On One Occasion ... Ivory Tower and Road Warrior Stories

On One Occasion ...

Ivory Tower and Road Warrior Stories

Ben Bennetts

Published by Atheos Books at Smashwords

Copyright 2013, Ben Bennetts

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment. The eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please buy an extra copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not buy it, or it was not bought for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and buy your own copy. Thank you for respecting my hard work.

Summary

The author, a retired electronics consultant engineer, spent ten years as a researcher and lecturer at Southampton University (the Ivory Tower) and a further twenty-eight years in industry, mostly as a one-man-band consultant roving the world (the Road Warrior). These are his stories: some funny, some sad, and some just interesting.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all the people who took my classes on test, Design-For-Test and boundary scan. I learnt as much from you as you all learnt from me. Thank you.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. In Times of Yore

Stories about Designers and Test Engineers

Chapter 2. Career Development

1968 – 1979 The Ivory Tower Years

Chapter 3. Career Development

1979 – 2007 The Road Warrior Years

Chapter 4. Box Files and More

Chapter 5. Other Stories: the Early Years

Chapter 6. Cirrus Days

Chapter 7. Working with Professional Institutions

Chapter 8. Short Courses

Chapter 9. The Stress of International Travel

Chapter 10. Trading as ...

Chapter 11. Close Encounters of the Sexual Kind

Chapter 12. Variety is the Spice of Life

Chapter 13. The Final Years: ASSET InterTech

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Extracts from The Religion Business: Cashing In On God

Introduction

Five years after I retired in 2007, Mark, my older son, and his wife Kirsty returned from their endless travels and stayed with my wife and me for a short while before continuing their journeys to distant shores. While at home, they decided to move all their UK household possessions from long term storage into spare space we had in the house, thereby saving themselves the storage costs. Our charges were nil. This movement-of-goods exercise meant that my wife and I had to tidy up our stuff to make room for theirs and we threw some of our own possessions away. Not wanted on the final voyage!

1966 - 2007. Box Files, Certificates and Plaques

During the process, I came across a number of box files, wooden plaques and framed certificates. The box files, there were eight, contained an original copy of just about every technical paper I'd published during my professional career as an electronics engineer, plus sundry documentation such as press cuttings, short course brochures and other miscellany relating to my professional life. The twenty-two plaques and framed certificates were awarded to me by various organisations and conferences for professional services rendered.

I looked at this pile of memorabilia and said, modestly, There's a glittering career contained in all these box files and bits of wood but the items have no value to anyone but me and given that my career is finished, I should throw them away. But first, let me see if any of my three children want them for posterity.

The answer came back swiftly - thanks, but no thanks. So the collection of files, plaques and certificates was moved downstairs ready for the next communal bonfire.

But it hurt. I'd sweated blood and tears for some of the things in that pile. To consign them all to a bonfire was niggling away at me, especially as the wet weather we were experiencing that winter was preventing the lighting of the communal bonfire thereby making the pile painfully visible just about every day for two months.

And then the solution came to me when I awoke early one morning and lay in bed thinking about the state of the world and the price of fish, as you do.

There are stories behind some of these items. I should arrange them in chronological order and then go through them letting the stories come to the surface so that I can capture them, I mused.

And that's what I did. Writing this book has been a nostalgic experience. Some stories are funny; some are sad. Some are to do with how and why my career progressed and the effect of happenstance and coincidence. Some are to do with my early life at Southampton University, the Ivory Tower in the title; others with becoming a world-wide traveller, the Road Warrior in the title. And some just describe things that happened that don't happen to those who have not been deeply immersed in the development of a highly technical subject, or who have not been constantly on the road.

But first, to set the scene here are three stories from times gone by.

Return to Contents list

(^_^)

Chapter 1. In Times of Yore

Stories about Designers and Test Engineers

Many moons ago in a land not too far away there lived a designer, a clever man, somewhat remote from his fellow countrymen but fêted by them for the brilliance of his inventions. He worked in a factory, his spacious office situated on the top floor where the air was sweet, the floor was heavily carpeted, and the coffee was free. On the ground floor was the manufacturing area, its workers in constant readiness to make the next product to come from his ever-fertile inventive mind. Test engineers, poised to check the new products coming off the production line, worked deep in the basement where the air was rank, the floor earthen and damp, and coffee expensive.

