Accessorize

Yes, yes, several thousand times a minute yes. Anybody who has ever watched the movie Predator has surely thought to themselves "I may not be the beefcake that Jessie 'The Body' Ventura is, but I'd still love to pack a minigun. What to do?" The answer, naturally, is let the car carry the load for you. If American automotive management and engineers showed this sort of innovation, we would definitely all have 100 m.p.g. flying cars to take us to work.

The Worst Math Joke You May Just Laugh At

I was walking to my desk early one morning when I saw the following sketch on a coworker's markerboard:This is just my re-creation, but it's a classic. If you get it, it's at least worth a chuckle. If you don't, you should feel very good about your priorities in life right now.

Pookie Power

This little buggy, according to http://www.defensetech.org/, was a solution to a problem during the Bush War of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). It is known as a Pookie. The problem was that rebels were sowing mines along roads, and those roads needed to be cleared quickly to keep supplies and commercial goods flowing. This glorified go-cart uses special tires (racing slicks) to distribute the vehicle and driver weight widely and evenly, reducing the likelihood of detonating a mine under the vehicle, and if a mine did detonate, the relatively light armor was sloped to deflect the blast safely away from the drive. The assembly underneath is a mine detector, which I imagine was just an electromagnet capable of noting the metallic mines of that era. The design located many anti-vehicle mines in service, and is claimed to have never set off a pressure mine. Some were destroyed by electronically (remotely?) detonated mines, but even then only a single driver died due to one of those explosions because of the armor. Not too shabby for a cheap little buggy.



There is another insurgency underway, in case you haven't noticed. While the intensity of the war in Iraq has dropped off, a very similar problem was and is still faced by American forces. While the explosive devices placed by Iraqi insurgents were far more difficult to defeat, here is the American solution:

If that doesn't give you a warm, fuzzy, patriotic feeling I don't know what does. There is a 99% chance that the vehicle (this variant is known as a Cougar) in the picture survived the explosion. It's a mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle, or MRAP. It's about as traditional of a solution to a tactical military problem as one will find. When the bad guys get bigger guns, upgrade your armor. The armor is now too heavy, so upgrade your suspension. The vehicle is now slow, get a bigger engine. It's a very incremental process, inching along while your opponent is also sharpening his tactics and tools. Oh, and they are horrendously expensive, difficult to maintain, and don't even fit down many streets or across some bridges.

I see a great deal of this in military ship design/building. Don't take any chances. Something that does just a little bit more but is far more expensive is preferable to something that is cheaper and almost performs as well, or is pricey and is going to be either an astronomical success or an utter failure. This mentality does make some sense when soldiers' lives are on the line, which was clearly the case when the U.S. rushed to buy MRAP's. But is it the best mindset to instill in your entire defense infrastructure? Play it safe, and don't ever worry about hitting a home run.

However, that is not the only solution. The British also have soldiers in Iraq, and in their area (which includes the urban hole of Basra), they specialized in precise raids with minimum firepower traded off for speed, speed, speed. This method is not guaranteed to be successful, but it points out that the closed-minded, single solution approach often embraced by the military and defense design establishment is faulty thinking. I watched a series of shock tests this week that brought that lesson home.

It's amazing what a 3000 pound hammer dropped onto a spring loaded fixture can prove. At hand was the question of whether a lightweight, flexible linkage could stop a tremendous load (momentarily up to 15 tons or so) at one end while being held in place by... a 3/8" roller assembly. It survived! How? The heretical use of materials the Navy often holds in disdain (titanium, precipitation hardened stainless steels...) and a willingness to take a little bit of a risk. I had the good fortune of working with the man who conceived of this and numerous other ingenious contraptions. Most involved intentionally stretching a linkage to make it work, and running numerous linkages off a single actuator, and other Swiss-watch mechanisms that others dismissed as "claptrap". Some of the designs even broke, or seized in place, or rusted away in seawater. But none failed so badly that the design couldn't be fixed, and the savings in space, money, and infrastructure compared to more traditional concepts were substantial. In the end, this particular invention of his passed the shock test and operated just fine when the dust settled. A few washers were bent, but what's a little stretching between friends?

It took the absolute mental saturation of gizmos, widgets, and mechanisms for a man to have the vision to create machines like this on a blank sheet of paper. It took the experience of working with his own hands on boats and cars and many hours of applied engineering analysis to know when intuition mattered more than numbers, and when something would just stretch or crack clean through. It took the guts for him to stand before critics and present his vision to others and overcome their stubborn resistance and fear of failure. And it took him being correct time and again before he was trusted with the reigns of multi-million dollar designs and given the chance to prove his mettle. His mind was agile, unbound by convention, and stubbornly entrenched when the Dork-meter was pegged. This is the sort of mind it takes to produce a Pookie, not an MRAP.

