Happy Birthday to...Roadie
- Thread starter blazinlow89
- Start date
Thanks, fellow goofballs! Man, I even got a Happy Birthday wish from Autoforums today! Ya get banned by Vertical Scope, but the birthday email spam generator just keep cranking them out ever year without fail.
I even changed my FB picture to be a little less fierce a few days ago. In case you want to see the new benevolent Pope Roadie pic. My hair went white starting at 50, but at least it's still there.
I even changed my FB picture to be a little less fierce a few days ago. In case you want to see the new benevolent Pope Roadie pic. My hair went white starting at 50, but at least it's still there.
Lucky!The_Roadie said:Thanks, fellow goofballs! Man, I even got a Happy Birthday wish from Autoforums today! Ya get banned by Vertical Scope, but the birthday email spam generator just keep cranking them out ever year without fail.
I even changed my FB picture to be a little less fierce a few days ago. In case you want to see the new benevolent Pope Roadie pic. My hair went white starting at 50, but at least it's still there.
Happy birthday, sir.
Jared
Happy birthday Mister Roadie. Thanks for everything that you've done for the community, as well as for the things that you taught me when I joined the staff.
One of my favorite reads from the roadie: Bill Carton’s “fix anything, even yourself” Manifesto
One of my favorite reads from the roadie: Bill Carton’s “fix anything, even yourself” Manifesto
Happy birthday to one of the most helpful members of gmtnation. Your help is much appreciated to the gmt community
Man, thanks for dragging that one up again.MAY03LT said:
After my daughter, I consider that essay to be my #1 long-lasting legacy to leave future diagnosticians. Thousands of hours of experience and millions of butt-in-seat airline miles went into the career that distilled down into those 16 pieces of advice. Just to make sure it gets archived here in case I get hit by a meteorite and my hosting goes away someday, I'm going to be a bandwidth hog and put it in front of everybody's face yet again. Appreciate indulging me.
Bill Carton’s “fix anything, even yourself” Manifesto
1. Troubleshoot problems efficiently.
Divide the possible solution set in half if possible, as long as you can come up with questions or experiments. Is the issue in
the source or the measurement side? The income or the spending? The go or the stop? The hard or the soft? The ebb or the
flow? The potential or the kinetic? Eliminating half of the possibilities at a time is faster than eliminating the 5% possible
causes.
2. Never give up, unless forced to by economics.
There are no mysteries unless you give up. Everything has a root cause. It may not be economic to run all possible tests to
discover the ultimate root cause, but problems can and do have a solution, even if it’s a compromise. Throwing out,
discarding, or recycling an item because it can’t be fixed is ultimately an economic decision, not a technical one. A corollary
is that designers who design items to not be maintained easily are under orders from bad management, who should take
the blame for being bad world citizens.
3. Always get a good case history. Ask questions. Observe. Demand the truth.
People lie, and so do imperfect diagnostics. You may discover more by observing the symptoms, looking at animal tracks in
the dirt (historical clues in the problem parts), and asking uninvolved bystanders what they saw or heard.
4. Don’t make a problem worse by ill-planned experiments.
The Hippocratic Oath applies to system diagnosticians as well as physicians: "Above all, do no harm"
5. Use the Scientific Method.
It works. Make observations; form a theory; design and perform experiments; make conclusions. Lather, rinse, repeat. (Run
a loop and do the process repeatedly until it works.)
6. Document what you do.
You don’t want to forget, repeat experiments unnecessarily, or leave parts out. Remember, if you take something apart and
put it back together enough times, sooner or later you’ll have enough parts to make two of them. Except the universe won’t
let you do that, so it’s just a joke. But there’s a lesson in there. Take notes. Take pictures. Digital film is free!
7. Google can be your friend.
Whatever your potential solution is, some form of it was probably invented before WWII. I learned this from my first
technical mentor, and it’s even more true today, with the entire Internet to search for hints. Practicing advanced search
techniques is like practicing the piano or tennis or cooking. It’s a REQUIRED life skill for this century.