One day, the designer cast his eye over the domain of his countrymen and decided that the time had come to lift them from the drudgery of walking to their place of work. Only the President had a horse suitable for riding. All other horses were used to pull carts. The designer decided that he would invent a motor car, a vehicle that would transport the masses safely to their destinations, keeping them dry in inclement weather and enabling frequent visits to ancient parents or, who knows, flighty young ladies of dubious repute.

And so he set to, starting with a metal shell designed to enclose a space big enough to accommodate two large people and two small people seated in comfortable seats. He decreed that the vehicle would have four wheels, one at each corner, and an engine to propel the vehicle at great speed, compared with a horse that is. He added brakes to stop the vehicle when required, a steering wheel so that the person chosen to drive the vehicle could turn it left or right if needed, and an ash tray for the convenience of those who smoked cigarettes, not yet banned in his country. He contemplated adding a radio but decided this would be an unnecessary embellishment, also a distraction, and so he dropped the idea. That can come later, he thought to himself.

The designer worked hard for many months, hidden from view behind his office door and communicating with nobody, least of all the manufacturing and test engineers below his lofty office. He emerged only for pizzas, cans of fizzy drinks, and Fisherman’s Friend cough drops to which he was addicted. When he finally came forth with the plans, his appearance was haggard, his beard long and his eyes hollow. But, he had achieved his ambition. He had designed the first motor-driven conveyance for the inhabitants of his kingdom. The President would be pleased and would convey upon him the highest honour of the land, he thought.

The production engineers below him seized the plans eagerly and within hours started building the new automobile. Exactly eighty-seven hours later, the first production model was pushed off the conveyor belt and passed down to the test engineers in the basement with the request to make sure it all worked before delivery to the President of the land, the first customer.

All went quiet for several hours. The designer stood anxiously at the entrance to the Test and Repair Department staring at the sign over the door, Abandon hope all ye who enter here and waiting for the judgement of the test engineers. Eventually, the door opened and a small wizened man emerged with a large Test Report in his hand bearing the title DFT. The man identified himself as the Chief Test Engineer, fixed the designer with a steely eye and said in sombre tones, We need to talk.

Taken by surprise, the designer nodded and invited the test engineer up to his office. The test engineer looked in amazement at the carpet on the floor, sampled the free coffee, and breathed deep of the sweet-smelling air.

It’s good up here, he murmured.

Yes, replied the designer, now what seems to be the problem?

The test engineer coughed slightly to clear his throat and then said somewhat timidly, We cannot test the engine in your car.

Why not?

Because you have encased it completely in metal, came back the reply.

That was to protect it from the stones on the cart tracks and keep it dry if it rains, explained the designer.

I agree, acquiesced the test engineer, but how can the engineers in my Test and Repair Department gain access to mend the engine if it stops working?

Ah, I see your point. What’s your solution?

Cut a panel out of the metal over the engine and then put it back with a hinge and a catch so that I can open it to work on the engine.

Good idea, said the designer magnanimously. "I’ll call it a bonnet after the head apparel worn by my own true love when the sun shines. Anything else?"

Oh yes, came the response. I can see where to top up the oil in the sump of the engine but how can I check how much oil is there?

Well you just pour in one full can every time the engine needs oil, advised the designer.

No, that doesn’t work because I don’t know how much oil is there to start with, came back the slightly exasperated reply. "Why didn’t you specify a small hole to be drilled down the side of the engine block that allows a thin metal rod to be inserted deep enough to touch the bottom of the sump? Then I could withdraw the rod and see how much oil is already present before adding new oil. You are a dipstick!"

The designer was somewhat taken aback by the lack of respect in the name calling but turned it to advantage by declaring that this indeed was another good idea and that he would honour the test engineer by naming the thin metal rod a dipstick. And that’s how dipsticks acquired their name. But, I digress ...

The designer then asked if that was all whereupon the test engineer presented him with the hefty report he had been clutching in his left hand. (He was drinking the free coffee using his right hand.) Startled at the weight, the designer began flicking through the pages reading some of the comments written by the test engineers: provide an oil-pressure gauge on the dashboard to warn the driver of a sudden loss of oil; provide a speedometer to alert the driver when his speed exceeded that of the fastest racehorse in the land; cut away the metal that shrouded the wheels so that the tread depth of the tyres could easily be inspected; ... The list was endless.

But none of these things will make my car go faster and they all add to the manufacturing cost! protested the designer.

