Members Hard Truth Posted July 12, 2007 Members Share Posted July 12, 2007 The Tech Field Effect (TFE) is the phenomena that occurs when a qualified technician comes into proximity with a device that has been working intermittently, causing the device to immediately resume functioning. One of my theories is that because technicians are exposed to more magnetic and electrical energy fields than most people, they may radiate energy fields themselves. The energy field causes loose electrical connections to arc and resume carrying a current. Or maybe its that the technician just knows how to use the device properly. What do you think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GY Posted July 12, 2007 Members Share Posted July 12, 2007 I think at best this would be a bad April Fool's post. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted July 12, 2007 Members Share Posted July 12, 2007 The Tech Field Effect (TFE) is the phenomena that occurs when a qualified technician comes into proximity with a device that has been working intermittently, causing the device to immediately resume functioning. One of my theories is that because technicians are exposed to more magnetic and electrical energy fields than most people, they may radiate energy fields themselves. The energy field causes loose electrical connections to arc and resume carrying a current.Or maybe its that the technician just knows how to use the device properly.What do you think? Well, when I walk into a room, bent spoons straighten themselves magically... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted July 12, 2007 Members Share Posted July 12, 2007 Well, it certainly *seems* that my stuff starts working when I take it in!!! Same with a car. "Well, it *was* making this sound for the last week..." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted July 12, 2007 Members Share Posted July 12, 2007 Well, when I walk into a room, bent spoons straighten themselves magically... Are there frequently a lot of bent spoons where you go? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Billster Posted July 12, 2007 Members Share Posted July 12, 2007 Are there frequently a lot of bent spoons where you go? Only at the love-ins Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Billster Posted July 12, 2007 Members Share Posted July 12, 2007 Or maybe its that the technician just knows how to use the device properly.What do you think? The technician stepping in immediately addresses the most common cause of equipment malfunction - operator error. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted July 12, 2007 Members Share Posted July 12, 2007 When I was a kid I was obsessed with getting one of those new solid state stereo amplifiers... but when I finally got one (a brand heavily hyped by an independent electronics store I was briefly in love with when I was 13 but which was never seen again and whose name I simply cannot remember) it turned out to be a much better pink noise source than amp. It sound like it had a slow puncture. When I found my new love (the old Fidelity Sound in Orange, CA, one of three or three decent hi fi stores in all of Orange County in the early 60s) I took my hissy amp in to have their tech work on it. But it sounded fine on the bench. We waltzed around a lot with this (undoubtedly with me free-riding the whole thing, I was absolutely shameless, hanging around in this poor man's store all day long, driving away his rich customers trying to look at his line of McIntosh amps and big JBL speakers and then cadging him into putting his tech to work trying to track down the source of hiss in a cheap transistor amp). I finally decided that it was partially a heat issue and so I got the tech to run it on the bench with the cover on for about 8 hours and someplace in there, sure enough, it started hissing and I said SEE, SEE! What can you do for me? He said, well, short of replacing all the transistors and caps... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted July 12, 2007 Members Share Posted July 12, 2007 Are there frequently a lot of bent spoons where you go? Yeah... it is the dangdest thing. But I finally figured it out... It's a big wave field around me... when the outer reaches of it hits the spoons (forks and knives, pencils, pens, etc) some distance away from me -- they all bend... Then, as I get closer and closer, they start unbending. Until they're more or less normal by the time I get up close to them.I figure it's different sectors of this field around me. Of course, maybe it's just time for a new eyeglass prescription... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members spokenward Posted July 12, 2007 Members Share Posted July 12, 2007 I think that we may need a corollary if the tech is wearing a colored knit shirt with an emblem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members fantasticsound Posted July 12, 2007 Members Share Posted July 12, 2007 Ok.. so maybe that's correct regarding electronic equipment. But how do you account for mechanical problems in cars that disappear the moment you drive in the entrance to the shop or dealership?!? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members jamsession Posted July 12, 2007 Members Share Posted July 12, 2007 The device usually has the common sense to start working again 'cause it knows I am about to disassemble it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted July 12, 2007 Moderators Share Posted July 12, 2007 "Of course it's plugged i... oh." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members fantasticsound Posted July 12, 2007 Members Share Posted July 12, 2007 "Of course it's plugged i... oh." Oh... you had to bring this up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted July 12, 2007 Members Share Posted July 12, 2007 "Of course it's plugged i... oh." Yeah. Good thing that's never happened to me. Oh, no....never..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members steveg Posted July 12, 2007 Members Share Posted July 12, 2007 Well I am sure a bunch of you will disagree and poke fun, but I have been involved with computer music and advanced computer systems for over 20 years and I can swear to you that in some cases, computers behave differently for different people. We have example over and over again of this happening and we unofficially have concluded that your overall attitide toward life reflects in the way some technology devices react to you!! It is particularly noticeable with difficult, hateful people. I know is sounds crazy, but I have worked on it daily for many years and see it over and over again!