain they monitor the IF frequency to see what you are watching. I told you I was in communications security, and learned how much can be done if they want to. I haven't hooked up an IP security camera yet because it seems to require full time Internet access, to inform China. I just want it to wake an old cell phone by the bed if it detects motion.

No Highs, No lows -BOSE

Along with Junky But Loud JBL

Does home built from parts count as brand new ? The only "factory built" computers here are the Lenovo laptops , and they were all refurbs from Newegg . All our comps are running Win7 ... because my wife refuses to learn Ubuntu , even though it's almost identical to windoze . She may be forced to if/when they shut down all the older Win OS's .

What's your opinion of Kenwood speakers ? I have a mishmash of component stereo equipment , most pretty old stuff like the Pioneer SX-6 receiver . Rated .009% THD @ 50 watts , but it'll push 100 watts at .01 % .

I'm a fan of the old DCM Time Frames, but expensive. The new"er" Time Windows were meh by comparison. Just more modern looking... back in 1993.

With Bose it depended. The cubes could NOT produce low frequency, but they were usually only sold as part of a system with a mediocre to fair sub woofer. I installed a few for customers. To get broad sound you had to pounce it off the walls in a rectangular room from the center of one wall. Put it in a corner, and it as a night mare to get it to sound right. On the other hand their book shelf stereo speakers were half decent. I still have a set of 301 bookshelf speakers here in the house. They aren't as good as DCM, but they also didn't sit on the floor where the cats could get to them.

The biggest issue I had with Bose package theater systems was they didn't have any real equalization capability. You got what you got, but that's true with most surround amplifiers. Maybe some bass and treble control, but you couldn't tune for the room with your noise generator.

Does home built from parts count as brand new ? The only "factory built" computers here are the Lenovo laptops , and they were all refurbs from Newegg .

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I don't know what counts to those who might care, mine including the laptops are home built from used, a few new and occasionally shop made parts. My first computer was completely home made (wire wrap) to my design, including the metal case and an audio tape modem, and I coded the OS, text editor and assembler. At work the lab computers were invariably former front office machines and I found I could keep them useful for a good ten years. Except for full sized data acquisition cards the older laptops could be adapted to the same hardware interface tasks as desktops and didn't permanently take up lab bench space.

I run them until the browser becomes obsolete, this one has Firefox 115 esr, the final version for 7. The TV playing and recording laptops don't need an Internet browser and haven't been updated at all, they'll send a smoke signal when they go.

I do have a fairly recent Lenovo with Win 10 if needed, but I find it more annoying than useful, and a cellular data hog. I stuck with Win 2000 for a long time, with a pirate patch of XP features, then XP until 7 support stopped. If REALLY necessary I still have a Teletype, Morse key and ham license.

What's your opinion of Kenwood speakers ? I have a mishmash of component stereo equipment , most pretty old stuff like the Pioneer SX-6 receiver . Rated .009% THD @ 50 watts , but it'll push 100 watts at .01 % . Snag

---------------------- I wish my ears were still rated that good.

The job wasn't to bad except for having to wait for somebody to open the door to the building every time we came in. The doors were posted no photography and a few other things, but nobody gave us a second look. They just opened doors for us. The Russians would have paid dearly for photos of the chalk boards in some of the rooms.

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prize for the 40 second bet was a steak dinner. AFAIK he always won it.

Mitre was very secure, with guards at the entrances and cipher locks on the lab doors, of which I memorized a dozen. Another guy who knew Russian (and looked like Trotsky) taught me some greeting phrases that we'd pass back and forth as we walked past the oblivious guards. That was the maximum level of rebellious independence I saw. With a clearance you develop the tendency to stifle curiosity, ask no questions, be very polite and appear to notice nothing you don't Need To Know. A stranger might be a powerful cabinet member or Senator even if he's wearing a cowboy hat and boots. We dealt with a high level FAA honcho who dressed like Hopalong Cassidy. Dean Kamen's standard clothing to meet Presidents is a blue jean shirt and pants, he could be mistaken for a plumber.

I don't think mine ever were ... I'm not so much into loud these days as clean . Of course InnaGoddadaVida and Stairway to Heaven ...

A mate was visiting a few years ago and he is a serious Heart fan from their early days and I ran up this of Heart covering 'Stairway to Heaven'

, he'd never heard of it before and was blown away, it's played at least once whenever he is up my way. My ears aren't nearly as good as they used to be but I still prefer vinyl having kept all mine when others ditched it. Some albums the difference between CD and vinyl isn't as noticeable but on some albums they were badly remastered for CD and the difference is noticeable, IIRC Robert Plant pressed for LZ4 to be re-done some years back for that reason.

A mate was visiting a few years ago and he is a serious Heart fan from their early days and I ran up this of Heart covering 'Stairway to Heaven'

,

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Thanks. Nancy is one of my faves. I made the mistake of loud vs clean, Cerwin-Vega 15's and a DAK subwoofer, second-hand of course.

I knew a classical radio announcer who had Voice of the Theater speakers in his large custom listening room, and a tape of his wife's Broadway-class singing definitely sounded better on his system than mine, almost as good as the live performance I heard for a week from the lighting panel, but I wasn't motivated to spend big bucks on entertainment when I could hear it often enough from backstage.

They made some good stuff and some absolute crap. The etuff back in the eighties? was pretty good

Loud AND clean is pretty much the holy grail. I have an old system - Audio Research Labs? that I've used a few times for kids' friends stag and doe parties at local community center - it can pretty much raise the roof and still be crisp and clear - the guys at the center said it was the cleanest sound they'd ever heard there. The speakers have 14 inch? woofer and passive cones plus midrange and tweeter - I replaced the foam surrounds on all 4 woofs myself a number of years back. It is a combination instrument/pa amp. REAL early solid state system and it weighs a TON - largely due to the huge power transformer.

These speakers are pretty old , came to me 2nd hand from a good friend (he went nomad , lives in an RV and manages campgrounds in the eastern Sierras) and he'd had them for a long time .