K.I.S.S. – a.k.a. Techies are Human Too

I have been accused in the past of being extremely egotistical, to the point where an old friend of mine had drawn a diagram to define just how much.  He drew a circle, and labeled it “The World”.  Next to this, he drew a second circle, and labeled it “Andy’s ego”.  After a good chuckle, I “corrected” the first label to state “The Universe”. 

Now surely that paints me as a very arrogant soul.  Like other “techies”, I worked very hard to gain the technical knowledge I possess, and am very proud of being able to use that knowledge to solve problems and help others.  However, that level of knowledge can also in fact breed arrogance.  I mentioned in an earlier entry the British show “The IT Crowd”.  In this show, the phone was almost always answered, “Hello, IT.  Have you tried turning it off and on again?”  That question is rather haughty, don’t you think?  After all, techs are in the service industry.  It’s their job to help others with technical issues.   But it brings to light something anyone working in the service industry has to face from time to time.  The fact is they are exhausted by “stupid people”.

That’s not meant to be insulting.  Anyone who has worked in a service industry has been worn down by customers from time to time.  This can happen due to a series of unreasonable requests, irate people, or simply “having a bad day”.  In the tech world, we sometimes get impatient with those who do not possess the same level of knowledge.  To be fair to techies, this usually stems from dealing with customers that every service person has dealt with, those who seem to have no “common sense”.

Let me explain what I mean.  For example, on my old web site, I shamelessly had a posting wall titled “Stupid User Tricks”.  Now, this wall didn’t have complaints about customers who had a lack of knowledge.  It was for those who did crazy things like try to scan paper into their monitor, used their CD/DVD disk tray as a cup holder, or couldn’t find the “ANY” key on their keyboard.

The “any key” story is sort of an urban legend of technical support.  The idea is that the customer is installing software, but can’t complete the process.  He calls tech support, and after some discussion with the tech, explains that the screen is stating “Press Any Key to Continue.”  Customer is actually looking for a key labeled “any” on the keyboard.  Sounds definitely like an urban legend, of which many a software and hardware manufacturer has claimed this story.  I also will make that same claim – I did in fact receive that call many years ago.  Those of my former colleagues reading this blog may or may not remember the fact that I fell out of my chair laughing – and almost got fired over how I treated the customer.  (Something I am not proud of.)

As in any service industry, at some point you “hit your breaking point”, and the “next customer” is the one who takes the brunt.  In most cases, if the more seasoned and professional of us “lose it”, we simply come off as arrogant, sometimes in the form of talking down to others.  At this point, we have to remind ourselves that everyone has their skills that they can be proud of.  If I have an electrical issue, I call my brother-in-law, who is a master electrician, and he gladly helps out.  I am of course there for him when he needs help with computers or electronics.  Same goes for my younger brother – who has his own business performing general work on people’s homes.  I call him if I need somebody “handy” to help me with a project around the house.  Hmmm… I wonder if either of them would be willing to help me if I got all “high and mighty” whenever they had a question around their computers.  Probably not.

Another challenge of becoming an “expert” is the K.I.S.S. syndrome.  K.I.S.S. stands for “Keep It Simple Stupid”.  This is not something techs say to people they are assisting (unless they want to get them angry and/or get fired)!  This is a statement that really is a mantra for any type of troubleshooting.   The K.I.S.S. syndrome is inversely proportional to the amount of knowledge someone has.  The more knowledge you attain, the more you forget the basic steps when you go to troubleshoot.  The result is you tend to jump to the solution because “you’ve seen this before”.

Over the years, I was repeatedly reminded of this indirectly by my wife.   My wife is a “techie” as well, but she’s been the “Mac person” while I was the “PC guy”.  One example was when I was troubleshooting one of our PCs that wouldn’t power up.  I dismantled and reassembled it, swapping components, even stripped down to its basics, but couldn’t get it to boot.  She then came over and reseated the memory chips and it worked.  There have been many other examples of this over the years anytime something electronic wasn’t working – I tend to jump to what I believe to be the solution and get frustrated when it doesn’t work.

