Frequently Asserted Pomposities and Frequently Asked Questions

P. How fortunate to be paid a salary to work in the shop!

R. Zero salary. Reimbursement is only from invoices.

P. Please attend to the {ice machine | instrument used in the undergraduate laboratory | museum requirement | walk-in freezer | other Departmental requirement. }

R. This policy was established by the department 2004-07-23. The requestor must fill out an Internal Work Request, let me complete the contractor section and have it approved by Maureen B. Blank forms should be available in my mail box in the departmental office. They are numbered. PLEASE TAKE THE LOWEST NUMBER.

Q. Can you please fix this for my research work?

A. With a few exceptions, can try. Most research groups maintain good credit ratings.

Q. What is your rate?

A. Effective 2006-10-01, 60 dollars/hour. During 2006 the rate increased from 45 dollars/hour to 60. Still, real hourly income is astonishingly small, due to discussion about potential work, donated time, bookkeeping, favour work, errands to suppliers and other requirements. My income might surprise you.

P. I need an estimate for *!

R. Many projects are completed without formal cost estimation. People who have worked with me for years understand my approach. If you want an estimate, please ask.

Q. How do you squander your time here in the Department?

A. Ask to see my journal.

P. The Department should pay for this.

R. A person requesting work has the primary responsibility to arrange payment. The Department usually pays departmentally oriented expenses. The Pathology Museum, teaching facilities and shared facilities, such as the sterilizer, are examples. Expenses pertaining to a specific research group are usually paid by the group. Aesthetic and personal requirements are individual responsibilities. In a specific case, you might ask the Financial Coordinator, Director of Administration or Department Head for clarification and assistance.

Q. Please (fix my bicycle | fix a golf club | fix my spectacles | make a prank trophy | make a part for my child's science project ... ).

A. The shop is a departmental facility. Any member of the department is welcome to participate provided s/he is capable of working safely and not incurring damage to machinery and tools. Personal projects advance by individual initiative. I am happy to assist as circumstances allow.

Q. I was given this yellow hose with a pink stripe and unfamiliar end fittings. What is it used for.

A. The most helpful reference I've found is in Wikipedia; bottled gas color coding.

Q. What do you charge to overhaul a vacuum pump?

A. Effective 2007 March 1, overhaul of a Welch 1400 will cost 500 $CA for labour. This does not include oil and parts nor repairs to the motor. The owner of the pump orders and provides oil and parts. The rebuild kits range in price from 85 to 175 $US approximately. A replacement shaft is approximately 130 $US. Check with me before ordering parts. For current prices of parts in US dollars, check these pages.
"http://www.lds-vacuum.com/"
Other companies also overhaul vacuum pumps.
This company is in Edmonton. http://www.blowerandvacuum.com/
Also try Vacuum Sciences, 4934 Jefferson Street, NE, Albuquerque, NM, telephone 505 837 9245.

For pumps other than the Welch 1400, please enquire.

Q. Why do you specify the date as yyyyy-mm-dd? Sane people use mm dd, yyyy.

A. ISO 8601 and the "long now".

P. This really absolutely must be ready by yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm!

R. This can amount to queue jumping. Read on.

Q. I really need this _____. When will it be ready?

A. That depends on the current time, the time required for projects ahead of yours in the queue and the time required for your project.

Q. How can I be sure my work is completed when needed?

A. Try to evaluate the queue and estimate the time for each project. Allow for contingencies. Calculate back to determine when to submit your project. Account for probabilistic factors as appropriate. Does this seem difficult? It certainly is!

Q. What priorities and factors determine position in the queue?

A. Priorities from highest to lowest, 1. Scientific truths and values. 2. Federal law. 3. Provincial law. 4. Regional law. 5. Municipal law. 6. University regulations. 7. Requirements for teaching. 8. Requirements for research. 9. Requests from outside the department.

A project does not always wait until there are no projects of higher priority before receiving attention. Waiting time is a factor. As waiting time accumulates a project tends to move up the queue. This allows attention to a project of lower priority within a finite time.

Judgment is used in accomodating contingencies and queueing projects of equal priority. Small repairs and emergencies tend to be "squeezed in".

