My Misadventures With Modern Design

7/22/2017

Clattering

Splattering

Who made this &*%$#@?
How often do we scream this?

I do, every time water dribbles on my feet from the dispenser on our refrigerator.
I do, every time one of our imbalanced knives or forks goes clattering to the floor.
I do, every time I have trouble with coding or design on my not-totally-smart-phone.

Fortunately, I have found the perfect tool for one of those problems. Hint: you probably have a dozen under your desk.

First: the refrigerator. (I sometimes say “icebox” to annoy my wife.) Fairly new, and functional, except for the cheap pieces of plastic in all recent household appliances, designed to break after the warranty runs out.

The main problem is the gadget that dispenses ice (crushed or cubed) or water (allegedly cleansed by a pricey little filter.)

To get water or ice, you push in a curved bar with a glass; the H2O comes out of the innards; when you have enough, you take the glass away – and another few seconds’ of water, solid or liquid, falls to the floor.

Infuriating. No adjustment or fast hands can solve the problem.

My theory is that the people who built this device never, ever, tested it. Just built it.

Out of innate politeness, I will avoid mentioning the maker. Let me just say: Kamsahamnida.
                     *                *             *
Then there is our dinnerware, sleek and silvery, only used when we need a full set.

So pretty to look at. But the tines do not hold much, and when you lay the knife or fork down, the handle is so top-heavy that it performs a one-and-a-half gainer onto the tablecloth and thence to the floor, with rice, salad or fish splattering on the rug.

They never tested the thing. Just built it.

Out of innate politeness, I will avoid mentioning the maker. Let me just say: the imprint on the silverware reveals the country where it was made. Hsieh-Hsieh
                     *                *             *
Then there is my smartphone. I’ve only had it a few years – resisted a long time, but now I am hooked. Check for emails every 60 seconds.

It works pretty well, but the other day I could not fit the charger into the rectangular slot. My wife’s charger did not fit, either.

Oh, great, I thought, those blankety-blankers will tell me I need a new super-duper 12A phone, or whatever series they are up to. This is a costly little malfunction.
Then I had a thought. Nature’s wonder tool. Should be hawked on late-night TV.

The humble paper clip. Good for what ails you. Cures the common cold.

I opened one segment of the paper clip and inserted it into the slot where the charger no longer fit.

I wiggled it gently. And out tumbled a pound or two of what we New Yorkers call schmutz -- detritus from my pocket, my desk, my yard, my jogging shorts.

The charger now fit.
                     *                *             *
I don’t think the paper clip will help fix the spattering water dispenser or clattering silverware.
I have given it a permanent place of honor on my desk.

(PS: the paper clip has heroic implications in Norway. (Check it out.)

Brian Savin

7/22/2017 07:53:25 pm

This piece is darn clever (laced with some obvious genuine pain) on many levels and very enjoyable! I'll read it again tomorrow, before I open the Sunday Times, to ensure at least one giggle for the day.

I may just take your clip idea and shove it up my iPhone to see if improves its spell check. Ed's gives a liberal bias. Mine just makes me look like an idiot.

George

7/23/2017 08:29:15 am

Brian: thanks. It's true. Programmers tailor spellcheck to mess with our minds. Mischievous techies. GV

Brian Savin

7/23/2017 07:55:50 pm

😋!!!! (Someday I'll get get you for being so clever!)
Best
Brianm

Brian Savin

7/23/2017 07:58:10 pm

See? It did it to me again!

Mendel

7/24/2017 01:46:13 am

George,

Blowing in the charging port also sometimes works. I know, I graduated high school in the eighties. Anxiously awaiting your Ode To Duct Tape.

friv 2018 link

7/25/2017 05:19:10 am

Its really good information, i like your blog post. Thanks for sharing

Ed Martin

7/25/2017 05:10:18 pm

Peggy suggests you drag your table over to the "icebox" (she grumbles when I use that term, also). That way you could clean the silverware under the dripping.

bruce

7/27/2017 11:16:52 am

george,

my solution to the phone thingy is that i don't own one.

the ice box and understanding what it was shows a certain age group. i certainly remember them.

as for the fridge, smartphone problems....i think they're commonly called 'first world' problems these days.

bruce

George Vecsey

7/27/2017 01:27:22 pm

Bruce: what's first world? My wife is in regular email contact with a very idealistic social worker she met in India, who is now working in a rural area there.I get emails from Japan,Rio, Mexico, Europe,Vietnam....
When I was in Seoul in 2002, people were talking on the cellphones, half a mile deep in rock, in the subway.
Lot of ways, USA is third world. Subways and airports falling apart because "leaders" of all parties didn't care.
Now we have a sicko running this country. Good luck.
GV

bruce

7/27/2017 01:49:25 pm

george,

i don't often use that term anymore.

seems to have become non PC. rich countries or developed world might be more common or maybe not.

japan and korea certainly match or surpass in many important technological ways.

and, of course, south koreans would rather die than fall behind or lose to japan in anything.

i'm like you. i get emails from all over hell's half acre (i wonder where that saying came from. have to google after).....

as for usa being third world...whaddya expect when the highest aspiration for many of the 'folks' is not to pay a penny in income tax.

all taxes are socialist/commie plots.

bruce

Alan Rubin link

8/14/2017 02:24:41 pm

George, the open paper clip is a staple in my woodworker's array of tools. It can either remove wet clue from tight spaces or be used as a spacer to set small openings.

