Turning OFF the Sound

If you’ve followed my posts going back about a year you’ll know how tortured I’ve been by the various kinds of clamor coming from my multitude of neighbors, and I do have plenty of them. In fact, even with my bad pitching shoulder, I could probably chuck a baseball from the middle of my yard and hit the roof of any of a dozen houses. That is how closely packed the homes are in this part of the subdivision.

Last month marked the beginning of my breaking point when it comes to this never-ending racket. A new neighbor on the other side of the wall from my master bathroom put a caged dog under the eaves of their east side roof. This phobic animal is no more than a dozen feet from where my head hits my pillow. From spying over the wall it appears to be some kind of husky or pug mix. It doesn’t “go off” all the time, maybe a dozen times a day, but that’s plenty.

Folks around here routinely acquire dogs with the sole purpose of raising a ruckus in case anyone approaches. These poor animals then never leave their tiny enclosures for the rest of their miserable lives. Most become neurotic and bark at anything, out of sheer craziness if you ask me. You hear them all the time, these wretched animals barking incessantly for hours on end, probably to simply while away the unending hours of close captivity. It nears the height of animal cruelty, but few people here seem to understand this. ‘The very poor and the plight of animals, eh, so what; we have our own problems, so why worry about some stupid dog?’

The absolute final straw was my “favorite” neighbor, the one that nearly caused me to pull stakes and take off earlier this year when I had the temerity to ask the woman of the house to control her new puppy’s continuous yapping. Three times since then they’ve brought in roosters for a few days at a time, each occasion the piercing sound of the cock’s erratic crowing caused nerve-racking exasperation. Even with two layers of foam over all my windows sandwiched between two panels of plywood, it was not enough. So, enough was enough. I called in Eddy, my fiancé’s brother-in-law, a man who has become my personal builder, for a planning session for one last try at fixing the noise intrusion problem.

I told him I wanted to try four things: first, pack insulation thickly between the ceiling and roof; second, attach shag carpeting over all the walls; three, completely seal all the cracks around the air conditioner; and four, rubber seal all the openings around the doors.

He listened carefully and then countered with: “How about this: We’ll brick up and seal over all four windows of the bedroom and bathroom, and instead of insulating the space between the roof panels and ceiling, we’ll install a second ceiling and insulate the space between the two ceilings.” He agreed that we could easily seal around the aircon and doors, and then, if all that wasn’t sufficient, we could go ahead and put shag carpet on the walls.

“All right! Let’s do it!” I gave him an enthusiastic go ahead. That was last Sunday, a week ago.

Monday was a holiday so they started work on Tuesday morning the second I took off for the office at 0845. After working with my last client at noon, I dallied at the fitness center so as not to get home until well after 4pm. By that time Eddy’s boys had finished cementing in two of the three large windows. Before working with installing cement blocks though they first they had to remove all the glass panels along with the louvers and aluminum framework.

By Wednesday afternoon they had the last of the three windows filled in with cement blocks. When I came home on Thursday half the new ceiling was up and all the finishing cement neatly covered all the blocks where the windows had once been.

Friday was a long day. Eddy and his workers stayed till well after 5pm to finish painting the new ceiling and the walls where the windows used to be.

By yesterday, Saturday, they had the bathroom done as well. The small window in there had also “disappeared,” while the new second ceiling with its own layer of thick insulation was up, with the ceiling and walls given a final whitewashing signaling the completion of the big sound proofing project.

The neighbor’s dog yapped away when I entered my renovated bedroom for the first time after all the new sound resistant features had been added. I closed the door and sat in my easy chair with the TV off. I could still hear the dog, but barely; it sounded miles away.

‘Ahhhh! Success!’ I sighed with great satisfaction. I turned on the aircon and ran a small fan aimed at the open bathroom door where I figured the exhaust fan would help reduce the strong odor of the fresh paint. I notice that the low hum of the aircon along with the small fan completely masks whatever hint of outside sound still manages to infiltrate the room.