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dylan Walters Posted July 12, 2007 Members Share Posted July 12, 2007 I think Steve is onto something. It sounds crazy, but I can verify that I've seen this happen ever since I can remember.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted July 13, 2007 Members Share Posted July 13, 2007 People and the electro-magnetic energy they generate do interfere and affect electronic devices. Yes, computers do behave differently to different people. Steve's post is right on. I think somebody should do a study. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members philbo Posted July 13, 2007 Members Share Posted July 13, 2007 I think it is a corollary of Murphys Law. It can be used to your advantage - - for example, whenever I fix anything, I always test it before putting in the last few cover screws, because Murphy guarantees that if you wait till all the screws are in to test it, it just won't work. There might be something to the idea of EM fields around techs. I've never had a watch last more than a month or two. The magnetic stripe on my drivers license won't read in a scanner, and I have to replace my credit cards frequently for the same reason. Maybe it isn't so much that I radiate EM fields - - but I do spend a lot of time around them in my day job (radar, microwave gear, various types of radios; etc.). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Hard Truth Posted July 13, 2007 Author Members Share Posted July 13, 2007 Philbo-if you happen to have an eelskin wallet that could also cause the problems you experienced. I have definitely experienced the cover screws effect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gus Lozada Posted July 13, 2007 Share Posted July 13, 2007 The technician stepping in immediately addresses the most common cause of equipment malfunction - operator error. WORD ... or maybe, it is simply MAGIC !!!... in a 95% (or higher) of the times I address a problem of a customer, I can make it work. It is simply that people does not use te devices RIGHT. Manuals? whadissit? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Billster Posted July 13, 2007 Members Share Posted July 13, 2007 Manuals? whadissit? Oh yeah. If something is going haywire and I don't already know how to fix it, I'll grab the manual and find the answer. Then the person says to me "See, I wouldn't even know what to look up in the manual." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted July 13, 2007 Members Share Posted July 13, 2007 Well I am sure a bunch of you will disagree and poke fun, but I have been involved with computer music and advanced computer systems for over 20 years and I can swear to you that in some cases, computers behave differently for different people.We have example over and over again of this happening and we unofficially have concluded that your overall attitide toward life reflects in the way some technology devices react to you!! It is particularly noticeable with difficult, hateful people.I know is sounds crazy, but I have worked on it daily for many years and see it over and over again!!!! We humans are pattern recognition devices. But... sometimes... those pattern recognition subsystems get a little overcranked... I, too, have worked with computers for a long time, 21 years of pc ownership, and a tiny bit of old skool programming before that (my first computer class, all jobs were submitted on punch cards). And, while today's computer systems are so incredibly complex as to be often unpredictable to the naive... I have NEVER pursued one of those vexing/perplexing mind-of-its-own issues that could not, ultimately, be reduced to a repeatable set of circumstances. (And, as some of you can probably imagine, I can get extremely dogged when pursuing something that vexes me.) Now, don't get me wrong -- I consider myself a lover of capital-m Mystery, I often call myself a cyber-pagan. I have even seen a full-on, old-fashioned ghost walking silently through the room I was in. I'm not completely ruling out some sort of unrecognized electrical or other field around some people... there are certainly plenty of anecdotal accounts of people who can't wear certain kinds of watches because they just don't work right once they're on their wrist or carried on their person. But I have not seen computer phenomena that can be traced back in such a fashion to the user or seen any science whatsoever to back it up. Now -- clearly -- some people have a LOT more trouble with computing than others. And I can see this in myself from time to time (my moods have been known to shift quite radically at times)... there are absolutely times when I make my OWN trouble on complex systems -- and I've learned to watch out for it because, in the past, I've sometimes leapt to blame hardware or software, ranted and railed, and then sheepishly realized that in my frenzy of anger and frustration I had been making one tiny, fatal error... I dunno. It's a tantalizing idea you posit... it's amusing. I could make wiggle room for it in my personal cosmology -- but I haven't seen evidence of it that convinces me that there's really anything there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted July 13, 2007 Members Share Posted July 13, 2007 Oh yeah. If something is going haywire and I don't already know how to fix it, I'll grab the manual and find the answer. Then the person says to me "See, I wouldn't even know what to look up in the manual." That's a really good point. A lot of times I think a lot of us old-timers -- many of whom had science or technology backgrounds before getting involved with recording and/or computers -- fail to realize just how completely at sea most technology consumers are. (Or -- for that matter -- how very bad much technology documentation REALLY is. One thing that has AMAZED me in the post-computerization era: the indexes one finds in technology books are almost always REALLY, REALLY bad -- much worse than when we didn't have computers to help us compile indexes.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gus Lozada Posted July 13, 2007 Share Posted July 13, 2007 ... something very simple: I was not being able to connect to MSN three days ago. A full day. {censored}. On Windows you get this dialogue box which helps you to reconnect. Unsuccess. Then it takes you to another box with more help options. I am so good on computers, I needed NO help from them, right? Then I gave up and got into one of the help links. One of the options said: "Check if your computer has the correct date and time" ... and hell... I was checking that same morning the Windows calendar to organize my vacations and left my date changed to August... and that was why I was no able to connect Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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