Drive through silly mid off

From sasCommunity

"Mid off", like "Deep cover" is a fielding position on a cricket pitch, it is generally a quieter place which might allow for some reflection and contemplation were it not that it is occasionally a place of unexpected and frenetic activity. In reference to the "silly", the reader is referred to a good reference on cricketing terminology; if you don't choose to accept the linguistic ambiguity here that it refers to a place most mortals might prefer not to inhabit.

In the context of this monograph, the place has special challenges that permit the willing to be prepared and the brave to look for something that may show them to be ill-equipped for the job, or allow them to grasp the laurel that marks the achievement of something unexpected and valued.

In the game of SAS, as in the game of cricket, there are places of frenetic activity and routine performance where the majority of play occurs. In SAS, silly mid off is the place where there is less experience, less opportunity for experience and an occasional underlying disdain from the mainstream players for taking a position that seems under-challenged. However, there is an excitement to be had from dealing with a complex and unexpected issue, especially if it is so uncommon that experience is rare and the solutions ill-defined.

I was thinking on cricket as I prepared a speech recently, and was looking for a theme. The interwoven ideals of individual excellence, team loyalty, fair play, good sportsmanship and gentlemanly behaviour (and their betrayal in recent years) gave me some good ideas. I was reminded of a man in my youth who I wanted as a mentor. Professor Julius Sumner Miller taught Physics and one of his engagements was on television where he showed school children various experiments and asked "Why is it so?". After displaying some curiosity of air pressure, surface tension or the meniscus, he would ask a student to explain "Why it is so".

Just like the home TV game show contestants of today, I would have an answer immediately that the professor didn't get from his students. But then I was not in the presence of the great man, now was I faced with the terrifying red-rimmed Cyclopean eye of the television camera. Perhaps I too would have answered "I can't explain it Professor", and he would have continued "Then you don't understand it, because if you did you could explain it". That abrupt judgement opened his providing an explanation that we could all follow, but his context was a lesson as well.

It taught me three things:

1. That while knowledge was power, it's power was only realised when it was shared.

2. That sharing of knowledge might lead to finding out we didn't understand as much as we thought we did.

3. That if we could share our knowledge, we too were likely to learn more in the process. If it wasn't a mistake, then it might be a new perspective.

Despite this lesson, a collaborative encyclopaedia strikes me as a flawed concept. It collects and delivers information from mainstream knowledge, without spending enough time on the unexpected and rare. The dictionary of my namesake was innovative and an attempt to provide a compendium on use of the English language. Today however, while there is still a need for a volume on meaning and etymology of common English words, the removal of many of the common words would reduce such a reference to a manageable size to assist with the unexpected and misunderstood terms. Just as we cannot reproduce the wonders of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, and indeed it would be a waste to attempt to do so, we might however be able to shed light on the less travelled path and focus our efforts on providing knowledge in new areas of endeavour. In the process we'd create a compendium of knowledge for which there was a greater need.

This would also allow us to excise all the wasted material that proclaims its position as the "one true source" of knowledge in a given area. At its best, the assertion is impudent, at its worst the assertion is self serving, ignorant and vain. Fielding in silly mid off requires an open mind, free discussion and the acceptance that nothing is axiomatic here.

There are often many ways to achieve a correct solution in SAS, and we see this when discussion occurs over the best way to achieve some goal. One might write simple but lengthy code to get a solution. The time taken to write and debug the code once or twice may be some minutes, and the pronouncement is made to use some generic solution that surfaces the result with a single call to a macro. If the macro contains the more intricate elements of system calls such as the Windows Application Programming Interface, then one might get a rich and robust result, but it is at the expense of the user truly understanding the implications of the technique they employed. When some new technology comes along, there may be a temptation to change the macro to reflect the current rather than deprecated facilities, but we have moved further away from the area of understanding of the user and undertaken additional expense of potential misunderstanding. Insistence on any way as the "only way" is wrong. Each solution needs to be reached after understanding the expense it incurs.

I was reminded of the generality of this lesson when my ADSL router showed some problems. Eventually I identified that four small components on the circuit board were from the infamous ranks of Chinese Junk (along with poisoned toothpaste, lead paints on childrens toys and GHB on children's beads) and had dried out after a very short life span. My alternatives were three:

1. Purchase a new modem, incurring the additional costs of configuration and testing and the likelihood that this one too would be a doorstop in a couple of years.

2. Put it out of service for a couple of hours while I replaced the faulty components. While practicable, my toolkit did not extend to easy work on circuit boards designed for small fingers or mechanised techniques.

3. Refer it to a repair shop and pay substantial costs including providing an alternative while it was away for a period likely to be upward of three weeks.

Each approach has its benefits and its costs, and the costs will vary according to the user. My choice was to repair it myself, but with some decades of experience of building sensitive and critical circuitry, and a workshop equipped with sufficient tools to make this a possibility, I had both the means and the method to take this path. I could never suggest it for the new user however, since a mistake here may simply waste time before the device inevitably becomes a doorstop. Nor does it make sense for me to show someone else how to make the repair unless the person has some experience in printed circuit board work.

Often the most cost-effective and timely solution will be to purchase a new device and ensure full warranty is in place immediately to forestall the expected demise of a device that was built to a price point rather than to a performance expectation. The lesson to be had is that there are often cheaper solutions to a problem, which might include deploying fielders in positions other than silly mid off, but it is probable that at some point a ball will be played to that position and a teams unpreparedness in that area could result in a marked loss. To cover silly mid off we need to invest in training or more experienced players, and there is still no guarantee the investment will allow us to defend the pitch. The decision on investment rests on the budget we have available, the availability of skilled players and whether we think it is necessary to cover the expected losses.

As I read again what I had written, I realise I haven't offered a suggestion on what is right for anyone but myself, in certain limited circumstances. If there is to be a firm suggestion from this piece, it should be that a choice is rarely axiomatic, and to suggest otherwise is almost certainly flawed. Every decision is a compromise; a positioning between idealism and practicality for the purposes of achieving an end. A little like life itself... perhaps.

[A motorist drives a car, a golfer drives a ball off the tee, an athlete drives on to greater achievement and a batsman drives a cricket ball. Which reminds us that any language is open to interpretation. The opinions expressed herein are mine and complaining about something with which you choose to disagree will earn you a peremptory invitation to go elsewhere. Free debate, discussion of alternative viewpoints, sharing of relevant personal experience or reminding me of some valued lesson will earn you a welcome to draw your chair a little closer to the conversation.] --Deep cover 20:55, 13 November 2007 (EST)