To further illustrate the effectiveness of Eddy’s work a storm passed through early in the afternoon today. Normally I cannot hear the TV over the drumming of hard rain on the corrugated metal roof panels overhead, even with the volume full up. But now, with the newly insulated ceiling I could barely hear a faint drumming. I listened to the TV just fine without having to adjust the volume at all.

Most Filipinos cannot understand the consternation I feel every time a dog “goes off” or when one of the neighbors plays karaoke at full volume till way past midnight. I’m not even sure other Americans get as agitated as I do when these horrible sounds invade my space. But for me, it is supreme torture; or I should say, WAS torture, because NOW, all that is behind me.

Last night, my first blessed night under my “new roof,” was one of uninterrupted dreams and tranquilty. In fact, I stayed asleep way later in the morning than I normally do, all because of the wonderful lack of outside sound. The kitchen is just across the breezeway from this room and the usual morning clatter of pots and pans, not to mention the conversation of the girls and the maid as they prepare breakfast was no longer to be heard. In effect, this room is as quiet as the inside of a sealed coffin. Thus, I literally slept like the dead. The hundreds of dollars I paid to achieve it was worth every penny.

Pothos, I Hardly Knew You

Last year when I had landscaped the area under my newly built tower and equally towering fruit trees to the point that it was ready for planting, I sent Divine out to do some shopping at the local nurseries. Of the 20 or so types of plants she came back with, four were types of vines. I liked her choices thinking that the different colored runners would look great crawling through the recently placed stones of my rock garden. I was right; among the stones, the natural mix of plants is living art.

It turns out that three of these ivy-like plants that Divine bought are different kinds of Pothos. I’ve seen these viney plants all over the world, used as house and office plants, but never worried about what they are called. I am ashamed to admit it, and me a self-styled lover of all things in nature. Why had I never heard its name before?

Even though I wasn’t familiar with what they are called, it was fairly easy to find and identify it on the net. I typed “tropical houseplants” into the search engine and there it was on the first page of possibles.

‘Ah, Pothos, so that’s what it’s called!’

What a strange name; it definitely doesn’t roll naturally off the tongue, at least not off mine. I keep tending to call it Porthos; which would be pretty cool, naming a plant after one of The Three Musketeers. I guess I could break it down into Pot-hos, which said out loud phonetically sounds like the plural of a trampy pot. Weird how my mind works.

I planted all the vines Divine brought home in the shadiest part of the new garden, figuring they wouldn’t do well in direct sunlight. I’m sure the fact that they don’t prefer full sun is why you see these plants all over the world in every mall you’ve ever visited and on display in so many doctors’ offices.

The vines flourished in their new home among the shady rocks beneath my thickly leafed mango trees. In no time my many Pothos plants began to sprawl out of the confines of the small rock garden. One particular vine pushed its way beneath the bench against the wall upon which the bench rested, although I didn’t really pay much attention to the wayward tendril until it popped up above the bench back. It was neat how its roots attached to the painted concrete blocks and then, as the Pothos pressed ever upwards, its roots continued to attach themselves tightly to the decorative painted bamboo above the blocks.

The roots don’t seem to care what it is they find themselves up against. As the vine sprouts outward into the world, the brown worm-like roots attach themselves to whatever it is they happen to touch up on, and so tightly that it seems as if they have glued themselves onto that host surface. Once Pothos has tacked itself to something it ain’t coming off; it actually seems to become chemically part of the surface to which it is attached.

I can’t believe I’m devoting an entire post to this plant, but the more I watch it in my garden the more fascinating I find it to be. It’s next amazing feature after its efficient roots are its prolific leaves. They aren’t all that amazing as they grow in a potted plot in your grandma’s living room, but the leaves of the Pothos plants become truly extraordinary once it begins to grow upwards on a tree or up a wall, for once the plant starts to climb, each successive leaf grows larger than the one beneath it.

