What is Facilities Management?

(View Video 1 directly on YouTube – makes full-screen option available)

Metaphors using sharp objects, plus “The Howling FMer”

(View Video 2 directly on YouTube – makes full-screen option available)

Austin, in his comment, links to an article in Scholoarpedia on Synesthesia which I begin to read and find rather interesting. However, as I get down to the “Top down and contextual effects” portion of the article, I notice that there’s a sentence with a typo in it, specifically “The second experiment (6) used an ambiguous grapheme (‘A’ or ‘H’) embedded either in between ‘T’ and ‘E’ (as in ‘THE’) or between ‘C’ and ‘A’ (‘CAT’).” If you notice, at the end there, the ambiguous grapheme as an ‘A’ really is between ‘C’ and ‘T’, not between ‘C’ and ‘A’ as the sentence states (this makes more sense looking at the image provided in the article to illustrate).

Now, I was feeling generous and figured, hey, why not mention this to someone at the site so they can fix it? Actually, my first thought, being linked into the middle of the article, was “I already have a Wikipedia account, I’ll just fix this for them real quick.” Of course, they use the same MediaWiki software and default theme (hence the confusion, especially when linked to an anchor within an article), but Scholarpedia is not actually Wikipedia, as I quickly infer (and I haven’t had a scientific paper with a model named after me published with over 250 hits in Google–yet, if ever–so I can’t create an account). No problem, I’m sure there’s a contact form around. Nope. I can’t find one, anywhere on the site. Well, I just noticed the only email address I’ve run across on the site, suggestions @ scholarpedia.org, hidden away on the detailed requirements for authors page. No useful information on the About page, or the Help page. Oh wait, on the Instructions for authors page, it does have a random other email address, for a specific person. But they seem pretty much of the opinion that if you aren’t a famous scientist, you have no need to contact them about anything. Ironically, their Copyright page even says to “Contact Scholarpedia for copyright details.” Without mentioning a way to do so.

Oh well, maybe I’ll grab those two random email addresses I found and send them a quick note. If I get around to it; they can certainly find it here if they bother to look. I guess sometimes it takes is someone who graduated high school after being homeschooled to find the errors the super-genius scientists miss… ;-)

Thus ends this rant. Thanks, I feel better now. School 100% complete for the semester as of a very short time ago, so I’m quite happy to work the hot-air typing muscles for a few before getting to bed later than I should, again (but the exam got completed and submitted!).

After searching every room of the house for about five minutes, I called my wife (on her way to work already) and asked if she had any ideas. None. More looking. I call my mom to see where she was at, since she was on her way here to pick up Nathaniel, and asked if she had any ideas. “Did you check the drawer of the coffee table?”

Duh. No! Of course I hadn’t checked the place Nathaniel constantly puts everything from pens to coasters to remote controls! Sure enough…he’s never moved my mouse or mouse pad before (and knows better than to touch them if he remembers), but apparently that changed. A few seconds later they were packed and ready to go. But who knew moving a mouse and mouse pad five inches lower than their previous location could cause so much trouble, and hilarity?! :-D

(cross-posted to Nathaniel’s Blog)

The basic principle you must use to compare to your potential spouse is what I call the Toilet Paper Principle, or TPP. The principle is very simple. Do you and your potential mate agree on whether the toilet paper rolls should be placed on the holder so it feeds over the top, or down underneath? If so, it’s likely that you will be able to find other areas in which you both are obsessive, but about the same thing in the same way, which is a key to surviving at least two years from my experience. For example, you may discover that you both have a passion for correct grammar and spelling. If one of you discovers a spelling or grammatical error in a document of some sort, the person discovering the error may enthusiastically complain to the other about what a lousy job of proofreading the document’s creator has done, why can’t they use a dictionary or at least Word’s spell check, etc. and can count on their partner to heartily agree and possibly join in with a corroborating comment. This comes in particularly handy when writing; everyone, even perfectionists, make mistakes and typos, but when you have such a wonderful partner to rely on as an uninterested editor (and believe me, depending on the topic, I do mean uninterested!) to pick up your slack.

This sort of interplay with common obsessions is very important if you are to survive each other for any length of time. Because inevitably, you will discover areas in which you both have passionate opinions that don’t line up with each other. People who are OCPs I’ve noticed tend to be stubborn and opinionated. Some of them are outgoing, and everyone will recognize this immediately. Others may be people-pleasers and thus hide their opinions from the general public.

When you get married, however, you will share your opinions with each other. Stubbornly. After all, you’re always right. Or at least, your wife is. According to her. You may even be fooled into thinking this has something to do with hormones, especially if you end up with children rather quickly. Just give it 9-12 months you think, and convincing your wife to change her mind will be a lot easier. You think this because, as a guy, you’ve already forgotten the dating and engagement portion of your relationship, where she was just as stubborn.

Guys aren’t allowed to defend themselves against women if they’re gentlemen (this applies to physical contact but should probably extend to verbal onslaught as well), so they have to use other defense mechanisms. The easiest (and thus generally the most popular) is to simply forget things quickly. This usually comes without much effort, and it gets easier with practice. Fortunately, practice is easy to come by, and hey, if you really can’t remember what it is your wife said while you were in the middle of contemplating which good science fiction domain names might be available to register “just in case you need it,” you have a good, honest defense should you be accused of forgetting your wife’s statement. Of course, you won’t really get away with it, because how could you possibly not hang with baited breath onto everything your wife may mention in passing, unless she is completely unimportant and disposable and you’re a horrible person?

