Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips If you want time alone to think, do something distasteful to your colleagues. They will leave you alone. A few years ago I was in a job where we had a small refrigerator of soft drinks in the office. One thing that comes from such is that someone has to refill the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips There is an old diagram that helps explain what a system does. Sometimes, these old diagrams are lost and need to be found again. Apologies to Google and the Chromecast, but it is a good example to mention. Me, i.e., old engineer: What is that? Young Engineer: It is a Google Chromecast. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips A good test provides information—no more and no less. Let’s take a step back to the fundamentals of engineering and building things. Part of building some thing is to perform some tests on the thing. Why perform a test? The oft-cited answer is, “to show that the thing works.” Deep sigh. We […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The napkin or envelope is still one of the best tools for the engineer or manager or fill-in-the-blank. I have a(n old-fashioned) laptop computer, a smartphone, and a tablet – and I still write notes on a napkin. Yes, I am old, that is part of the explanation. Yet, there is something […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I try to write a few six-word stories and learn a few things. I have heard about six-word stories and stories written with only a few words. Okay, enough thinking and waiting; here are a few attempts. The window broke; I jumped out. I woke, he died, me too. The grandchildren visited. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips If a system fails at one boundary, it will probably fail at another boundary. Hence, if you find a boundary failure, start looking for other boundary failures while you still have a chance at prevention instead of correction. A few years back I had a problem with my van. I couldn’t reliably […]

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by Dwayne Phillips One of the best things to know is what I don’t know. A next best thing to know is what to do when I don’t know what I’m doing. I have my shortcomings. Yes, hard to believe, but true. One of my shortcomings is admitting when a situation highlights one of my […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Contemplative writing is a valuable practice. It is far more valuable and far less used than shallow meetings. In my 28 years working for the government, I attended countless meetings where much of nothing was discussed. I avoided far more if these meetings than I attended. Meetings are a characteristic of government […]

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by Dwayne Phillips A blink-of-an-eye expert can walk into a situation and point to disastrous mistakes in the blink of an eye. My wife knows kitchens and what happens in kitchens. She can walk in a kitchen full of people cooking something, and if they are doing something wasteful, she can point to it immediately. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Good thoughts, hard work, a good team – they are great, but don’t guarantee success in projects. I find yet another television show that illustrates the need for thought and planning. I have found another television show that I love to hate to watch. It is Alaska Gold Rush on the Discovery […]

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