In the above example, my wife remembered that there is a very basic electronic circuit inside a PC, known as a bus.  That circuit connects the CPU, memory, and I/O connections – any loose component would cause the circuit to be incomplete, resulting in the computer not being able to boot.

I was recently reminded of my arrogance.  My PlayStation 3 console wouldn’t read one of my new game disks, which had been working earlier that day.  I also couldn’t eject the disk.  Naturally, I went online to see what the tech world said about it.  There were all kinds of crazy solutions, but none of them worked.  At that point, I figured, “Great, this is a common thing”.  So, I went to the manufacturer web site to see if there was anything documented around the problem.  Sure enough, there was.  “Aha!” I exclaimed, “I am vindicated!”  I then proceeded to read through all the information and perform additional troubleshooting steps.  None of which worked.  The only option was to send my system in for warranty service.

Note:  If you know a tech, you know we despise calling tech support.  This is due to the fact that we arrogantly feel that we know more, and hate wasting time performing troubleshooting steps we’ve already performed.  To be fair, with some manufacturers, this can in fact be the case due to mass outsourcing and lack of proper training.

I then called the manufacturer and got on the phone with a technician.  Knowing that the technician’s job was to troubleshoot the problem as well, I explained all the steps I had already taken.  I also noted that the system made strange noises when I inserted the disk. The tech appreciated my level of knowledge and only had me perform a few more steps to confirm my findings.  She then worked through the process of entering my device for warranty service and sent me a pre-paid mailer with instructions on prepping and sending back the machine.  Now, you are saying, that tech did their job, right?  And gave you good customer service?  In that, you would be correct.  The “hook” to this story comes next.

The next day, my kids had wanted to play a game on their Wii game system.  Generally, I don’t allow them to load the disks themselves as they had actually scratched one of the games to the point where it became unplayable.  As I went to load the game, I noticed the system was on.  One thing I do automatically is hit the eject button to make sure no disk is already inside.  (I once broke a portable DVD player by not checking and “double loading” a disk.  See, we can make mistakes!) 

I especially noted the Wii being powered on as a Wii system automatically turns on when you insert a disk.

Sure enough, there was a disk in there.  As I went to retrieve it to put it in its case, I noticed that it was, in fact, the PS3 game that I had believed was stuck in the PS3 console.  In other words, I had inserted the disk into the wrong game system, and spent all that time trying to get the disk out of the system I thought it was in. You might say, “Easy enough mistake to make.  No harm done!”  Except this is where the K.I.S.S. syndrome really shines – the 2 game systems sit on different shelves about 3 feet apart.  Boy, did I feel dumb!

Hope that last bit gave you all a good laugh.

So, in summary, techies have good days and bad days and don’t always act 100% professionally.  Not to mention, they can miss the obvious and make mistakes.  In other words, techies are human too.

But wait a minute…

…where’s the troubleshooting tip?  Well, the tip is around general troubleshooting.  Remember that troubleshooting is just a method to solve a problem – it doesn’t have to be a technical issue with a computer.  Here are some tenets around troubleshooting:

•  K.I.S.S.
• Check the simple things first.  It will save you time in the long run.
• Divide and conquer.
• Use process of elimination.  Narrow down the area of the problem’s source.
• Remember the following quote from Sherlock Holmes, “When you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
• If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
• Of course if you change something and it makes the situation worse, you should change it back.
• What most people don’t care for is the other situation.  What if you make a change and nothing happens?  Change it back.  Why?  You are introducing additional variables.
• The symptom points to the source.
• If the TV doesn’t turn on, changing a light bulb won’t help.  You’ll need to check anything related to the TV – the outlet, the cable box, the TV itself.
• Escalate when needed.
• This is another way to say, “Get help when you are over your head.”  If you aren’t comfortable or just plain stuck, seek help.

Hope you enjoyed this issue.  Tune in next time for more exciting tips!

