Jail Zuckerberg

On 3/1/2021 12:45 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Mon, 1 Mar 2021 09:50:24 -0800, "Mark J."
wrote:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-liebermann-151823/

I gotta say that the accomplishments listed for your "Liebermann Design"
job are impressive indeed!
Mark J.

I was referring to the "magic, and miracles." Quality over quantity,
you don't need to do many miracles to enhance your reputation.
Mark J.

I originally though that's what you meant. But then I noticed that
you used the word "accomplishments", which is what inspired me to fix
my resume. Should I erase and trash everything I did and put it back
the way it was originally?

Incidentally, I managed to perform a minor miracle yesterday. No
magic was needed. Customer simultaneously had two computers, one
Sharp TV, and his Yahoo password all fail at the same time. There was
nothing wrong with the computers, but both LCD monitors were kaput. I
brought the TV video back from the dead by performing the reset
ceremony, but had to reroute the cabling for the audio to get things
to work. I don't know how the password got trashed, but after
performing the "lost password" ceremony, he was able to receive his
spam normally. I left with a nice check.

However, like many miracles, things aren't quite as they seem. Today,
the TV crapped out again, this time announcing an EEPROM or firmware
failure. The Geek squad says his TV service contract expired 3 years
ago. The replacement monitor I found in the garage failed. That's
now three dead monitors. So far, the Yahoo password is still working,
but that's a bad thing because he's now bombarding me with email
suggesting we go shopping together.

Miracles and possibly magic don't always stay working and I might be
returning the nice check.

Grumble...


I understand that working with electronics sometimes involves apparent
miracles.

A friend who did it professionally said "So I went there, the device was
dead, I opened the case, found nothing obviously wrong, closed the case,
and now it's working correctly. How do you bill for that?"

I used to do this for student's expensive graphing calculators. I
referred to my services as "the laying on of hands."

May all your miracles be stable!

Mark J.

On 3/1/2021 2:45 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Mon, 1 Mar 2021 09:50:24 -0800, "Mark J."
wrote:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-liebermann-151823/

I gotta say that the accomplishments listed for your "Liebermann Design"
job are impressive indeed!
Mark J.

I was referring to the "magic, and miracles." Quality over quantity,
you don't need to do many miracles to enhance your reputation.
Mark J.

I originally though that's what you meant. But then I noticed that
you used the word "accomplishments", which is what inspired me to fix
my resume. Should I erase and trash everything I did and put it back
the way it was originally?

Incidentally, I managed to perform a minor miracle yesterday. No
magic was needed. Customer simultaneously had two computers, one
Sharp TV, and his Yahoo password all fail at the same time. There was
nothing wrong with the computers, but both LCD monitors were kaput. I
brought the TV video back from the dead by performing the reset
ceremony, but had to reroute the cabling for the audio to get things
to work. I don't know how the password got trashed, but after
performing the "lost password" ceremony, he was able to receive his
spam normally. I left with a nice check.

However, like many miracles, things aren't quite as they seem. Today,
the TV crapped out again, this time announcing an EEPROM or firmware
failure. The Geek squad says his TV service contract expired 3 years
ago. The replacement monitor I found in the garage failed. That's
now three dead monitors. So far, the Yahoo password is still working,
but that's a bad thing because he's now bombarding me with email
suggesting we go shopping together.

Miracles and possibly magic don't always stay working and I might be
returning the nice check.

Grumble...




http://www.yellowjersey.org/photosfr...ast/newfon.jpg

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On Monday, March 1, 2021 at 12:59:12 PM UTC-8, AMuzi wrote:
On 3/1/2021 2:45 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Mon, 1 Mar 2021 09:50:24 -0800, "Mark J."
wrote:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-liebermann-151823/

I gotta say that the accomplishments listed for your "Liebermann Design"
job are impressive indeed!
Mark J.

I was referring to the "magic, and miracles." Quality over quantity,
you don't need to do many miracles to enhance your reputation.
Mark J.

