The Digital Detective, Pay the Piper I

Pawnee ©
Encyclopedia of Aircraft

One day, I faced company arrest, a kind of corporate detainment. Company arrest combines citizens’ arrest and house arrest. Worse, the detainment came with a threat of physical harm. I’m not sure I should name the enterprise involved, but their initials are Piper Aircraft. They are known for fine low-wing light aircraft ranging from the homely but hardy Pawnee to the gorgeous Fury.

Piper contacted me about the time I went solo in my career. I had become an accidental expert in teleprocessing, the transmission of data. Operating systems have clean well-defined edges, where every tiny piece has a distinct, often powerful purpose. Contrarily, telecommunications is fraught with errors and omissions. An OS has to maintain a semblance of recovery and control despite fried fibre optics, iced-over microwave towers, or Russian-severed Atlantic cables. Trapping entangled signals, simultaneously there and not there, is trickier than bathing Schrödinger's cat.

Fury © Piper Aircraft

The introduction began a year earlier when a phone call came in, Director of Programming Services for Piper Aircraft in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. Introducing himself as Willy, he explained they were using software from my old boss Rich, as described last time. They were experiencing problems but didn’t know how to diagnose the source.

Willy explained Lock Haven was two hundred miles from nowhere and not easy to get to. A trip required a full day’s drive from my home, a seven hour drive without traffic, and oddly about the same via a chain of commercial commuter flights. Thus Piper Aircraft commuted by… Piper aircraft. Willy would instruct one of their pilots to pick me up and afterwards return me home. On my end, I chose Plymouth, Massachusetts not because I lived there but because my girlfriend did, and a small airport might be easier to navigate.

© Piper Aircraft

As a newly baptized student pilot, I enjoyed the ride. The pilot wasn’t a natural teacher, but he handed me right-seat controls while nothing demanding was happening, adding a few hours to my logbook. A side trip to LaGuardia found us sandwiched between two giant jets. Small planes have to be cautious about wingtip vortices, invisible whirlwinds that can capsize the inattentive.

As we flew into central Pennsylvania, eagles glided along side us rising on thermals from the spread of forests below. No pun intended, but this commute became the high point of my day.

© Piper Aircraft

Loch Haven’s municipal airport was Piper’s for all practical purposes. It adjoined the company’s plant and offices. Nearby buildings housed machine shops, assembly operations, and a paint facility. Piper situated me in sort of a company residence for visitors and commuting executives. The company was relocating their headquarters to Vero Beach, Florida, so short-term housing had become important.

That set the pattern for another three visits. Willy was revealed as a bombastic fellow, lots of bark but no bite. He’d grouch, gruff, and growl, but didn’t mean it. He would help anyone who’d need it and undoubtedly made a fine father.

© Wikipedia

All but one of his programming staff were married and weren’t interested in hosting a codeslinger after hours. Jennifer was the opposite, a girl with an interesting history and no one to hang out with. We shared dinner and dialogue a couple of evenings.

Originally from the area, she’d moved east, but hadn’t drained the avgas from her arteries. Exposed to new opportunities, she’d learned to skydive, where she’d become proficient.

She related a number of high-flying tales. Once she initiated a naked jump with her skyteam, exactly what it sounds like: shed clothes and bail out nude. I guess you had to be there. The mothers of most of us, if we’re gonna die, simply hope we remembered clean underwear.

© Wikipedia

Then came her moment of disaster. Unexpected winds tossed her parachute in uncontrollable arcs that caused her to crash into the ground, breaking her back. Jennifer returned to hearth and home to heal, staying with her mother and father, and working at Piper to pay the bills. She planned to resume jumping, but that was probably a year off. In the meantime, she helped form the backbone of a local jump club.

Shop Talk

This turned out the first and only time I worked in a union shop. Management explained they had to get permission for me to take charge of their machines.

The union was gracious about it. At first, they kept an eye on me, but once they realized I knew what I was doing and was willing to share my knowledge, they made me welcome.

It transpired their problems weren’t serious. They simply needed a helping hand marrying equipment and software from multiple vendors. I enjoyed working with Willy and the staff, which resulted in additional visits.

Where’s Willy?

I previous mentioned my charming boss. I struck off on my own, not getting wealthy, but living by my own lights. One day to my pleasant surprise, I saw Piper’s number on my telephone. Only this time, the caller wasn’t my friend Willy.

My imagination suggested the name sounded like Manny O’Dious, the new Number 2. This was Piper’s new Director of Programming Services, but what a gutter mouth… and gutter mind.

“That stupid ƒ-er Willy managed to piss off a vice president and got his ass fired. ‘Willy.’ Can you think of a more stupid name? Anyway, you left your job undone. Get your ass down here and fix the problem now.”

Taking orders from a person I respect is remotely tolerable, but as you might have guessed, being bossed around is not  my thing. Still, I needed to make a living.

“When can your pilot swing by?”

“Oh no, no. Things are different now. I’m not providing or paying for transportation. It’s not in my budget.”

Lock Haven, Pennsylvania

Lock Haven was landlocked in the remote wilds of Pennsylvania, so making the trip by commercial and commuter hops to ever smaller airports required as much as five or six hours of flight time and additional hours of rental car driving. One way required an exhausting full day of traveling, time I would have to bill for. More to the point, the client was always billed for transportation. This guy couldn’t grasp I was trying to save him money and me time.

It also rankled me that while the recent problem was unclear, I’d left no work undone.

“Have you tried to book travel between Plymouth and Lock Haven? Minimum seven hours by car, seven hours by air, and I invoice for travel. Always. You can save two days of billed consulting with a pickup.”

“Hell no. Get your ass on a plane or a mule or whatever and get yourself here you….”

“Good bye.”

I was almost shaking with tension as I slammed down the receiver.

Who put the BOMP in the Bomp Bah Bomp Bah Bomp?

A half hour later, the phone rang, same area code 570, but different number.

