I'm sure it's one of the first times I've ever thought this, but right now I'm really glad I didn't go into finance for a career. OK, that's untrue, even though the money is good for them, I've always recognized that the lifestyle stinks. But holy moly, those guys (and gals) are probably not having a great time right now, even if they've socked away money before this month.

As any part-time pessimist would do in rough economic times, I've been thinking about work and how I could be affected by an extended recession. I'm not too worried that a possible economic downturn will have me out on the street tomorrow, but of course I wonder what might happen in the near- to mid-future. Furthermore, being the perpetual optimist, I am trying to see how a recession could be good not only for engineers, but also for engineers (and others) in Generation Y. So for now, forget about golden parachutes, let's think about silver linings:

1. Hard times -- You know what people who were around in the depression era love talking about? Hard times. You know why? Because they made it, that's why. So listen up! They weren't handed jobs and houses and pre-packaged suburban Lego™-kit lives. They put up with some sucky times and earned a lot of what they got. Fast forward 80 years and you have Generation Y, the helicopter parent driven careers with high salaries and lower skill levels than many engineers leaving school 20 years ago. I'm not saying I'm not grateful for the opportunities I've had and the work I've been allowed to do, I'm just saying that a wake up call could help our generation in some subtle ways. Who knows, maybe in 80 years we'll be the ones telling the young whippersnappers how good they have it.
2. Weak dollar -- I hear a good deal on NPR about how the credit crunch is the most worrisome aspect of a flailing economy and I agree it can really hurt companies if they do not have access to capital. Poor cash flow through one business can affect the next and the next and so on because companies are not capable of buying the products they need to get their job done. However, something a lot of economists are failing to mention is how the bailout and the economy in general is pushing the dollar to new all time lows. For engineers, with jobs being outsourced daily, this can be somewhat good. It has been cost effective to send manufacturing jobs overseas and even some design jobs, but that has been because of discrepancies in currency (no thanks to the Chinese government). If the value of the dollar drops off, it's unlikely that textile mills will be popping up in Cleveland like they do in Malaysia or India. But maybe a few more manufacturing jobs will stick around. And maybe a manager or two will think twice about the equivalent cost of sending a design job overseas where they might have to spend some extra time fighting the language barrier.
3. More start-ups -- Somewhere along the way, bright young entrepreneurs who can't get jobs at their local global conglomerate because of a hiring freeze end up saying "Hey, I can start a company! I'm already not making money, it wouldn't be any different!" Don't believe me? Google started in 1998. It flourished through the entire tech bubble mess. Yeah, there's an example for you. Hard times, especially when it's hard to get loans or credit, make the environment particularly well suited to software start-ups, where fixed costs (factory equipment, raw material, Swingline staplers) are much lower than they would be for a widget making facility.
4. Repair -- Some of the best lessons I've ever learned in electronics was trying to fix something that was already broken. I'm trying to fix a broken piano right now and it's already been an enlightening experience. In the spirit of all things renewable, why not fix the gadgets we have instead of creating new ones we don't need ("Oh look, this refrigerator has GPS!"). As the world goes more digital and parts get smaller, there's less troubleshooting and more "throw out that board, put in a new one". But even having younger engineers analyze failures on a system level can have a positive effect on their understanding of said systems.

I would love to tell you that everything is hunky dory and that the economy will have a continually positive growth rate forever. But seriously, that's politicians' jobs to lie about that. I'm just saying that in the event of a recession, people deal. I'm not planning on going all grapes of wrath and trying my hand at farming in the dust bowl, but I feel (perhaps overly) confident that I'm flexible enough to weather any economic storm brewing on the horizon. Do you think you are? Let me know in the comments.

This blog started when I moved back to Cleveland. Really, it was a little bit sooner, but it got going full time once I was settled in back in May. Since I've been back, I've actually really enjoyed it. There are some things I miss about Austin (where I used to live), but I am happy with my decision, most notably because of my job. I feel like I am part of the minority that is moving back North, that others in my generation are more likely to head south at the first opportunity.

Is there any reason to live in the north anymore?

