Techie fixed a ‘brown monitor’ by closing a door for a doctor As the door closes on another working week, The Register brings you another edition of On Call, our reader-contributed column that recounts your amazing stories from the frontlines of tech support. This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Neville” who told us about a job in which he supported systems that produced 3D images …
"Vantablack. You can buy it. "
There are two types, the coating and the paint.
The coating, a door is to big. And the paint has to be applied by trained personal.
It's also very delicate, so would be useless after a few weeks of use.
A "cheaper" alternative is Black 3.0, but that will still cost a fortune to paint.
And both of them smell TERRIBLE even after drying
I hesitate to think how unbearable the whiff would be for the surface area of a door, It was bad enough coating small parts for space optical instruments that people needed to go outside every 15 minutes or so
Surely octarine should be a candidate, being the colour you see in the split second after running head first into a brick wall but just before you pass out, otherwise visble only to wizards (and witches, Hermione, Cho, Luna, Lily, we salute you) and cats
"is black a colour at all?"
In holiday jobs in the textile industry I discovered there were many shades of black yarn. When the dyes of black fibres are examined by thin layer chromatography it turns out that there are often multiple colours in there.
referencing a comment above, goths in the 80s knew the difference between a red-based and a blue-based black hair dye
See also the Guardian Style Guide:
Goths
uc: Germanic tribe that invaded the Roman empire
goths
lc: Sisters of Mercy fans who invaded the Shepherd’s Bush Empire
"Black is not a REFLECTIVE Colour !!"
{edited} I started writing before seeing other comments
Total absence of reflected light : try making a Gregorian black hole at home. It's a lot easier than fabricating esoteric materials, or space travel.
This is the usual response ... 'Fix it with no expense spared OR thought applied :) !!!'
1. The monitor has to have the reflective surface because technology of the time produced a highly reflective surface on High-res Displays of this kind.
2. The REAL issue is the positioning of the Screen.
3. The quickest and simplest solution is to change the colour of the door.
4. The simplest way to change the colour of the door would be to use a readily available curtain to hang on the back of the door.
5. The curtain would, by chance, be exactly the same type of curtain used to provide privacy in a hospital space.
6. The somewhat slower/dearer solution (NHS timescales & costs) would be to paint the back of the door a suitable colour.
:)
P.S. Note I did not suggest move the monitor because the monitor is HUGE/HEAVY and it probably was in a set position .... therefore why the replacements had exactly the same issue.
P.P.S. I know these type of monitors well ... I installed 50-60 of them in one day for a GIS System which had the same requirement for Hi-Res & large screen area.
It's so funny how we used to consider 19" a really large monitor. I was so happy when they got cheap enough I could afford one.
And now the only time I install something smaller than 27" is when it needs to fit a small space, and they're light enough to pick up with one hand.
I almost gave myself a hernia when I installed my 21" flat tube Sony Trinitron CRT in the early '00s.
That monitor weighed 70Lbs if I remember correctly...I remember adding an extra leg to my desk beneath the monitor so the desk wouldn't flex under the weight of the monitor.
"That monitor weighed 70Lbs if I remember correctly...I remember adding an extra leg to my desk beneath the monitor so the desk wouldn't flex under the weight of the monitor."
I put in an aluminum girder since I had two. Steel would have been cheaper other than the issue with demagnetizing it. The big monitors did not like anything magnetic around them for miles.
In one office a chap had a 24-inch monitor - a converted TV. It ran in 640 x 480 resolution with Windows 3.1.
It turned out that his eyesight really was that bad.
I had trouble using the PC, because the keyboard cable was not long enough for me to sit and read comfortably. I had to improve the resolution and then set it back after fixing things.
"6. The somewhat slower/dearer solution (NHS timescales & costs) would be to paint the back of the door a suitable colour."
"Institutional" green or brown?
AKA vomit green and shit brown, beloved of Government and local government from at least the mid-1800's :-)
a fix may have been to reduce the ambient light so there would be less reflection from the door.
of course the light from the monitor could be being reflected by the door too, but could be mitigated by positioning oneself & blocking the reflection, but.....
Uh huh. I used CRTs for decades and there was never any sort of aftermarket anti-reflective coating for them.
