May 21, 2002

Well, I have been here in Germany long enough now that I have started to loose track of the time. Before writing this letter, I actually had to consult my calendar. It is six weeks today. I guessed that it was about six or seven, but could not be sure. In some ways, it seems much longer, but in other ways, it seems to have gone by fast.

I figure it is probably time to write about some of the more interesting events that have happened before they become a blur or I forget about them completely. It is funny, each time something interesting happens, I think about ways to describe it and hope that it inspires me to write that very day. However, I usually end up putting it off because of I am either busy, too tired, or something urgent has come up-such as falling off a mountain. Each particular event seems significant enough at the time that I assure myself that I will not forget to chronicle it. But now, as they accumulate, I realize the power of crow-epistemology is stronger than the significance of any particular event when enough of them begin to accumulate.

Please forgive me if some of what I have to report does not seem very significant, but many of the day-to-day events struck me as rather amusing at the time. And although they are not particularly important on the grand scale, they were of particular interest to me in relation to my situation here in Germany-especially since I often have to humor myself with my daily observations while lacking any direct personal contact with friends or relatives. I especially miss being with Objectivists!

One of the most mundane observations I made was regarding the architecture. Almost all of the houses, restaurants, municipal buildings, etc. have the same appearance. Each one is different in some particular way, but is the same in a very general way. From the side, the houses remind me of the generic sketch that every child makes of a house when he is about four years old-only without the front door since it is actually the side of the house (chimney optional). You know, the one where the roof forms a point like a triangle extending over a square, but there is no line separating the triangle form the square, and the windows are divided into four panes.

It was rather surreal at first (maybe that is not the right word, but I can’t think of another to describe it). It felt both foreign and familiar at the same time. All of the villages and the surrounding landscape were different from anything at home, yet I did not feel as if I was experiencing anything new either. It was not until this past Friday that I understood why. When I was driving past one of the houses in a village between home and where I work, I noticed how some of the plaster wall was chipped away showing two different layers, and how it was painted over rather than repaired. It was a pastel color and the shrubbery was very green below the only window on that side. In the window, which was surrounded by wooden shudders, was a flowerpot, or so I thought. As it turned out, nothing was in the window but blackness. The flowerpot was what I had expected to be there.

It was then that it occurred to me that each of these very ordinary houses resembled the photographs you sometimes see framed and hanging in someone’s bathroom above the toilet. I remembered how I would look at one of these photos and feel some sort of reluctant interest, bordering on boredom as I studied the subject. The house always looked old and foreign, yet it was still just the side of house just the same. What would usually hold my interest were the two obvious questions: “where is it? And how old must it be?” Now, after seeing so many houses like it, and seeing that there is indeed nothing grand or exotic about them, I know that I will experience nothing but boredom next time I see such a picture-not that I ever held them in much esteem in the first place. One may as well hang a close up photograph of a window on a house with aluminum siding-much like the side of the house I just sold.

That brings me to one of the insignificant revelations I finally had regarding the differences between European and American houses. Is it their shape, their size, their yard? Yes, all of these things are different, but what makes them the most foreign to me is that they do not use bricks, shingles, nor aluminum siding! It seems that all of these are unique to the US and Canada.

OK, I know, staring at the plaster houses isn’t as exciting as driving full speed down the Autobahn (wow! that passed spell-check), but not everything is. Have I driven on the Autobahn yet? As of this past Saturday, yes. I decided to go out and have a bite to eat. On the way back I thought it was a good day for a drive and why not head down towards the Autobahn and see what this little Passat can do (yes, that’s all I have to drive so far). When I made it onto this two-lane highway that everyone talks about, I expected traffic to be scorching by at unbelievable speeds. I put my foot all the way down and pushed my VW wagon as far as I could. I went speeding by most of the other cars, changing lanes when necessary. For the most part, everyone seemed like they were doing about 75mph on the average. How disappointing! I finally got the car to its top speed of 208 (kph, not mph) which is about 129mph. I was whizzing along as free as can be, passing some cars and watching others up ahead and behind who were doing about the same speed as I was. I sure wish I had had a Rush album playing right about then. As I was cruising along, I looked to my left and notice a car in my side-view mirror a little ways back. After looking back at the road ahead, I turned my head to see the same car passing me on the left and then he was in front of me. Although I was driving at top speed, this Porsche Carrera (a car that does not pass spell-check) passed me like a he was driving 40mph and I was parked. It was then that I decided I needed to exit and come back another day when I have a better car-I don’t care if I have to rent one for a weekend!

