I come home from work the other day and there's a laptop on my kitchen counter. Wife says my sister dropped it off. She wanted to get the battery out but didn't have a screwdriver small enough to get the screws out. So I look at the screws and they are absolutely the tiniest screws imaginable. Same size as the ones on an iPhone5 but torx. I dug around for half an hour before I found anything small enough.

Took me another 30min to get all the screws out and remove the battery. I text her:
"where's the new battery?"
Her: "I don't have one."
Me: "then why did you have me remove it?"
Her: "to see if that fixes it"
Me: "what (specifically) is doing or not doing?"
Her: "it's not working."
Me: "a little more (specific)"
Her: "it won't turn on."

So I plug in the power supply, check the barrel connector with DMM. Initially 18V, but dropping. Stabilized around 2V. I chopped the cable in half, connected it to my bench PSU, and what do you know? It works! My bad; I should have known better. I should have asked about the battery before wasting an hour of my life.

I texted her simply "it wasn't the battery," when what I really meant was "NEXT TIME JUST TELL ME WHAT THE DAMN PROBLEM IS AND LET ME TROUBLESHOOT IT. IT'S WHAT I DO." I'll give her a proper jab face-to-face when she comes to pick it up (I ordered her a new power supply).

It just reminded me of every time I've ever gone up to a machine operator for a trouble call and instead of describing the problem, they rattle off their hairbrained theory about what's causing the problem that they aren't immediately willing to disclose. Sometimes you really have to interrogate them pretty hard just to get out the simplest details.

"Just tell me what the problem is." Im sure you can all relate.
</rant>

 

It is the same problem when someone says "I want to hire someone to design a circuit". I ask: "what are your requirements" and the client looks at me like I've got two heads. I know it is going to be a long day.

 

I'm sure you can all relate.

Yep. One customer hired me to put a new jerk cord on her lawn mower. Later, I found out the cord got jerked to death because the valve seat had come loose from the cylinder head.

There ain't no amount of new cords that will fix a blown valve seat!

 

There are two aspects that particularly cause me agita.

The first is when a lengthy interrogation is necessary before THE relevant action is revealed. Example: after asking 25 questions geared around "what happened", it finally comes out that they "might have spilled some coffee on it right before it stopped working".

Even more insidious is the secret actions that take place when you are trying to help someone over the phone (I have some friends and relatives that could win a prize for this).

ME:...OK, I know how you can fix that, but you have to slowly and carefully following my directions and tell me what is happening at each step....OK?...ok.

So, it starts out fine...
ME: ok click on that - does a window open that says blah blah...
THEM: Yes, I see it....
ME: ok, now drag that to that little folder that says blah blah....
.....
.....
ME: Hello? Did you drag it?
.....
ME: Hello?
ME: What's going on?? [and I know they are doing stuff because they think they have it all figured out]
.....
.....
(finally) THEM: umm now it's blank and none of the keys work

*sigh*

I would last...maybe 4 hours as a computer help line person.

 

Me: I don't no nuttin about no computers.

 

Sounds a lot like Homework Help, don't it?!

We ran in to this all the time at my former employer. Someone works for a few years figuring out how to do some hair-brained thing with discrete electronics (and sometimes it represents some really clever and breakthrough work) and now wants to put it on an IC because they need not a single channel, but an array of them. Fine. That's what we do. But they just want us to port their discrete design onto an IC. They didn't want to tell us what the circuit needed to do or give us any kind of performance specification. It was often a long, painful process to convince them that discrete and integrated electronics are two very different critters.

 

My trick in the field was to tell the customer, when I look at a problem I have to understand what happened when you first encountered your problem. Put me in your shoes and tell me about the incident just the way it happened. Suddenly they let themselves over to the moment in time.

My son is stubborn, he want's to do things himself, I don't help until he totally breaks down and ask's. I walk past him without offering any help, I just say, still being difficult? I know how that is and walk on.

Finally he asked me what do I do to my face, my friends and I have no idea what to do, I told him start with the basics, I said change them dirty f-ing cables before I even help you, once you do that we'll trouble shoot it further. Long story now short after a year the car was down, I put my meter on it and got 14.4vdc I said it will charge efficiently and the battery cables "your Mom" told you to change are the problem.

Burn...........he's starting to understand old people know a lot of shiz, experience is golden. Cant' tell you how many times I wanted to say something as I walked past looking at them dirty broke cables.

kv

 

I come home from work the other day and there's a laptop on my kitchen counter. Wife says my sister dropped it off. She wanted to get the battery out but didn't have a screwdriver small enough to get the screws out. So I look at the screws and they are absolutely the tiniest screws imaginable. Same size as the ones on an iPhone5 but torx. I dug around for half an hour before I found anything small enough.

Took me another 30min to get all the screws out and remove the battery. I text her:
"where's the new battery?"
Her: "I don't have one."
Me: "then why did you have me remove it?"
Her: "to see if that fixes it"
Me: "what (specifically) is doing or not doing?"
Her: "it's not working."
Me: "a little more (specific)"
Her: "it won't turn on."

So I plug in the power supply, check the barrel connector with DMM. Initially 18V, but dropping. Stabilized around 2V. I chopped the cable in half, connected it to my bench PSU, and what do you know? It works! My bad; I should have known better. I should have asked about the battery before wasting an hour of my life.

I texted her simply "it wasn't the battery," when what I really meant was "NEXT TIME JUST TELL ME WHAT THE DAMN PROBLEM IS AND LET ME TROUBLESHOOT IT. IT'S WHAT I DO." I'll give her a proper jab face-to-face when she comes to pick it up (I ordered her a new power supply).

