Monthly Archives: January 2014

Wheels of Industry

Sometimes it goes downhill fast!

10 Comments

Last Tuesday was the day I stayed home because the roads iced up. Naturally, being all dedicated and everything, I had my phone by my side. So about 1400, it rings and and I’m not happy to see that it’s the tech who takes care of two of my stations deep in Cajun Country in south Louisiana. If it’s a disaster, I’m in trouble because they’ve closed the interstate and most secondary roads are impassable.

Him:  I suppose you’re working from home today?”

Me:  You got that right.  Roads’re messed up.  Please tell me you don’t have a disaster.

Him: Sort of.  We keep tripping the breaker on the UPS. (Naming the station that just got a new inverter two years ago.  A GOOD one.)

Me:  How often?

Him:  Couple of times right quick.  Then it wouldn’t reset.  Then it reset.  Then it went all weekend.  Yesterday it was doin’ it again.

Me:  You need me out there TODAY?!?

Him:  No.  Roads’ll still be messed up tomorrow.

Me:  I’ll be out there Thursday morning, around 0800.  I’ll leave straight from the house.

Later he called back that there was to be a meeting at the station on Thursday morning, so I could come later.  I told him I’d be out there at 0800.  Sitting through the meeting wouldn’t hurt.

True to my word, I was at the station before 0800, having braved still icy roads.  The meeting took place.  At 1000, I headed over to the control room to look at the problem.  The technician said he’d follow after he took care of a call of nature.

I walked into the control room.  Noticed a couple of electric floor heaters plugged in.  The building has a self-contained HVAC unit, but sometimes those things won’t keep up with the abnormally low temperatures.

I opened the door to the room where the UPS is located.  It was working, humming its butt off, loaded to the max and then some.  No wonder it was tripping.  Since I personally installed and commissioned the thing, I knew its normal load was an amp.  It’s rated for a thousand watts.  At 120 volts, that’s 8.3 amps.  Right now it’s pulling ten.  Yeah, no wonder it’s tripping.  So the question now is ‘Where’s the load coming from?”

Remember those electric heaters?  1200 watts.  Ten amps.  Hmmm.  I wonder…  I turned the nearest heater off.  The meter dropped to almost zero, in other words, where it SHOULD be.  Heater back on?  Load’s back.  And in the equipment room, there’s a receptacle that’s fed by the UPS , remains of some long-gone equipment.  With the heater plugged into it.

About the time that I am having seriously deranged-sounding chuckles, the tech walks in.  I pointed out the problem, laughed, told him that at least his heater would have ridden through a power failure.  He changed it to another receptacle and promised to label the one from the UPS.  I shook his hand and hauled off, headed back to the office.

At 1500 I’m getting ready to leave, having given sufficient effort for the day.  Wrong.  Phone rings.  The boss.

Boss:  Did I catch you at a bad time?  Can you talk? (Boss is very safety-minded.  If I was driving, he wants me to pull off the road to talk)

Me:  Sure I can talk!  I’m sitting here at my desk.  What’s up? (I feel like the loser in the horror movie that’s going down into the dark basement)

Boss:  The pipelines up north have lost two air compressors in a week, two separate stations.  They’re identical units and it looks like the failed the same way.  It may be electrical.  I want you and the mechanical engineer to go up there and meet them in the morning to do a Root Cause Failure Analysis. (The nearest of the two stations is a mere four hour drive away.)

Me:  You got it, boss.  Lemme make a hotel reservation.

I made the reservation, walked over to the next hall, met my partner for the trip, then the two of us met with the assistant boss, looked at some pictures of the failed air compressor.  Didn’t look like an electrical problem to me, but what the heck, I’m up for yet another adventure.

I got into the hotel room at 2000 hours.  At 0600 I was up, and at 0630, on the road.  At 0730 I was at the station.  My compatriot was already there.  With the station guys leading the way, we went to the air compressor building.  No doubt about it, there’d been a fire.  And no doubt about it, it wasn’t of electrical origin, that is, unless you point out that if it hadn’t been running on electricity, it probably wouldn’t have caught fire.

After carefully examining forensic evidence and traveling a hour to another station to look at the same model compressor to see one that hadn’t burnt to ashes, we came up with “Destroyed due to a fire of indeterminate origin, but not electrical in nature.” Somebody else can complete that investigation.  I left at 1500.  Got home at 1900.

And I’m tired.

History

Today in History – January 31

3 Comments

1747 – The first venereal diseases clinic opens at London Lock Hospital. “I caught it from a toilet seat…”

1865 – American Civil War: Confederate General Robert E. Lee becomes general-in-chief.

1915 – World War I: Germany is the first to make large-scale use of poison gas in warfare in the Battle of Bolimów against Russia.

