Troubleshooting Part II

Sometimes there are things that aren't precisely technical which still may cause problems. Here's the story of one unusual bug and its solution.

When I worked at a software company they wanted to get golf shirts for the R&D department. So, I guess because they thought I had nothing else to do, i.e., I wasn't a programmer, I got tasked with sourcing the shirts and getting the order.

I had a measly budget but through some clever research and negotiating was able to order 60 very nice shirts with a custom logo. Everyone was pleased with the shirts, and we planned a department photo day where everyone would wear their shirts (original, I know) and get a photo taken.

However, all the people who had ordered Size L shirts were complaining. The sleeves were scratchy. When they wore the shirts, there was something on the sleeve cuffs that was scratchy to the skin and caused red abrasions.

I tested my own shirt and found the same thing. (I'm not in the habit of wearing golf shirts.) I called the supplier and he had no clue about the cause. He did offer to take all the Large shirts back and replace them, but it would take some time and we wouldn't have the shirts by picture day.

I did a little more research, on the web, and could find nothing about scratchy shirt cuffs. Then I had an idea. From quilting and working with other fabrics I thought that maybe there was something the fabric had been treated with that was causing the problem.

Usually washing will remove such a thing, but to ensure the navy and white colors didn't run together, the shirt had to be washed in cold water, which is not the best for dissolving fabric treatments. But it was worth a try, so I tested my own shirt by washing it and putting it in the dryer.

The shirt came out nice and clean but still with the scratchy cuffs. I didn't want to risk washing it in hot water and wrecking the shirt, for 2 reasons -- I would not have been able to return it if damaged (though under the circumstances I probably could have made the case that it was a defective product anyway), and the risk of it shrinking and thus becoming unwearable was also an issue.

But I had an idea. I set up the ironing board and put the sleeve between two sheets of paper towel. I then ironed the sleeve cuff to melt whatever was left in the fabric. (I would like to have put it under a microscope to see if there was something there, but I didn't have one handy. But it was a thought!)

Whatever came off the sleeve cuffs would be transferred to the paper towels and the sleeves should be fine. It worked! We had a simple solution -- just iron the two cuffs between paper towels on a hot enough setting and they were fine.

Next day I called the supplier and gave him the solution. He told me that a whole bunch of shirts had been returned for this same issue from various customers, and they had all come from the same factory in India.

Having the solution to the scratchy cuffs was going to save him thousands of dollars in returned goods from this shipment of shirts. I think he was so gobsmacked by the simplicity of the solution he forgot to thank me.

Even though we had a solution, however, I still didn't know how the shirts had come to have these scratchy cuffs, and in bulk, too. I was somewhat content to have fixed "the shirt bug" but was not completely satisfied until I knew the cause. As you know, if the cause is known, prevention is the next step, and always much better than repair. Ounce, pound, all that.

I was retelling this story in my tech comm class some months later, and one of my students had the answer. He had previously worked in his family's garment business. He had never heard of scratchy cuffs before, but he did know that for knit shirts like golf shirts, the banding on the cuffs is often made on large looms where they knit 1- or 2-inch wide strips in parallel, and the edges are joined with glue. That's why ironing worked -- it melted the glue.

This budget factory had not done the additional step of removing the glue from the finished bindings when they were separated. I thought this was worthy of sharing with my original supplier so called him to explain it. And he didn't care one bit. They had gone with a different factory somewhere else, even though it was more expensive, and just passed the cost along to the customer.

Just goes to show you, that if there's a bug, I can find it and figure out how to get around it. :-)

Troubleshooting Part I

I am somewhat of a crank about usability and user problem solving. And because I deal with technology day in and day out, I pride myself on being able to deal with technical problems of one sort or another.

Here's a story about one of my trouble-shooting adventures. None of this is classified any longer, btw. It's 35 years later, and the technology long obsolete. My job doesn't even exist anymore.

When I was in the military and worked in telecommunications, we had a tape relay centre -- the communications centre of the very large base in Germany -- that used banks of typing reperforators to punch Murray code onto either chad or chadless tape. (Anyone else out there know Murray code? I can still read most of it.) I worked shifts 24/7 but our techs had cushier jobs and only worked one of 2 8-hour shifts -- either 8 to 4 or 4 to midnight, with no weekends.

The midnighters and weekenders were on their own as far as trying to deal with any technical issues. Usually we just swapped out the offending gear, left a tag on it with a description of the problem, and put it on the techs' bench for dealing with next day.

This particular time, I was on a cycle of a lot of midnights. We had a good crew, and even though we were often busy, there were times of the night when it was quiet enough that we could play cards and just chew the fat. So it was a pretty good time, all things considered. They gave me no sympathy though in this particular struggle with some machinery.

About halfway through the shift on a Friday night, so around 4 a.m., this one particular reperforator started to act up intermittently. It was skipping spots when punching the tape so we'd get garbled messages. I hauled it out of the cabinet, swapped in a spare, and left a detailed description of the problem on the ticket, along with a sample of the garbled tape.

Monday night, I went on duty to find a note from the tech that said he couldn't find anything wrong with the machine, so he swapped it back in. By virtue of working 12-hour mids and weekend shifts, we got 3 days off so the next time I went in to work it was Friday midnight again. Sure enough, half way through the shift, the same machine started to act up again. They're numbered so it was easy to tell. Again, I swapped it out, politely asked the techs to look at it again, and carried on.

Monday night shift, same thing. Big NFF (No Fault Found) on the tag, machine swapped back in, get a clue lady. You know, the old "women aren't technical" accusation. I complained to my team, who advised me to shrug it off -- always good advice. Drat if the next Friday night didn't the same thing happen! This time I got my entire team to look at the machine and verify it was garbling messages. It's always good to have witnesses. The senior NCO signed off on the ticket and we swapped out the machine as usual.

Monday night, a curt message from the tech Sr. NCO: "What are you people on???? Quit wasting our techs' time with machines that are perfectly fine. Next time, I'll charge you." (meaning a disciplinary charge) True, there had always been a bit of a rivalry between operators and technicians, and my team in particular was notorious for playing jokes on people. (This is how one's reputation as a jokester can work against you. Who, ME??? Nah...) But they were tired of having to keep looking at this stupid machine.

Fourth Friday night in a row -- same machine broke down. We debated, should we report it or fix it ourselves permanently with a hammer? I voted for the hammer but was overruled. So we decided to call out the duty tech to come NOW and see the machine for himself. He rolled in about an hour later, not in a good mood, but unable to disobey an order from a superior. :-) He tested the machine, and sure enough, got garbled tape. HAH!! Okay, I see it, I know it's bad, I'll fix it Monday.

Monday night, there was no word at all. We sort of forgot about it, until we came in the NEXT Monday night and found a note -- "Machine permanently FUBAR (F***ed up beyond all repair). Overheats when online too long. Works perfectly after cooldown." After working all week, the thing would get overheated by 4 a.m.-ish on Saturday, start breaking up the code, and causing problems. After sitting for 2 days waiting for the tech to look at it, it had cooled down sufficiently to be back in good working order. Sheesh.

I was vindicated, but never did receive an apology from the techs who disbelieved me. None of us had seen such behaviour from a machine before, but it wasn't to be the last. "Overheating" as a cause was tucked away in my mental inventory in case I ever ran into such a problem again.

It's a really good feeling, though, to be able to solve technical mysteries.