Q. What can I do to minimize interruptions of my work when equipment fails?

A. Remember the old proverb: the best reliability is from redundancy. Keep spare equipment in working order.

Q. What can I do to hasten progress of my shop projects?

A. There are many answers. Here are a few examples.

Eg. 1. Convince me that the strategy described above for handling the queue is wrong.

Eg. 2. Convince me that I erred in applying the strategy to your work.

Eg. 3. Invest more time in long range planning and submit your project with more lead time.

Eg. 4. Take care of the documentation for your equipment. It is invaluable for troubleshooting and repair.

Eg. 5. Modern electronic devices have very complex circuitry. A service manual with schematic is invaluable for troubleshooting. If you can provide the service manual when requesting troubleshooting, it helps greatly. If you can not find it locally try the Web or the supplier of the machine.

A working copy of the same machine is also invaluable; modules can be swapped between machines for testing.

If you ask me to troubleshoot a machine without a service manual, a schematic diagram or a spare machine you may be presenting a very difficult task. Functional characteristics of the machine can give helpful clues. Expect to be asked about functional characteristics.

Eg. 6. If you request construction of a special device, design and drawing is a time consuming part of the work. Any contribution will help.

Eg. 7. Material procurement is time consuming. If you can obtain materials, progress will be hastened.

Eg. 8. The shop is a departmental facility. Any member of the department is welcome to participate provided they are capable of working safely and not incurring damage to machinery and tools.

Eg. 9. Pay attention to your project. If you drop by the shop occasionally you might find a way expedite progress.

Q. Why did you waste time on this obscure repair to * which has no obvious direct benefit to any project?

A. Investments in shop facilities pay off in better efficiency. Productivity depends as much on efficiency as on diligence.

Q. Why do you use those old computers?

A. My computing requirements are modest: primarily email, text processing and Web service. The capabilities of these old machines are sufficient. There is no need to generate more electronic waste.

Q. Is your computer named carnot because you don't drive?

A. =8~)) The machine was purchased for a laboratory where, for little more than whim, some of the computers were named after French scientists. This machine happened to be named after Sadi Nicolas Léonard Carnot, discoverer of the second law of thermodynamics. I have driven motor vehicles since 1966.

P. I want only X, Y and Z to see this!

R. WebDAV

P. I want only myself and X to edit this!

R. WebDAV

Q. Where can I get an inexpensive {computer | disk drive | modem ...}?

A. Try PC Galore, 2744 W 4th Ave., 1/2 block east of MacDonald.
http://www.pcgalore.com/

Q. How can I dispose of this {broken | obsolete} {computer | fax machine | power supply | spectrometer ...}?

A. Disposal of electronic material as garbage contributes to obliteration of Burn's Bog and other ecosystems and can release toxic substances. Better to make use of recycling services. Call Bernie Dick at UBC Waste Management (office 822 9619, cell 788 5542) to make arrangements. The shop is not a waste disposal site.

Q. I need to make a document. What software should I use?

A. For serious work use TeX, a master-work of Donald Knuth. Otherwise a number of bloated and overpriced application packages with limited capabilities are available.

Here is an example. A document of one page with no illustrations contains 1621 characters, blanks included, comprising 279 words. The Word file, blah.doc, is 74 kB! blah.rtf is 99592 bytes. Wow! One tenth of a megabyte for a plain one page document! The LaTeX file yielding the same document is a mere 3955 bytes. Of all technologies, computing has allowed some of the most absurd inefficiencies.

Q. What do you think of {that | this | my} Web site?

A. The majority of sites use proprietary languages rather than the markup languages defined by the W3C. A site based on a proprietary syntax is not strictly a Web site and should be named according to the software which created it. "Internet site created by Shiney-Pro" for example. The benefits of conformance to W3C standards are analogous to the benefits of using the SI rather than an older system of units. For anyone with a genuine interest in the Web, the explanations in the W3C pages are more than adequate.

P. OK, OK, so the W3C has standards. Who cares?

http://www.pitps.org/~pitps/. Validate.

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/. Validate.

http://www.oberon.ethz.ch/. Validate.

http://garbo.uwasa.fi/. Validate.

http://www.debian.org/. Validate.

Q. Why do you use that strange computer system that nobody has ever heard of?

A. Only because it is the most efficient system I could find.

End of FAQ.