“Hey, it’s Jennifer. How ya doing? Leigh, I’ve been tasked with, well, persuading you to drop in. He has the budget, but see, he gets kickbacks for every budget dollar he doesn’t spend. Let me tell you what we’re dealing with…”

She went on to explain. “Shortly after he arrived, he treated himself in town to a steak dinner. Two bites from finishing, he informed the waiter the steak was tough and he would not pay for it. Nor the soup or the salad or the wine. Restaurants run on thin margins, and they swallowed hard to absorb a loss like that. He is one cheap bastard and now you’re the steak. He sees you as a burdensome expense but he needs you.”

“What happened to Willy?”

“You know Willy, he finds it fun to bluster, but one of the VPs didn’t understand him and summarily fired the man without considering how to replace him. Nobody wants a career move to the wilds of Nowhere, Pennsylvania and they were lucky to land Willy. Now everybody’s bleeding.”

“How did they recruit Manny? I never heard the name before.”

“Ah. He has no computing or management experience. He was actually a BOMP salesman.”

“Bomp?”

“Bill of materials processor, like a parts list for a huge project. It’s a pretty good program despite the fact he’s a terrible salesman. I don’t know the circumstances, but he must have been in dire straits. As soon as he heard Willy had been fired, he applied and, being the only candidate, he got the job. Upper executives haven’t figured out what a bad decision that was. He thinks we’re all trying to sabotage him. Believe me, I’m getting out of here soonest.”

I laughed. “While suckering me in, huh?”

“Damsel in distress and all that. We’ll get you here, try to keep everything per usual.”

Arrested Developer

© Piper Aircraft

We planned for an upcoming holiday weekend to maximize my time on the machine. I packed my suitcase and stuffed computer gear in my flight case. As agreed, their plane arrived on time for the pickup. On my arrival, the union rep said cool beans. I never understood that expression, but someone explained I was ‘golden’.

Except with the director. He didn’t hover over me– I give him that– but asked one of the programmers to monitor me.

Within a couple of hours, I had a good idea where the problem lay. By late afternoon, I nailed it, no long weekend required.

A half dozen vendors were waiting to hear who was at fault. I entered the director’s office to spill the results.

“Well?” Manny asked. “Whose problem is it?”

“Piper’s. The issue manifests in IBM’s controller, but you didn’t follow configuration instructions. You plugged it in while ignoring the ‘Some assembly required’ notice.”

“Not my fault. My staff keeps undercutting me. Look, here’s what you will do. I’m going to give you an extra fifty bucks, no, say hundred bucks and you say you traced the fault to the DUCS package. You can convince them.”

I blinked. It was hardly worth mentioning $50 covered ten minutes on the time sheet. My old boss’s software had nothing to do with the problem, but they were the smallest and most vulnerable supplier.

“No, I want no part of that. It’s a user error. No vendor is at fault.”

“Then a virus Trojan whatchacallit.”

“No, it’s not a virus.”

“You sure you won’t take a hundred bucks and let this go?”

© Piper Aircraft

“No, I can’t do that.”

“Then find your own way back.”

“What?” I didn’t think I’d heard him.

“Find… your own… fucking… way… home. I won’t provide transportation.”

“You can’t do that. There’s no way out of here, not even a rental car.”

“Tough luck. I gave you a chance.” He templed his fingers and stared musingly at the ceiling, fully in control. “Factory like ours is a dangerous place. All kinds of accidents could happen, especially after dark on a long weekend.”

That made no sense. “Don’t act ridiculous. You are threatening me over a few thousand dollars?”

“Not ridiculous to me, more like an object lesson you’re going to lose. If I was gonna threaten, I’d point out the surrounding deep woods,” he interrupted his TV drama-speak to wave his hand toward his window, “and how dangerous forests are, hunting season or not.”

To be continued…

The Slobbering Detective

New Years Eve sniffing dog.

A charming subset of cozy mysteries feature pets with magical powers. Truth is, dogs and cats don’t need an ounce of magic to do what they do. They are descended from a long line of predators whose only job was to track, kill, and eat prey. To perform that job on a daily basis, they were granted skills by nature that allowed them to carry out that task unerringly.

They needed to see in the dark. They needed to spot movement. They needed to hear over long distances. They needed a strong sense of smell. They needed speed and agility to reach that prey. And fangs and claws sharp enough to get the job done. Wolves hunt in packs. Cats were solitary hunters, which made sense since their prey was often too small to share.

By comparison, our ancestors evolved standing in trees, reaching for fruits and leaves. They’d grab something, and if the light was good they could determine if it was good to eat. To do that one innocuous task, those primates needed the following: to be able to stand upright; thumbs; soft, tactile fingertips to judge their meal’s tenderness; eyes that could judge color and ripeness at close quarters. In time, those nimble fingers were handy to make tools, and the focal length of those eyes helped them assess the facial expressions of loved ones and enemies.

If you’ve ever tossed a treat to your dog, you have had ample opportunity to assess the differences in our two species. When the dried liver hits the kitchen floor, the dog sniffs around for it until she locates and snarfs it. The whole time this is happening, you stand on the sidelines, rolling your eyes.

“It’s right in front of your face!” you say.

It is, but dogs don’t see well up close.

Beholding this, we humans feel smug.

Great Dane / Poodle mix.

Bred to retrieve, um, bears in bodies of water while looking poofy?

Yet when the sun goes down, our ability to see color—or anything, for that matter—declines. We’re useless and must retreat to a campfire or a well-lit room. If we didn’t do this 60,000 years ago, we would be just a delicious hunk of protoplasm wandering aimlessly in the dark.

At night, the dog’s vision doesn’t change much from its daytime vision. The common rap on them is that they’re color blind, but that’s not strictly true. The ability to see color varies breed to breed. They can see some colors; they just don’t need color to survive. Their ancestors hunted primarily at dawn and dusk. (They were—SAT word alert!—crepuscular.)

Bred to point birds.

Now: Bacon sniffing dog.

Dogs hear things up to four times farther away than human ears can. Their peripheral vision is optimized for long-distance movement, and they see parts of the light spectrum that we cannot bother with.

Every sense they have is exceedingly useful in low-light conditions. They spy something moving, they smell something alien or tasty, they hear footfalls—and they’re off. Thank goodness for backyard fences.