The Pothos growing up the wall behind the garden bench is now about 8 feet up, and incredibly, its top leaves are almost a foot wide. When I first noticed the size of the uppermost leaves on that plant I thought I was witnessing some kind of natural miracle. I had never seen any similar plant with such elephantine leaves. Why were they doing that? I had to find out why they were growing so large and how much larger could they possibly get? And so, I looked up this otherwise ordinary plant on the internet to learn that it is called Pothos and to find out its secrets.

Researching the plant I was amazed to learn that in the tropics it can grow upwards into trees to the height of 65 feet. Even more amazing is that the leaves on a mature climbing Pothos can actually grow three feet across! None of that would have seemed even remotely possible until I had the opportunity to see my own Pothos plants now in action. None have climbed that high nor have any of the leaves reached those yard wide proportions, but at least now I know of their exciting potential.

I also have several Pothos plants growing outside in hanging planters and their vines seem quite content to grow downwards with some vines as long as 20 feet so far. The interesting thing is that none of these potted Pothos vines seem to have the least inclination to grow upwards when they come in contact with a wall. It seems that only those plants that grow rooted in the ground will send their vines upwards into trees and up walls. I really do not understand why this would be. Nature can be so quirky at times, but those miraculous eccentricities are much of the attraction for me.

Another curiosity is that the Pothos leaves stay small and ordinary as the plant travels outward along the ground. It’s only after it grows upwards that its roots begin to activate by attaching themselves deeply into the vertical surface, growing deeply and quite snuggly into that material. The same is true of the leaves; it is not until the vines begin grow upward attaching to some kind of surface, that its leaves become robust and start to reach their full potential in size and thickness. To compare, I have another different type of tree climbing vine that sends out super long reddish tendril like roots all the way down to the ground; unlike the Pothos vines though its leaves do not increase in size as they grow upwards into the tree.

I’ve already trained several Pothos plants to start growing up the massive trunk of my outdoor mango tree using u shaped staple nails to hold them in place on the tree to get them started on their journey upward. So far they are doing wonderfully and seem to love their new home growing up the side of the tree.

Seeing how beautiful those tree growing Pothos have become, Divine and I were inspired to transplant a half dozen Pothos “babies” to the base of our “indoor” mango tree by using the end cutting technique. It’s been about a month so far and the six little vines are just now beginning to send out their first new leaves. I can’t wait to see if they will thrive as well as their outdoor tree climbing counterparts.

As far as I’m concerned, Pothos has become my new favorite plant. Pothos is king.

Fixing Healthcare, Just Like Fixing Airplanes?

With all the talk lately of American healthcare troubles it got me thinking on the subject of problem solving. That IS the goal I think; but it seems that very few if any of the myriad techniques available are being applied, other than the amateurish principle of “trial and error,” which may well be the worst method there is. I’ve heard people in the administration actually say things like, “The problem is SO catastrophic that we NEED to do something, ANYTHING; we can always “tweak” it as we go later.”

Similarly, back in “the stupid old days,” the US military routinely used the “field and forget” method to employ new weapons systems,” a fiasco of a way of doing things that usually ended up as “field and fix.” The annals of our military history abound with horror stories of hastily-employed weapons; the extent of their failings discovered at the worst possible time, that is, “when the weapon met the war.”

The “fog of war” is murky enough without making it worse with untested equipment, yet until relatively recently we routinely did this foolishness. Usually it happened because of politics (sound familiar?), or where some high placed officials thought THEY knew better than the REAL experts, the experts of course being the enlisted folks and officers who have to actually use the stuff.

During my time “in” I was around quite a bit of problem solving, which started with my time as a technician and technical supervisor. But all that turned out to be preparation for what I got into during the last half of my career, when I graduated from repairing individual planes to resolving issues involving entire fleets of aircraft. If I’m completely honest though, rarely was I the actual “solver,” but always I was certainly part of “the problem solving process,” a process that invariably involved input from a team of “solvers.”

I got onto the whole “big picture” problem solving ride by accident. It started as I entered into the last 13 years of service, the half way point of my time in the military. From there my career path meandered to the extraordinary, at least compared to a lot of other airmen’s careers.

