Keith February 6th, 2007
Shawn has just posted an interesting article at Anecdote about the problem with Melbourne’s train system. With holidays, and other interruptions to my normal commute, I haven’t been using our train service much since before Christmas. I’m not looking forward to riding the rails again this Friday!
As Shawn has explained, this seems to be more than a mechanical problem, even if a very complicated one. As soon as you have people involved, it potentially becomes complex.
Back when I worked it the pure IT space (on a system called “EDG”), I had an interesting problem-solving experience. The problem – and the ultimate solution – ended up being fairly simple, but actually finding the cause was a little more complicated. However, the whole situation became more complex, due to people being involved.
I was fairly new to the team at the time, but had already become fairly familiar with the system. However, I was still being treated as the “junior”. Wiser heads than mine had already solved major problems on EDG; they could solve this one too.
The unusual aspect of this particular issue was that two different things started going wrong at about the same time. The senior people set to work, going through the usual fault diagnosis procedures. Some were addressing one of the symptoms; some were working on the other. I wasn’t called upon for my (fairly limited) experience.
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Keith January 17th, 2007
The original title at the top of this blog was: “It’d take a lot of it to make a man laugh.” Why? Of course, there is a story behind it…
I heard it from my father many years ago, when I was a child, living on a sheep station near the town of Birregurra in western Victoria. He relayed this story from his boss - Charlie, the property owner - who was a participant.
It was 15 August 1945. Everyone in the town was celebrating V-J day – victory over Japan, and the end of World War II. People were driving up and down the main street, making lots of noise. Most likely a fair amount of alcohol was also being consumed! A man named Mark Ward, in the transport business, was riding on the bonnet of one of his own trucks. The driver stopped suddenly, catapulting his passenger forward. As he slid forward, one leg caught on the front bumper of the car, resulting in a very nasty compound fracture.
When visiting him in hospital later, Charlie commented to Mark, “God, it must have hurt!” Mark replied, “Well, it would take a bloody lot of it to make a man laugh!”
This has always seemed to me to be a quintessential example of Australian humour. Our traditional humour is black, self-deprecating and sarcastic. Maybe this has been shaped by the harshness of our environment or by the convict origin of European Australia just over 200 years ago. It is a strong part of our culture. This is a country where our most holy national holiday (ANZAC Day) is a celebration of a famous military defeat (at Gallipoli).
Stories can convey so much information, often in a few words. In this example, a brief narrative can say so much more about culture than reams of written analysis.
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