On the subject of cars, I have had the opportunity on two occasions to drive the department vehicle, which is perhaps one of the weirdest cars I have ever driven. It is a Mercedes A-Class, about as small, if not smaller, than any car you will see riding around the US. In spite of how small it is, it has lots of headroom and seats five people. But that is not what makes this particular model so unique. It is the only car I have ever driven that is a 5-speed manual, but has NO clutch pedal-I repeat so you don’t have to go back and re-read: NO clutch pedal! Somehow, the transmission engages the clutch automatically (or has one of those new variable drive transmissions) when you shift between the gears. I got used to it very quickly, but my left foot was continuously pressed against the floor not knowing what to do. After awhile, since my foot was getting sore constantly pressing down like that, I decided to just tuck it back behind my right foot. Eventually the novelty would wear off and all I could think about was how loud the car was-whirrr!!!

In case you are wondering, when I drove this car I had not yet fallen off the mountain, so that was not a factor while pressing my foot down against the floorboards. Just recently, I did go see a doctor to make sure everything was going OK. Perhaps one of the reasons I did was because I knew it wasn’t. My leg was swelling pretty badly and I was getting no feeling just along the left side of the wound-while the right side hurt like hell. The doctor gave me some antibiotics and bandaged up the leg, telling me that I might have to go to the hospital if it did not show improvement by the next day. When I showed up the next day, I felt a little better, but he was doubtful. I convinced him to give me another day before sending me to the hospital, and he reluctantly agreed. The next day, I went and it was much better. In fact, I hardly have any pain at all now.

Before leaving, the doctor gave me a prescription for some medication that I am supposed to apply directly to the wound and cover with bandages. When I left his office, I went directly to the pharmacy to get this. While I was there, I recognized a little old lady from the waiting room of the doctor’s office. She started talking to me in German, but I told her I could not understand. She then pointed at my head and spoke again. This time, her words were simple and I could understand what she was saying. She had a look of adoration in her eyes as she told me I had beautiful hair. She was the short, frumpy, type of old lady that you normally picture spending most of her time sitting on the front porch or in church, just a few years away from her grave or a nursing home. I resisted the temptation to hold my hands out to either side, palms out, and asking her, “so what do you think about the rest of the package?” What can I say? I’m a rock-a regular pillar of self-control. I did manage to smile and blush a little as I tried to tell her I needed a haircut while I made scissors motions with my fingers. For all I know, in Germany that gesture probably means “you ain’t so bad yourself.” Well, we didn’t exchange phone numbers or anything, so I’m still no closer to coming back home with a German bride.

I am hitting off with the sheep though! (Or as my landlady says, “the sheeps.”) It sounds kind of cute when she says “sheeps” and I have found myself taken to say it too whenever I am talking with her. One afternoon, I was looking out of my window and it was drizzling just a bit. I could see one of the pens where they keep some of their sheep, and that particular flock was grouped inside the small trailer that they keep for them as a shelter. I went “baaahhh!” and they all looked up and came to attention in the small doorway. One of them responded back-“baaahhh!” Amused at how successfully I had managed to establish communication with this lower species, I repeated my greeting. Each time I did, that one sheep-I don’t know which-would respond in turn. This kept me entertained for all of one and a half minutes (but what would the neighbors think?).

One day, Brigit, my landlady, was taking both of the flocks for a graze. I came outside just as she was sending them back. They all came running full tilt down the path that runs between the two pens. One flock is supposed to go into one pen, and the second into the other. They usually go straight into them with no problems. However, on this day one of them decided to follow the wrong flock and went into the other pen and started chasing those other sheep around, causing quite a stir. This particular sheep is a ram and has a good size set of horns. I watched as Brigit and Erik (her husband) tried desperately to separate him from the others. He was much larger and was gray with some black in the face compared to the others of this flock, which were all brown. (Don’t ask me. I thought all sheep were white and fluffy. I don’t know too much about animal husbandry-perhaps THAT’S why I’m still single!)

Eventually, Brigit got the idea of bringing the other flock-the one he belonged to-out into the yard again so that maybe he would see them and want to join them. She was right about that part, but she miscalculated the ram’s intelligence for how to go about doing this. He obviously believed in the idea of the shortest distance between two points being a straight line, because he proceeded to charge in their direction through the wire fence. Using nothing but brut force, he kept running into it, sometimes getting his horns caught before pulling himself free. Finally, he got caught badly enough that he could not pull free, but he kept pulling anyway in what was a very violent struggle. Brigit attempted to free him from her side of the fence but could not and only ended up scraping her hand.