Until very recently, dogs thought you and I had bad taste in nighttime entertainment. When humans watched movies on analog TV sets, all those little frames of film moved so fast that our eyes—which, mind you, move at the speed of low-hanging fruit—perceived them as moving images. Dogs didn’t see that. On cathode ray tube TVs, dogs saw one image that never moved. Occasionally, the picture flickered annoyingly.

Then digital TVs were invented, and suddenly dogs could actually glimpse what we were gawping at. Modern nature documentaries often evoke a response in dogs, probably because they’re hearing a rich soundtrack aligned with the image of moving animals. Your dog’s favorite thing to watch on TV? Big shock: other dogs.

Former military dog.

Now: Enjoys serene mountain views.

In my previous August-Dog-Days post, I talked about how good their noses are. 

They know when you’re about to walk in the door after a long day at work. Can they tell time? No—they know that your scent has declined in the house for eight hours, and you always walk in when your scent level has reached about 15 percent. Oh—and by long association they can tell the difference between the sound of your car engine and everyone else’s on your block.

They know when it’s bedtime because they can feel and smell the temperature dropping in the walls of your house.

If you walked in on a chef making beef stew, your sad excuse for a nose would perceive the simmering dish as a whole. “Oh,” you might say, “you’re making boeuf bourguignon.” Ever watch the Food Network? Even professional chefs have trouble identifying all the ingredients in a complex dish they have tasted. Their failure rate goes up if you blindfold them.

Rover walks in the kitchen and thinks, “How delightful! I smell (cooked) beef, onions, carrots, celery, red wine, all in fragrant abundance! Oh—and is that a bay leaf? When are we eating?”

In other words, dog noses are precise enough to detect each scent independent of others. They’re not thrown off if one ingredient has been combined with something else.

Which is why they are so useful when issued a gold shield.

Bred to burrow into tunnels and kill badgers.
Now: enjoys traveling in large purses.

It matters not a whit that the perp packed fifty kilos of cocaine in a giant crate of coffee. A police dog smells both scents equally well.

Trainers have tried to obscure the scents of various explosives by dousing them with perfume, swaddling them with dirty socks or—gag—dirty baby diapers. K-9 cops, God bless them, smell right through all that crap.

Drug-sniffing dogs routinely locate waterproof bags of drugs in the gas tanks of vehicles where smugglers cleverly thought they could cache them. Surely, that noxious smell of gas would “throw off” the dogs, the smugglers thought. Yeah, no.

It’s true canines don’t like the smell of citrus fruits or citronella, but that won’t stop them from doing the job they were trained to do.

When asked to ID a suspect in a traditional lineup, humans—using their primate-endowed visual gift for assessing, ahem, fruit and enemies—pick out the perp with a fifty-five percent (or less) accuracy. A dog who has been allowed to sniff around the crime scene can sniff out the suspect who fled from that site with 80 percent accuracy. If they fail, it’s probably for the prosaic reason that, in the aggregate, we humans stink alike.

Bred to hunt varmints underground.

Terra = earth, hence terrier.

Now: A hit at all the coffee bars.

Last time, I mentioned how, in the classic fleeing suspect scenario, bloodhounds work the trail by sticking their noses to the ground while their marvelously floppy ears stir up human dander. Air-scenting breeds do the opposite: they lift their noses to the air to catch what’s passing by.

Those are the breeds used for search-and-rescue work. Cadaver dogs, trained to detect decomposing human flesh, can do their job even when the murderer has weighed down the remains and dumped them in a body of water. When a killer finally confesses to the crime but can’t quite remember exactly where he buried the remains, cadaver dogs point the way. In some cases, cadaver dogs have located remains long entombed, Poe-style, in the cavities of walls.

Besides Dr. Stanley Coren, the psychologist whose books I have consulted to write these two August posts, I have also enjoyed the work of Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, whose dog books routinely hit the bestseller lists. She works at her own dog cognition lab in New York City. In one of her books she observes that researchers know more about lab mice, rats, guinea pigs, and even rabbits than they do about canines, who are the second-most employed species on the planet. This probably has something to do with the complexities and costs of rearing and studying large animals in labs.

That said, besides K-9 patrol dogs and the specialist animals I’ve mentioned, there are protection dogs, seeing-eye dogs, therapy dogs, and emotional support animals. Those are the givens most people would be able to rattle off.

But there are so many others.

Autism service dogs are trained to help autistic individuals, often children, stay safe in their homes and schools, blocking them, say, if they are about to do something that would harm themselves.

Mobility service dogs help disabled folks open kitchen cabinets, pick up dropped items, turn switches on and off in the home, and perform other essential work.

Seizure response dogs have been trained to bark for help, press “lifeline” buttons to summon assistance, or retrieve a phone when their owner experiences a seizure.

Seizure alert dogs, by contrast, have been trained to anticipate when a seizure is about to happen, alerting their owner to take medication.

Conservation protection dogs protect game on wildlife preserves and assist in spotting poachers.

Arson-sniffing dogs have been trained to detect the remains of flammable liquids and other compounds used to torch a property. Even though accelerants have a tendency to evaporate, a dog can smell it for at least 18 days later, which is usually long enough for the damaged site to be stabilized and permit entry and a careful, walk-through inspection.

Natural gas-sniffing dogs are trained to detect gas leaks in pipelines.

Termite-sniffing dogs do a better job of finding infestations than human pest control experts.

Gypsy moth-sniffing dogs root out nests of these pests that could potentially decimate nursery plant stock or forests.

Beehive-sniffing dogs root out the weird diseases and pests that can infect and destroy bee populations. 

Mold and mildew-sniffing dogs pinpoint the locations of growths that are making people sick in a home or apartment complexes.

In hospital and lab settings, dogs have detected prostate cancer from urine samples and tuberculosis from slides containing human saliva.