My job path took off on this “merry tangent” in 1989 when I left the position of shift leader for a new job in the Quality Assurance Office after being recruited into it by the master sergeant I eventually replaced. (I caught his attention one morning as he observed the no-nonsense way I handled my troops during the weekly “FOD walk”). During my next 6 years in the Quality Office I also took on the ancillary responsibility of overseeing a contract field team of around 25 or so civilian technicians whose job it was to strip out most of the original 30-year-old electronics in our vaunted C-130 “Hercules” cargo plane, and installing modern systems in their place.

What I found the most interesting about that 6 year QA gig was constantly running into new problems, some big, some small. There were about 80 airplanes on our flightline (including the Air Guard’s)—a lot of C-130s. With so many “birds” it took several years to modify all of them; so for quite some time we had a mix of newly modified aircraft, along with “birds” still creaking along with 30 and 40 year old technology.

As lead base for C-130s, often times we were first to get the newest systems, on a trial basis so to speak. In effect, we were the guinea pigs for the rest of the fleet; as such, I was confronted with glitches and gremlins almost on a daily basis. My job was to research these malfunctions, in the short term find out the “whys,” and finally, to come up with answers and even resolutions.

It was during this time of continuous problem solving that I began to simultaneously submit my “fixes” by way of the Air Force Suggestion Program, as well as to the primary approving agency being the Air Logistics Center at Warner Robins AFB in Georgia.

I remember the first time I had a suggestion approved just a few months before I joined the QA team. It was to modify an incorrect troubleshooting tree for engine oil pressure transmitters. It wasn’t all that complicated, but months later, seeing the pages amended in the technical orders to reflect MY changes was quite heady. In a small way I had affected the entire fleet of several hundred C130s. I felt pretty good about that, and about the little award check I got out of it as well.

The stars lined up perfectly when I joined the QA shop and found myself responsible for the proper installation of a host of new aircraft electronic systems. As part of these responsibilities I worked with the Lockheed “mod team” to write the installation workbook requiring that I saw and or touched every new wire bundle, screw and rivet that went into the plane. As part of that workbook I made it mandatory that I personally sign off the okay to reinstall every panel to make sure there was no debris left behind it before they were allowed to button it back up. There was a good chance that I would be the last person to inspect those areas for years to come; and believe me, I felt the pressure of knowing that. When it comes to aircraft work there is no such thing as being too critical; it either meets spec or it doesn’t. My very last signature was the one I made on the acceptance sheet which brought each airplane out of depot status back into operation with the Air Force.

Earlier I spoke of how the military has made a science of properly fielding new weapons systems (in fact, the army has a university devoted to perfecting and teaching acquisition at Ft Lee, VA); BUT, when installing so many new systems onto a 30 year old platform like our C-130s were, while still keeping much of the deteriorating original wiring and archaic electrical power, in the aftermath of that we were bound to have to do some major “tweaking.”

Indeed, MY CFT guys put a LOT of new gear into those old planes: Let’s see, one of the most complicated installations was a brand-new redundant Self-Contained Nav System that also provided attitude information to the flight directors; the team also put in a host of flat panel and digital instruments to replace the old spinning dial analog indicators, a new autopilot, GCAS (ground collision avoidance), a partial upgrade to aircraft power, a much improved radar altimeter and Doppler radar, as well as several new radios and associated antennas and secure voice kits. Toward the end of my tenure we also started to put in GPS, TCAS (aircraft collision avoidance) and electronic countermeasures to include the chaff and flare dispensers. After almost 15 years since my involvement I’ve forgotten some of the systems MY team installed, but per aircraft all that work took hundreds of man-hours, thousands of feet of wire, countless hundreds of wire pins and terminals, and scores of connectors; and it all had to be done perfectly and on schedule, aircraft after aircraft. All those long overdue upgrades were bound to lead to a host of problems, and boy, did it ever!

