DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

David Lazarus wrote a special report for the Chronicle on the risks of using “offshore” employees for processing sensitive (private) medical and financial data. He appears to have caught one of the parties in a lie. The transcription is riveting.

The story, in brief, is that a sub-sub-subcontracted medical records transcriber in Pakistan threatened to release private medical records if her past-due invoice wasn’t paid immediately. This triggered an investigation, which revealed that UCSF had contracted its records transcription out to a company called Transcription Stat, which subcontracted the transcription to an independent worker named Sonya Newburn, who subcontracted the transcription to another individual named Tom Spires, who subcontracted the transcription to the Pakistani, Lubna Baloch.

Everyone down the chain expressed shock and indignation about the threatened privacy breach. Of course they did — their reputations are on the line. The common criticism of everyone about the next person down the chain: “They’re not supposed to be subbing this out!” Heh. Watch as American industry digests its own stomach lining. People moan about exporting American jobs, but when it comes down to actually doing the work, these Americans would rather pay some poor foreign person $7/hr to do it.

Anyway, the story ends with a great caught-in-the-act phone interview between Lazarus (I assume) and one of the subcontractors. I don’t want to spoil the surprise; it’s worth the 10 minutes it will take you to read it. Here’s the full story: Outsourced UCSF notes highlight privacy risk: How one offshore worker sent tremor through medical system

This article describes the process of making long footboards for a DW 5000 series bass drum pedal.

Why would I want to make long footboards? I tried to learn a heel-toe playing technique, but my feet were the same size as my footboards. I literally couldn’t play the kick drum with my heel without turning my foot sideways. Otherwise, my toes were running into the chain and sprockets, peeling the skin off my toes. (I play without shoes.)

By the way, you can read a description of heel/toe pedal technique, or you can buy a video for $15 or you can buy a “system” for $149.

My options seemed to be:

• buy a new pedal, like the Axis Longboard, for lots of money
• make longer footboards for my current pedals
• have all my toes cut off

Some pedal manufacturers probably sell long footboards as an option. Drum Workshop is not one of them. Their “Delta” solid footboard does not relocate the hinge, so the playable area of the footboard doesn’t change. I’ve tried this. I know.

The best way to make your own long pedal footboards is to have a brother who is an expert metalworker and who has a machine shop in his garage. This is what I did, and I recommend it.

Our plan was to make a one-piece footboard, replacing the two-piece original. We planned to relocate the hinge to the back of the base plate. In the picture, you can see that this would buy us nearly three inches of playable pedal area. Also note that the stock pedal has the hinge in an “open” position, roughly 150°. Our design would require the hinge to be closed to an acute angle of about 30°.

One of the many benefits of having a metalshop in the garage is the likelihood of finding some 4-inch by quarter-inch aluminum stock in the scrap pile. This is what we did. We clamped the strip of material into the vise grip of a gargantuan saw that spat green lubricant goo all over the place, and sliced off two 13-inch lengths. When the cutting was done, the area was covered in a slurry of aluminum shards and lubricant, and the cut edges were perfectly machined… not that we wouldn’t sand and grind them on no fewer than three other hulking industrial devices over the course of the afternoon.

The stock DW footboards look undersized as compared to their replacements. We picked the new length by measuring the distance from the nose of the stock footboard (when installed) to the new hinge location. Essentially we made these boards as long as we could without welding an extension into the base plate — an option we discussed, but rejected because I didn’t want FrankenPedals. Making new footboards was as complex a modification as I was willing to pursue.

We traced various shapes on the rectangular pieces, using plastic curve templates. In the end we went with a slightly flared coffin shape, both because it was easier to cut than anything curvier, and because the fun German slang term my wife used to use when she was telling me to move my enormous shoes out of the doorway translates as “children’s coffins.” We rough-cut one side of one board on a bandsaw, then adjusted its contour on the belt sander.

Once we were satisfied with the shape, we traced it onto the other board, and then back onto the second side of the first board, after spraypainting the boards to allow us to score the line accurately. (Scraping a line into a painted surface yields a more visible and finer guide than pencil or Sharpie tracings would.) Then we went back to the bandsaw to make the cuts.

The profiles of the two footboards were nearly, but not entirely identical, given that they were cut freehand. This makes no difference to their utility, but what’s the point of all this effort if the result wouldn’t be perfect? We clamped the two boards together for final shaping. The front and back (heel and toe) edges were ground to match, as were the countours of the sides. Notches for the chain were cut into the toes of each board; we rounded the underside of each notch so the chain wouldn’t be rubbing against a sharp edge.

With the shaping complete, we prepared for the fasteners. Our plan called for relocating the hinges to the rear of the baseplate; this required us to chip dried thread sealer out of the hinges, and to drill/tap threaded holes into the baseplates. We mounted the hinges and ground down the protruding screws on the underside. Then we drilled and tapped threaded holes into the rear of the footboards. Finally, we drilled and countersunk a hole in the nose of the footboard for attaching the chain.