8. Use your own experiences cleverly.
Learn to search your own experiences for additional clues, even across disciplines. A car-repair solution may give you a hint
for a circuit fix. A power saving concept from one instrument may help you fix an appliance. Who knows what crossconnections
are being wired up in the human brain every minute?
9. Keep an extremely open mind.
Don’t rule out even the most unlikely theories without compelling evidence. Sometimes the obvious is right – sometimes
it’s just a diversion from real understanding.
10. Never stop learning and observing.
Never stagnate. Never refuse the chance to learn new things. Boredom is easily put aside by curiosity.
11. The most subtle and satisfying problems to solve have multiple layers.
If there was a one-to-one correlation between problems and solutions, a robot could diagnose everything. Sometimes it’s
an art, not a science, and the root cause is a chain of improbable events. Practice thinking about cascaded effects,
improbable connections, and using that open mind. And the possible layers could be from any discipline – hardware,
software, design, users, environmental effects, internal interference among similar or dissimilar systems.
12. Take your own sweet time.
Of course, that’s not always economically possible, but as an artist, you can’t always predict the hour and minute of your
success. Experience can give you guidance if it is going to be a multi-hour, day or week project. But if you knew exactly how
long it was going to take, you would also know what part had gone bad, and you wouldn’t have to be fixing it personally,
now would you?
13. Don’t expect to be left alone.
Some managers just HAVE to micro-manage – they feel useless otherwise. And a frustrated manager is an annoying
manager. All you can do is point out what your success rate is, and that constant progress reports slow down the progress
you’re reporting on. Deal gracefully with the interruptions and they’ll decrease over time.
14. Take advice, but remain in charge.
A project, product, army, or country can only have one person ultimately responsible for failure or success. If that’s your
role – embrace it. Don’t let somebody else steer the vehicle while you’re behind the wheel.
15. Find the bright spots in what looks like impending doom.
Even failed experiments or backsliding results teach you some things – such as what doesn’t work. Look for the nuggets of
good data in the mass of bad. Extract it with statistics if necessary. But don’t give up hope that it’s in there.
16. In God we trust – all others bring data.
Data rules. It is necessary to persuade the unbelievers. To prove the fix is proper. And to extract you (the diagnostician)
from the stressful situation and let you clear out of Dodge City and get on the train home.
Copyright © 2009 William Carton. All rights reserved.
The_Roadie said:My hair went white starting at 50, but at least it's still there.
Mine went into stealth mode when I was 23.
but
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!
We thought about making you a cake......but
[video=youtube_share;axERGIC5K8s]http://youtu.be/axERGIC5K8s[/video]
Happy birthday fellow Aries, mine is next week.
I now have this printed out and hanging on my cubicle wall. good stuff
The_Roadie said:
I now have this printed out and hanging on my cubicle wall. good stuff
Happy Birthday Bill from NORTH of Toronto-Richmond Hill, you have been a great help since I joined last year. 
Keep on trucking-I know that you will remember that saying! Lol. Stephen
Keep on trucking-I know that you will remember that saying! Lol. Stephen
Happy Birth Day!! I hope it is enjoyable for you and that you get everything you wish for and more!! Thanks for all the great info you have provided to me and many other's.. your truly one of a kind sir!!
Happy Birthday! We all greatly appreciate everything you do on/for this site for the benefit of the GMT community. 
Happy Birthday Roadie! I found this site trying to figure out why you were "no longer with us". Here's to many more and maybe some of the unbanned members can let others know what day it is with a few posts over there?
It's his bday and he's alive and kickin it over at...
It's his bday and he's alive and kickin it over at...
First of all, Happy (belated) birthday
Second, this is fantastic! I hope you don't mind that I shared it with some people (giving proper credit, of course) and printed a copy that will be hung in my garage. These are sometimes obvious, other times obscure, gems of DIY and problem solving advice. Well written, thanks for sharing your experience.
The_Roadie said:
Second, this is fantastic! I hope you don't mind that I shared it with some people (giving proper credit, of course) and printed a copy that will be hung in my garage. These are sometimes obvious, other times obscure, gems of DIY and problem solving advice. Well written, thanks for sharing your experience.