Let's go over the sour points first:

1. It's cold -- No brainer on that one, it definitely snows more in Ohio than in Texas, but you do get the benefit of some winter sports (skiing, tubing, professional snowman making) and the picturesque nature of seeing snow on Christmas or at other times (this wears off after about two weeks). Unfortunately, the cold lasts longer than most people would like in Ohio. Back in Texas I was wearing shorts and tubing down the river by March.
2. Gas/Heating --  This year might be the best example of expensive heating, but it has yet to play out. Oil prices are falling right now but could easily rise again in time for winter. There are some other (corny) ways to heat your house, so oil prices do not have the final say in how much we'll be paying per month for oil north of the Mason-Dixon line. On the bright side, we're paying WAY less for electricity than the south during the summer months.
3. Young people -- There's kind of an avalanche effect to people migrating out of one city or into another. The more people that move somewhere, the "hotter" the scene becomes and more people want to move there. Cleveland still has a pretty vibrant night life, but it pales in comparison to Austin and some other larger cities.
4. Urban Development -- Suburbs happen. Sprawl happens. The longer a city has been around (such as those  in the north), the more people want to spread out and get their own space. This is slowly happening in the south (Dallas, anyone?), but Austin is still relatively compact. With newer, smaller, growing southern cities, urban planning can help to compact things and make them more accessible. If you are moving to a city in the north, it's likely that a lot of the urban development is already done (though not completely).
5. Jobs -- We hear about the manufacturing jobs lost in Mid-West every time you turn on NPR. But there are also less large corporations in the north, due to some of the above listed reasons and less amiable tax laws than parts of the south.

But there is a lot of bright spots in Cleveland, even in the winter!

1. Water -- Necessary for life, right? Well some people didn't really think about that when they were setting up new cities and towns in the southwest (I'd reference all of Arizona first). The Mid-West though? We've got tons of it! The great lakes are a great resource, whether for shipping, recreation, fishing or even lighting on fire (go Cleveland!). It definitely makes the summer months that much better and makes the winter months that much more bearable. Polar bear club, anyone?
2. Infrastructure -- Even though we may be a sprawling metropolis with many different cities, I will say that Cleveland has the benefit of a well developed system of roads. If you are so inclined, you can also take an AmTrak train to more destinations than you can from Austin (more track = more destinations...but to be fair you can get to most any city if you sit on a train long enough).
3. Proximity -- This was another nice deciding factor, both in where I went to school and why I wanted to move back. I can easily drive home to Buffalo in 3 hours, can drive to Columbus in 2.5, can drive to Detroit in 2.5 if I'm feeling feisty and can get to Chicago or DC in about 6. This compared with Austin having a 3 hour drive to the next biggest city (that I didn't want to visit anyway) and a 12 hour drive to get out of the state.
4. Airport -- Similar to above, sometimes you just want to get out of town. If you can't drive, you might as well fly. And if you're going to fly, you might as well fly out of a hub. Even though continental decided to cut back their flights out of Cleveland, we have a great place to fly out of to get to some warmer destinations in those bleak winter months.
5. Home Prices/Cost of Living -- Thanks in part to our bozo friends in the finance industry and the overzealous DIYer house crowd, the housing market isn't doing too hot right now. However, if you're looking for a house, this is a great time! House prices and general food prices make for a much lower cost of living than many parts of the country, especially those with similar populations to Cleveland. Sometimes this is offset by lower taxes, but your consumption rate can be a little higher without incurring as much cost.
6. Renewable energy -- There is a lot of wind out on Lake Erie. This primes the region for becoming one of the premier renewable energy markets as we move forward with attempting our energy independence. The Great Lakes Institute for Energy Innovation is a start up at Case Western that could really help to move this forward.

I'm still really glad that I moved back to Cleveland. I only dealt with winter from Feb - April last year, so we'll see how I handle an entire Cleveland winter. I'm not saying I'll live in the Great North forever, but that for now, it fits me just right. Keep warm!

Hi Everyone,

I have been reading some ways to take a blog to the next level, linked by the ever resourceful and connected Seth Godin.

I am considering switching themes. I had a rough time of it when I was using StumbleUpon a while back and came across a few different sites that had the same theme as this one. It's a testament to the creator of the theme, but a bad way to stand out.  As such, I'm going to embark upon making my own theme. I'm sure there will be some component of circuits and analog electronics on there. I mean, this is an analog blog, right? If you have any suggestions for me, please leave them in the comments.

I've also gotten tired of seeing the main column of this blog be so narrow, so I have adjusted the width and am working on adjusting all the peripheral columns and such. If you are having trouble seeing this site, please leave a comment or email me (see the contact section of the blog). Thanks for your help!

"Hmm, I should really get a sound sample for the before and after on my piano. I'm so confident I can get this thing to work that I want some evidence how broken it was prior to my genius fixing of this machine."

POP. ZAP. HUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

"EEP," thinks Chris.

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM....

So it seems that I may have broken the amplifier on my Wurlitzer 200A. This after I took my sweet ol' time getting all the replacement parts in from Mouser. After they finally arrived, I scheduled a time to work on the piano on the weekend to try and fit into my relatively busy schedule.

First inspection of the board shows that this piano has definitely had work done on it before. There are multiple places where the solder joints have been over done with solder (too much globbed up in one place). The resistors and capacitors also do not appear to be the originals, though they still appear to be pretty old and could be the originals.