Ow, That Hertz! (or, Keep It Cool, Man!)

Our next tip has to do with cycles.  These are not bicycles, but clock cycles inside electronics.

We are all aware of the fact that electronics continually follow 2 trends:

•  They get faster & more powerful
• They get smaller

Computers are the classic example of these trends.  Early computers would take up a large room.  They became smaller and smaller until home desktop computers came out in the 1990s.  Through the 1990’s, they also became faster and more powerful.

The key to a computer’s speed starts at its processor, the “brain” of the machine.  Its processor ran at a speed of 4.77 MHz (Megahertz).  This was the clock pulse of a machine – controlling the timing of the electronics.  A Hertz has a mathematical value of 1/s.  The means one signal pulse per second.  Standard NTSC television (cable TV) has a speed of 60Hz.  This equates to 60 frames per second.  Anyone who does video editing will tell you that this allows the frames to be changed quickly enough that the human eye can not detect that they are actually watching a series of changing still pictures.  This of course gives the illusion of seeing live full motion.

Modern HDTVs display at frequency of up to 120Hz (120 frames per second), some even claim up to 240Hz.  You won’t see any screen flicker watching those!

So that early computer sent signals at a rate of 4.77 Megahertz.  A Megahertz is 1 million signals per second.  That sounds really fast, no?  That should have been fast enough to run anything!  Keep in mind that is in the form of a digital clock pulse.  Each instruction has to be broken down digitally into a series of 1’s (on) and 0’s (off).  These instructions and data have to be carried on the main circuit of the computer which connects the CPU, memory, and devices.  Simply printing the letter A to the screen involved a series of instructions that had to be broken down and carried on the main circuit.  Here is the process in simple terms:

1. The user types the letter A on the keyboard.
2.  A special chip, called the Interrupt Handler, contacts the CPU, “interrupting” what it is doing to get its attention.
3. The CPU has to read (from the computer’s memory) the driver information.  (The driver is the series of instructions on how to control and communicate with a device.  In this case, the keyboard.)
4. The CPU processes the instructions, converting the letter A, digitally.
5. The CPU then reads the driver for the video card.
6. The CPU then processes the instructions to send the letter A to the video card.
7. The letter A displays on the monitor.

As you can see, this simple task takes a lot of instructions, which need to be carried back and forth on the main circuit as a series of electronic signals.  Those users of early computers (even into the 1990’s) would see sometimes a “lag” when they were typing quickly.  This was the system’s inability to keep up with the speed of the user.  You see, Hertz is actually a measurement of frequency.  In addition to being a measurement of the “clock pulse” of the computer, it is also a measurement of how many instructions can be carried and processed per second.  In other words, how frequently these instructions and data can be acted upon.  If you relate that to your heart rate, it runs at a certain “speed” when at rest.  (Also a frequency, measured in beats/minute).  When you do “work” (i.e. exercise) your heart rate increases, and the support systems work harder.  Naturally, as computer software became more complex with more options, the number of instructions increased significantly.  Therefore, the system needed to run faster.  (Of course, the CPU wasn’t the only thing that needed to increase in “power”, but the support components – memory and devices – needed to as well. 

Believe it or not, a very big driver for the continuing increase of the power of computers and components where a specific niche of users and the software they used.  That was that of the gamers, wanting video games that were much more complex with improved graphics.  This is still a big driver in the growth of computers and electronics today.

So that leads us to the theme of this article’s topic.  In the 1990’s and early 2000’s, there was a drive to get computers and their personal components to be faster and faster.  A common joke among techies was not to stress when buying a new machine that you get all the latest and greatest.  “As soon as you buy it, it is 6 months out of date.”  This statement illustrates the speed in which the technology was being enhanced, continually getting faster and more powerful.  One of the barriers was getting speed of a home computer up to and past 1GHz (Gigahertz).  A Gigahertz is 1 billion cycles per second.  The goal was to have computers processing at least 200 times faster.  Okay, we know that the two trends listed at the beginning of the article happened, and continued to happen, so why was there a “barrier”?