I originally though that's what you meant. But then I noticed that
you used the word "accomplishments", which is what inspired me to fix
my resume. Should I erase and trash everything I did and put it back
the way it was originally?

Incidentally, I managed to perform a minor miracle yesterday. No
magic was needed. Customer simultaneously had two computers, one
Sharp TV, and his Yahoo password all fail at the same time. There was
nothing wrong with the computers, but both LCD monitors were kaput. I
brought the TV video back from the dead by performing the reset
ceremony, but had to reroute the cabling for the audio to get things
to work. I don't know how the password got trashed, but after
performing the "lost password" ceremony, he was able to receive his
spam normally. I left with a nice check.

However, like many miracles, things aren't quite as they seem. Today,
the TV crapped out again, this time announcing an EEPROM or firmware
failure. The Geek squad says his TV service contract expired 3 years
ago. The replacement monitor I found in the garage failed. That's
now three dead monitors. So far, the Yahoo password is still working,
but that's a bad thing because he's now bombarding me with email
suggesting we go shopping together.

Miracles and possibly magic don't always stay working and I might be
returning the nice check.

Grumble...


http://www.yellowjersey.org/photosfr...ast/newfon.jpg

I don't think that people realize how much of their day that they spend screwing around on-line. Today I've driven 30 miles to pick-up a stem, The guy that owns it misspelled his address and then when I got that fixed, the Maps program was saying "turn left at the next corner." All I saw was a cliff wall. So I would drive along and it would say "Drive 3/4 mile to:" what turned out to be Brickyard Cove Marina. Then it would say, "Make a u-turn and go back to: (streetname)" again nothing more than a cliff. Finally got him on the phone and he said that it was a park building. Well I CRAWLED along that cliff face and just before the Richmond Ramblers motorcycle club there was a little house along the road. That turned out to be it - no street of any kind. But its address was a separate street name than the road it was on. Anyway, got my stem and returned and stopped at the store for some vegetables and decided that I would make seafood pasta tonight.

Came home, put everything away, then cut up the box that contained the Eddy Merckx and put it in the recycle container. My older brother is doing absolutely nothing but sitting in front of that screen. As a hobby he used to build guitars. Why the hell doesn't he do that instead of messing around on the Internet 24 hours a day digging up Fake News to believe?

My younger brother does nothing but go visit the older brother. They get along great together because the older brother who actually has a clue about politics keeps it to himself, unlike me. Well younger brother makes quite a bit of money as a retired city employee on Calpers and I want to hear what he has to say when taxes come in. Or the license on his Lexus. Or the payments on his Condo. Or the increases in the maintenance of the Condo area. He never rides a bike on the street anymore. Only rides a trainer.

When I used a trainer in rainy weather it never seemed to maintain my fitness level but he claims that it does. Have any of you ever had an experience of maintaining your fitness levels with a trainer?

On Mon, 1 Mar 2021 12:53:48 -0800, "Mark J."
wrote:

I understand that working with electronics sometimes involves apparent
miracles.

Not exactly. RF is generally considered to be black magic and much of
what I do involves RF. I can confirm that this is correct.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-RF-engineering-considered-black-magic
Other forms of electronics can also involve some aspects of magic, but
nowhere near as much magic as needed for RF. As computers evolve
ultra-complex monstrosities, they develop some of the characteristics
of RF, such as inconsistency, lack of repeatability, unexplainable
crashes, irreproducible symptoms, etc. This may seem like magic, but
it's not. Magic implies a pact with the devil, arcane knowledge, and
sleight of hand, none of which are much use with computers. Like many
things, the more you learn and know about something, the more you
realize that the things you haven't learned and don't know are growing
at a faster rate.

A friend who did it professionally said "So I went there, the device was
dead, I opened the case, found nothing obviously wrong, closed the case,
and now it's working correctly. How do you bill for that?"

That's easy. He can bill for time, parts, travel, research, mass, or
whatever seems appropriate. Asking such a question is a sure sign of
an impending business failure, where a real professional would more
properly ask "Did I bill for everything I could?"

