Neanderpundit

The work I do is like that; I spend a lot of time moving from place to place solving otherwise insoluble problems.

The europeans, specifically, who we have come to represent in the last couple of years, have brought documentation to a new art; the wiring diagrams and component documentation has developed enough density that it has crossed an event horizon of complexity from which no actual information can escape. I am a middling troubleshooter; I have been doing so for a long time. I ALWAYS WIN. One way or another.

And I cannot troubleshoot these machines. The europeans can’t either, they just swap parts until it starts workng again. I refuse to force the customer to give me carte blanche to buy whatever parts I THINK might be broke until I find the one he needs.

So far I have been lucky, and I hope my luck holds out. What I wish, is that there were a young punk out there, who has carved my name into a round, and is looking to best me.

But there isn’t. G-d help us.

I keep hearing about vaccination.

If you’re not smart enough to vaccinate, you’re a moron. If you think the government ought to force people to vaccinate, you’re a moron.

The moment the government has power to force you to do something, they abuse it. They’d make some damned anti violence vaccine and turn us all into reavers because nobody in fedgov understands unintended consequences. Witness gloebull warmening.
On the gripping hand, we need to know exactly why there is a percentage of people on whom the vaccines dont work. A 98% success rate, in say brake jobs, means you get rear ended once a week by someone. Surely we can get vaccines as effective as the high school dropout at Midas.

Is a sort of a photo safari. The instructor (Who hung around afterwards and yapped for a long time, despite twenty plus years he still has a great passion for his craft) said to me “I started having THIS class because if we went right to the photo-safari bit, we spent all our damned time showing people how to use the cameras and no time actually taking pictures.” I can see what he means. I spent some time tonight just rapidly switching settings and moving shit around, and i can see how just a little bit of drilling will make you a wad better. A couple of the things he showed us:

The shutter release defaults to “push a little and I’ll focus, push more and I’ll take a picture” But what isn’t obvious is, if you keep holding the shutter partway dowm it either holds the very first focus, or keeps continuously focusing. This is a camera setting. Also, you can remove the focus from the shutter release altogether and attach it on other buttons so that the shutter release does shutter only. Another of the programmable buttons puts the ISO setting at your fingertip with the thumbwheel, you can change film speed to suit you while you are framing a photograph.

I guess I had assumed most of these things were possible but I have a zero-tolerance policy where manuals are concerned; a booklet for a camera that is more than ten pages long is not an owners manual but a reference guide. I write operation manuals, and no matter how complex the system, I keep it to one page. The code is well written enough that this is all the operator ever needs. Sometimes I have to write a ten or fifteen page book of instructions for maintenance people, and that consists mostly of safety and recovery procedures. So when I cracked open the 65 page Nikon manual, I figured out where the shutter release was and put it back in the camera bag. Now that I have been taught the basics, I will refer to it as I need, but I have a lot more information than I had two days ago, and I’m having fun.

When film photography- most commonly 35mm film photography- began to be popular, there was a surge in people taking classes, going on photo safaris, etc, and I suspect we will see this more and more with the advent of good quality inexpensive DSLRs. It has to be good.