At least you can take comfort in knowing that you truly don’t remember her telling you–that thing she says she told you, until you forget all about it ten seconds later. And then, who cares? On to the next thing! How about mounting touch-screen computers and keyboards around your house to fold out of every wall on adjustable arms and connect to your existing terminal server session on your central server when you authenticate with the built-in fingerprint reader to pick up your web browsing or to-do list creation (to help you remember) where you left off in the last room? Sounds like an excellent project for that spare several thousand dollars that you…already spent on other necessities (ahh…a geek can dream…). Oh well, at least there are plenty of spelling and grammatical errors you can go find and share with your wife, and she’ll commiserate. And you won’t have to switch the toilet paper around the next time its use is necessitated, because your wonderful wife will have replaced the roll in the correct direction for you. And her. And you’ll both live happily ever after (until your kid hits his teens, so I hear).

(I make no claims as to the reality of any of the above (much of humor is exaggeration of reality, after all), but you know enough of it rings true to–ring true. At least if you and your wonderful partner both share OCP traits. Thanks to my wife for two AWESOME years and for many more to come! Happy Anniversary Sweetie!)

I do think that in some cases, instructions could be improved if they were divided up with different emphasis. So high-level stuff would be large and in one style, with the smaller steps broken down in a smaller area for those that needed them. Most instructions do use a table of contents and/or headings to do something like this, but I think adding levels could in some cases help. For example:

Typing Text in the Eye Dee Ten Tee Program

For ID10Tsnovices or advanced users :-)

• Big Main Heading
  • Creating a document
    1. Push the button
       • First, hold your finger in front of the circle (aka “button”) in the center of the case.
       • Move your hand forward, depressing the circle with said finger until you hear and feel a click.
       • Remove finger from button.
    2. Wait
       • Wait until the screen in front of you has finished turnng on
       • Continue to wait until there are little pictures on the screen.
    3. Open “Eye Dee Ten Tee” program
       • Find the picture (aka “icon”) on the screen in front of you that says “Eye Dee Ten Tee” (this would be a good place for a screenshot)
       • Move the mouse to the picture you found in the previous step.
         • (more inane steps here on how to move the mouse, what is a mouse, etc.)
       • Press the button on the mouse to begin using the said program
         • (more inane steps here on how to click a mouse?)
       • Wait until you see a blank white area on the screen with text at the top saying “ID10T” with a blinking cursor below that text.
    4. Type your text
       • Move your hands to the keyboard so your left index finger rests on the “F” key and your right index finger rests on the “J” key
       • Make sure your other fingers rest on the keys they naturally line up with in this position.
       • Move your fingers so one finger at a time depresses the key corresponding to the next letter in succession of the word(s) you desire to display on the screen.
    5. Print the text
       • (lots more steps here to print the text so the user doesn’t have to save the document somewhere that they would forget anyway becuase you haven’t explained directory structures yet)
  • More high-level steps here

I could continue ad nauseum, but I hope you get the idea already, and I think I’ve had way too much fun with my little demonstration exercise :-D Basically, more advanced users use the numbered steps and ignore the substeps, while novices can go at a slower pace with the detailed steps. And the occasional advanced user can refer to the detailed instructions when they get lost. Note the use of bold style and font sizes (i reserved italics for editorial comments, in this case) to visually separate the varying levels of steps to make this easier. Also note the lack of visual aids becuase I’ve already spent way too much time making this silly example to bother with graphics.

(Disclaimer: My instructions above are not complete and there are several obvious glaring holes where more steps need to be added to remain consistent with the level of detail provided. But unless I can get credit for this as my manual, it’s not worth the time nor the effort!)

(Warning: The above instructions are for entertainment purposes only and I disclaim any and all liability arising from the use or misuse of the above instructions regardless of the intentions of the user, or the orientation of the moon in relation to the earth and sun.)

(Warning: This example also serves as an example of a procrastination technique for avoiding credit-bearing projects. Doing the same is not recommended. You should really do the school work itself and turn it in early. But IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer) and you should consult your own and not consider this a legal opinion in any way, shape, form, or point of fact.)

However, it’s very bad if a can comes with the tab broken off the top (it looked attached, but came off when I touched it). It’s bad because, at least with Progresso Chicken Soup cans, regular can openers don’t work and there’s not an immediately obvious alternate opening method. This one required some ingenuity, courtesy of a suggestion from my wife. “How about you use a butter knife to pop it open?”

I very strongly, highly recommend not using the blunt end of a butter knife to hammer down the edge of a can top such as this. It explodes. Not just a little. It goes “pop” and ends up all over your hair, shirt, shorts, the floor, the counter, everything on the counter…you get the idea. And in this case, it wasn’t the generic, hypothetical “your,” it was me. My hair, shirt, shorts, etc. Did I mention ear? Yep, it went in my ear (one of them). And nearly my eye. I had my eyes closed after this happened to protect from the splatter, so I couldn’t see my wife on the couch watching me. In a concerned voice she asked “are you okay?” but was otherwise silent. I wiped the soup out of my eye and looked at her only to notice she was trying very hard not to laugh very, very hard. Not trying hard not to; laughing hard. I chuckled to show I saw the humor and she burst out laughing. It was actually pretty funny, minus the cleanup which is most definitely not funny. That’s okay, I’ll have help. I was making the soup for her, after all, and following her suggestion.

Now, if I could just get all the soup out of my ear…