Anyone else catch this, from Dick Mills' article in Westergaard?

"The good part about smoke testing is that it is by definition realistic. The bad part is that it can be too realistic. If the test fails, the consequences can be just as bad as the accident we're trying to avoid. You may recall the news reports of the failure of the 911 system in New York City in early February. They were smoke testing the backup power system and it didn't work. One man allegedly died as a result."

Wonder if he really *knows* this is what they were doing, or if he's making an "educated guess".

In my opinion, there's an awful lot of smoke testing going on of late.

Bobbi buzzbyte.com

-- Bobbi (bobbia@slic.com), February 26, 1999

Answers

More like there's a lot of smoke blowing going on of late.

-- Smoke 'em if you got 'em (accentu@te.the.positive), February 26, 1999.

The Corps' idiom is, "pounding smoke", rather than blowing it, and I'll let you guess where. . . (not smoke testing, we know about that too!)

Yes Bobbi, I read that as well. I don't know if Mills has inside info or not, but smoke testing is a desperation measure. Sort of like putting aviation gasoline in a jet engine because you don't have any jet fuel and someone is shooting at you. You might get home before the engine burns out or blows up, but then again, you might not.

-- Hardliner (searcher@internet.com), February 26, 1999.

Just for the record, in Bavaria in 1945 we determined in vivo that the standard issue Jeep engine will run quite well using liberated Calvados as fuel. Necessity is the mother of invention.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), February 26, 1999.

Most military aircraft operating manuals have a section on using Emergency Fuels. "One time, good deal" is the phrase that comes to mind with restrictions and caveats, of course, on things like high speed flight, high-G manuevers, etc. Basically just like Y2K, if it gets you through the emergency in one piece, it's ok. A good example of a time to use such measures was "when no suitable fuels are available and the flight must take place, such as evacuation circumstances."

A lot of parallels between handling Y2K and military aviation.

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), February 26, 1999.