On the electronic device side, it also is perfect to push those tiny, slightly recessed reset buttons.

Being a former engineer and then a seller of appliances for forty years, I can relate to the lack of planning and/or testing of consumer products.

We moved two and a half years ago to a new home. The ten year old GE refrigerator had a water dispenser in the door that accommodated a full size glass or mug. The light went on when the lever was depressed and the platform was removable to wipe clean any spilled water.

My current KitchenAid has insufficient height so all items being filled must be tilted. There is a separate button to turn on the light.

What happened to checking with your competition?

One of the first things I learned in my metallurgical engineering curriculum was that sharp corners must be avoided. Anything at a right angle or a notch was a stress raiser that could lead to a premature failure.

My first job out a graduate school was in Pratt & Whitney’s Material Development Lab in East Hartford, CT. I was working on high temperature materials, which made perfect sense since my MS MetE from Lehigh was in the brittle fracture of low temperature materials.

It was a very exciting time as the space program was beginning and commercial airlines had just incorporated jets engines into their fleet. It was so new, the airline maintenance manuals were being written as the planes were in use.

The MDL also had a failure analysis section which was fun to monitor. One day they had a rush job as a jet engine on a trans-Atlantic flight had flamed out and the pilot pulled the plane up about 100 feet above the water.

Before the samples had arrived, the group speculated that one of the turbine blades had fatigued off due a tool mark at the base.

They were right on.

It was not made public, but the entire nuclear submarine fleet was grounded for about six months in about 1964-65 due cracks in the heat exchanger wall where the tubing was connected. One material was in the heat exchanger body and another in the bundle of tubes encased inside. A mixing of the two would have caused an explosion.

I was working in the welding section of INCO’s (International Nickel Company) research lab. INCO had convinced the Navy to switch to a nickel based alloy tubing with the assurance that the full resources of the company would be available if a problem occurred.

We were put on alert that there was cracking at the joint and samples were on the way. It was speculated that the cracking was the result of too deep a penetration of the welding head.

Although this was confirmed upon inspection of the samples, the welding section did tests on multiple variations of the alloy content for seven months which proved the tubing not to be at fault. Since I was new to the department and had a light work load, the bulk of the testing fell to me.

My boss spoke with Admiral Rickover every few weeks and personally gave him the final conclusions.

The next day my boss took us out for lunch to celebrate our efforts and to thank us. I will never forget his saying, “You just had a lesson in political metallurgy.”

Two unnecessary major projects because simple basics were not followed or picked up in inspection.

The list goes on.

Comments are closed.

QUOTES
More and More, I Talk to the Dead--Margaret Renkl

NASHVILLE — After my mother died so suddenly — laughing at a rerun of “JAG” at 10 p.m., dying of a hemorrhagic stroke by dawn — I dreamed about her night after night. In every dream she was willfully, outrageously alive, unaware of the grief her death had caused. In every dream relief poured through me like a flash flood. Oh, thank God!
Then I would wake into keening grief all over again.
Years earlier, when my father learned he had advanced esophageal cancer, his doctor told him he had perhaps six months to live. He lived far longer than that, though I never thought of it as “living” once I learned how little time he really had. For six months my father was dying, and then he kept dying for two years more. I was still working and raising a family, but running beneath the thin soil of my own life was a river of death. My father’s dying governed my days.
After he died, I wept and kept weeping, but I rarely dreamed about my father the way I would dream about my mother nearly a decade later. Even in the midst of calamitous grief, I understood the difference: My father’s long illness had given me time to work death into the daily patterns of my life. My mother’s sudden death had obliterated any illusion that daily patterns are trustworthy.
Years have passed now, and it’s the ordinariness of grief itself that governs my days. The very air around me thrums with absence. I grieve the beloved high-school teacher I lost the summer after graduation and the beloved college professor who was my friend for more than two decades. I grieve the father I lost nearly 20 years ago and the father-in-law I lost during the pandemic. I grieve the great-grandmother who died my junior year of college and the grandmother who lived until I was deep into my 40s.
Some of those I grieve are people I didn’t even know. How can John Prine be gone? I hear his haunting last song, “I Remember Everything,” and I still can’t quite believe that John Prine is gone.
-----
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/opinion/death-grief-memory.html
Jan. 30, 2023

My Misadventures With Modern Design

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