On Sep 13, 2004, at 5:07 PM, Steve McKenzie wrote:
> While the vague approach protects the spec writer,
> it doesn't really help the intended recipient.
I learned about this as a sprog engineer 4 years out of school, and I
learned it from Jimmy John McKeral, who just barely made it through
high-school as the result of a problem with authority figures. he made
such a huge pain in the ass of himself each time I used 'approved' or
'suitable' or 'equivalent' in a spec that I finally learned to write
specifications that actually specified specifically. McKeral had a mind
like a steel trap, although not altogether cultivated. He could weld
and run one of our early submersibles and he knew a lot about NDT, but
he was best at poking holes in assumptions. People who took themselves
more seriously than they took their jobs always had trouble with him.
He finally left the QA business to grow orchids and was killed in an
accident of some sort. I owe him a lot.
Christopher Wright P.E. |"They couldn't hit an elephant at
<a href="/group/PipingDesign/post?postID=Qs4J-JdF8ZaI_wm3FLlHe1PhFt7rnbyVB1vF_ygdMKnR6j95hJkdrSw-TeDn4D88Ec06AP79YE_r5TJrOg">chrisw@skypoint.com</a> | this distance" (last words of Gen.
...................................| John Sedgwick, Spotsylvania 1864)<a href="http://www.skypoint.com/~chrisw">http://www.skypoint.com/~chrisw</a> Received on Mon Sep 13 20:26:00 2004
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Tue Mar 04 2008 - 11:40:36 EST