Short message

I read in sci.electronics.design that John Fields wrote (in ) about 'Short message', on Mon, 21 Mar 2005:

You are right. I seem to have a defective subtlety sensor.

The basic definition of an expert is that they know enough to know the boundaries of their expertise.

I'm happy to sound off about stuff that I do know about, and I shut up when I know I'd be out of my depth, which may be what is creating the effect that Jim Thompson is complaining about.

One of the problems I've had with what little consulting I have done is that the problem that the client wants to be solved is often not the problem that needs to be solved.

---------------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

We could try a few about our regulars here:

Winfield Hill Will be remembered in my will. His excellent and comprehensive book on analog design Is fine.

John Woodgate Has probably opened up some kind of floodgate By introducing to this newsgroup the Clerihew An epigraphic verse form of uneven metre, often resembling the works of McGonagall, and understood by very few.

Fred Bloggs Appears to be a sound engineer, but with a few loose cogs.

Paul Burke Ought to get on with some work.

--- I agree. I recently had a client who was taking a consumer product to market, and when I got on board and suggested that they replace a lot of pushbutton switches and a silkscreened front panel with a membrane switch array/overlay they said they were happy with what they had, thank you very much. There was also a motor driving a platter through a couple of cogged gears and a toothed belt and they didn't want to hear anything about direct drive either. Anyway, I forgot about the whole thing and about $20 or 30k later I was asked if I would find an overlay vendor who could supply a prototype in a hurry and to redesign the circuit switching to accommodate the new membrane switches _and_ the new direct-drive motor which was on the way. I smiled and said, "Yes, of course!"

I _love_ changes and redesigns at the request of a client.

-- John Fields

It's a hard thing to say, but if the customer asks for rubbish and that is what he gets, then that's high quality workmanship.

schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com... [snip]

I would think that if you solve what needs to be solved, you'd automatically solved what they want to be solved.

If you have a system consisting of parts A-B-C, and they want you to solve the problem in C while it could be done easier or fundamentally better in A, why not solve it in C if that is what they want. You can always make a small suggestion to solve it in A, but sometimes there are valid reasons to leave A as it is. It's a bonus if they tell you why ;) Don't question them to death if they don't want to tell you.

Have you seen his?

This just to show that mine is very much longer than yours!

Mike

No.