The Smallest Minority

I'm an engineer, thank God I don't work on stuff that is life or death important. It's bad enough when management does stupid crap even after we tell them. Of course, they don't get laid off when revenue tanks. Sure glad Microsoft has set such low performance standards for computers...

You might be surprised to know how much HMI (Human-Machine Interface) software used in industrial process control runs on Windows.

The Blue Screen of Death is no joke when the computer is responsible for monitoring and controlling a chemical or physical process that can have a nasty outcome if not properly regulated.

Each new "upgrade" of Windows gets thoroughly vetted before the process control industry buys in. I know a lot of sites still running NT because they know their version is stable with the software they're using.

Bridges are a controlling part of the topology of roads in the St. Louis area. The Missouri and Mississippi rivers join there and gazillions of vehicles cross each one every day.

One in particular comes to mind now, the St. Charles Rock Road Bridge which crossed the Missouri River at the north end of St. Charles. It's not there any more, having been replaced by two very nice concrete and steel bridges a bit further north.

It was an old booger, just two narrow lanes inside a rusted steel truss, perched on crumbling concrete piers. It looked old. To approach it raised the hair on the back of my neck.

Then I read a story in the newspaper in which a MODOT inspector was interviewed about that bridge. He was asked if it was safe, and his response was, "Yes." He was then asked if he allowed his family to go across it, and his response was, "No."

I never went across it again.

Your right Kevin..I am not an engineer and my career was for most of my life in management... and a lot of it in the military.

Subjective decision making is always a risk and in government it is double risk because most of the time management decisions will be faulted regardless the outcome. Different managers react to problems in different ways..seems that most want to either pass the buck up or down thus never being in a position where they could be blamed. Others manage by reraction..just reacting to who ever yells the loudest. But there were some of us and no doubt still a few around that managed under the Sgt Joe Friday ( probably before your time) concept.."Just the facts maam. just the facts." We also knew and understood Murphy's Law and tried to get ALL of the data we could gather before making a decision and once that decision was made we followed through to see that corrective action was done and done right. Piss people off? Yeah, damn near every day. But that is the job of management..because few subjective decisions are gonna please everybody..and it is about damn time the politicians realized that.

For those of you who don't know, I live in Minneapolis and last Wed was a pretty bad day here. I came home from my summer job to find 8 messages on my machine--not the norm--checking to see if my family and I were OK. I had no idea what was going on so I flicked on the news and the bridge that I have rode across a million times was gone. Horrible.

If you go to my blog, I put up a post just to have people check in and lo and behold, the political bickering started. There is a lot of info in the comments about how our state is run, most of it posted by sw, but I might be worth checking out.

MNDOT is basically run by the mafia--Scandinavian version--and are inherently corrupt, inept, and lazy.

I wanted to throw in one more comment here in case anyone is still reading this thread.

As of Tuesday, August 7th, not a single person from Tim Pawlenty's administration has stepped forward and said, "It was my fault." In fact, Transportation Secretary Carol Molneau has said that she has no intention of resigning nor has the Governor asked her to do so.

Hmm, where have I heard that before? So much for individual responsibility...