No doubt they could do so much more, but using these marvelous creatures to perform such highly specific work always collides with an unavoidable triple whammy. They’re expensive to train, expensive to buy and keep once trained, and their lives are brutally short. A trained K-9 might well cost an agency $50,000 before its new owners buy it a bowl of kibble. For kicks, I priced out body armor vests for dogs—$1,049 to $1,200 pop. That’s before you spring for the protective doggie eye goggles, protective ear muffs, and rappelling gear. (Well, you have to use something to lower a search-and-rescue dog into a canyon to rescue those foolish hikers who always go missing, don’t you?)

For a while there, I dug deep into the world of mystery writers who feature K-9 cops their books. Some have online stores where you can buy bundles of their books along with dog-themed merch for fans and their animals alike. I have listened to podcasts with these authors, and even enjoyed mysteries where entire scenes were written from the dog’s point of view.

Hands down, dogs are the best people. They enrich our lives and we simply don’t deserve them. And that is why I believe the smartest thing a writer of crime fiction can do is stick a picture of a cat on the cover of their books. Trust me—the dogs in your life will still love you.

* * *

Most of the factoids in this piece came from:

How Dogs Think: What the World Looks Like to Them and Why They Act the Way They Do, by Stanley Coren.

Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know, by Alexandra Horowitz.

See you in three weeks, when we return to everyone’s favorite species—humans!

Joe

josephdagnese.com

In Memoriam: Little Shrimp on the Prairie

Some of you will remember that I've been covering, off and on, any news about the Little Shrimp on the Prairie, i.e., Tru-Shrimp's Madison Bay Harbor since 2018.

(See HERE for my adventures with Dark Ally as we went to Bellaton, searching for the lost Salt Water Aquariums of South Dakota Agriculture.  It's worth it for the scene where we found with 5 listless shrimp floating in a hopefully saline home aquarium, probably begging for their blessed release...)  

And, even though Tru-Shrimp got counties and towns to pony up development, money, and lots of publicity, and even though they promised endless pounds of shrimp from their dark saline towers, nothing has yet been built. Anywhere.  

And now it's official, folks, it never will be:  Sob, sob, sob... (feel free to read that anyway you like.)

"In December, 2018, the [South Dakota] Governor’s Office of Economic Development, or GOED, announced plans for a cutting-edge shrimp production facility in Madison, South Dakota. GOED granted $5.5 million to the Madison Lake Area Improvement Corporation for the project.

The Lake Area Improvement Corporation loaned the money to Tru Shrimp, the company, at 2% interest. The company is now known as Iterro. They planned to build the facility in 2019. Then, they pushed it back to 2024. As of today, it has yet to be built...

Rep. Marty Overweg is the Vice-Chair of GOAC. He said they need answers.

“They took that out and got private investors, South Dakota investors, to invest in their company also because the state of South Dakota gave them the startup money of $5 million," Overweg said. "So not only did they stick us for $5 million, they also stuck a whole bunch of South Dakota people who privately invested in this company. And this is bad business. I mean this is a drop ball, huge mistake.”  

(Uh, Marty, this is what South Dakota does best - look at EB-5, Gear Up!, and many, many more...) 

Iterro and the Madison Lake Area Improvement Corporation did not immediately respond to a request for comment."  (LINK) 

(And if they did, Iterro would undoubtedly answer, "How about never.  Is never good for you?") 

And to anyone who wonders how on earth this happened:  Greed.  Simply greed.  Tru-Shrimp might as well have been selling shrimp-shaped trombones - NO ONE WAS GOING TO MAKE MONEY EXCEPT TRU-SHRIMP.  But there's one born every minute, and a lot of them wear suits and ties and seem sane on the outside... 

Oh, and before they ripped Madison off for $5 million in tax dollars, they ripped off Luverne, MN, for $5 million in tax dollars before ditching them.  

So that's their MO, and if someone comes to your small town or city somewhere on the priarie - or anywhere else - says, "Guess what! There's a company that wants to come here and raise shrimp!" RUN, do not walk, away from them, holding all your money tightly to your chest, because otherwise they'll rip it away from you the way you rip an exoskeleton from a shrimp.  

Me and Dark Ally offer our thoughts and prayers:

Oh, how we hardly knew ye.

*******

And now for something completely different...  

Some days it seems like that's all that's out there, doesn't it?

This is why I miss Colombo, Maigret, Tommy & Tuppence Beresford, and other detectives who actually like their spouses and their jobs.  And I keep reading Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, Dame Frevisse and Cadfael, Nero Wolfe and Jackson Lamb's Slow Horses misfits. They all know who they are and are pretty comfortable with it, no matter how weird and wonderful they get.  

And speaking of being comfortable with who you are, if you haven't yet, check out 1989's mini-series "Summer's Lease" with the late, great Sir John Gielgud playing (at 85!) the cheerfully sponging, endlessly lecherous, sometime journalist Haverford Downs, who manages to slide into his only daughter's family vacation to Italy. There they find their host has disappeared, and there's a very suspicious death...  Gielgud won a Primetime Emmy Award for that role and he deserved it.  Here's episode one, from YouTube (which has all the rest of the episodes, too):

Enjoy.

MEANWHILE, BSP!  

A review from London's own "Murders for August" by Jeremy Black:

"Paranoia Blues. Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Paul Simon (Down and Out Books, 2022) is an excellent volume edited by Josh Pachter, following similar volumes for Joni Mitchell (2020), Jimmy Buffett (2021), Billy Joel (2021) and the Marx Brothers (2021). Each story is matched to a song. Hardboiled America is the setting, and the themes are grim but also well-realised. The writing is spare and aphoristic, violence is to the fore, and it would be good if several of the novelists mentioned this month could match the quality of the writing here. There is no space to review all 19 of the stories, but they are impressive, kicking off with Vietnam echoes and killing in the New York subway system in Gabriel Valjan’s “The Sounds of Silence”. R.J. Koreto’s “April Come She Will” addresses fraud and blackmail, with some marvellous lines: “For men, the possibility of sex is actually better than sex itself…. August, the end of summer, a time when relationships die”. Robert Edward Eckels had stopped writing in 1982 but resumed at 90 to write “The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine”, an account of office theft, poor management, and measured retribution. Frank Zafiro’s “A Hazy Shade of Winter” deals with the travails of an elderly mob enforcer: an instructive perspective. Anna Scotti’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” is a brilliant and humane account of hardship, care, and a concealed suicide. Tom Mead’s “The Only Living Boy in New York” takes Civil Rights into violent crime in New York including a spring-loaded leather strap on the protagonist’s wrist. Excellent book."  