The problem has to do with the following electrical formula:

W = V x I

This formula, derived from Ohm’s law, is the electrical formula for power.  W = Wattage, or how many watts are generated.  V = Voltage, the “potential” for an electric circuit.  I = Current, measured in amperes (amps).  It is the amount of electricity being carried.

Okay, Mr. Science, thanks for the lesson.  But what does it mean?  We need to relate this to our frequency measurement, Hertz.  As the Hertz increases, the clock pulse increases, and the amount of information that is carried increases also.  That information is carried as electricity.  So, when the frequency increases, so does the current in the system.

Okay, so more electricity is being generated.  That’s a good thing, right?  Well, yes.  But look at the formula again.  Wattage is the unit of measure for power.  In this case, that power can take the form of heat.  This is what caused the barrier.  During the “race to a Gigahertz” multiple CPU manufacturers were working diligently to get a CPU that could run at and beyond that speed.  Problem is, when cycling up the circuit to that speed, the CPUs would run way too hot (you could fry and egg on them).  Remember from basic science that heat causes expansion as molecules move away from each other.  Heat, of course, would cause expansion of the silicon and the circuits, causing failure. 

The solution of this was to change the structure of the CPU to incorporate other metals that run cooler, such as copper. This technology was not actually invented by Intel, AMD, or Motorola, the CPU manufacturers for PCs and Macintosh computers.  It was invented by the Digital Equipment Corporation.

You may be aware that nowadays there are solutions for dissipating heat.  These come in the form of cooling fans and heat syncs.  Heat, however, still can be a problem if you do not care for your system properly.  And this is not just the case of PCs.

All electronics nowadays have powerful processers that run at higher and higher frequencies.  This is what allows us to have more complex appliances and devices.  So not only can your computer have a heat problem, but other electronics can as well.  Electronics manufacturers work on the heat problem in different ways – computers have cooling fans and heat syncs, televisions and video games have these as well as ventilation, even a smart phone has a heat sync.

The measures that manufacturers take do not always work well.  Some electronics overheat if they run too long.  I myself had a video game system that ran so hot it would “crash” within minutes of turning it on.  This is because the heat was so high that the system’s memory would expand and pop out of the circuit board.

So you are probably asking yourself, “What can I do?”  

I wouldn’t expect you to modify your electronics to better cool them.  (Although many a gaming enthusiast has added liquid cooling to their computers and gaming systems, this is advanced tweaking best left to an expert and can void a warranty.)  The key item for the average person to focus on is ventilation.  Most larger electronics have fans to dissipate heat.  If the casing of the system isn’t ventilated properly, the heat becomes trapped.

So, your tips for this week are:

·         Do not stack electronics on top of each other without adequate spacing between.  (Some electronics are made to be stacked, this is as their ventilation is to the sides, not top and bottom.  When in doubt, look for the vents or feel for the air flow when powered on.)

·         Don’t pile things against or encase your electronics to close to a shelf backing or wall.  (Again, keep the vents clear.  Leave a few inches at least to the sides of a shelf or wall.  The key is to keep adequate space around your electronics.)

·         Check vents periodically for dust.  Use an air can to blow away dust (available wherever electronics are sold).

·         Shut the system off once in a while!  (Video game systems will run hot after hours of gaming.  Encourage the kids to take a break and go play outside or read a book.  Feel the casing, it will probably be warm.  If it is getting too hot, time to save and shut down.)

·         Keep your systems at room temperature.  Again, basic science.  I’ve known people to keep their video games in their garage or unfinished basement (read “man cave).  In the extremes of summer and winter, keeping electronics in areas without temperature control will cause them to fail.  (Remember, cold can be an issue as well.)  This also goes for leaving electronics in a car – I know more than one person who left a laptop in a car overnight, only to come out and find the screen is ruined.

Hope you enjoyed this article's tip.  Thanks for reading!