Shop Truths, Phrases, Tales; and Outright Lies

[Paul Jones]

Very nice indeed TM51. During my management career, I think establishing several self directed work teams was the most rewarding part of my career. Basically cross-function teams of highly skilled people and some are horizontal thinkers (big picture) and some vertical thinkers (specialists), yet they were very much in tune with each others' strengths and weaknesses, and knew how to deliver and receive constructive criticism to continuously or quantum leap improve and solve difficult problems. We had established five criteria for working together and the fifth and most important was "It had to be a fun place to work". On my LinkedIn bio there are several testimonials by former direct reports who mention the great times we had working together.

So, I could image us working together and it would be interesting and fun. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday.

Regards, Paul

P.S. - PJs, I think you would be interested in 3D seismic reflection seismology. In mathematical terms, it is an under determined problem where we have more variables than independent equations to solve uniquely for the variables. In this case the most important unknown variable is the velocity of sound in each rock layer so you guess each velocity and solve through iterative simulations where the velocities can be approximated indirectly by other methods. It is the millions of iterations that require fast computers and kind of like the movie "Ground Hog Day" where you do the same thing over and over with slight tweaks here and there until everything comes into focus in 3D. There is also a lot of signal processes since the hydrophone arrays for marine geophysical exploration are about two miles long towed behind the ship and have many GPS sensors along the 2048 channels or more hydrophone string, use a 0.5 millisecond sampling rate with the sound first penetrating a 10,000' deep ocean column plus another 30,000' of sub-ocean rock strata, with all the reflections coming back up to the hydrophone arrays taking tens of seconds of elapsed time. The sound source is an array of airguns (devices with 2000 psi compressed air carefully released at precise intervals causing a water cavitation bubble and then sound from the water slamming back together to fill the void around 30' below the surface). The initial sound signal looks more like a dampened sine wave so the signal processing tries to massage the waveform back into a single spike and of course there is background noise, ship noise and sea surface noise. It is amazing it even works but it does and it works very well after years of perfecting the techniques. The same technique can be used on land but use Vibraseis trunks with a vibration plate pushed into the ground and encodes a signal that can be detected with a geophone array. The big difference is the ocean column of water is not there but the overburden of unconsolidated soil and surface rock layers plays havoc channeling multiple reflections (kind of like tool chatter) that has to be signal processed out of the data. Luckily the computers and computer programs can do all the housekeeping as compared to teh 1930's through the early in 1950's when these corrections were done by hand with slide rules. In fact I used slides rules until 1973 in grad school when I used an HP 35 calculator shared by others in the department.

[Toolmaker51]

Just when I'd forgotten all about LinkedIn...Signed on during its infancy tracking my illustrious niece in Europe. Maybe OK for the professional crowd and administrative types - no deal for the blue collars. The dingy connections it drew here made me nuts. Especially when distasteful managers from former employer would list me as a reference!

[Frank S]

The contributors of HMT and in particular this thread are an ecliptic consortium to say the least.
I imagine a think/do tank comprised of the several on here would ultimately have to be named the Epicyclic Elliptic Think & Do Continuum. (EETaDTC) This bunch passed the "Q" continuum light years back

[Toolmaker51]

Aye Caramba, LOL... was thinking merely along the lines of 'The Forum Group'.

[Paul Jones]

Toolmaker51, I know what you mean about LinkedIn. Lately I seem to reject most of my LinkedIn invitations - I am getting more selective in my old age. However, LinkedIn is now becoming the app of choice for most professional headhunters. There are all sorts tricks of the trade to peppering in key words into your LinkedIn profile so your name comes up on the first two pages of the headhunters search criteria.

Funny about being listed as a reference and LOL to those when they want to land their next job. One thing I did learn is not burning any bridges with past employers no matter how much satisfaction it would be to give them some "advice". It seems there are far less than six degrees of separation now with all the social media available.

[PJs]

Hi All,

Thought I would just put this out here because of TM's nice statement and the follow up around the cul-de-sac. I've actually thought about this off and on again, especially since finding HMT. After I left corporate I figured I'd have some time to run off some of the things I had been wanting to bring forward, like some Alt Energy Ideas and a lot of others over the years that got stowed away. I did in a sense, that I designed and built the Hawk's (Harmonic Alchemy Workstation System). Basically it was an A/V clinical delivery system that utilized a lot of old and new tech in one system. Somewhere in the development of that, Ideas for all kinds of things were pretty much rampant and I thought about creating a CO-OP, basically a think and do tank like mentioned above. I don't have all the skills or wherewithal, but a group of like minded souls with varied skills and wherewithal could, and bring more ideas to the table. I kind of put it to the side thinking the Hawk and other stuff around it would create a foundation and some $$. Unfortunately it never unfolded because the economy crashed and my SO and I were ripped off "significantly' by a well known individual.