The best I ever saw was these half-assed polarized film things in a frame you could stick on, that pretty much cut the output of the monitor in half. The cure was worse than the disease, so it was perfect for American doctors.
Yes, that's why you fly to the US for treatment out of pocket when MOH say "Sorry old chap, we ran out of funding for that procedure in March. I'll put you on next year's list. Do let us know if you die in the meantime so I don't waste my time calling you "
I'm disgusted, not one of you mentioned Hotblack Desiato or Haggunennons of Vicissitus Three black ship!
ZAPHOD: Hey-yeah! Now that is really bad for the eyes!
FORD :I mean it’s so black! You can hardly even make out its shape. Light just falls into it.
ZAPHOD :And feel this surface.
FORD: Yeah! … Hey, hey you can’t!
ZAPHOD: See? It’s totally frictionless. Oh this must be one mother of a mover. I bet even the cigar lighter’s on photon drive, well whadda ya reckon Ford?
There is guidance on this. And specifications for lighting levels. Not that any hospital I work at has ever followed any of these.
Yes it is my day job.
And even wearing white clothes is stupid.
Failure to fulfil the imaging chain to the end point is potentially legally actionable - did you report this in a controlled environment meeting the international standards. One day a lawyer will learn this.
"And even wearing white clothes is stupid."
Uniforms are very important in the UK. If you are standing in the middle of a field and doing any sort of work (or work is being done within a km) you have to put on some day-glo apparel. An investigating team surveying a crime scene where a madman ran over a bunch of people all need to wear "bunny suits" with masks and shoe coverings even though the person was caught immediately on site. Laser ranging and LiDar scanning is now a super important add-on to color photos (taken by people that know little about cameras). A simple shroud is so gauche now that if anybody has expired, at least one tent must be erected and under no circumstances can any movement of the body be viewable by the public. Placing the body on a stretcher/gurney and further into a vehicle must be completely concealed.
Wonder where government money winds up? Besides the uniforms that are required, many more need to be inventoried anywhere where they might, possibly, one day, be required by somebody that doesn't have some from their own tailor. Replacement required if anything is beyond it's best by date.
I owned a manufacturing business for many years and from time to time the fire department stopped by for an inspection. One of the things they would inspect was the first aid kit(s). Other than simple bandaids (plasters), I don't think anything was ever used out of them but everything had expiration dates and it all had to be within date. Having family in medical/dental occupations, I had far in excess of what was required for the type of business and number of employees but it didn't matter if one thing was out of date. Easily solved as we had date stamps for the products we made that worked fine for updating the things in the kit to something a decade hence. It was also very important that the box had particular nomenclature on it such as "Class XX first aid kit" or some such. If it didn't have the writing on it, the FD was incapable of knowing if it was suitable or not.
Very similar in my part of the world - all workplaces need a first-aid kit, the contents of which depending on number of employees and type of work. Though it's not the fire department that normall controls this.
Cars also required to have a first-aid kit of a certain standard and in fact obtaining a driver licence requires completion of a first-aid course. There's also legal indemnity if there's an accident and you inadvertently cause damage by attempting to help (broken rib from CPR isn't uncommon).
I imagine the best before dates on certain items is that they should be sterile and it's not possible to guarantee sterility after a certain time.
The fix is to charge tech time for a fully documented non-fault and offer to add a non-reflective surface - for a fee, as the problem and remedy are outside the scope of the support and supply contracts
As soon as wallets get hit, people start being more sensible
I was somehow thinking some VGA connector wasn't seated properly, or perhaps a faulty cable, and the blue channel going AWOL (I have had that before), but that would probably have been fixed by swapping the monitors, assuming they also swapped or checked the cables at the same time.
I've told this one before on here, but not for a while.
Late one Friday afternoon (isn't it always‽‽) a university professor client rings up - computer is dead, he needs to submit something over the weekend.
I rushed over (10 miles away), walked in, pressed the power button and confirmed that the computer wouldn't turn on. I then turned on the switch on the mains extension lead it was plugged into. Turned the computer on. I hung around long enough for him to confirm that everything was OK (I think it was really just for his blood pressure to come down)
In fairness, he admitted that he should have been able to sort that himself but was flustered. He was even happy to pay the bill (for an hour on-site - our minimum charge for a visit)
In my first job after uni (early 2000s) I called the IT help desk in a panic that my machine had just randomly turned off and I couldn't get it to restart!