Yes, but without them we cannot test the car before selling it to a customer and the customer cannot maintain the car once it’s his. If you do not do these things, we will be out of business and that ambitious little man down the road, Henry Ford, will claim this potentially lucrative market as his own. He will copy your design down to a T. (And that is how the Ford Model T got its name but, again, I digress ...)

Let me think on all these wise things you have told me, said the designer, contritely, and he waved the Chief Test Engineer out of the room.

As he left, the test engineer looked back over his shoulder and cried, Don’t forget test! And with that exclamation, he was gone, back to the basement where the air was not sweet, there was no carpet on the floor, and coffee cost money.

The designer sat in his office, cogitating, turning the report over and over in his hands. Finally he stood up. Don’t Forget Test – DFT – Design-For-Test. Yes! That’s what I should have done. And with that epiphanic exclamation, the dark clouds that had been obscuring the sun moved away and the warm rays shone into the designer’s office falling on the report and illuminating particularly the large DFT title on the front cover.

Unfortunately, at that moment of revelation, that epiphany of the true meaning of Design-For-Test, the strain of the criticism he’d just taken and the effect of too much caffeine from the free coffee combined to cause the designer’s heart to stop and he keeled over and died instantly. The DFT additions were never applied to his brilliant invention and the company went bankrupt within three months of starting production of his untestable automobile. And this explains why Henry Ford came to prominence as the manufacturer of the world’s first commercial motor car. Henry knew about DFT!

The Angelic Test Engineer

A man woke up one morning feeling kind of strange.

My dear, he said to his wife, I did not sleep well last night. I seem to have a lump.

You always have the hump, she retorted. (Her hearing was not so good these days.)

"No, lump, not hump. Have a look at my back. There feels like two." And with that, he rolled over onto his stomach so that his wife could inspect his back.

Good Lord, she exclaimed. "You are growing wings! You have two new winglets sprouting on your back, just above the infraspinatus fascia." (She was a malapropian physiotherapist and knew her muscles from her oysters.)

Oh my goodness, said the man. What do we do now?

Make money from your abnormality? his wife suggested, rather too flippantly for his liking.

Okay, okay, she continued. We’ve just detected the fault so now we need to carry out more tests to confirm its true nature and find out if there’s a cure. You’d better go see Dr. Frankenstein, you know, the one who’s always messing about with the human body. He’ll know what to do. In fact, he’ll probably be able to put his finger on it, or them, and she chuckled at her little joke.

The man got up, donned a large overcoat to hide the two new protuberances and took himself off to see the good doctor.

Frank, I have a problem, he declared on entry. I have detected a fault in my otherwise perfect body.

Ah, proclaimed the doctor, fault detection has been at work I see. Let me take a look.

After examination, he declared in ominous tones, "Yes, you appear to be growing wings but first I must generate a full set of tests to make sure I am not confusing wings with devil’s horns or even cloven hooves. I must carry out a medical process called test-pattern generation; the generation of appropriate tests to confirm you don’t have any other associated ailments. Wait here." And with that, he disappeared into his laboratory and worked feverishly on his test-pattern generation process to produce further tests designed to establish that there were no other faults present in his patient.

When he returned, the doctor announced to the man, now fast asleep and in need of rousing, that he would carry out a series of word association tests, walking up and down tests, and how-long-can-you-stand-on-one-leg tests to identify or eliminate all other possible defects in the man's body. Once the results of these tests came back from the analysis laboratory, he said, he would be able to identify precisely the type of fault his patient was suffering from and then work on a cure.

Two weeks later, Dr. Frankenstein called the man back into his office and revealed the results. He said to the man, "I have a diagnosis of your complaint. You have angelititus magnificus, the growth of angel-like wings on your back. The detection was easy; the symptom was the uncomfortable feeling you experienced when trying to sleep in the supine position. The diagnosis was more difficult as we had to eliminate other possible causes of your discomfort such as an errant tennis ball or a particularly lumpy mattress. That we’ve now done and we can move on to a cure. I need to repair your back by making the budding wings go away."

How do you do that, Frank? enquired the man.

Oh, there are various ways: the gentle use of a few sheets of fine-grain sand paper, the controlled application of sulphuric acid, or just plain old bolt croppers. Don’t worry, we’ll figure out what’s best for you.

Which technique hurts the most? chipped in his wife.

Bolt croppers, with no anaesthetic, was the reply.

Then do it that way! she exclaimed and burst into hysterical laughter, almost a cackle. (She was a hard woman.)

The man deigned not to reply to his wife’s attempt at humour and opted for the least painful solution