The Do YOU Need a FAQ? FAQ

A Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) file is a meme dating back to when the Internet was mostly e-mail, bulletin board services, and Usenet. According to the Usenet FAQs about FAQs, in those days, FAQs were often created to prevent visitors to a newsgroup from pestering the regulars. Although technology has made the Internet of those days almost unrecognizable to users today, the major change in the net is that FAQs are no longer the result of "pestering."

It IS still about saving yourself some work, though. You've been answering some questions already, and some of those more than once. So get them written down, and put them where they can be found!

Once, long ago, I worked for NASA. One of my co-workers there, someone I liked and admired, was one of America's leading experts on fastening and joining. And local management didn't understand the importance of this knowledge until a few months before this guy was to retire. THEN they got a contractor to record my friend's knowledge on video.

My friend passed away a few years ago. I have no idea whether NASA even attempted to replace his knowledge, or whether anyone watches the videos. I have a copy myself, that my friend gave me before he passed. But I don't know fastening and joining well enough to try to pass on that knowledge.

The lesson I learned was this: you never know when someone brilliant might move or quit or retire or become infirm or die. And that their knowledge must not be allowed to die with them.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

- Arthur C. Clarke

This is a pretty familiar axiom, especially among those of us geeks who read a lot of science fiction.

But I have come to a new conclusion, involving magic from another source:

Any sufficiently unselfish act is indistinguishable from magic.

When we do something - and I'm talking about nearly anything - for reasons other than our own personal gain or pleasure, it's not much different from casting a spell. It unleashes magical forces in the small corner of the world where we live. I mean, Harry Potter, move over.

I once worked for a start-up, GreyPilgrim Inc., a maker of flexible robotic manipulators (most people might just call them "robotic arms"). The company has since gone Chapter 7 and re-emerged from the ashes as something else. But this company was the one that gave me the start-up bug, so I'd like to say a few words about where that bug comes from.

(Hear out the whole explanation) Our office/lab/shop was in a small garage occupied by a house-painter in Lower Merion, PA. Surrounded by half-full cans of latex, ladders and spotted old blankets, we made magic happen. But my first day, having to use the restroom was anything but magic. No restroom. They gave me a paint bucket and said, "we usually use this." So I went out back, did my business, came back, and they handed me a trash bag and said "we line the bucket with this." So my lesson was, make sure you hear the whole explanation - and I've never forgotten that.