Lawrence,

On Tue, 16 Mar 2004 23:23:42 -0600, llile@SALTONUSA.COM
wrote:

> How patient are you?

It depends!  When things go wrong I start losing
patience the third time...

<...>

> Things I do not have patience for:
>
> People who yell when there are no fires about

I do my best to stay calm and not get flustered or
infected by their panic.  Sometimes it works...

> Children who obstinately put themselves in harm's way
in order to be disobedient

Well here I think Darwin applies.  ;-)

> Software with buggy and needlessly complex user
interfaces

Agreed.  Since I've designed systems with user
interfaces, and then watched them being used afterwards,
I have a good idea how these things should be done, and
it gets my goat when others get it wrong.

> Mechanical contraptions in general, if it is smaller
than a two-by-four
> and the tools weigh less than 5 LBS, and it is not
electronic.

I think (having read the rest of your message) I'd say
"anything with springs in".  Since it it in their nature
to explode out of their housing and get lost.
Especially small ones that can't be replaced by stealing
one from a retractable ball-point pen!

<...>
>
> Now it is almost impossible to get one of these back
together if the mainspring gets out of the cord
retractor unit.

I often wonder how they build things like this.  It went
in once, why won't it go *back* in?

IMHO anyone who designs a device with a spring in it
that is preloaded on assembly, where the housing itself
won't keep it in place without special tools or jigs,
should be taken out and shot now, to save the rest of us
untold trouble later...

<...>
> Step 1. I take one apart, being careful not to let the
constant-force spring go sproing! and fly out of the
housing like a jack in the box.  I put it back together
after appling some grease.  It works a lot better!
> But the cord doesn't go in all the way.  This time, I
clamp onto the mainspring with hemostats and hold it in
place.

This is the point I'd hit it with lateral thinking.  If
the cord won't go all the way in, cut the cord short at
the point where it is all in the retractor, and refit
the plug.  Especially as this is a prototype, the
potential customer isn't going to complain about the
cord being slightly short - would they even know?

<...>
> Anybody wanna hire a mechanical klutz?  I will be
looking for work tomorrow........

Presumably it's all over by now - I hope it went well!

Cheers,

Howard Winter
St.Albans, England

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