At this time, Erik decided that he would demonstrate the power of Man over beast. He came over shaking his head and grabbed the ram by the horns and wrestled him free of the fence, but did not let go now that he had him in his grip. The ram attempted to buck, squirm, and charge, but to no avail. Erik had both horns firmly in his grasp as he straddled over him from behind and walked him toward the gate. At this time, I was already upstairs again looking out my window at the events taking place. It was quite a site! Brigit was concerned for the ram because he cut his lower lip, and Erik was just concerned with getting him back to where he belonged. I yelled “way to go!” Erik just looked up at me with a silly grin on his face because he thought it must look rather funny the way he was leading the sheep out in such an awkward fashion as he continued to buck and charge. I had to laugh when he gave me that look, but at the same time I could not help but admire the way he had control of the beast. It looked rather heroic, and Erik made it look so effortless despite the fact that his arms were taught and he had to shuffle step with his legs on either side of the ram. Once he got it past the gate, he let it go and it ran back to where it belonged.

But who cares about sheeps! I know the big question that everyone just cannot wait to ask: “what about work?!?!” Good question!

Well, I have to be running now. You all take care!

(Just kidding)

One of the first of my many interesting tasks was to build a circuit board with about a gazillion components on it. OK, maybe not that many components, but quite a few. Why is this interesting? Well, these where not thru-hole components. They were surface mount (SMT) and on both sides of the board. This was the first time that I ever attempted to solder SMT components by hand-and I’m talking about (well, writing about) the really small ones! These parts were so small that I needed to handle them with special tweezers. The smallest ones were so small that I could not read the numbers on them without a magnifying glass. The largest component was a 64-pin microprocessor. But despite it being large, it had a very fine pitch making it very difficult (for some people anyway) to solder all of the legs. The resistors were like small black monoliths (perhaps to help insects evolve and one day reach Jupiter) with silver/gray lines at either end. They reminded me of microscopic Hershey bars.

When I finished putting all of the components on except for the microprocessor, I asked one of my coworkers how to obtain it. He told me that he did not have time to help me, that he would get it the next day, I asked him why. He told me that he was too busy to flash it and then solder it onto the board. I told him that I did not need him to solder it, that I was going to do that myself. He looked at me, smiled, and said “really? It is very difficult!” I replied, “no problem!” He seemed incredulous, but he told me that he would flash it for me so that I could solder it. He had that OK-if-you-say-so attitude, implying that I was in over my head. He told me it took him five tries the first time he attempted to solder this component. Undeterred, I told him “well, there’s only one way for me to learn.” Less than three minutes later, I was finished on my first try and it looked as good as it could get for a hand-soldered part. He was quite impressed, and after inspecting it for what seemed like too long (probably out of disbelief) he showed it to the others in the group. You should have seen the way I swelled up!

After spending two weeks getting acquainted with my group and a general overview of the company, I was sent to another group to work for two weeks. This was a mechanical design group. The idea was for me to learn what they do and how they do it. One of the many tools they use is a software program called CATIA. This is a very powerful software design tool for doing 3-D CAD work. Someone once told me that you could work 40 hours a week with this program for three years and still only know 1/10^{th of what it can do. There are many CATIA experts they say, but no one person who knows everything about it. This is the software that DaimlerChrysler uses, and I had some exposure to in the past. My exposure was limited however. When I was working with Yazaki, I learned how to do some basic 2-D drawing (and I mean VERY basic). At Chrysler, I only saw how it was used to demonstrate 3-D packaging of vehicle design, but did not ever use it. While I was in New York working at Marquardt for seven weeks, I spent an entire week teaching myself the basics of CATIA. It was then that I learned how to do 3-D modeling.}

So, by the time I was sent to work with the mechanical design group, I had a basic understanding of CATIA. Each day in that group, I worked with a different individual who was supposed to “show me the ropes.” Each time they got to the part about using CATIA I would say, “oh yeah! I know about CATIA.” And they would then ask me-with some surprise-“you know how to use it?” And I would tell them yes, but also tell them that I am by no means an expert. At this point, they would usually have some extra work that they needed done, so they would tell me, “OK, let’s see what you can do!” And much to their surprise, I actually completed all of the tasks they would assign me-although I would have some questions from time-to-time. This surprised both the mechanical engineers as well as my electrical colleagues. Nobody in their wildest dreams ever expected an electrical engineer to know how to use CATIA. Furthermore, the mechanical guys were even more surprised that I was able to do so much after just one week of self-training.

