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Re: What's the most technical task you ever did as part of your job?
Subject:Re: What's the most technical task you ever did as part of your job? From:Nick Murray <flutable -at- hotmail -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Sat, 26 Jan 2013 14:02:35 +1100
Great question!
In 2001 I was working in a team in Denmark doing systems testing and
documentation for a public transport ticketing company (Australian
company, Danish customer). The ticket machines used smart cards, and the
system was touch on/touch off, so the computer could both calculate the
correct fare, and track where customers travelled (for route planning
purposes).
One of the ticket machines seemed to have a faulty backup battery, which
meant that when the driver turned off the ignition key, the data in the
ticket machine's RAM vanished. Since the machines also had GPS
capability, we were able to identify which bus contained the ticket
machine by analysing patterns in data returned by correctly-working
machines. Once we identified the machine, we identified the bus, looked
up its timetable and routes, and then I jumped into the car and drove
like a bat out of hell up the M45 motorway with the intention of
downloading the ticketing data before the driver ended his shift (for
some reason we weren't able to contact the driver directly). As with
most motorways, there were several overpasses with no on- or off-ramps,
so I ended up chasing the bus all around southern Denmark.
I finally caught it right at the end of the shift. With gravel spraying
everywhere I slid the car half-sideways into the depot, leapt out and
sprinted towards the bus. My Danish wasn't that great, but with a bit of
arm waving and yelling I managed to get the driver's attention just
before he turned the key. Plugged in the download unit, sucked out all
the data, and job done.
Another fun part of this job was trying to find out why certain ticket
machines printed ticket receipts every time the driver used the brakes,
or turned left. After not using any of my electronic engineering degree
for years, it was good to revise a bit of it and ultimately point out a
bus power supply that was not up to spec: the current draw of the ticket
printer, and of the turn indicators was just enough to cause a voltage
drop, which we were able to reproduce on a test bench. Lo and behold,
dropping the voltage just slightly caused tickets to print.
But why it was only LEFT turns and not right turns that caused the
voltage drop...that will forever remain a mystery to me!
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