I am proud to say that my first "Cool Papa Bell" story (which is also its title) appeared in it.  Cool Papa Ted Bell, former shortstop for a minor league Florida team, is serving life for murder. He feels "kind of bad about it now", but not enough not to turn to the tried and true when he finds Aryan Nation gang The Brand is beating up the infirmary orderly. In prison, justice comes in all kinds of forms. And I never said he's reformed...  

Available at DownandOutBooks:

https://downandoutbooks.com/2022/10/31/new-from-down-out-books-paranoia-blues-crime-fiction-inspired-by-the-songs-of-paul-simon-edited-by-josh-pachter/

And my second Papa Bell story, "Round and Round" is in "Janie's Got a Gun", edited by Michael Bracken.  That one's a ghost story set in a penitentiary, and I can assure you that the ghost is real...  

Available at https://whitecitypress.com/product/janie/

And, of course, both are available on Amazon.com...

Enjoy!
  

Robot on Wheels

Today’s article might seem more suitable for Top Gear, Car & Driver, Road & Track, Jalopnik, or Motor Trend, but today’s article about Tesla motorcars has method behind the madness. I’ll limit my comments about its controversial CEO to saying (in my unhumble opinion) he’s so very good at a few things, he believes he’s good at everything. Whatever faults he has, he’s a brilliant businessman and a damned good technical futurist who attracts an insanely dedicated following across a broad spectrum of ‘fanboys’.

Once Upon a Time

When I was a wee budding boy mad scientist, I salvaged a generator from a truck and purloined a used battery. A few spare parts from the farm’s machine shed and a wooden frame, and I cobbled together a dangerous-as-hell electric go-kart of sorts. The clutch was a belt tensioner and the Soapbox Derby brake, carved from a discarded rubber tire, literally dragged the kart to a halt… barely. But the proof of concept worked. Electric motors were well understood, waiting for battery material science to catch up.

Wanting an electric car has long been a wish. A few years ago, I test drove one, a Tesla Model 3. The car came with ‘autopilot’, which meant it could follow highway lanes and when I finished the drive, it parked itself very nicely, thank you. The loudest sound was the air conditioner’s fan, which still needs to be addressed.

Autopilot, by the way, is Tesla’s advanced driver-assistance system, and FSD represents the premium, more advanced version.

Traditional manufacturers have been developing similar technology, but Tesla’s advantage then was reduced environmental impact combined with one, two, or three powerful motors capable of slamming passengers back in their seats, 0-60 in THREE SECONDS. The proof of concept worked and battery technology was catching up.

The other attraction was a promised feature, FSD, full self-driving, an add-on of several thousand dollars. Drivers could petition to become beta testers after being tested themselves. In that early stage, owners were informed bad driving would result in withdrawal of FSD. Drivers had to be on their toes, but proof of concept worked.

I rode in a Tesla the day it was released for beta testing. The car behaved like any new driver– jerky, hesitant, uncertain, then suddenly over-daring. It was like a theme park ride but more so. Over time, Tesla issued a number of updates and gradually driving smoothed out,^† behaving like a competent, well-mannered, defensive driver. Close your eyes today, you can not tell a real person isn’t chauffeuring you about.

In recent months, I’ve been driving a Tesla model Y. I don’t own the vehicle, rather I’m under a not-so-onerous obligation to drive one a few times a week. I think of the machine as a robot on wheels. Not coincidentally, Tesla has a humanoid robotics division, and I have little doubt one subsidiary feeds the other, advances in one group benefitting another.

My friend Thrush says you don’t so much drive an FSD Tesla, you supervise it. Further, it demands a stern taskmaster. It watches your eyes. If it thinks you aren’t paying attention, it will let you know. The car doesn’t like a pair of my sunglasses and scolds me once in a while.

I tend to be a highly focused driver, so I’ve been surprised when riding as a passenger over highways and byways I’ve driven for years, discovering shops and sources I never knew were roadside. FSD allows drivers to relax a little but stay alert. Flight instructors tell students to constantly scan, always scan: instruments, windows, communications, controls. It’s good advice for drivers.

When All is Not Peaches and Petrol

But what about accidents? Surely cars without drivers must have insane collision numbers. They do… insanely less, to borrow an Apple phrase. Teslas using FSD suffer only ⅕ the accident rates as human drivers. One fifth, 20%. That’s tens of thousands of fewer accidents… and fewer deaths.

That’s not to say everything is perfect. I discovered the current FSD program had difficulty with red traffic light arrows. It would stop as usual, but after twenty seconds or so, it seemed to forget about the red light and proceeded with the turn.

And then came an unexpected mother of all tests. I was in first position in the leftmost turn lane at a six-lane major intersection (southbound on Edgewater Drive at John Young Parkway and Forest City Road, Orlando) when the entire array of traffic lights blacked out, gone, kaput. The Tesla hesitated and then edged forward until I stomped the brake. I was still new to driving, so I didn’t know how to report a rare but risky situation.

An opportunity arose to observe its behavior when blocked by other cars, once on Interstate 4 and another on side streets. A steady stream of cars obstructed the exit lane. No shouting, no gnashing of teeth, no road rage, no surge of blood pressure, no Florida Stand-Your-Ground shootout. The Tesla sedately continued to the next exit and looped back.

Conversely, when wanting to cross multi-lane traffic, the machine hesitates when other drivers kindly open a gap. Wisely so because a common Florida insurance scam involves a con artist waving an innocent to proceed only to jump in the path and scream injury. Per contra, the Tesla politely allows side street drivers to ease into traffic.

Unlike some competitors, current (no pun intended) models don’t include lidar among sensors, but rely upon a full kit of cameras in our visual spectrum. That means in a determined downpour, it can’t see any better than we do. In such a case, neither of us should be driving.