I used to do this for student's expensive graphing calculators. I
referred to my services as "the laying on of hands."

That has the same problem as my miraculous repair. They don't stay
repaired. Among my many perversions, I fix older LED type HP
calculators.
http://www.learnbydestroying.com/jeffl/pics/calculators/index.html
(I can't find the JPG of my entire collection of HP calculators).
The number one problem with such calculators are intermittents. That's
because nothing is soldered and most parts are snapped, glued, heat
swaged, or pressure clamped together. The really cheap ones are CoB
(chip on board) which will go intermittent after a few temperature
cycles and die with broken wire bonds if you touch the epoxy. An
acquaintance did a vibration test on some calculators for a review.
All of them failed. Ever notice that specs for calculators do NOT
include anything for vibration or drop testing?

May all your miracles be stable!

That's unlikely. If I don't understand and fix the root cause of a
problem, the device is likely to re-appear. I suggest that you spend
the time and fix everything you find wrong or find suspicious.
Otherwise, it might come back with the old problem, or a new problem
that you didn't catch the first time.

Incidentally, fixing bicycles is much easier than electronics. Sure,
you get greasy and there are plenty of oddities, but at least you can
see, hear, smell or feel the moving parts. That's much better than
needing test equipment, microscope or computer to fix electronics.

Good luck.
--
Jeff Liebermann
PO Box 272 http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond CA 95005-0272
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Mon, 01 Mar 2021 14:58:59 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

http://www.yellowjersey.org/photosfr...ast/newfon.jpg

I don't understand.

I fix smartphones, sometimes. Mostly battery replacement, broken
screens, and mangled USB/power connectors. The problem is that
they're rather difficult to fix. Besides the vendors (i.e. Apple)
making it increasingly difficult to fix anything, the firmware bugs,
the lack of parts and information, the extreme miniaturization, and my
failing eyesight, the owners regularly abuse their phones. There's no
magic involved in keeping them alive. It's the first product I've
seen where the manufacturers have successfully sold obsolescence while
pretending to be environmentally correct. The phone will fail in 5
year from battery failure, lack of OS updates, copper corrosion,
mechanical (hinge, button, connector, etc) use failure, or lacks
features that the cellular provider will no longer support. Magic
can't fix those.

If the cartoon you provided suggests that we might be better off
without smartphones, I beg to differ. The value of any new technology
is best defined by how the technology is abused. Smartphones are
certainly successful and have been thoroughly abused. I know a few
people who have resisted in various ways. That will probably remain
their position for many years. However, the next generation will
consider smartphones and full time internet to be a necessity for
living, necessary evils, expensive luxuries, an ecological disaster, a
privacy horror show, or whatever is in fashion at the time. It
doesn't matter, and phones, internet connectivity, and all the
problems and compromises they bring with them, are here to stay.

I wonder how many people during the early 20th century had the same
attitude about automobiles, preferring instead to continue using
horses and perhaps bicycles. At the time, automobiles might also have
been considered magic. (Notice how I snuck bicycling into this rant).


--
Jeff Liebermann
PO Box 272 http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond CA 95005-0272
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Mon, 01 Mar 2021 14:35:31 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:

On Mon, 01 Mar 2021 14:58:59 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

http://www.yellowjersey.org/photosfr...ast/newfon.jpg

I don't understand.

I fix smartphones, sometimes. Mostly battery replacement, broken
screens, and mangled USB/power connectors. The problem is that
they're rather difficult to fix. Besides the vendors (i.e. Apple)
making it increasingly difficult to fix anything, the firmware bugs,
the lack of parts and information, the extreme miniaturization, and my
failing eyesight, the owners regularly abuse their phones. There's no
magic involved in keeping them alive. It's the first product I've
seen where the manufacturers have successfully sold obsolescence while
pretending to be environmentally correct. The phone will fail in 5
year from battery failure, lack of OS updates, copper corrosion,
mechanical (hinge, button, connector, etc) use failure, or lacks
features that the cellular provider will no longer support. Magic
can't fix those.