From 90 to 91 I took a short break from “my path” by going to war; during the two years it took those 7 months to pass I became a regular maintainer again. After the war I returned to Little Rock to find shocking changes in my absence; the Air Force had gone through a major organizational and philosophical shakeup—maintenance had become completely decentralized; there was no longer a single colonel in charge of maintaining all 64 aircraft. Overnight each of the four squadron commander’s took over complete responsibility for their own birds’ upkeep.

Not only that, but a new concept called TQM, or Total Quality Management (a term now long out of vogue), had become the latest management fad. Under it, all of us once scary QA boogiemen lost our scariness and instead we became nerdy “quality facilitators.” Lucky for us though, our Logistics Group commander was shrewd enough not to dismantle us the way other C-130 bases had done immediately to their QA shops once the reign of TQM had begun. The fact that our QA pretty much remained intact paid off big as far as I’m concerned.

I must admit though that I wasn’t sorry to see the days of inspection quotas ended; I never liked doing all those tedious exams anyway. Instead of inspecting individuals’ work (making them extremely nervous!) and checking out test equipment, we began concentrating on “process improvement.” And ho hum, I guess we did some of that, but what really excited me was getting all that new electronics correctly installed, and just as important, finding and fixing all the associated glitches and bugs.

And HERE is why our commanders were so brilliant in keeping us QA boys around—we became the corporate knowledge bank, the go-to-guys for oddball problems, and the overseers of high interest taskings from the command.

There is a very scary truism about airplanes: You don’t know what’s screwed up if you don’t know what’s screwed up. This strange axiom became obvious when our wing became the only one still conducting so-called acceptance inspections of those C-130s returning from the depot facility at Ogden, Utah. We had just way too many airplanes to let our contract field team do all the modifications, so Ogden and Warner Robins did them as well. The problem is that the colonel in charge at Ogden became upset with us because we were the only ones complaining about their work. I would go out to an airplane just arrived from Utah and fill page after page of squawks on a legal pad, and many of them were grounding write ups (I once found over 100 writeups). The Ogden colonel was so irked at us that he paid for me and my right hand man, a brilliant avionics troop by the name of Shawn Dougherty, to come to his facility so he could show US how wonderful HIS installers were. As it turned out, we were not the least bit impressed and in fact showed them the many errors of their ways. At first their resentment was disconcerting, but eventually I think we won them over with our earnestness.

The point is that WE KNEW what to look for because we were were intimately familiar with every disturbed and new wire bundle and connector, so we immediately recognized the improprieties, but we were the only inspectors left at the wing level who continued to do these post-depot inspections. A chilling thought—what about the OTHER aircraft never looked at with the same knowledgeable eyes? As far as all the other users the installation was A-okay. The only actual acceptance inspection done at the depot was done by an aircrew that had no clue about what was physically done to the aircraft and whose only worry was to accomplish the checkflight. As far as they were concerned, if the systems worked on that flight, then it was good to go. In other words, “Ignorance is NOT bliss.” …shudder…

And NOW, to finish up this LONG post—my counterpart, Shawn Dougherty, and I, began to LOOK for problems or just ways to make maintenance actions less cumbersome and more efficient. Here’s what we learned: if you stay your ass in the office, you will NEVER learn a thing. You GOT to find out what you DON’T know. A common fault of problem solvers is that they THINK they KNOW; they DON’T. Following that premise we made our rounds to the flightline, to the squadrons, to the shops, to the contractors, all with the goal of talking to “the experts.”

Hardly a day went by where some sergeant or senior airman didn’t come up to me to complain about some new glitch or malfunction. It got to the point that troops seeing me drive by would jog over and flag me down, something they NEVER used to do when I wore my white boogieman QA hat. They loved that I always had a sympathetic ear and asked lots of questions. Complaints, moans, and groans—I LOVED it. If they had a problem I WANTED to hear about it. Their squawks became my bread and butter.

