Wide Band Oxygen Sensor EGOR

[Garfield Willis]

I hope no one takes offense at this; I do think it's germain to the
group and it's topics, albeit somewhat indirectly. Here's how I view the
situation with my most diplomatic hat on. :)


On Wed, 7 Jun 2000 14:11:29 -0400, "Bruce Plecan" <nacelp at bright.net>
wrote:

>  There are DIY WB O2s around,  I'll never understand why they aren't
>shared, but hey, that's their idea (BTW, I bought some sensors for a few
>guys to develope a DIY WB O2 and have nothing really to show for my $ other
>then receipts).
>  There are just a couple guys that have the working knowledge for something
>like this, and rarely do those talents go unpaid.  Or so it seems.

Bruce raised several different issues in his whole post, but I'll just
speak to the snippette above, if I may:

I can only offer my own particular perspective on this, especially
because this is an area of wide personal choice.

Some view automotive experimentation as purely a hobby, others view it
purely as a marketplace and business arena (it certainly qualifies as a
bone fide "industry" these days), and some few like meself have a
mixed-up perspective, where they started out perhaps as a pure hobbyist,
but were forced by circumstances into the commercial side of things. I
know Bruce and several others were here when those events I'm alluding
to took place.

What I've found personally is that in any endeavor where there's a
goodly amount of sharing of information, it works very well until you
have people taking advantage of the generosity of others. This becomes
especially hard to take if a person also makes their living with the
skills and expertise they bring to the hobby. Myself, I would NEVER
charge my friends to help them paint their house, because I'm not a
house-painter by profession, I don't make a living painting, but I would
also NEVER presume upon a buddy of mine, if they were a professional
painter, to help me paint my house gratis. Because that's how the guy
makes a living, it's different. If he's a grandly generous bloak and
INSISTS on helping gratis, well then I'm especially grateful, but I make
the *opposite* assumption if his profession is involved. If it's just
your hobby, it's just a hobby. If it also involves your professional
occupation and means of feeding yourself, then there arises an
additional issue that can't be presumed upon, if you're paying attention
to your friendships.

It doesn't mean you can't mix the two sometimes, but things sure go sour
in a hurry if people get presumptuous. That's one of the reasons I
always try to insist on paying my friends if they do something for me in
their professional capacity. Because I want to bend over backwards to
make sure they don't think I'm sucking up on them or taking advantage of
the friendship and presuming on them, and also to make sure they have
tangible proof that it's for their friendship and comradery that I
associate with them, and not because I'm looking to get their services
on the cheap.

Even works with my friendships here in the DIY groups; for example, this
last flurry of activity in trying to define what forms a P&H Injector
Interface should take, I'm very grateful for the inputs I've gotten from
people, and even tho it's just a hobby for most all the respondents, I
still try to return back to the group something of value by way of
thank-you, whenever I can think of something to offer that might be of
general use. Hence the lengthy tomes on the electrical nature of
injectors & their drivers, etc. Just don't want to be anything like a
suck-up, is the bottom line.

I always thot this attitude was something everybody got taught by their
parents during maturation. Maybe not, but I'm sure it's a fairly widely
recognized rule amongst friends.

Gar


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