Sentinel: Sentinel Manual Question...

[buddrousa]

To paraphrase a line from Blazin Saddles
Manual we don't need no stinking manual.

 

[JDKelley]

To paraphrase a line from Blazin Saddles
Manual we don't need no stinking manual.

Mel Brooks is always appropriate! As is Monty Python. If you can't find a Mel Brooks or a Monty Python quote for whatever situation you're in, you're not trying...

 

[dmfalk]

Or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy....
"Must be a Thursday... I never could get a hang of Thursdays...."

 

[dmfalk]

"RTFM Interface" makes it sound technical. All they usually needed to do is "interface" with the bloody manual for two minutes, and they would have saved me four hours on the road and out of the shop...

Free donuts and coffee at their expense..... 🍩 ☕

 

[JDKelley]

Free donuts and coffee at their expense..... 🍩 ☕

Death Wish at a minimum (or Biohazard, or Devil Mountain - I'm serious about my caffeine... My psychiatrist tells me I need to reduce my caffeine intake. "To what - about LD50?")

 

[dmfalk]

Been there, done that! ;D I don't drink coffee, but my soda intake (and other similar beverages) are mostly caffeine-free. Had a horrible incident about 25 years ago that caused me to switch from cola to root beer or ginger ale. Never looked back!

 

[JDKelley]

I suppose - but justifying the bill to the customer was never my problem. I justified it to my boss - he justified it to the customer. I told him what I did, what I billed out, and why, and let him spin the bull**** to justify everything. He was better at that that I was.

He just let me fill out truble ticket that way because it helped me not put things through walls. Things like workstations, servers, RAID arrays, end users, company sysadmins, ...

 

[cshustak]

You'd be surprised with how many don't RTFM.... Or not! 😚 I try to keep local copies of the "Easier to Read" manuals for both my HomePatrol-2 and SDS100, as they're excellent references. I'm surprised a printed copy of the Sentinel manual hasn't been made available at Zip Scanners, just like the other manuals....

To write a good manual takes talent and skill, and most people who do this work lack either or both.

You need tech skills to understand the engineering, and programming. Engineers typically have this.

You also need writing skills - the ability to write in grammatically correct sentences, assemble a well-planned paragraph, and create a narrative that leads from the reader's place of not knowing, to understanding the issue. This also demands that the writer understands where the reader happens to be on the understanding scale, and what information needs to be presented, in what particular way, to transport the reader to knowing.
The problem is that most writers lack the technical chops to really understand what they are writing, and most engineers can't write worth a damn.

That leads to horrible tech documentation.
And since most companies look upon documentation as a cost and an afterthought, they rarely invest the resources and resolve to do a good job.

And when you have a scanner that is as sophisticated as an SDS, that puts users in a tough situation.

 

[JDKelley]

To write a good manual takes talent and skill, and most people who do this work lack either or both.

You need tech skills to understand the engineering, and programming. Engineers typically have this.

You also need writing skills - the ability to write in grammatically correct sentences, assemble a well-planned paragraph, and create a narrative that leads from the reader's place of not knowing, to understanding the issue. This also demands that the writer understands where the reader happens to be on the understanding scale, and what information needs to be presented, in what particular way, to transport the reader to knowing.
The problem is that most writers lack the technical chops to really understand what they are writing, and most engineers can't write worth a damn.

That leads to horrible tech documentation.
And since most companies look upon documentation as a cost and an afterthought, they rarely invest the resources and resolve to do a good job.

And when you have a scanner that is as sophisticated as an SDS, that puts users in a tough situation.

Get me the information - I seem to have the ability to take abstruse subjects and reduce them to terms a layman can work with. I've taught plenty of difficult subjects.