Like Paul I was blessed to put together and work with some excellent teams over the years. As an engineering manager I was always hands on and considered myself a liaison more than a boss...mainly because I came from the ground up. I implemented a "White Board Brain Storm" meeting were we all came together and brainstormed "unencumbered" how/who/what came down from on high or the blinkin Sales department. Our best effort once was to design, proto, with docs a product in 3 days with 4 people. Wasn't brainsurgery of a product but we did it, ready for production, and Well. Bottom line we were one of the best and most rewarding teams I had the honor of serving with...and had a gas doing it. I took them out to lunch once a month (my dime) for ~4-5 years and made the rule we couldn't talk about work, just have fun! Paul; I'd be curious what the other 4 criteria were?

Frank's EETaDTC name was perfect in so many ways but the "Q" thing made me LOL as well as think about this a bit more deeply! (Thanks). Q is one of those semi nebulous (good/Bad) things particularly in electronics, and with people it's more like valence bonds, I think...just a nice glow if it's working well...otherwise it can result in a messy situation.

Like I've said many times I've never been a Joiner for very long and Change Is. The one thing that usually gets me to join, is some defined platform (Criteria) for it's existence and some basic charter to follow, and a cordial group of soles. Something like this needs some nourishing and thought. One thing I think is great about this group is the want to learn and share which we all seem to have a hunger and passion for. That's a plus in my book and we could make up some new Tales.

Just putting it out there (as usual)...Thoughts?

Till Then,
~PJ

[Frank S]

Pj, I'm glad to hear there is a fellow devotee of alt energy. From past and sometimes present I keep several alt energy projects on the table.
OK I'm going to do what I do best and hijack this thread for a moment.
While in Kuwait I designed several wind turbine generators mostly these did not get much further than building a small scale model in my home workshop. I did find and buy 200 surplus gr 40 1"x 2"x 2" neodymium magnets that I planed to use in constructing various sized axial and radial fluxed generators out of some day.
Then after we returned to Texas and our stuff somehow never got shipped these ideas got put on hold .
As a temporary quarters we bought a 1968 GMC buss that had been converted into a motor coach in the early 90s that had toured with the Nascar circuit until sometime around 2006 when a friend of mine bought it. After we bought it from him thinking we might use it as a means to search out a parcel of property in west Texas. Things changed and we only drove it to another friend's place where we parked it and had been living in it until we found our place where we are currently trying to get things moved to.
Right off after we started living in the RV I decided that I wasn't going to tie it to the grid not wanting to establish a permanent grounded Diggs in the thing. I wanted to remain semi mobile but didn't want to have to rely on pouring nearly @ the time $4.00 a gallon diesel in the thing every week. So I bought an array or solar panels 1.2 KW worth then set up a bank of 6 used T105 Trogen and 6 new Continental GC2 batteries and a 1800 watt 3900 watt surge dimensions PSW inverter. that way instead of having to run the main generator 24/7 we only ran it for an hour or 2 every day and sometimes not even that if we happened to have days of full sun and instead of making our meals on the stove we used the induction cooker we might not run the 14 KW Kubota generator for 3 or 4 days sometimes on 100% rape seed oil diesel. So now 3 1/2 years later the bank is aging to the point that I have disconnected 4 of the batteries that have failed due to the 1000s of charge cycles sometimes as many as 3 charge discharge cycles in a single day and since we don't stay in the RV more than a few days to a week at a time now instead of replacing the aging bank we run a much smaller 6 KW Maxim diesel generator for as much as 12 hours a day. with a 3.6 hr per gallon consumption @ $2.00 A gal it is not worth the cost of new batteries at this time.
Other things I have in ALT energy is I have a Listeroid 8 HP diesel with a 6 KW generator mounted with it that I got a couple years back that had been running for the past 8 years exclusively on diesel made from used motor oil. I also got the processor and 400 gallons or oil to reprocess into diesel. the engine only turns @ 600 RPM which means it will run for nearly 4 1/2 hrs per gallon This unit will be incorporated into my backup generator system at the house we are moving into. plus I plan to double or triple the size of my solar array to use at the house after I possibly go grid tie. But for an inverter I will most likely build my own torrid 10 to 15 KW transformer based on the design of a mate down in AU or NZ. the exception will be I want to build it as a 3PH 240v which will mean I will either have to power it off of a very large bank with much larger solar and possibly some wind gen as well or get the energy from the listeroid. or other means as a back up source for either the house or the work shop
END of Hijack we can now resume our regular programming

[C-Bag]

That's cool Frank you are an alt eng guy. I was surprised to hear you say that as you seemed to be so involved with the petro boys.

