In a message dated 98-06-29 01:38:55 EDT, [log in to unmask]
writes:

<< if there aren't sometimes blind
 assumptions being made about high-tech solutions meeting those criteria
 more effectively? >>

I once spent the good part of a summer week as a teen trying to rig the
lawnmower to cut the lawn without my having to follow the machine around, and
failed. I could have mowed the entire lawn for the entire summer in the time I
spent trying to figure out how to do the job with less effort.

I'm most proud of our brownstone composite patching job where out of
frustration our mechanic threw away the manufacturer mix and we brewed our
own... not a simple task considering the results we achieved, and at a time
prior to the new custom mixes. I go back twelve years later and see that the
faux stone still looks new, and am somewhat in awe that it worked at all.
Despite this, when starting a new project I always look for the packaged
mix... mainly because the mechanic with the magic color sense has long since
moved on, not to be replaced, and always dreaming of the "solution in a box".
The mechanic that could actually do the job, a simple task that few of us
talkabouts could ever come close to, was illiterate and in shrot time was
unfairly promoted to be a foreman.

I tend in general to hate composite patching of stone and think it a bastard
technology of glorified stucco and that it will always come back to bite me in
the rump. Little to be done about it, the technology exists, the educated spec
it, customers want it, we need work, and I am building a leaden ass to
accomodate their desires.

I have since found the neat term "transactional cost" to apply to trying to
figure out if it is worth the effort to communicate, or simply to go ahead and
do something.

][<en