It just reminded me of every time I've ever gone up to a machine operator for a trouble call and instead of describing the problem, they rattle off their hairbrained theory about what's causing the problem that they aren't immediately willing to disclose. Sometimes you really have to interrogate them pretty hard just to get out the simplest details.

"Just tell me what the problem is." Im sure you can all relate.
</rant>

Lately I have been watching a lot of psychologist Professor Jordan Peterson lectures as background entertainment while working on things in the shed and it absolutely amazes me just how much psychological analysis and understanding I have developed over the years (but didn't have the right terms or reference points in place to even fully realize it) just from the very concept of having to figure out the owner/operator of whatever it is that need looking at in order to fix the actual device.

And just like you too often its 90% fixing the damn owner/operator rather than the actual device that comes into play.

looking back to working with a multitude of people in the oil fields as a electronics technician many times the main fix for a buggy machine was to simply turn the computer or PLC systems off for 20 seconds and then turn it back on so it could do a hard reset. A process that's so simple a 5 year old could be trained to do it but oddly not many adults of certain personality types. Or at least not without debugging the adult first.

I can't count how many machine operators that I had do the turn of, count to 20 , then turn on thing and then fail at it until I added the psychological analysis part to the equation. Half the people could be told to count to 20 against a clock and hit the 20 second count pretty close. The other half couldn't hit it within +- 10 seconds so I had to adapt the 20 count process to most of the high strung ones to be a 30 - 60 count just to make sure they got the actual 20 second shutdown time I wanted applied properly.

Fascinating and rather fun guy to listen to if you have time and want to get a understanding of how you/we think or don't think when we really should. https://www.youtube.com/user/JordanPetersonVideos

 

Burn...........he's starting to understand old people know a lot of shiz, experience is golden. Cant' tell you how many times I wanted to say something as I walked past looking at them dirty broke cables.

Normal day in my life when working with certain friends of mine. Years ago a buddy of mine wanted me to change out a new tank heater on one of their big payloaders because it isn't heating properly and had to be plugged in for 10+ hours to start on a good day if it would start at all.

I go over an have a look. Yep it heats but not how a 2000 watt unit should and the problem should've been dead obvious. The 100 foot 16 ga extension cord that ran the not quite 20 feet out to it had a path 3 inches wide melted down to bare dry dirt in the snow wherever it laid.

We put a 20 foot 12 ga cord on it and the machine was heated up and started within 30 minutes.

 

discrete and integrated electronics are two very different critters.

A hard won lesson for me. After studying drawings of the insides of IC's, but no actual experience building IC's, it took me a long time to figure out which configurations don't work like that with discrete devices.

I said change them dirty f-ing cables before I even help you

One of my rules: Do the obvious first. That gives your brain time to figure out what to do next.

too often its 90% fixing the damn owner/operator

That's why I always had a partner on the other end of a phone number...to fix that 3% of people that I just couldn't satisfy. I'm brilliant at fixing machines, but not very good at fixing people.

We put a 20 foot 12 ga cord on it and the machine was heated up and started within 30 minutes.

One of my customers complained that their air compressor was useless. Same cure. Remove the 50 foot, 16ga extension cord and install a 25 foot 12 ga extension cord.

 

I got her back. Just imagining the her pucker factor when she woke up this morning saw my text, was enough to call my wasted hour a wash.

 

@tcmtech and @shortbus: STOP the incessant bickering! Or it won't be just your pointless argumentative posts that will get removed.

 

There are two aspects that particularly cause me agita.

Been awhile since I heard that word used.

Ron

 

She wanted to get the battery out but didn't have a screwdriver small enough to get the screws out

Never came across a Laptop that requires a Screwdriver to take the battery out.

 

Never came across a Laptop that requires a Screwdriver to take the battery out.

I just replaced the battery in mine and the first step was to remove 13 tiny Philips head screws. And then, when the bottom still wouldn't come off, I had to remove the center rubber foot to expose the 14th screw, which was a tamper-resistant Torx screw. Once I had the cover off I had to remove some screws holding the battery in, too, but I don't recall how many.

 

Never came across a Laptop that requires a Screwdriver to take the battery out.

You're probably used to enterprise grade laptops or "mobile workstations" and/or older consumer grade laptops. These laptops typically have a cover over the hard drive bay and ram slots held in place by a single locking screw or a locking clasp, a battery that comes out by unlocking a clasp, and a slot for a locking cable. They are also often characterized by removable CD/media drive and express card slots. They are more robust, made with a decent amount of metal. They are much higher quality than modern consumer grade laptops. For example my 2012 HP Elitebook has two clasps which secure the entire bottom panel. I just upgraded the ram in it and it took longer to unplug/ replug all my cables coming out of it than the actual removal and replacement of ram.

The trend now with consumer grade machines is mirroring (but lagging) the trend in cell phones; that is, making them unserviceable, or at least intentionally service-unfriendly, and with a life expectancy of 2-3 years. "Disposable." Anything that doesn't need current to pass through it is cheap plastic. You can't get to the ram, battery, HDD, or cooling fan, without taking entire bottom off the machine, which is discouraged by the manufacturer using eyeglass screws to assemle it.

 

Bad @shortbus and @tcmtech, no donuts for you. I'm putting more "Executive Time" on your schedules

Been awhile since I heard that word used.

Ron

Yeah, it's a good word. It comes to mind ever time I watch the news

 

I'm putting more "Executive Time" on your schedules

So I am going to get a paid vacation to think about my actions? I can live with that!

 

Bad @shortbus and @tcmtech, no donuts for you. I'm putting more "Executive Time" on your schedules


Yeah, it's a good word. It comes to mind ever time I watch the news

That was seriously funny.

Ron

 

That was seriously funny.

Ron

What word??????????

kv