Granted, it won't read like a typical technical manual (oh, it will be grammatically correct, semantically correct, and mechanically correct, although I do tend to be fond of archaic words and constructions,) but my writing style tends to be more "conversational" than "technical." I've read plenty of books on higher subjects, and most of them are so dry they should come with an inbuilt water fountain (I've been teaching myself how to design rocket engines, for instance. Not the easiest thing in the world to learn, but I'm getting there. I have a few designs that should be workable - both combustion engines and cold-gas thrusters.)

Get me the tech info on Sentinel and a contact at Uniden that's worked on the project. I'll sign an NDA. Worst thing that will happen is I hand back a document that needs a little fleshing out here & there for things I didn't/couldn't understand, but they'll be few (I'm a "knowledge worker" by trade. My job is to catch a subject you give me, and become a subject matter expert w/in a few days to help you sort out problems. Since I retain so much, the synthesis of information for problem-solving just gets more and more interesting. And more & more reliable in nature...) I just ask for final edit so I can proof the thing - I don't want to turn out a manual with a bunch of typos in it.

@JoeBearcat - are you listening? I want to help!

 

[JDKelley]

Been there, done that! ;D I don't drink coffee, but my soda intake (and other similar beverages) are mostly caffeine-free. Had a horrible incident about 25 years ago that caused me to switch from cola to root beer or ginger ale. Never looked back!

I've had a caffeine jones for years, I started drinking coffee when I was six. But, I've been self-medicating lately - caffeine is one of the few things that works on migraines for me, and I've had a migraine (post-traumatic) since mid-2006. Eighteen years is a little long, don't you think?

I've done blood tests until I'm ready to get a spigot valve install in the AC fossa of my right arm. I've seen enough pictures of the inside of my head I could probably sketch it from memory with reasonable accuracy. I've had EEGs and sleep deprived EEGs (since I'm expected to fall asleep during those tests, that means I usually have to stay up for 2-3 days beforehand, overnight is squat.)

My caffeine intake is high enough that just licking one of my wounds would probably keep most people up for three days. But I can drink an entire 8-cup pot of Death Wish and go to sleep on it, no problem. (I usually wake up about 4-5 hours later, reasonably rested and needing to pee rather badly...) I've done the same thing with Biohazard, and it's half again as strong as Death Wish (which is 2-3x as strong as regular coffee. I wasn't kidding when I said reduce my caffeine intake to LD50...)

My blood pressure's good. If I didn't take Ativan for impulse control, I'd be trying to talk my pshrink into giving me a scrip for something like methylphenidate or dextroamphetamine - stronger stimulants are more effective, more calming to me (I have a paradoxical response to stimulants,) and they have a greater effect on my migraine for a lesser effect on my blood pressure.

I still remember the first time someone gave me an "energy drink" - Redline, it was. I chugged the bottle, put the cap back on, and set it aside. "Not bad." He then sat there and watched me for the next half-hour - apparently, you were only supposed to drink half the bottle at a time, and he was waiting for me to start vibrating, or something like that. I find the caffeine hit, combined with the high-dose B vitamins (most of which have neuroprotective - and therefore neurological - effects, which are synergystic with the gabapentin, topiramate, and high-dose B2 I take every day to help push my headache down.)

This migraine has a lot to do with why I'm "semi-retired." I still consult a little, just to keep my finger in, and I still get paid to try to break into places (I do interesting work.) But, when you get as beat-up as I have (GSW x5 - one of those is a fun story, Auto v Ped x4, stabbed once, dead twice, massive facial fractures, broken neck in two places - C2 & C5 - broke every rib at least once, fractured pelvis, stress fractures tib/fib both legs - and I've been asked by an orthopaedist, "What are you?" after he examined my X-rays. Apparently, the only other things he'd seen that were that X-ray dense were made of metal... I wasn't insulted, I was interested. Dr. Joseph is an interesting fellow - Boston PD while he got his PhD in epidemiology, taught at Temple while he got his MD, been practicing out here in the Bay Area for over 40 years, sounds like he left South Boston yesterday. Little Jewish fella, his son married a Catholic, so (as he says) they get all the holidays off!)