So what do I think happened? In my onomatopoeic description at the beginning of this article, you may have guessed that there was a short to ground (the "ZAP"). This happened because I was dumb enough to try turning on the piano when it was not bolted to the chassis. The circuit board likely shorted from one of the high potential points to the chassis, which is grounded. In the process, high amounts of current either caused a part to fail catastrophically through material failure (a PN junction having too many carriers "break through") or thermally (an electrolytic capacitor exploding due to high temperature).

I have a very primitive multimeter intended for use on power lines and such, so it could only tell me the there is 2 volts DC at the speaker output. This is definitely not healthy for the speaker nor the system and leads me to believe the output coupling capacitor may have broken. I will update more once I borrow my friend's advanced multimeter.

Even though I got the capacitors and transistors in for my Wurlitzer 200A, I decided to write about something else before I started documenting the hopefully successful re-build of my vintage piano.

Generation Y has a strong reputation of feeling entitled and wanting to do things their own way. The question I have today is:

To break or not to break?

Should the spirits and ideas of young upstart Millennials be squashed in order to show them the ways of a company? When we bring in new employees into an organization, what is their greatest strength? Is it their new ideas? Or is it their ability to perform the normal tasks, but maybe better than their predecessor? Is it their ability to stand out or to fit in? Is it to buck the bureaucracy or to massage it? Let's look at some situations.

Any time an employee comes into a new situation, you might expect them to have some modesty or humility. Apparently with Generation Y this is not happening, they instead expect to be placed into positions of authority, without knowing much at all. I know, I was a perfect angel .

What are some of the things that new people might shake up when they move into a new job?

1. Offerings from employers - We see this happening in preparation for the new employees of the younger generations. Look at Google, Facebook and any other young software company. The culture is  a more all-encompassing experience and more is being offered to younger workers. What they don't tell you though, is that even though there may be all those great perks like free meals and dry cleaning, they expect you to be working...a lot. A friend of a friend who now works at Google claims he has been there for months and still hasn't plugged in his refrigerator at home.
2. Methodology/Paradigm - This is the change that requires the most caution. Sure, sometimes the methods have been developed because one person or another wants to keep their job or because "that's how it's always been done" (no one remembers why). But sometimes, things are done a certain way because they are keeping it simple and it just happens to be the best way to do something. It is also possible, it is the lesser evil among many other options. It is in these situations, where it seems glaring that changes are required, that newer employees might be tempted to shake things up, but in fact would be disturbing things. (Completely Random Side Note: who doesn't love the word paradigm? If you say it like it's spelled, you sound like you're calling out the mascot for Kellogg's Sugar Smacks Cereal!)
3. Workplace Culture - More and more young people entering the workplace have seen Office Space and read Dilbert before they've experienced it. As such, they have certain biases and are immediately looking to make workplaces more laid back areas where they feel comfortable doing work. There could be an entire discussion regarding the idiosyncrasies of Gen Y, but I'll leave that to others.

These are not necessarily bad things for any of the generations involved. But a lot of people already in these jobs will be inclined to "break in" or "season" some of the new recruits, especially when it comes to point 2 above. Of course hazing comes to mind, but really I think a better way to say it is "institutionalize" or "teaching". There are often certain ways to do things that are better than others. One example might be teaching a newer employee how to best measure the current of an op-amp. The new employee might have TONS of ideas of how to do this (probe the voltage across an output resistor or capacitor, crack open the case and probe the tiny silicon chip, simulate the entire thing in SPICE and try to correlate it to a real world model, etc). However, the learning could have been guided by a senior adviser who might know the fastest way to do that task.

In my first job, we were consistently told that we were brought in to shake up the organization. They wanted to hear our ideas and for us to give our input. The problem was that we had never done anything like what we were tasked to do, so much of our input was either ridiculous or ignored (I will point to my own examples first, I was crazy!). I believe the reason they brought us into the company in the first place as inexperienced new workers was to quickly acclimate us to the new environment and type of work. Sure, there won't be too many great new ideas from the new employees, but they had shown us how things should be done from the beginning. The asking for ideas of the new employees was instead a really great way to appease our needs to contribute, even if it was never implemented.

Is it bad that younger people want to try something new at a job? Should their ideas be squashed if it is "known" that there is a better way? (quotations imply there might be a better way that had never been found)

I'd say it's fine to try stuff out and even to try and change things at a new work place. The important thing is to remind the younger and new employees to consider all of the costs involved with changing something. It can be expensive and time consuming to do something a new way and in the end might make it a worse solution. If anything, Generation Y needs to know that their ideas are alright to have and even to act on, but that sometimes the best thing to do for a company and for ones own time is to use solutions that are readily available.

What do you think?