Options are highly customizable from minor convenience choices to how the car behaves. It can act like an auto with manual transmission, an automatic, or its own paradigm. Remember I used an old generator as a motor? Some motors can act like generators and vice versa. Let off the gas on an electric vehicle and when the motor is internally braking, it simultaneously dumps juice back into the battery. Try that, petrochemical fans.

The Futurist

I’m going to attempt a couple of predictions. We’ll start to see new and unexpected uses for FSD. Suppose a driver passes out or falls heavily asleep. Presently, the car tries to get the driver’s attention by flashing the screen and sounding a tone. If it can’t rouse the driver, it pulls off the road.

But with additional AI, it might realize you, the driver, are sick or wounded or suicidal and drives you straight to hospital. If someone attempts a holdup in a mall parking lot, you might summon your car to the rescue.

Or your grounded teenager steals your car without permission and heads for her (or his) dealer/boyfriend. You hop on your phone and instruct the car to lock doors and drive her (or his) drunk butt straight home.

As boomers age and Generation X is discovering bald spots, sagging parts, and skeletal stiffness, enlightened officials might find their way clear to allow FSD owners to ride as a passenger in their car without a drivers license. Senior citizens could safely transport themselves as freely as the rest of us. How liberating!

Previously, I suggested the most likely and most immediately useful humanoid robots will be found in toys for toddlers and eldercare, respectively. Taking that a step further, an intelligent car could advance care and concern for both. Just as it warns about unfastened seatbelts, it could detect unattached baby carriers. Never again must we read about a child or pet locked in a hot car, when the car itself realizes it has several options to offer succor and solutions.

An Accident Waiting to Happen

Consider road safety once FSD automobiles chat among themselves. A truck obscures your line of sight leaving you unaware a car is stopped in the middle of the road. A child wanders into the street. A motorbike slips into your blind spot. An out-of-control bus is hurtling at you.

I fully expect we’ll see FSD vehicles talking with one another, one warning others of impending disasters. Then suppose one realizes if nothing is done, that child in the path of an oncoming vehicle will die. With altruistic programming, it could sacrifice itself to save the pedestrian and possibly persuade other vehicles to intervene.

And then…

The arms race between crooks and cops embodies the flip side. Quite soon someone figures out how to use a BMW iX to drive the getaway car, steer a Cybertruck through a bank’s front doors, direct a Genesis GV80 to hijack a trucker, or send a Ford Mach-E to pick up ransom money and return the victim. Until, of course, the cars rat out the perpetrators.

And finally…

Of the first four Tesla-built cars, I’ve mentioned models 3 and Y. The other two are S and the X. In the same vein as Tesla’s built-in man-child fart noises, the models spell out S3XY.

What do you think?

^† Tech Tales (How it’s done)

Finding the sweet spot for detail

Thanks for coming by. This is a rerun of a column from 2016 with some updates. I hope it is helpful.

In search of blogging topics, I asked my friends for suggestions. This paraphrased question caught my eye right away:

How much detail should a writer use when describing the setting, what the characters look like, and what the characters are doing?

The amount of detail a writer should use is of course a personal matter. Some authors love expounding on setting and appearance, giving every detail so that a person could--if they had to--draw an exact replica of a room or a picture that would make a sketch artist proud. Other authors take a minimalist approach, preferring to leave setting to the readers' imagination. Readers' taste also varies, with some wanting to know every detail of each place and character's appearance, others not wanting their time wasted on that detail.
 
Given that readers' tastes do vary across the spectrum, an author obviously can't please everyone. I typically suggest something in the middle of the spectrum (though my personal taste is toward the minimalist side). You want to set the scene but you don't want to bore the reader or hold up the action.

When it comes to what characters look like, I suggest telling the reader one or two telling details, something to make the character stand out in the reader's mind. Does the character have a large mole on his cheek? Does she walk with a limp? Does she have extremely big hair? I wouldn't limit myself to thinking a character's description only applies to what he or she looks like--you might have guessed that from the question about the limp. Saying the woman who came to visit smelled like she worked in a kennel or her voice rumbled like she'd been smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for decades will hopefully be more memorable than simply saying she had shoulder-length brown hair and blue eyes.

Now this is memorable.

I suggest getting this type of detail in early, before the reader decides for herself what the character looks like. But don't force the detail in right when we meet the character if it doesn't work there.

If there's something important about the character's appearance or description, make sure you get it in early too. You wouldn't want your bank robber to be described as someone who sometimes slurs her words, and not show the reader until the end of the book that this character sometimes slurs.

Of course sometimes you need to give a little more detail in order to create a smoke screen. If something about a character's appearance is an important clue (or red herring), try to weave that detail into the narrative, hiding it among other details so it doesn't appear important. For instance, if it's important that Jane has dark green eyes, don't make that the only thing you say about Jane because then that detail will stand out. Instead tell the reader that Jane has ratty brown hair that looks like it hasn't been washed for a week. Her hair is so nasty you can hardly see her dark green eyes or the scar on her forehead she got from a bar fight. The reader will hopefully focus on the scar and Jane's nasty hair, with the eye color fading into the recess of her brain.

These same techniques can be used for setting. You want to create your world, but you don't need to spell out every detail to do it. Are you creating a charming town? Tell me Main Street has an old-fashioned ice cream shop and a Mom and Pop diner that's been there for decades. Let me know that a large green is adjacent to Main Street with some Revolutionary War statues and large shade trees people picnic under in the summertime. That's more than enough for me get the quaint picture you're trying to set. I don't need the name of every store, of every statue, of every street. But if it's an important clue that a certain statue was defaced, don't have that be the only damage done. Bury that clue in a report of the damage supposedly all done by the vandal.

As to detail of what characters are doing, I also advocate for minimalism. If you have two characters driving and discussing the case, I don't need to know each time the driver changes gear or flips on the turn signal. If you tell me that Bob is driving, I can picture what he's doing, though an occasional mention that Bob changed lanes could work as a tag. In contrast, you definitely want to show things that are unusual--things that are important to the plot. If Bob is distracted and keeps looking at his phone or the radio or keeps checking out the rear-view mirror because he thinks they're being followed, I want to know.