To finish blowing my own horn, we began to establish a reputation, especially once all the approved suggestion awards began to roll in along with the award checks. Every month during commander’s call Shawn and I would receive not one or two checks, but usually 5 or 6. This went on month after month, for almost three years; and once the word got out that WE were the people to see to get things fixed, even more folks approached us with their tales of woe. I’m pretty sure our success inspired others to do the same thing. I loved it, being able to make a difference.

As I said, seldom if ever was I the one that came up with the fixes. Most of those ideas came from the same folks who came forward with the problems in the first place. Ask someone for a problem and chances are they can also tell you how to solve it.

But my REAL secret weapon in tackling especially big problems was my contract field team. Those fellows were incredibly brilliant at finding the best solutions. Most were retired military with decades of experience working on aircraft long before they started modifying planes as civilians. Whenever I approached them with a problem, I’d make my pitch, usually at the break table, and then I’d leave them to mull it over. Without exception, within a few days they’d have a workable solution, usually complete with diagrams and written procedures. They always told me that they wanted nothing in return since by contract everything they came up with officially belonged to Lockheed. It was a joke to them; they said they’d rather I have credit than Lockheed. Absolutely remarkable men!

In 1992 or 93 the base commander even chose me to be his Suggestor of the Year, or at least some one in the suggestion office did, not that I was even aware that such an award existed. It was nice but it could easily have gone to Shawn, since we collaborated on most of our projects. I always say that THE best idea I ever had was hiring him to work with me in QA.

I learned during those exciting times that my strong suit was seeing the brilliance in others and tapping into that brilliance as a primary resource; and I found that the best answers invariably come from the same folks who come forward with the problems in the first place. If the solution is the drink then I was the humble vessel. I did my job best by completely defining the problems and their scope, usually after that, what had to be done became obvious. I’m sure the answers to our healthcare dilemma can be found in exactly the same way; and not by a bunch of self-serving politicians and lobbyists who THINK they know the answers; THEY don’t.

Coloring For Free

Like most kids their age, my girls constantly seek to be creative. They love to draw, color and paint. They go through coloring books like candy. Boxes of crayons and marker pens last only a couple weeks before its time to resupply.

Their creativity as of late has expanded into the pc world. It seems that now they can’t get enough of their online computer games. Even now they are begging me to hurry up so they can go online to their favorite kids sites. I’m always on the lookout for new learning games and puzzles so we can combine "getting a little education" with their artistic endeavors.

On several of these free kids sites you can print out coloring pages, but soon we had exhausted even those freebies. Then it occurred to me, why not make our own coloring pages?

I was playing around with Paint Shop Pro when I had my "coloring epiphany" while experimenting with the “Flood Fill” function. This feature is represented by an icon that looks like a spilling paint bucket. It works very much like that as well.

First toggle the color palette into view on the right side of the screen and select the color you want to fill into the photo.

The moment I had “my bright idea” is when I chose to start filling the photo in with white.

As soon as I saw how a few clicks of white “fill” vacated big blocks and swathes of the photo and yet still left outlines of what was there THAT’S when I knew I had come upon a way to make as many pages for coloring that my girls could ever want.

I started out with this photo of my youngest girl. I asked her if she wanted me to help her color herself and she was all for it.
Oops. A problem--the white fill bled into the face area.

The solution: Using the "paint brush" feature and dialing the tip to a proper shape and size I outlined the face to keep white from bleeding into it.

It works. I began to fill in the rest of the photo with white to turn it into a coloring book page.

I ended up having to outline other areas as well when the white fill would completely obscure their original shape. In the above case I had to outline the arm.

Let the coloring begin!

Here's another we did together. We took a picture of me standing in front of a tank at the 4th Infantry Division Museum at Fort Hood, Texas.
From that to....
....to....
Notice how we left the faces untouched, although we did moderate the tone of my youngest's face to give our work of art a kind of toned down "colored" look. If you've got kids give it a try. Mine love coloring themselves and their daddy too. I admit, I helped 'em color. Couldn't resist it... xx