1929 – The Soviet Union exiles Leon Trotsky. Today he’d get a department chair at any of several universities.

1930 – 3M begins marketing Scotch Tape.

1953 – A North Sea flood causes over 1,800 deaths in the Netherlands. FEMA slow to respond. Bush widely blamed.

1958 – Explorer program: Explorer 1 – The first successful launch of an American satellite into orbit. Also first documented use of transistors in space.

1961 – Project Mercury: Mercury-Redstone 2 – Ham the Chimp travels into outer space.

1995 – President Bill Clinton authorizes a $20 billion loan to Mexico to stabilize its economy. Yeah, they’re plenty stable. Now, so are we…

2010 – Dances with Smurfs Avatar became the first film to gross over $2 billion worldwide.

2011 – As global warming tightens its grip, a winter storm hit North America for the second time in the same month, causing $1.8 billion in damages across the United States and Canada and killing 24 people.

History

Today in History – January 30

1800 – US population: 5,308,483; Black population 1,002,037 (18.9%)

1933 – Adolf Hitler is sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. He’s charismatic, and a great speaker…

1945 – The Wilhelm Gustloff, overfilled with German refugees, sinks in the Baltic Sea after being torpedoed by a Soviet submarine, leading to the deadliest maritime disaster in known history, killing roughly 9,000 people.

1945 – World War II: Raid at Cabanatuan: 126 American Rangers and Filipino resistance liberate 500 prisoners from the Cabanatuan POW camp.

1966 – Global warming grips the South as -27 degrees F (-33 C) is recorded in New Market, Alabama and -19 degrees F (-28 C), in Corinth, Mississippi, both state records.

1968 – Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive begins when Viet Cong forces launch a series of surprise attacks in South Vietnam. US and South Vietnamese forces beat back the VC and NVA, reducing then to an unviable field force in the days to come, but are in turn whipped by the American media, who paint the battle as an American loss, and the “Peace” movement in the US, who WANTED Communism in Vietnam.

History

Today in History – January 29

3 Comments

1834 – US President Andrew Jackson orders first use of federal soldiers to suppress a labor dispute. Now President Obama uses labor to suppress EVERYBODY.

1845 – “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe is published in the New York Evening Mirror. It’s his first published work.

1886 – Karl Benz patents the first successful gasoline-driven automobile. First polar bear gets stranded on an ice floe.

1916 – World War I: Paris is first bombed by German zeppelins. War Zeppelins! I was born out of my time!

1944 – USS Missouri, the last battleship commissioned by the US Navy is launched. Still an impressive bit of technology 60-odd 70 years later…

1985 – Final recording session of We Are The World, by the supergroup USA for Africa, providing a way for media superstars living in 20,000 square foot mansions to show us how much they care about starving children in Africa.

2002 – In his State of the Union Address, United States President George W. Bush describes “regimes that sponsor terror” as an Axis of Evil, in which he includes Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Now it’s Obama, Reid and Pelosi.

Weather

Working From Home

18 Comments

Yes, I know you folks up north are giggling about our ‘winter storms’ down here, but I woke up at 0600, got dressed and walked out to get the paper. My car is covered with a thin layer of ice. It’s thirty degrees now and this is the high for the day. Radar shows a band of precipitation moving in from the northwest, expected to remain freezing, so we’ll get sleet, snow, or perhaps both.

Between me and work is 140-foot bridge over the Calcasieu River ship channel. That thing’s a hoot on a rainy day, much less with a bit of ice or snow, so I’m going to take the advice being issued by our emergency preparedness folks and stay home today.

I can drive in this stuff. Forays into winter weather in Germany and Korea and a couple of years in Kentucky have familiarized me with the techniques. I’ve had the worst possible demonstrations on the hazards of black ice on roadways by the expedient method of trying to control and M-60A1 tank going downhill on a frozen roadway. Fifty-four tons and tracks? Slides very well. and nothing you can do with those tracks will change the direction, so just hang on for the ride.

That said, I have more than passing comfort in MY skill. It’s those ofther 20,000 drivers that I worry about, many of whom will see my careful choice of speed and path as reason to zoom past me only to carom off bridges and rails ahead of me.

So I’m staying home, checking my email, making a pot of rice and gravy, and enjoying my little bit of winter in Southwest Louisiana. Go ahead and giggle.

History

Today in History – January 28

2 Comments

1521 – The Diet of Worms begins, lasting until May 25, providing history students with chuckles ever since.

1871 – Franco-Prussian War: Siege of Paris ends in French defeat and an armistice. Yawwwwnnnnnn!

1915 – An act of the U.S. Congress creates the United States Coast Guard from Life Saving and Revenue Cutter services. Happy birthday, Coasties!