If the cartoon you provided suggests that we might be better off
without smartphones, I beg to differ. The value of any new technology
is best defined by how the technology is abused. Smartphones are
certainly successful and have been thoroughly abused. I know a few
people who have resisted in various ways. That will probably remain
their position for many years. However, the next generation will
consider smartphones and full time internet to be a necessity for
living, necessary evils, expensive luxuries, an ecological disaster, a
privacy horror show, or whatever is in fashion at the time. It
doesn't matter, and phones, internet connectivity, and all the
problems and compromises they bring with them, are here to stay.

I wonder how many people during the early 20th century had the same
attitude about automobiles, preferring instead to continue using
horses and perhaps bicycles. At the time, automobiles might also have
been considered magic. (Notice how I snuck bicycling into this rant).


Re Internet as a necessity... In one of the complaints about the
treatment of the National Guard groups assigned to the Washington
debacle was the complaint that they had been housed in a place with no
Internet.

Depending on exactly what is "the early 20th century" in the little
town I grew up in people didn't prefer horses, they just didn't have
sufficient funds to buy a car and they already had the horse :-)
And even stranger, "back in those days" people actually walked, even
little kids walked to school, I walked a mile to school when I was in
the 1st grade. Hard to imagine I know but true. But on the other hand
childhood obesity was so rare as to be almost nonexistent.
--
Cheers,

John B.

On 3/1/2021 5:09 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Among my many perversions, I fix older LED type HP
calculators.
http://www.learnbydestroying.com/jeffl/pics/calculators/index.html
(I can't find the JPG of my entire collection of HP calculators).
The number one problem with such calculators are intermittents. That's
because nothing is soldered and most parts are snapped, glued, heat
swaged, or pressure clamped together. The really cheap ones are CoB
(chip on board) which will go intermittent after a few temperature
cycles and die with broken wire bonds if you touch the epoxy. An
acquaintance did a vibration test on some calculators for a review.
All of them failed. Ever notice that specs for calculators do NOT
include anything for vibration or drop testing?

Interesting. I began using Hewlett-Packard calculators in the late
1970s, IIRC. In addition to the RPN logic that I still greatly prefer, I
was sold by a demonstration my best engineer friend had seen. He was
working at a very large technical firm, and an HP salesman visited to
pitch the calculators to the engineers. As part of his demonstration, he
suddenly and without warning threw the calculator at a concrete block
wall. He then picked it up and showed that it was still working
perfectly. Granted, impact =/= vibration, but it was still impressive.

The HP I bought was a great improvement over the previous RPN calculator
I had. (I thought that was a Sinclair, but those images don't look
familiar.) After a few years the keys started "stuttering" - as in,
typing 5 might result in 55555. Many times I opened the keyboard,
cleaned off corrosion, smeared with a thin layer of Vaseline to slow the
progression of corrosion.

About calculator intermittent failures: I still use and love my HP-48G,
but it's developing quirks. The main one is that pressing the "ON" key
no longer works! But I learned that if I press down on the calculator
body just below the screen, that key is functional. IOW, before using my
calculator you have to know the secret handshake. (As if RPN isn't enough.)

One of my saddest moments was realizing that my HP-48G+ had fallen outo
of my briefcase as I rode my bike to work. Posting "Lost" notices on
telephone poles and checking pawn shops failed. But I'll bet whoever
found it is still trying to figure out why "2+2" doesn't work.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 3/1/2021 3:53 PM, Mark J. wrote:

I understand that working with electronics sometimes involves apparent
miracles.

.... or other wizardry.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/61/f1...d77b7d3970.gif

Our house is haunted by a poltergeist. Not the normal kind that pushes
candlesticks off mantle shelves and throws dishes around empty kitchens.
Ours is in the electronics. (That's where most of them have gone.)

I can give plenty of examples - such as keyboards, mice and touchpads of
our only two computers all going dead the evening I wanted to check the
weather before a long vacation drive. Or most spookily, an old, old
radio with long-travel push buttons turning itself on at 3 AM.