Before they'd even managed to come down, I realised that while stretching my toe had nudged the switch on the power socket on the wall (my only excuse for not realising it is that steel toecaps were required so I hadn't felt it). I called them back very sheepishly to explain that I'd found the root cause of the problem and they hadn't even logged it in the system as a call yet, so I didn't have to live with the infamy of having it officially recorded that I'm a muppet!).
"I realised that while stretching my toe had nudged the switch on the power socket on the wall "
The switch on the wall socket is bizarre to us Leftpondians. If the outlet is meant for a lamp, there's a more conveniently located switch on the wall at a reachable height and any device that plugs in will have it's own power switch (or several). Electrons aren't going to leak out if there aren't a couple of "valves" to close off the outlet. The switches are also "upside down" compared to the US.
Because we have "ring final circuits" in the UK where all of the sockets in one area of the house are connected together in one big loop we tend to use the switches to isolate individual appliances without having to unplug them to cut down on standby power drain, and as an extra safety mechanism to reduce the chance of electrocution when plugging/unplugging things in case they have a damaged plug or cord etc.
We also don't use freestanding lighting as much as the USA, instead preferring in most instances to have either individually switched freestanding lamps, but for room lighting we tend to settle on integrated ceiling lights with a light switch on the wall as you'd expect. This allows us to use thinner grade cable and daisy chaining for lighting circuits because there's no risk of ever plugging in a high current appliance to them because that would necessitate removing a lightbulb and using an adapter. This used to happen in the old days (with electric clothes irons commonly used in bulb sockets) but back then thicker lighting cable was used and there was much less understanding of electrical safety, and consequently many more accidents.
I installed a bit in a computer for a friend and when finished and tested switched it off.
When I next went to see them I asked where the computer was, the answer was gone for repair as it wouldn't switch on, I asked had they checked power switch at back (it had low power switch at front and rocker switch at back) - needless to say it came back no fault found.
I still (almost 30 years now) remember the argument I had with a customer about sending the "Wrong monitor"
I made sure it was the correct size, the large 15" rather than the 14", yes 15" but the cable was wrong.
Was it the right colour? yes blue lead to blue connector (a genius idea I'd happily buy the guy that thought of colour coding the cables a beer)
Is it the right way round? (I've delt with the public before)
Are any of the pins bent? No all the pins are straight
AHA! I've had this before. (for the youngsters here) not all the pins on a VGA cable are required, so some manufacturers leave them out and it makes the monitor cable look different to the socket.
No it's the wrong size.. I've held it next to the socket and it won't fit.
Have you tried it?
No because it won't fit
Repeat
Please try it, it will fit
No it won't fit..
Until tech-response = "Just Bloody try it!"
Wait for long pause
I've been a bit silly haven't I
Customer is always right training kicks in... Yes sir you have
Hang up
A chum of mine (Sysop in a small company,) was stood in his kitchen home one evening when the power went off, plunging him into near darkness. H
A resourceful chap, used to thinking on his feet.
He ruefully confided in me that his first reaction was "oh, simple solution: I'll open the fridge door and use the light in there." Closely followed by "oh, of course......"
He ruefully confided in me that his first reaction was "oh, simple solution: I'll open the fridge door and use the light in there." Closely followed by "oh, of course......"
The fridge fairy couldn't find her wand in the dark.
"thinking on his feet" the operative word here is "thinking."
In the BoFH game taking the extra time, to consider the evidence or facts, potential diagnoses before initiating (hopefully) remedial action, removes the requirement of sporting a Stetson.
In this case a few minutes would have allowed his eyes to become dark adapted and able to see quite adequately in most domestic and urban environments.
This is true, years ago I was writing in 6502 machine language, real time stuff for ash and dust control in coal fired power stations (it was 1982) and I dreamt in hex.
A friend took me to a McDonald’s possibly the first time I had been in one and the till said OFF in a red LCD display.