1915 – US President Woodrow Wilson refuses to prohibit immigration of illiterates. Today ACORN and the dimmocrat “community organizers” make sure they VOTE and the NEA and Department of Education makes sure they STAY that way.

1981 – Ronald Reagan lifts remaining domestic petroleum price and allocation controls in the United States helping to end the 1979 energy crisis and begin the 1980s oil glut.

1985 – Supergroup USA for Africa (United Support of Artists for Africa) records the hit single We Are the World, to help raise funds for Ethiopian famine relief. Africa IMMEDIATELY stops starving, Right?!?!? No, dumba**, YOU’RE NOT the world, you’re a narcissistic, deluded pri*k with an exaggerated sense of self-importance, and most thinking people understand that.

1986 – Space Shuttle program: STS-51-L mission (Space Shuttle Challenger disaster) – Space Shuttle Challenger breaks apart after liftoff killing all seven astronauts onboard. Lives lost on the pathway to the stars…

1991 – Dictator Siad Barre flees Somalia ending 22 year rule. He’s that last ruler of Somalia. It is now a lawless land ruled by survival of the fittest. Any “government” claimed is there to assuage the consciences of international busybodies.

History

Today in History – January 27

1756 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is born.

1785 – The University of Georgia is founded, the first public university in the United States. Yeah, those people in the South, are, like, sooo backward, yahknow…

1880 – Thomas Edison patents electric incandescent lamp. 2012 – Congress revokes the patent.

1888 – In Washington, D.C., the National Geographic Society is founded.

1915 – US Marines occupy Haiti. Today this is remembered as the “Golden Age”.

1924 – Lenin placed in Mausoleum in Red Square. Communism denies God and provides its own objects to worship.

1945 – World War II: The Red Army arrives at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland.

1967 – Apollo program: Apollo 1 – Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire during a test of the spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center.

1973 – Paris Peace Accords officially end the Vietnam War. Colonel William Nolde falls, becoming the conflict’s last recorded American combat casualty. “Peace” comes after North Vietnam invades and subdues South Vietnam, overrunning Saigon in April of 1975. A million Vietnamese died after we “gave peace a chance”.

1980 – Through cooperation between the U.S. and Canadian governments, six American diplomats secretly escape hostilities in Iran in the culmination of the Canadian caper. The rest will stay there in Iran until we get rid of the bumbling buffoon Jimmy Carter and get a REAL American president.

1984 – Pop singer Michael Jackson suffers second and third degree burns on his scalp during the filming of a Pepsi commercial in the Shrine Auditorium. Around the same time, comedian Richard Pryor sets himself alight while free-basing cocaine, giving rise to what one of my co-workers sensitively named “The Ignited Negro College Fund, because a mind is a terrible thing to baste.”

1996 – Colonel Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara deposes the first democratically elected president of Niger, Mahamane Ousmane, in a military coup. That’s more democracy than most of sub-Saharan Africa sees.

The Name Game

The Name Game #351

Forty-five degrees this morning as I walked out to pick up the paper under almost overcast skies. We’ll hit sixty again today. Tuesday’s high is predicted to be thirty-five. We have a term for this: winter.

In the paper I found the birth announcements.  The big hospital across the river shows forty-three new babies from between December 20 and January 20.  Twenty are born to unmarried parents and three have mommies who can’t figure out who the daddy is at all.

Let’s get into it, shall we?

Patrick & Veronda(!) N. name their son after a college, so we meet little Princeton Kade.  It’s likely that the next one will be Gonzaga.

Harry H. Jr. & Porsha(!) S. triple up on their daughter, little Harley Taleah Rene.  I guess is momma’s named after a car, a dughter named after a motorcycle isn’t a big stretch.

Cody P. & Lindsey S. either give their son a trade or name him after the second-worst president of my lifetime, so we see little Carter Joseph.

Chad & Samantha V. do a daughter as Melayna Ryan.

Miss Rosa A. does twin boys up with Kamron Karter and Karston David.  Twins.  No baby daddy.  Hillary’s ‘village’ will be raising these.  With YOUR money.

Troy-Wayne N. & Paylette(!) D. give their daughter punctuation instead of married parents.  Meet little  La’Troix Waniya Renea.  Any bets on them spelling that handle the same twice in a row?

Another apostrophe, probably the same reason, as Jacoby P. & Valencia M. do their daughter as J’Nyah Jana.

Miss Blayke L., sseing the positive effect of having a ‘y’ in her name, confers additional power to her son by liberally sprinkling them in his name, giving us little Coltyn Blayke.

And that’s it for the week.