Where My Dogs At?

Barack Obama was not my choice for president. However, he is the man who was elected to be our president for the next 4 years, so I maintain that we need to make the most of what we've got. I already have a great possibility in mind. The First Family will, following tradition, choose a pet. This will most likely be a dog. There is one fantastic option here: One of Michael Vick's dogs! This assumes full rehabilitation and training of one of these mistreated dogs, of course, but out of the forty or so dogs taken into custody it seems certain that at least one could fit the bill. Think of what a strong message that sends about the treatment of animals! It's even the sort of rags to riches story that America prides itself in. Not to mention the ability of a majestic pit bull or other fighting dog to convey great qualities in a nation. Strength, loyalty, doggedness (forgive the pun), and, of course, ferocity towards the wicked. Does the White House need another terrier or spaniel? I think not. As an added bonus, it's one more opportunity to make the animal mistreating, gambling, tax-evading, false stament'ing Mike Vick look like a fool.

Give Thanks

I'm slowly reading the bible coast-to-coast, and I came across this tonight, of all nights, from Colossians Ch. 4:
"Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving... Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person."
I wish anybody out there a good day. If there is anything in your life discouraging you, take heart, there is an enormous amount of good still to be found.

Interstew

I had to cover for my supervisor recently while he took a week of vacation. I've had quieter weeks, to be sure, but that's not the focus of this entry. Through a series of events that is not likely to happen again for some time, I ended up conducting my first job interview.

I felt badly for the young man before I even met him. The guys I sit with at work all went emphatically on the record as being quite relieved that I did not interview them before they hired in. I obliged them by making up a few sample questions like "Why do you think you're good enough to work for me... I DIDN'T SAY YOU COULD ANSWER YET!" and proposing mind games like shaking my head "no" while he answered or saying "is that all?" at the end of each of his answers. Good fun, that, but it did bring to light that I am about as scary as somebody who stands 5'10" with glasses and no tattoos can be.

I did realize that the young man seeking a job deserves a little better than that, so, lacking any support from my employer on the matter, I hit the world wide interweb (now on computers!) for a few tips on conducting interviews. That was a Godsend. I got my act together, reviewed his resume and I was ready to rock the following morning.

Then I saw his transcript. The Hindenburg was less of a wreck. Heed my words, college and pre-college students; it is folly to claim that certain areas of your studies were your favorite and that you really have a knack for them when your grades in the relevant classes were in the C to D range. It's not in your wheelhouse, it's in your five-hole.

• Another tip: If your GPA is below 2.5, don't take 5 months off and THEN start looking for a job. Unless you spent your year off with the Peace Corps or on a foreign mission, you just look desperate.


• Additional free advice: If an interviewer notifies you in advance that the following question is a no-bull, honest query, don't throw up a smokescreen answer using a lot of key words like "leadership", "diverse", "core skills", and the like. It will get sniffed out.


• Kicking a dead horse: If the interviewer says "Not everybody can be a leader in their first few years of team projects in a field as specialized as maritime defense engineering, so what other roles do you feel you play as a member of a team?", do not present an answer that even sounds remotely like "I am the leader". Bad move.

Hopefully, the next interview I am required to conduct will go more smoothly, especially for the prospective employee. And it will ideally occur far, far in the future.

Did Somebody Leave The Parking Brake On?

I recently completed the second and final run of the 2008 I Tell You What race circuit. The EBAC Fall Challenge provided a little bit more challenge than the previous weekend's Tarzan Brown run. While the course was shorter, I had a stomach ache so did not eat much breakfast. Also, I am optimized for cold weather running, so low 60's and humid causes me to struggle a little bit. As a result, my pace was notceably slower (6:57 per mile) than the previous weekend. It was still a very nice outing for the family, as the girls were able to play by the beach and were gracious enough to cheer for me as I sputtered my way across the finish line. My time was still OK, better than any year I've participated in the Fall Challenge. Having Wifey prepare me breakfast and being consistent with my training runs (with a 22 year old to pace me) certainly helped. Now that I've had time to recover and rest, my overworked knees are feeling much better, to boot. Here are a few photographs of the morning:

A little time with my ladeez
Relaxed/fatalistic beforehand

My fans, minus Wifey

Gratuitous submarine picture from race morning at Ocean Beach, because that's how we get down on I Tell You What

Wheezing my way across the finish line, ending the 2008 race season