There are some actions you don't need to show at all. If your character is beginning a new day, I don't need to see her brushing her teeth unless her toothpaste is poisoned or someone is going to strangle her while she's working on her incisors. I don't even need to know she brushed her teeth. Just show her arriving at her office, finding it in disarray from the burglars who struck overnight. And if your

When brushing teeth, less is more.

character is going to a staircase, intending to go up, and she thinks a bit, and then she's at the top of the stairs, that's just fine. The reader can infer that she just walked up those steps. You don't need to show every step as it's taken unless you're trying to show that she's wobbly or that a stair is creaking or if someone is going to push her over the banister. (Such fun!)

Of course, again, everyone's mileage may vary about the amount of detail preferred. I'd love to know what you think.

Wanderings

    On the day this blog posts, my traveling companion and I will be trekking on what will likely be our last mountain hike of the season. We're seasonal hikers, and the weather will soon shut us down. We'll be far from the internet. I apologize in advance for my failure to reply to any comments.

    We love hiking, particularly in the mountains. Without getting too woo-woo about it all, walking up and down the San Juans or the Sierra Nevadas provides a great way to reset. The Rockies require you to pay attention and to notice things. But they also offer flat meadows and lake trails when your mind can drift. I've blogged previously about how the Alpine Tunnel Trail in Colorado offered the seed for a story that Alfred Hitchcock subsequently published. My story in Murder, Neat also originated on a mountain hike. The trail didn't make it into that story, but the cold beer I was thinking about at the time did.

    A recent visit to nature prompted a few writing guidelines.

1.      1. Persistence is a key. 

We encountered this little tree while walking up Engineer Mountain earlier this year. Looking at it, I wondered how many pinecones fell upon this rock before a seedling found enough dirt to grab hold and take root. The same tree that drops the seeds shields the rock from water and sunlight. The overhanging pine is at once mother and foe to survival. It seems a harsh environment in which to thrive. Yet here we found the little tree chugging along. It would take effort to live on this barren and rocky environment. Maybe a writer could find an inspirational message about sticking to the task by studying this little pine, persevering until the word count is met or the draft is finished, even if she's not feeling particularly profound that day. Or perhaps a hiker would see a flat, shaded spot to rest after chugging up the hill behind you. Whichever one you are, I hope you find value in what this little guy offers.

2.      2. Practice is essential, but clean up after yourself.

It is hard to hit a clay pigeon sailing through the air. Accurate shooting, like good writing, is a craft that needs to be practiced. In this instance, if you look in the background, a careful observer might see a line of small clay targets poised against a log. I’m deducing from the available evidence that someone was teaching their son or daughter the art of shooting here. They began with static targets before advancing their young marksman to hit them in flight.  They left their litter behind, so we knew they’d been practicing.

After I got over my disappointment at having my nature walk despoiled by a responsible/irresponsible gun owner, I considered the lesson. Continual practice is essential to growth in any discipline, including writing or skeet shooting. But writing necessarily includes self-editing. Clean up after yourself. Read your manuscript critically before hitting send. As Michael Bracken and Barb Goffman can attest, I’ve certainly left a few empty shell casings behind on the manuscripts I’ve sent them, but hopefully nothing that looks quite like this.

3.     3. Keep your eye on the weather.

Never open a book with weather, Elmore Leonard famously wrote. But that doesn't mean the elements should be ignored. When hiking, weather can easily be the character that will sneak up and put you at risk or kill you. The elements are an essential character when you’re writing about the out-of-doors. Sometimes, they sneak in on cat’s feet. Other times, the weather heralds its arrival. Smart hikers know that things change when they're outside. Prudent ones study the forecast so that they have some idea about what they might encounter. Hopefully, they will take along some gear to safeguard themselves if the weather doesn't cooperate with the planned schedule. 

Consider the elements when you're writing. They present another obstacle for the protagonist to overcome in pursuit of the goal. More broadly, the weather should remind the hiker/writer about the importance of flexibility. I'm not a big muse guy. I think of writing as a craft practiced with discipline rather than the whisperings of a beautifully voiced Calliope. But I know we've all seen a story go a different direction than the one we originally intended. When immersed in the process, a better-than-the-original idea occasionally emerges. We follow it and end up in a different place than originally planned. To continue the metaphor, with preparation and flexibility, hopefully, we don't end up in a cotton T-shirt huddled under a skinny pine seeking shelter from rain mixed with sleet. Some who wander are lost. 

4.      4. Finally, Be open for secret doors. 

Doors feature prominently in writing tips. Bernard Cornwell says he spends a lot of time putting doors in alleys. Another recommendation is to have your character open a door when a writer is stuck. When you do, something has to happen. The protagonist could go through, a discovery could be observed, or something might emerge. The action occurs at the threshold.

Sometimes, hikers find doors in the wild. You can see this dark maw in the shadows in the center. The planned trek was interrupted when this mine entrance appeared. Seeing it reinforced my thoughts about flexibility. The dramatic tension built. We could go in, or something could emerge.

I'll hasten to add that we didn't enter. We just peeked inside. Unlike fictional characters, we couldn't write our way out of trouble if things went south. An acute case of Hantavirus is not why I go to the mountains.

The lesson I learned from the discovery is that secret doors really do appear. Strange things happen to us in real life. We can tell a credible story about an incredible happening. The challenge is for the writer to sell it.

I hope to see you on the trail with the right gear for the elements, gathering experiences you can spin into stories or, perhaps, seeing the rules for writing stories displayed in the natural surroundings. 

Until next time.

 

Three Grifters, Off to Fleece the World...

(With apologies to "Moon River")

I've said more than once that South Dakota's favorite mainstream, non-sexual crime is embezzlement. From the small town bar to state government to federal grants, a lot of money disappears. Sometimes people die, although those are usually ruled suicides if the sum is large enough. So South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley ruled that EB-5's Richard Benda's death in a field - shot in the stomach with a shotgun - was a suicide.  And Gear Up!s Scott Westerhuis killed his family first, then set his house on fire, and then turned the gun on himself. (There was also a safe that apparently developed legs, trotted off like a pig, and has never been found...) I've written about these before.  (Benda and Westerhuis)

But over the last month, we've had three big cases of embezzlement that each involved someone in State Government who was somehow put in charge of monitoring their own finances. That's a pretty neat trick to pull off, and I'm surprised that more people haven't thought of it...