Minutes later I still couldn’t work the significance of what 255 meant.
"Friend of mine got the gas-saving hotwater unit with no pilot light -- electric spark on startup."
Mine has a thermo-electric generator that works off of the pilot light so if there's gas, the controls work. The tankless water heater I have yet to install uses two D cells or a wall wart, but the cartoons don't include a schematic so I don't know if the batteries are switched out if the power plug is inserted to prevent the batteries from charged. I'd like to put in some rechargeable batteries and a small solar panel to charge them. There's no point in replacing batteries every few weeks (I'm sure) and I don't have power in the water heater closet for a wall wart. Running the lines would mean a lot less payback on the tankless.
As a child (1950s) I used to enjoy making toast using a toasting fork to hold the bread over the coal fire. The best way was to wait until the gases had all burned off (so, no flames) and the coal was glowing red hot. The best time of day was late afternoon when the fireplace itself was very hot (assuming the fire had been burning all day).
"Surprised you didn't have a gas cooker with grill above the hob as was common back then to do the toast."
My dad lived out in the country and was the second to last property on the power line. The pot belly stove was indispensable in winter and I learned how to cook on one, heat water for dishes and suffer through a cold bathing routine. While we had the wood stove, we didn't have a big enough galvanized tub hanging by hook on the back of the shed. Only one big enough for the dogs.
Learning how to get by with less than a full suite of utilities are good skills to have.
I came home from holiday once to find my flatmates sitting in the dark. "There's a problem with the lighting". Did you change the bulb? Yes, of course we changed the bulb.
So I changed the bulb and the lights came on. They had changed it for another dead bulb, and had been sitting in the dark for a week.
I had something similar in a work car
"Rear brake and tail lights aren't working on both sides. Electrical fault"
"Did you check the bulbs?"
"No need, there's no way all 4 filaments would be blown"
Needless to say, all 4 filaments WERE blown and 2 21/5 lamps later the problem was solved (The car was a pool wagon over a decade old at that point and the bulbs looked to be factory original, so we took the precaution of changing all of the others out as they'd browned up nicely on the inside over time)
Then there was the time my brother somehow managed to put a 5W tail lamp into a 21/5 combination socket, which upset his car (Honda Accord) quite badly. It took him 6 weeks of "checking" before he asked me to look at it. He paid for ALL the beer for several weekends and still cringes when it's mentioned (but at least he no longer attempts DIY)
In our house, the phrase "I'll open the fridge door and use the light in there." would not be seen as daft.
I have previously commented how old houses throw up hidden monstrosities.
We recently discovered that the fridge in the kitchen was not on the kitchen mains circuit, but came through from the dining room on a spur from another circuit. This despite the kitchen being re-wired about 15 years ago.
Terry Waite (held as a hostage in Lebanon for over 4 years) is a very large man, over 6 foot tall. When he was being smuggled between hiding places, he was stuffed into a fridge and put on the back of a pick-up truck. In his memoir he drily commented on this experience that "I can confirm that when you shut the door the light does go out"
"We recently discovered that the fridge in the kitchen was not on the kitchen mains circuit, but came through from the dining room on a spur from another circuit. This despite the kitchen being re-wired about 15 years ago."
My fridge is on a different circuit from the rest of the kitchen. Thank bog for that since the kitchen circuit also leads to the back two bedrooms, one of which is my office. I pop the breaker a few times a year. I will be adding a couple of more circuits once I redo the siding on the house. The fridge doesn't go off when the other stuff does.
These days, the fridge should be on a circuit that doesn't see too much draw so it can be set up on an "essential" bus. For a home with a back up battery or generator, it's handy to have only a subset of circuits operating and that's easier if they are grouped in a way that lets them be hived off.
I remember them being somewhat spherical-ish, so tilting them any which way never helped with reflection.
It helps with LCDs though.
Good (expensive) monitors, later in the CRT lifecycle, with the flat screens, did have anti-glare coatings and ... flat surfaces. Perhaps tilting those would alleviate some issues.
It was probably a nicely toasted memory worm.
He sat in front of the monitor, and as soon as the door was closed, the monitor turned brown. So the monitor was acting like a mirror.
The only way that would happen is if the only thing reflected in the monitor from the observer's POV was the door.