I've wanted to live off the grid since the '70's. But circumstances and tech just never got together. But when my wife needed a new car and instead of always buying used and fixing them I started on a hunt. There [I]seems[I] to be so many options but the choices aren't as advanced as they should be for a guy who's been reading sci-fi since the '60's and know what's possible. Through a series of coinkydink's and rabbit worm holes I found myself watching Jay Leno's Garage on U2oob. During a interview with a 3wheel electric car maker Jay kept talking about the tricks he employed to get to work using the least amount of energy with his Chevy Volt. The guy who can drive anything, his daily driver is a freakin' Chevy Volt. It's a plug in hybrid that goes 50mi on a charge then the gas kicks in. BTW, this is my first American car.

The Volt is like a phantom car with Chevy and I could never seem to find one at a dealer to look at. When my SO found a Mercedes B-class(another phantom car!) at the local dealer we found out it's an all Tesla (Mercedes is a partner of Tesla)running gear all electric that Benz has been making for several years. I'd never heard of it. When we go to look at a used one that was on the new car showroom floor because it was a 2013 and had 3,500mi and looked brand new......we have to walk through 3new Volts on the lot! The salesman mostly poopoo's the B as we go in to see it, how it can "only" go 80mi on a charge.

We end up leasing the Volt. It did bump up our elec bill, from $80 to $160, this is because the puny 110v charger that comes with it took 12-14hrs to charge so it had to kickin during peak. But she went 1,200mi on the tank of gas from the dealer(8gal tank!) and if she had no had to do a weekly trip of 110mi round trip we would have gone who knows how far without buying gas. Her daily commute to work is like 35mi so if all we did was local we'd very seldom ever buy gas. On long trips where we start out with a full charge it gets 46-48mpg. You can barely feel when the engine kicks in. I knew I could drastically drop the elec bill by going to a 220v charge station which would charge the car in 4hrs so could do it all off peak hrs. Home Depot sells them now for $300.

This led us to a solar co that the special was an included charge station. She went for it because the tax rebate is going away in Dec. The bonus was getting our horrible time bomb of a service panel replaced for the same price in the deal. We only got like 2wks of having the 3.5kv PV+ charge station on the first bill, but it was back down to $80 and should be a min charge of $10 next mo.

While I like the idea of DIY there is the practical side of I'd rather support what I'm able to when it's worthwhile and help the economy of scale kick in. Not a hyjack, just a wander

[Paul Jones]

We will be taking the solar plunge this year. We live on 1.5 acres where 0.5 acres is flat and then the backyard remaining 1 acre slopes 40 degrees down into a box canyon. It has the perfect southern exposure and my next door neighbor who has 4 acres with 0.5 flat put an 84 panel solar installation on their upper slope. We didn't even notice it for a week until I was looking over the edge of our property and I spotted his solar array. The neighbor said the overall installation was far less expensive than a roof installation because he can use much lower efficiency solar panels (but more of these) because he had no size restrictions as compared to trying to cram as many solar panels on the roof.

The photo on the left shows the neighbor's solar array as seen from the slope on our property. My chipper is in the foreground and I had just finished removing some re-growth of vegetation that if allowed to grow large will eventually die and become tumble weeds. Great material for wildfires as you can see in the 2008 photo on the right. There were three or four homes up the far ridge line in the background that totally burned down to nothing but white ash and a brick fireplaces due to the 40 to 50 MPH sustained winds. The city lost about 140 homes and many others damaged including our house. Also for the next wildfire (just a matter of when) I am putting all the patio furniture into the pool. The falling burning embers put holes in all the seat covers and webbing.





We have a neighbor that flies drones and takes videos of our surrounding neighborhoods. I started watching some of his YouTube videos and realized that a lot of my neighbors already had solar installations on their slopes. You just can't see them in the box canyons (we are at 750 elevation above sea level but the neighbors farther up the hill in the other direction are at 1,400' and very secluded in the box canyons). I do a LOT of brush clearing all the time and will have to make sure we have good brush clearance for the solar array (I have three chain saws and a 10HP chipper that consumes 3" dia. branches like butter). We had an awful wildfire in November 2008 that burned down many of the neighbors' homes including the next door neighbor on the other side. Just about everything has been rebuilt, far more fireproof and of course twice as large as to what was there before (hence the need for solar).

I love to hear more about your alternative energy adventures. By the way, we have plenty of on-shore breezes for wind generation but not sure about the city code restrictions.

We finally installed a 14.6 kW solar panel array on our lower slope of the property on 12-20-16 and avoided installing this on the roof. The ground installation allowed the optimum position and size of the array (plus it could be expanded if required).

[Frank S]

Paul I would hope that you are making rows of Hugelkulturs out of those chips

I would steer away from a roof mounted system at all costs if possible, unless the house was specifically constructed for solar PV
now solar heating or water heating can be another story as well My main problems with roof mounted systems are three fold #1 the additional weight #2 the added possibility for fire, #3 accessibility for servicing. No matter which type of Solar energy harvesting a person is contemplating there will always be a need to service the system. Even it is nothing more than a periodical washing