User:AndyTheGrump
Fremo ergo sum. [1]
How we fix things around these parts
(please note, this is my personal musings alone. It may or may not be considered satire. I'm not entirely sure myself.)
Our scene opens in the lofty town of Carson City Nevada, high in the Sierra mountains, close to where Lake Tahoe nestles amongst the sometimes-snowy peaks, and where only a fool could fail to admire nature's beauty. Somewhere back off from main street lies a rather nondescript industrial building, fronted with a slightly-wonky sign reading 'Tahoe Turboencabulator Components Inc, Est 1952'. Inside, a collection of mostly old and rather boringly uniformly white men are standing around, scratching their heads. The turboencabulator-flange-burnishing machine is broken. Or at least, one must assume that it is, since it is the focus of attention, and pieces are being pulled off it, seemingly at random. Into this scene moseys Jim McNuggit, the longest-standing employee at TTC, a man with a deep appreciation for turboencabulators, cheap whiskey, and old-west traditions (e.g. moseying). "Broke again, is it?" he asks, clearly not expecting an answer beyond the obvious. Someone or other answered with the inevitable "yep", and the inevitable sigh. It was going to be one of those days: nature's beauty would have to go unadmired again.
"Did ya notice when it stopped working?" asked Jim, aiming the question at nobody in particular. Someone specific - Earl Early, the confusingly-named late-shift foreman to be more usefully specific - responded with a noncommittal "sometime before I got here", followed shortly after by a mumbled "way before that" by someone Jim couldn't identify, visible only from the knees down, face up under the half-dissembled helical-burnishing-mill end of the machine. Perhaps more usefully, a short stocky man holding a long thin metallic rod, threaded at both ends, and with what appeared to be some sort of brass coathook bolted on two thirds of the way up, piped in with a suggestion: "I found this loose round the back" proffered Bob OKeefe, said stocky gent. "Been like that for years though" came a muffled reply, from whoever owned the knees. "Yeah, that's not it", said Jim, "nobody knows what that is supposed to do, and if it ever did anything at all, it didn't make any difference."
"What we need is lubrication" came the recognisably Texan drawl of Tex, long-term chief oiler, a refugee from far away Houston, which he'd left long ago to find somewhere less confusing to put his talents to use. Discounting the voice in his head ("whiskey") Jim merely nodded, noting that Tex had already smothered everything that moved, and everything that looked as if it ought to, in finest US polyalphaolefins, alkylated naphthalenes, and fluoropolymer grease, as seemed appropriate. That clearly wasn't going to work, but it kept Tex happy.
A loud 'clang' from round the back of the machine, accompanied by some very convincing western-oldtimer cussing, drew Jim's attention. It was cousin Elmer, fellow old-west-appreciator and second-longest-serving TTC mechanic. Elmer appeared, grasping the inner-sprocket drive-shaft support, and visibly limping on account of having just dropped it on his foot. "This is bent", he observed, holding it up for scrutiny. "Yup" responded Jim, "I bent it. Had to, to get the drive shaft back in after we took it out last year".
"I've found a spare" came a voice from behind Jim. It was Todd Whatsisname, the new guy and occasional butt of jokes concerning missing kindergarten. Which he didn't really, at the age of thirty-two. Fitting in clearly required playing the part though most of the time. For a change, he'd decided to be useful. Not that he was, since nobody could identify the 'spare'. It was clearly part of something mechanical, but almost certainly not connected with turboencabulator parts manufacture. With a bit of effort, it could probably be added to the machine though, and nobody objected when Todd placed it amongst the ever-growing pile of parts.
And so it continued. The machine grew smaller, until it wasn't there any more, beyond a cast-iron baseplate that would need a heavy-duty crane or a dozen sticks of dynamite to move. The pile of parts expanded until it filled most of the space that wasn't occupied by the baseplate or the various thoroughly-fluoropolymer-greased men. Once in a while a suggestion was made. And, after a little contemplation, discarded. The simple fact was, nobody knew why the machine didn't work. The wiser amongst them also noted that nobody really knew why it did work, when it did.