The next two weeks, I was supposed to work with another mechanical group, but they were to busy to show me around and asked if they could delay. (If only they knew how little they needed to actually show me and much I could actually do to help them with their workload!) Therefore, I was back at my desk working with the rest of the electrical engineers, but needing something to keep me occupied. My boss decided that it would be a good idea for me to understand how to work with the microprocessor and for me to practice programming in C language. I thought that this was an excellent idea! He provided me with a microprocessor development board without the actual microprocessor, and emulator to take the place of the microprocessor, and the necessary software to write the program and operate the emulator. Then he told me to design and build a circuit board so that I could test my ability to make some LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) “do stuff”-presumably turn on and off or something. Again underestimating my abilities, he figured this would keep me busy for two weeks.

Well, luckily for me I knew that this was too simple a task. Being the ambitious person that I am, I wanted to do more than just makes some lights go on and off. Therefore, I began brainstorming some ideas. I asked my colleagues for not just some LEDs, but five of them, each being a different color, as well as five switches. I created a circuit board that had the LEDs and the switches interacting with the microprocessor. The LEDs would operate with a 12V supply and be turned on and off by the microprocessor via transistors. The switches were connected to 5V via pull-up resistors and also went back to the microprocessor. OK, so what? What am I going to do with five switches and five colored lights?

Lots of things! I created three programs in one-two games and a calculator. The five LEDs are in a row as follows: green, yellow, red, white, and blue. When you first power up the board, the green, red, and blue LEDs are lit. They are labeled “memory,” “binary calc/conv,” and “speed” respectively. The switches are lined up in a row below the LEDs such that there is one switch to correspond with each LED. The switches are labeled 1 through 5, and the red switch is also labeled “start.” By pressing the switch that corresponds with the lighted LED, you then choos that particular function. By pressing the green switch, you choose the game “Memory.” Once you do this, you then press the red switch to start the game when you are ready. Once this happens, using a random number generator based on sampling the “clock” for the processor, the LEDs flash in a random pattern. There will be five illuminations. Some or all of the LEDs may illuminate and can do so in any order. Once this happens, the user must then duplicate the pattern using the five switches. It is much like the electronic game “Simon.” Three things can then happen. One, the user can successfully duplicate the pattern. Two, the user can make a mistake. Three, the user can fail to respond fast enough. The last two events result in all of the LEDs lighting up briefly and then going back to the initial “choose game” state. If the user successfully duplicates the pattern, then he can hit the start button again and the same thing happens, but only faster-level two. There are three levels to this game, each one faster than the previous. When you beat level three, the levels then repeat. Each time you successfully win, the LEDs flash in a ceremonious pattern causing much joy to anyone who may be viewing. Complete ecstasy results for those who are fascinated by shiny objects.

By pressing the blue switch when prompted to choose a game, you get to play “speed.” After choosing the game, you press the red switch labeled “start” and the LEDs again light up randomly. However, this time you must press the corresponding switch that goes with the LED immediately before the next LED illuminates. The object is to keep pressing the switches as fast as the LEDs light up. If you press the wrong LED, or if you do not react fast enough, the game ends. Otherwise, it will keep going for as long as you can keep up.

The last game is really not a game. By pressing the red switch, you choose to operate makeshift calculator. After choosing this option, you can then press the switches numbered 1-5 to see what they add up to. The result is displayed as a binary number on the LEDs. A binary number is one based on the fact that transistors have two states-on and off, therefore it uses a base two number system rather than base ten. Number one is represented by “1,” two by “10,” three by “11,” four by “100,” five by “101,” and so forth. When an LED is on, it is a “1,” and when it is off it is a “0.” The calculator will add up to six different presses of the switches. This is because, if one presses the number five switch six times, it will equal 30, which is “11110” in binary. There are not enough LEDs to go further than this because 35 would be “100011” and requires six LEDs. The usefulness of this is that you can easily convert any number between 1 and 30 into a binary number. Yippee! Or you can just hit the switches and watch as the different LEDs light up for what appears to be no apparent reason and say “duuhhh, huh?”

Well, when I finally completed this task, I showed it to my boss and told him, “and you just wanted me to make some LEDs blink. Well look what I have done instead!” To which he replied, “good.” (It was embarrassing the way he gushed over and praised me. I wish he would control himself more.)

Well, that’s about it for now. I’m going to close and sign off. Sorry for being so brief. I will try to write more next time. Until then, take care and best premises!

Your Friend with a capital F,

Eric (with a capital E)