The only ways that would happen are:-
a) if the door was directly in front of the monitor then there could be nothing between it and the monitor (i.e. no person sat at the monitor).
b) the door was off to one side and the observer was looking at the monitor at sufficient angle that the only thing visible in the monitor was the reflection of the door, why would they sit at an angle to study things in high definition?
c) the observer was the invisible man or a vampire who had no reflection.
You want those screens to be as sharp and bright as possible.
Having been the victim (?) of a poorly calibrated medical screen I speak from experience.
There's nothing like going in for laproscopic surgery to fix an obstructed bowel, and ending up having major abdominal surgery where they manually check every inch of your intestines and then tuck them back in...
> ... in for laproscopic surgery ....ending up having major abdominal surgery where they manually check every inch of your intestines and then tuck them back in...
And that scar! Filleted like a fish, breastbone to pubes. (Encysted and leaky appendix.) Mine is fading.... after ~~37 years. My later actual laproscopes, for gallbladder, faded much faster.
I had a colleague who insisted that sitti9ng by an electrical bock made him ill for years.
Then he was moved and I was given his desk.
When they removed his PC so mine could be installed in its place on the desk, a dust bunny the size of a soccer ball was revealed.
Yeah, the problem was the EMF from the breaker box. That was what was making him sick.
Not the cloud of dust mites being bounced off the wall and into the air by the fans of his workstation.
When on an outside broadcast and monitors or viewfinders suffered from reflections, a quick and easy fix of sorts was to put some neutral density (ND) filter sheet over the screen. It worked quite well, reducing the reflection's brightness relative to the image by fifty percent. The light from thereflection has to go through the ND twice (once on the way in, once on the way out), the image only once. Turning up the contrast a bit solved the other side effect.
Not only giving away your age, country of residence when a child BUT your secret fantasies as well !!!
(Yes, I remember Valerie, John and Peter <=== whose name I always forget !!!!)
Balanced on the edge of the 'Rabbit-hole' of UK Childrens Television ......
Apologies to the USAian contingent !!!!
:)
Adn that's something we all need to think about when we're being astonished about how our users can do something we think is dumb.
There's a sea of difference between calmly thinking "let's examine this problem" for an issue that isn't ours, with devices we're used to messing around with, and "Oh shit! The bloody technology isn't playing nice and I need it to be or there will be consequences" for someone who just uses the devices and expects them to bloody well work properly.
Fastest jobs are always with power buttons.
Hour drive to get to client.
They had reported a PC that was stuck and would not turn off.
I walk in, XP jammed in shutdown, I hold power button for six seconds. Press power button to turn on.
Leave, drive home for another hour...
Different client, same year....
Customer had bought a new PC. Reported it would not turn on when she pressed power button.
I arrive. Ask her to show me. She is pressing the monitor button... I point at the button on the main box.
This turned out to be her first computer, someone had come set it up for her but not explained the On switch was on the tower and not "on the TV screen".
I spent the rest of the hour on a tutorial with her.
Back in a previous life (the 1980's) I worked for a company that provided equipment to answering services. These people smoked like chimneys and ashtrays were everywhere. I'd come to "service" things and took some Windex and always cleaned the terminals. Afterwords I'd say that I tuned up the terminals. I got LOTS of praise and everyone liked the "tuned up" terminals.
Of course the paper towels that I used to clean the CRTs were black after they did their job. All part of the "service".
In a previous life I used to sell equipment to analyse long term ECG recordings (EKG for American readers). One of the functions of the display was that any errant heartbeat patterns were highlighted on the green sceen monitor. They were much brighter than the normal ones. There was also a general screen brightness button which for some reason users liked to fiddle with.
We would often get tech support comments along the lines of "I can only see certain beats - the rest of the screen is blank". Cue "can you turn the screen brightness knob?" - usually followed by a silent pause then a quick thank you and goodbye.
Over years dealing with TV and video systems (and other items of tech), it never ceased to amaze me just how unworldly many of our supposedly intelligent and skilled people are. People with more degrees than a thermometer would be utterly ignorant of things like those pesky laws of physics and everyday stuff that would be obvious to almost anyone else.
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