Experimenting with SPAM callers - 17 June 2025

We have a landline.  We have it for A Reason, so do not shame me.  We have had it for 30 years with the same number.   We get buckets of SPAM calls on the landline and have for years.  We originally subscribed to Caller ID so that we could know when a "real" person is calling, but that has its limits.  Most of the time, we have ignored the calls and let them rollover to the voicemail recorder.  Over the last two to three years, the SPAM calls stepped up and we now get one or two per hour.  This is annoying.  I have noticed that a lot of them are silent calls - no evident caller, just silence. As an experiment, I recently I started to answer these calls.  Many are still silent and hang up after 10-15 seconds, but some are actual callers: still SPAM, but a real person calling on the line.  I ask these people to remove me from their list and tell them we are on the Washington state do-not-call registry, but that does not seem to affect them; they usually just hang up and I am only hoping that they stop calling.  This practice has done little to reduce the SPAM calling rates.  I have even tried calling back the numbers on the Caller ID, but that usually goes nowhere and I believe the Caller ID info from spammers is pretty thoroughly spoofed.

So I started a new experiment this week:  I answer the calls but say nothing.  Ideally, I would mute my end, but that is buried in some menu and I am too lazy to find it, so I just listen.  No response from me, just silence.  Our house is quiet enough that it really is silent.  My theory is that the calling system will hear the silence and conclude that ours is a dead number (e.g., that they have discovered another outbound-calls-only spammer).  I hope this encourages them to start removing our number from the spammer lists.  We shall see.

If there is an actual caller that comes on the line, I will ask some key questions - who are they calling, who are they, and so on.  This usually reveals some business just rolling through the (proverbial) phone book looking for business - calls from realtors who want to flip the house, from builders who want to do some remodeling, or some other damn thing.  I have just been asking for them to remove us from their call lists, but I am now going to try to collect enough informationt that I will be able to identify them.  I have not decided what I will do with this information (report them to the WA Attorney General, name-and-shame them on social media, perhaps something else).  We shall see.

Photo: Gargoyle, Hospices de Beaune, France, 2025.

Bad Reporting #1: Radio Tower Stolen - 9 February 2024

No.  One does not just steal a 200-foot tall radio tower.  No.  There are two major problems with this simple-minded assertion, size and power.

The obvious problem is the size of the 200-foot tower.  It takes time and equipment to down it and haul it away.  You need a couple of hours to rig it, to lower it to the ground, to dismantle it, and then to haul it away.  The word "stolen" implies surprise or stealth.  The radio station had hours to respond to any surprise attempt to take the tower.  The police had hours to respond when called.  This tower was not stolen.  

The other problem is the electrical power being pumped into the antenna.  There are thousands of watts of power being pumped into the antenna in order to broadcast, perhaps as high as 50,000 watts, but likely less in this case.  When you walk up to the tower and touch it, you become the path to ground.  Big shock - literally.  Someone had to have the smarts to cut off the transmitter before anyone touched the tower.  Yes, the report talks about evidence of a break-in, suggesting that the thief did have the requisite smarts.  But radio stations monitor their signal - they listen to themselves to make sure they are still transmitting.  Again, no surprise is possible when the transmitter gets cut and the antenna gets "stolen".

Reporters really need to pause and think before they report this stuff.

Source: Alabama station in disbelief after 200-foot radio tower stolen at NBC News.

Talking to Executives - 27 January 2024

An underappreciated skill, learning how to talk to executives can boost your career.  This sounds trite, but it is true.  Many an engineer has capped out because they talked too much.

These boil down to a short list.  In this list, I lump "manager" and "executives" together.  With a manager, you are more likely able to bend these rules, but the higher you go in the manager-executive chain, the more you want to adhere to these rules.

1. Be succinct,
2. Actionable,
3. Focus on results and impact,
4. Define the problem but always offer a solution,
5. Subject lines - meaningful (not just "FYI" or "interesting event"), and
6. Be terse - yes, redundant with succinct because it is that important.

If engineers as a group have a fatal flaw, it is the failure to be succinct.  Ideally, when they ask a question, a manager or executive wants to hear "yes" or "no", to hear a single number or date.  Answering with a "yeah, but..." is not going to succeed.  In many cases, you can respond that you will get back to them with an answer, but be succinct.  And if you promise to get back with an answer, give them a date for the answer and meet that date.

In a bit of cognitive dissonance, managers are creatures of action and of delay.  On the one hand, managers want to get things decided and done, minimize delays, minimize waste, eliminate idleness.  On the other hand, managers will wait if promised more information, but it must be high-quality information that will inform a better decision.  Balancing these two is hard, but it is what managers are paid to do.  In the end, advance actions and options.