Embezzler #1:

Sixty-eight-year-old Lonna Carroll is charged with two felony counts of aggravated grand theft for embezzling $1.8 million from the South Dakota Department of Social Services over the last 13 years of her employment. Specifically, from foster care funds.

“The defendant was the employee making the request for assistance for a particular child. Once the request was made, she had also reached the position of being that supervisory approval,” Jackley said. “So she was the requesting person and the supervisory approval.”

Once the money was approved, Carroll intercepted the check, placed the funds in a bank then transferred the money to her own account in a different bank.

And that's how she eventually, after her retirement, was caught. "DSS converted to a different record-keeping system. A subsequent report filed by the state Department of Legislative Audit documented dozens of instances where checks from DSS were deposited at American Bank & Trust in Pierre, and later that same day cash was withdrawn from the accounts." So they looked into it and... 

The rest will be told in court.  (LINK)

Embezzlement #2:

Sandra O’Day worked for the South Dakota Department of Motor Vehicles in a supervisory capacity. She is suspected of creating fake car titles and using them to secure almost $400,000 in auto loans. Jackley says she created titles for campers without motors because they are not reported to the national registry.

“Once a false title was created, that title was taken to either a bank or credit union and a loan was taken out to somebody else, with the use of that as collateral. Once the loan was secured and the money, she then went and destroyed the fraudulent title.”

The DCI investigation led to the discovery of 13 forged car titles between 2016 and 2023. Since O’Day has passed away, no charges will be filed. According to Jackley, there is no evidence that anyone else was involved. KELOLAND News asked Jackley if the state could be on the hook to repay the loans to the banks and credit unions.

Because she was in a supervisory position, Jackley says O’Day could adjust VIN numbers, which allowed her to create the titles she would eventually destroy. Because of the statute of limitations, the DCI investigation only goes back to 2016. Jackley believes O’Day may have created even more fake titles as far back as 2011. (LINK)

We will probably never know the whole truth about this one - how many titles, how much money, because O'Day died in February, 2024, and Attorney General Marty Jackley has closed the case.  

Embezzler #3:

Lynne Hunsley, who served as a revenue supervisor in the Department of Revenue, was placed on administrative leave by department leadership within the last two weeks as she faces charges that she, too, falsified vehicle titles.

Interestingly enough, Hunsley worked for O'Day, and took over her position when O'Day retired in October, 2023. (I guess she learned from the best.)  This story broke only last week, so we're waiting on a lot more information.  

Meanwhile, A Blast From the Past:

A long time ago, I wrote about a place called MyDakotaAddress in Madison, SD, which was one of those online sites where permanent RVrs could become citizens in South Dakota (and other states with no income tax) through the simple means of spending the night at a South Dakota campground and then paying a regular monthly fee.  From my blogpost back in 2012:

This is only one of multiple little store-front operations that allow a person, in exchange for a yearly / monthly fee, to establish South Dakota residency and thus avoid paying state taxes in the state in which they actually live. They provide a SD mailing address, and help people obtain your new SD drivers license, SD vehicle registration and voters card.” They collect the mail and send it on, send on absentee ballots for voting, and basically allow a lot of people to “live” in South Dakota, thereby avoiding property taxes in their home state and perhaps avoiding other things as well. Who’s to say that the name they give is their real name?

 

Now, this is all fraudulent: It’s mail fraud, voter fraud, tax fraud… But, when I investigated it and brought it to the attention of all my state officials, I was told there was nothing illegal about it, and to contact them “when a crime had been committed.”  (The Wild West Continues)

Well, a crime was committed.  BIG crime.  Car theft.  In 2018:

A ring of savvy car thieves in New York exploited a bureaucratic weakness by registering many of their ripped-off Lamborghinis and Range Rovers in South Dakota, a state that lets people register out-of-state vehicles by mail and wasn’t thoroughly checking to see if they were stolen, the FBI said.

…In all, the group stole about $3.1 million worth of vehicles, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan. The heists included the theft of five 2017 Nissan Titan pickups taken from a dealership in Tallahassee, Florida, and a Lamborghini Huracan stolen in Miami, according to court documents.

…According to the FBI, [alleged ringleader Marvin] Williams registered 43 vehicles with the South Dakota Division of Motor Vehicles using false documentation. At least 10 of those vehicles had been reported stolen, authorities said.

"I have reviewed records obtained from the SDDMV, which show that MARVIN WILLIAMS, the defendant, who resides in Connecticut, has registered approximately forty-three vehicles in South Dakota, with the SDDMV, on behalf of himself and others, and has submitted false documentation, including false titles with invalid VINs, to the SDDMV to do so. In contrast to other states, prior to this investigation the SDDMV conducted fewer or no checks to confirm authenticity of VINs and lawful ownership in connection with registration of vehicles" [FBI Special Agent Kevin M. Gonyo, Complaint, USA v. Marvin Williams et al., U.S. Southern District Court of New York, 2018.11.06, p. 6].  (LINK)

Now I can't help but look at Sandra O'Day's career in forged car titles and wonder... was she involved?  Did she copy-cat?  Will we ever find out?  

And also, will anyone in our Legislature consider making it illegal for someone to both purchase and approve their own purchases?  One would hope so:  However, in Davison County, they're talking about merging the Auditor's and Treasurer's Offices into one.  Great idea! Save money!  

But Chief Deputy Auditor for Davison County James Matthews is concerned about the removal of checks and balances that would come if roles combine. “In our current status quo system, we have an elected treasurer and an elected auditor and our offices take each other’s work at the end of the month and are able to balance all the accounts to check each thing to the penny,” Matthews said. “With one office, you eliminate that checking of balance of both independent offices, working together to ensure that all the finances are accounted for and to prevent fraud.” (LINK)

Bingo.  

South Dakota, where we talk like Mayberry and act like Goodfellas...