But the fairly new Vizio TV is heavily polluted with bad magic. Not
infrequently it refuses to respond to any input signal, either from the
remote or from the manual buttons on the back edge. I eventually learned
that the proper appeasement ceremony is to unplug it from the wall, hold
down the manual power button for perhaps ten seconds, then re-power and
try again. It seems to work, perhaps after several repetitions.

But that doesn't explain the time I shut it off at midnight, set the
remote down, shut down all the house lights, started upstairs and heard
the TV turn itself back on. :-/


--
- Frank Krygowski

On 3/1/2021 6:02 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 3/1/2021 5:09 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Among my many perversions, I fix older LED type HP
calculators.
http://www.learnbydestroying.com/jeffl/pics/calculators/index.html
(I can't find the JPG of my entire collection of HP calculators).
The number one problem with such calculators are intermittents. That's
because nothing is soldered and most parts are snapped, glued, heat
swaged, or pressure clamped together.Â* The really cheap ones are CoB
(chip on board) which will go intermittent after a few temperature
cycles and die with broken wire bonds if you touch the epoxy.Â* An
acquaintance did a vibration test on some calculators for a review.
All of them failed.Â* Ever notice that specs for calculators do NOT
include anything for vibration or drop testing?

Interesting. I began using Hewlett-Packard calculators in the late
1970s, IIRC. In addition to the RPN logic that I still greatly prefer, I
was sold by a demonstration my best engineer friend had seen. He was
working at a very large technical firm, and an HP salesman visited to
pitch the calculators to the engineers. As part of his demonstration, he
suddenly and without warning threw the calculator at a concrete block
wall. He then picked it up and showed that it was still working
perfectly. Granted, impact =/= vibration, but it was still impressive.

The HP I bought was a great improvement over the previous RPN calculator
I had. (I thought that was a Sinclair, but those images don't look
familiar.) After a few years the keys started "stuttering" - as in,
typing 5 might result in 55555. Many times I opened the keyboard,
cleaned off corrosion, smeared with a thin layer of Vaseline to slow the
progression of corrosion.

About calculator intermittent failures: I still use and love my HP-48G,
but it's developing quirks. The main one is that pressing the "ON" key
no longer works! But I learned that if I press down on the calculator
body just below the screen, that key is functional. IOW, before using my
calculator you have to know the secret handshake. (As if RPN isn't enough.)

One of my saddest moments was realizing that my HP-48G+ had fallen outo
of my briefcase as I rode my bike to work. Posting "Lost" notices on
telephone poles and checking pawn shops failed. But I'll bet whoever
found it is still trying to figure out why "2+2" doesn't work.

Incidentally, this company may be of interest to those enamored of HP
calculators:
https://www.swissmicros.com/products


--
- Frank Krygowski

On 3/1/2021 5:35 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

It doesn't matter, and phones, internet connectivity, and all the
problems and compromises they bring with them, are here to stay.

That's an admirably Stoic attitude.

Two comments on the problems and compromises:

1) We're already at the stage where it's difficult to function without
an internet connection. I saw this recently when my credit union's
connection was out of service for quite a few days. I've heard of many
people who wanted COVID vaccine but weren't comfortable using the 'net
to try for an appointment and were forced to sit on telephone hold for
hours. And a good friend of mine (and one of the most tech-averse people
I know) has had no internet connection at home for about 12 days and is
beyond furious. The net is now considered the default way of performing
any transaction, and it must be making millions of elderly folks very
anxious.

2) Drivers entranced by their smart phones is becoming a real concern,
including for bicyclists. In our state, members of one political party
(guess which!) just struck down yet another attempt to make distracted
driving a primary offense. But I'm afraid even that won't solve that DD
problem for decades. I seem to see a phone-intoxicated motorist every
five minutes. We'll never have an army of cops big enough to pull them
all over.

I think the only slim possibility of a solution is phone apps that
automatically disable phone communication while a car is moving. If the
use of such apps became The Responsible Thing To Do, at least a portion
of motorists wouldn't be tempted to answer the texts coming in.


--
- Frank Krygowski