History

Today in History – January 26

1 Comment

1340 – King Edward III of England is declared King of France. Hell! By the year 2100 the doorman at Madame Gazonga’s House of Ill Repute in New Orleans will have been declared “King of France”. The Germans appear to have tired of the exercise…

1784 – Ben Franklin expresses unhappiness over eagle as America’s symbol. Ben wanted the wild turkey. Today I’d tender a suggestion that it be the blood-sucking tick.

1788 – For my Aussie friends: The British First Fleet, led by Arthur Phillip, sails into Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) to establish Sydney, the first permanent European settlement on the continent. Commemorated as Australia Day. Twenty years later, in 1808 – They have the Rum Rebellion, the only successful (albeit short-lived) armed takeover of the government in Australia. That’s a good reason for a rebellion. Actually it was about government rules on what constituted free trade, and that’s a good reason, too.

1838 – Tennessee enacts the first prohibition law in the United States. Yeah. Tennessee. Noted for whiskey. You guys just KNOW how this turns out. Nothing like enacting laws you just KNOW are going to be ignored.

1861 – American Civil War: The state of Louisiana secedes from the Union.

1863 – American Civil War: Massachusetts Governor receives permission from Secretary of War to raise a militia organization for men of African descent.

1871 – US income tax, enacted to pay for the War of Northern Aggression (Civil War) is repealed, but it’s such a nifty idea that politicians bring it back later.

1905 – The Cullinan Diamond is found at the Premier Mine near Pretoria in South Africa. It’s 3,106.75 carats, or a pound and a third.

1907 – The Short Magazine Lee-Enfield (SMLE) Mk III is officially introduced into British Military Service, and remains the oldest military rifle still in official use. It was still being made and issued in the 1980’s.

1907 – First federal corrupt election practices law passed. Dimmocrat lawyers go into overtime looking for loopholes, give up, and just make sure they try cases in front of dimmocrat judges.

1911 – Glenn H. Curtiss flies the first successful American seaplane.

1934 – German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact is signed, promising no attacks for ten years. This is called “diplomacy”. It works oh so well when you sign a treaty with a dictator…

1950 – India promulgates its constitution forming a republic and Rajendra Prasad is sworn in as its first president. Republic Day.

1980 – Israel and Egypt establish diplomatic relations. Egypt just as well do that, Israel having kicked Egyptian butt severely three times since 1948. Kinda makes up for that ’slavery’ thing…

1992 – Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) went into effect. If you are a trial lawyer, you celebrate this day.

1998 – Lewinsky scandal: On American television, U.S. President Bill Clinton says “I want to say one thing to the American people I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky” . Actually, they got the context wrong, He was telling Monica Lewinsky that he did not have sex with “that woman”, referring to Hillary Clinton.

2004 – A whale explodes in the town of Tainan, Taiwan. A build-up of gas in the decomposing sperm whale is suspected of causing the explosion.

2004 – President Hamid Karzai signs the new constitution of Afghanistan. That country smells like Taiwan’s whale…

Computers and technology

Thirty Years of Macintosh

12 Comments

And make no bones about it, Macintosh moved Apple out into the real world.

jobsnmacMichael L. Abramson / Getty Images

I bought my first Mac in 1985 – 128k RAM, two 400k 3.5 disk drives, 72 dpi Applewriter printer. Brought the boxes home, set the stuff on the table, plugged cables in, turned it on, and it worked. No editing config.sys. No installing the right card for your printer (remember serial vs. parallel?). Nothing. load the program disk, type something on the screen, hit ‘print’ and what was on the screen was on the printer.

I was heavy into hobby computing at the time. My buddies had the panoply: Commodores (64 and VIC-20), Texas Instruments TI-4, Ataris, And various versions of ‘IBM Clones’ because nobody could afford a real IBM. Mass storage of the day was either 5.25″ floppies or cassette tape. Hard drives, ten or twenty megabytes, were thousand-dollar dreams.

Operating a computer was keyboard stuff. Command line was king.

Command.com_Win8

Those of us (I was one) who knew what to do at C:\> were near the top of the computing heap. Those of us who knew our way around drivers and batch files and Hercules vs. CG vs. VGA etc. could make money. I did.

But when the Mac came out, I bought one because ALL that esoteric knowledge wasn’t needed. Wanna open a file? Move a mouse, point to a little picture, and click. It opened. If it was a word processing document, it opened in the word processor. If it was a drawing, it opened in MacPaint. If you wanted to print, you moused to a menu, pulled it down, clicked ‘Print’ and it did.

My buddies told me that I had swerved into a computing dead end. The mouse was a toy. Nobody would ever use 3.5″ disks. The menu structure and graphic interface was too limiting. None of it would ever catch on. Heh!

The Mac changed the world.