And then it was going-home time. No nightshift tonight on the machine. No turboencabulator-flange-burnishing was going to happen, clearly.
Dawn broke next day, and with it the beauty of the Sierra Nevada, basking in the sunlight from the east. Perhaps best-unspecified hours later TTC came to life, as the team from the previous day variously arrived in rusty pickups, dubious-looking Hondas, and what appeared to be some sort of mobile drilling rig, minus the making-holes part. To a man, they entered, and to a man they scratched their heads, as they looked at the scene before them. Whatever was wrong, they hadn't fixed it. It was just a pile of bits, and in the way of everything else. "Best put it back together", said Jim, trying to avoid making it sound like an order, lest he be held responsible for the consequences.
Now, taking big mechanical things apart can sometimes be hard. Threads may be seized. Bolts may be darned awkward to get at. And bolts may require extensive western-old-timer cussing to be persuaded to do the undoing part of their job. That is to be expected. The older and wiser know however that the real fun comes with the putting-back-together stage. Fun, that is, in the why-didn't-I-run-off-to-Reno-when-I-had-the-chance sort of way. Things that can only possibly go together two ways have to be tried four different ways to do so. Putting things together regularly results in having to take them apart again so something else can be fitted first. The four bolts you removed yesterday have inexplicitly gained a fifth identical friend that surely goes somewhere important. The fluoropolymer grease that has been getting everywhere now makes it impossible to hold the inner-sprocket drive-shaft support steady while you try to reinstall the shaft. Heavy parts get dropped on feet. Light parts get dropped, and scuttle off to hide. Putting it back together again was a three-day job. Which ended with a machine that still didn't work.
Last to leave, Jim McNugget looked around. Everything had been put back. Or, in the case of the spare whatever-it-was, added. The thing was whole again. Just not working. They'd turned it on and off half a dozen times. Sparky Daniels had double checked that the motors weren't wired backwards. Tex had added more polyalphaolefin, and topped up the hydraulic fluid. Todd had done his bit, by climbing on the top with a big rubber hammer, and whacking the mandrel-case on both ends, which had, according to ancient lore, worked when they did it in 1962. The knees, which tuned out to have been Oliver OKeefe's, had done their bit too, by helping the rest of him back underneath to undo his undoings. It was, beyond any reasonable doubt, all back together. And not working.
Jim reached for the light switch. And noticed the threaded-rod-with-coathook-attachment propped precariously up beside it, looking for an opportunity to fall over and trip someone. Jim picked it up and shoved it back behind the machine, out of the way.
Sparky, arriving early the next day, after having to flee home due to an increasingly-heated dispute with his wife over whether the dog was responsible for the strange smell, flicked on the light switch, out of habit. And then, out of similar habit, hit the turboencabulator-flange-burnisher start button. It was at least a minute before Sparky registered that the machine was running...
The moral of this story is that real-life stories don't have morals. Machines don't care for such things. They are the creations of humankind, but have no souls. Or more to the point, when discussing turboencabulator-flange-burnishers, no minds of their own, even if one sometimes suspects the contrary. Everything that happens to a machine happens because we made it that way. If they work, they work. If they don't, they don't. And if you build something without knowing how it works, you really can't complain when it doesn't. Fail to understand the machine, and you are subject to its will. Or its lack of one. Knowledge is power. But (online-encyclopaedia-slogans aside), knowledge isn't something you get for free. Acquiring knowledge takes time and effort. Time and effort to study the machine when it is working. Time and effort to study it when it stops. This is the Labour Theory Of Knowledge. Knowledge is Power. But only if you make the effort to acquire it. Hard work.
Failing that, just take the machine apart, put it back together again, and hope for the best. You might get lucky... AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:11, 16 May 2024 (UTC)