As an aside, some managers get confused.  One type of manager will made decisions fast in the belief that any decision is better than no decision.  Another type of manager will kick the decision down the road in the hope of avoiding blame.  Both of these are wrong.  Each decision will be different - some will invite immediacy and some will demand delay - but a manager that always leans one way or the other is wrong.  Either that, or they have no authority (delay) or they have no understanding (immediate).  End of digression.

Results are what a manager seeks.  Negative results are often called consequences.  Ultimately, the manager is not as interested in the work, but in the results or impact of the work.  A particular proposal may require an engineer to work nights and weekends, but the manager is interested in avoiding impact on the customer, and impact that might cause the customer to change to a competitor.  

Clarity in defining the problem is critical.  If an engineer delivers a perfect technical solution to the wrong business problem, it is not a solution, it has no value.  

As a particular point of communication, email has become a dominant way to communicate with managers, and the first line if that communication is the Subject line.  Write your subject lines to be clear, concise, and meaningful.  Bad examples include, "that answer you wanted", "FYI", or "suggestion".  A journalist would say that you have buried the lede.  You want the Subject line to be relevant to the  manager and give them something of value, something to catch their attention.  Subjects like "solution for Jones case", "Q4 capital request", or "retention problem" are going to catch their attention.  Your email is not a mystery novel - state the key inforamtion up-front, name the murder in the first sentence.  Sometimes you need to temper this for confidentiality, and so some vagueness is in order in the subject line.  You want to say "retention problem" rather than "Jones about to quit" in case someone is reading over the manager's shoulder.

Be terse.  This bears repeating because being succinct is critical.  All your work to craft a brilliant three-page document will be wasted if no one reads past the first paragraph.

There are managers and executives that will try to isolate you from the "next level up" and even peers will try to squeeze you out in an effort to out-compete you.  If you work to become a good communicator with executives, they will seek you out.

Never Underestimate the Power of a Demo - 9 January 2024

Early in my career, I worked for a guy named Dave Harms.  Dave supervised a hardware development group at Bell Labs and he was energetic and inspiring.  Furthermore, Dave was a builder and the group was designing a laptop.  We did not really have that word "laptop" at the time as all personal computers and workstations were desktops or "luggables", but Dave was not content with those form factors.  He wanted a laptop built around our new Mac-32 chip.

To illustrate the design concept, Dave went into the lab with the parts list from the design.  He grabbed a printed circuit board that was about the right size; the standard printed circuit board used in the Bell System at the time was about 8x10 inches (roughly) and all the possible hole positions were drilled out.  (A key challenge during board layout was to find enough room to run the signal paths between all the holes.)  Then Dave went into the parts inventory room and picked out parts that were the right size as called out on the parts list.  These were not the right parts, they were just the right sizes - 14-pin, 16-pin, 24-pin, and so on, as described on the parts list.  He put the parts into the printed circuit board (remember that all the holes were already drilled), assembling a simula of the ultimate design.  He bent the pins a bit so that they would stay in place in the board but still be usable on other projects.  Then Dave went to a meeting to propose the project.

Dave started out with the usual slides.  At the time, these were all hand drawn, but he went through the various points for the design.  The size, who would buy it, the computing and display capabilities, and so on.  People were interested but not very.  They were polite.

Then Dave pulled out his "demo" board and passed it around.  The room was electrified.

When people could "see" the "actual" board, not just slides and talk, but a physical mockup, they went from polite interest in the idea to supporting the idea.  It was like a switch was thrown and the lights came on.

The lesson from this experience was clear to me and I carried it forward.  Never underestimate the power of a demonstration.  People want to put their hands on the idea, and a demo can give that to them.

ETA: What triggered this little story?  A recent news article in FastCompany reports that "recently, Microsoft built a clock."  A research group in the Microsoft Quantum department went out and bought an off-the-shelf clock and "dressed up its enclosure by adding the logo of Azure Quantum Elements".  And...

The point of this little DIY project was to prove the batteries worked in a visceral way: "You want to have a wow moment," explains Brian Bilodeau, the head of partnerships, strategy, and operations for Azure Quantum. And the person the quantum team hoped to wow was Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. -- FastCompany article.

So there you have it.  The research team wanted to put the batteries on display, so they built a demo using a cheap clock and some artwork, then presented it to the CEO of the corporation in order to get his attention and support.  The Power of a Demo, right there.