With all holes drilled and tapped, we reassembled the parts using the original screws. To prevent mid-song spontaneous disassembly, we applied thread sealer (red goo #262; see later picture) liberally — by which I mean, all over the screws, the tools, the hinges, and the bench. But the red stuff on my brother’s thumb isn’t 262; it’s blood: the only two guaranteed products of an day in the metal shop are dust and injuries. I mean, I nearly hurt myself, and I wasn’t even helping.

Notice how the hinge is cantilevered off the back edge of the baseplate. We had some concern that, with the hinges operating from a “closed” position, the screw heads would collide as the pedal was depressed. But this turned out not to be the case; we measured sufficient clearance without resorting to surgery on the hinge or screws.

Before attaching the footboard to the pedal, we sanded the surface smooth with progressively-finer sanding disks. We wanted a nice smooth surface, with no burrs to tear holes in my socks (or feet). We went through about five rounds of 360-grit sanding disks.

We polished the edges of the footboards on the belt sander. The grit on this belt is so fine I couldn’t detect it with my fingerstips; it felt completely smooth. But there’s no denying the spray of metal dust shooting off the edge of the board (nor the mirrored edges of the footboards).

After much sanding, and a pass with metal polish, we finished the assembly. Like everything else that comes out of my brother’s shop, the pedals are perfect — not only beautiful to look at, but great to play. I’ve had no weird squeaks or rattles. The response is solid and confident. The motion is fluid. And best of all, I’m now learning the heel-toe technique that started the whole project.

The PV array had a good day yesterday: 2430 watts DC is 97.2% of the Sunnyboy inverter’s theoretical maximum of 2500 watts.

We were pumping 2100 watts of surplus power into the grid — a personal record, as far as I’ve seen. Note the minus sign in front of the 2.1 figure. “-2.1 kW” means 2100 watts of surplus power are leaving our premises and feeding the neighborhood grid.

The inverter’s max output of 2500 watts can only be achieved with a specific combination of conditions:

• the sun must be directly overhead, so that the panels are perpendicular to the sun’s rays
• the panels must be clean
• the ambient temperature must be cool, because heat affects panel efficiency

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will testify in public under oath before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as long as the panel seeks no further public testimony from White House officials, the administration said Tuesday.

Why is the Bush Administration making deals with the 9/11 commission? Didn’t Bush set up the 9/11 commission?

No, he didn’t. (The memory is the first to go — or is it eyesight that’s the first to go? Hmm, I can’t remember that either. But then, my eyesight is already gone.) I was all set to write about the Bush Administration’s flip-flop on this investigation, but I’m happy to report that Bush & Co. have been completely consistent in their efforts to block it.

“President Bush initially opposed the creation of such a panel.” (April 1, 2003) Then, after the 9/11 families insisted on its creation, “Leaders of [the] commission … complained .. that the Bush administration had been too slow to provide access to key documents and was intimidating witnesses by insisting that CIA and FBI ‘minders’ attend sensitive interviews.” (July 9, 2003) Bush & Co. continued the delays; “the chairman of the federal commission … said the White House was continuing to withhold several highly classified intelligence documents from the panel.” (Oct. 26, 2003) The commission made some headway but was again derailed by the Bush/Cheney obfuscation machine; “President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have placed strict limits on the private interviews they will grant to the [commission], saying they will meet only with the panel’s top two officials and that Bush will submit to only a single hour of questioning.” (Feb. 26, 2004)

And finally, Condoleezza Rice refused to testify before the commission. You have to appreciate her game face. She would make a formidable poker opponent. I think she could outstare a person with no eyelids.

So, anyway, it’s not as inscrutable as I thought when I wrote the title of this piece. It all makes perfect sense: if you don’t want the answers to be found, delay the investigation.

We finally had that fallen fir tree cut down. The arborist did a great job of not smashing the fence.

The tree was 120 feet tall. Now it’s in about 20 pieces, staked to the banks of the creek into which the pieces fell as they were cut.

I was right about the rigging. The arborist had tied himself to a nearby tree and shaved off all the branches on the near side, in case he would have to Tarzan over to it if the one he was cutting gave way. There was some risk that as he lopped the top off, the base of the tree would stand back up, catapulting him across the back yard. Note how the trunk is tied off.

There was a nontrivial risk of dismemberment in this project. That’s one of my criteria for outsourcing house- and yardwork: “Can I lose a limb? If yes, call a contractor.”

For you visual learners, Joe Stump created this handy flowchart. I’m wishing there were some cute iconographic representations of severed limbs on there. Does anyone on alt.tasteless make a clip-art collection?