Month: June 2017

Richard the Safety Guy

The Valve Store has always been a safe place to work. We of course have a Safety Committee made of salary and hourly employees, but it is ingrained in the culture and it shows. You can never be too safety conscious in a machining & manufacturing factory. And our parent organization, Emerson Corporation, which manufactures all kinds of gizmos worldwide, treats safety as a high priority as well.

Up until recently the company’s main safety coordinator was a dual job person, she was also our on-site Occupational Health Nurse. As our number of employees has grown, both the health portion and the safety portion became too big for one person.1 Enter, Richard. He is a nice enough guy and by all accounts a very intelligent individual. But, you knew there was something coming didn’t you? As sometimes really, really smart people are, he can be a little flaky.

The other day he came into our Fabrication offices and started to explain to our engineer that he had done a walk-thru and noticed that one of the anti-fatigue mats had a turned up corner that created a trip hazard and need to be replaced. Tom says, “Sure I’ll write up a purchase request right now.” “What size?” “It’s ahh,” he then starts to hold out his arms, moving them around in an approximation of a rectangle, “about that big.” Tom asks, “Which machine?” Richard replies, “Well, it was back there on the left side when I walked through and it is the 3rd or 4th or maybe 6 or 7 back.” The entrance to our offices are smack in the middle of the manufacturing area and seeing as there was no mention of which direction he was traveling when he came in, the offending mat could be anywhere on the shop floor. Tom sighs, and says, “I’ll take care of it.”

This is where I come in, because Tom comes over to the Arts & Crafts Department, tells me the above story and then says, “That guy has sure got some fantastic Safety Powers. Could you design me a logo for his super hero identity?” I ask playfully, knowing Tom, and knowing where he is going, “Nice SG for safety guy?” “No,” Tom says, “I was thinking more along the lines of SD.” “S for safety, combined with the first letter for a Richard nickname that is not-so common in usage anymore.”2 So I used the color green for safety, a nice round logo for center chest placement and a little extra flourish added to the letter SD to get across the point.

Richard might just try and rock a suit like that at Halloween, but I bet he’d want a cape!

aLL hAIL sHIFT f-3

Almost all of the work I do during the day is in AutoCAD and everything is in capital letters. So the CAPS LOCK key is my friend. It can also be my sworn enemy as you might imagine. I do work in other programs, email, Word, Excel occasionally and when I start typing invariably the first letter is a small one and the rest of the sentence is big shiny capital ones.

When in Word it is not a real problem because a couple of menu clicks and you get a dialog box with a four options to suit the issue at hand. If I forget and leave the CAPS LOCK off in AutoCAD it too has a little menu option for selecting the correct capitalization for text. When in Excel though, I have to highlight, copy, open Word, paste, key press, key press, highlight, copy, close Word, back to Excel, paste or just delete and retype. Guess which one I use?

The email thing is the most frustrating. It’s Outlook. Its Microsoft Word pretty much with the same ribbon and almost all the same text formatting options, but no sentence case swapper thing. Really? So I have to revert to the Excel procedure and depending how far I’ve gotten in the email I have even done the 20-step copy-paste dance.

It is a pain and usually I muddle through mumbling to myself. But today it got to me (steroids, ya think?). I started crawling the web looking for a macro or something that would automatically take the CAPS LOCK key off anytime I started typing into an Outlook text area. Couldn’t find anything like that or didn’t use the right search term, but I did stumble on an older page on Online Tech Tips that was designed for Word, but actually still works in Office 365 Outlook.

aLL hAIL sHIFT f-3 → press 2 keys together
ALL HAIL SHIFT F-3 → press 2 keys together
all hail shift f-3 → press 2 keys together
All Hail Shift F-3 → It’s a June miracle.

Dead Crow

On my usual route to work I pull up to a stop sign at the intersection of the 5 lanes of US-1, turn right, run most of the way through the rev range of first and second gears until it is time to signal left and to enter the turn lane for making the left onto the parking lot access road. Time to execute this takes about 6 secs. The 100 yard access road is traveled at selective speeds depending on the closeness of other incoming Valve Store employees and takes another 5 to 15 seconds.

When I take the left turn on US-1, I can get a good idea how I’ll handle this final approach. I do have to be 3/4 of the way down the access road before someone gets in it behind me, because I have to do a u-turn into the lot, stop, shift into reverse and back into that very first spot. Today there were just two vehicles headed north towards me and both were at least 1/3 of a mile back, so no worries. Wrong boy chick. Turns out the lead small pickup truck was hauling ass.

I should not have been too surprised because less than a 1/4 mile before where I spotted the traffic is a red light that catches most everyone and right past it the speed limit jumps to 55. So naturally most everyone who has to stop this one last time on the way to work, and possibly having just been sitting at the previous much longer stoplight 1500 feet before, pushes their foot to the floor and leaves it there until it is time to slow down to turn left.

So I’m only halfway down the access road when the truck hangs the left in behind me, I look back to see their new velocity and it hasn’t changed (much). By the time I transit the last half of the access road his headlights are right bright in my mirror. Now this is no big deal as I’m not militant on the backing in thing, if I don’t time have to to execute the maneuver gracefully without holding up the person behind, I just pull straight in. As the truck zips by towards the front of the lot I recognize it and I know the fellow well. I pass right by the machine he operates quite a few times a day, so I tell myself to be sure to tease him about his speed during the day. At least once.

Later in the day while walking through the shop he is standing there, so I walk over and ask if he ever looks down at his speedometer when traveling that stretch of road. He laughs and says, “Not if there no one in front of me.” “Well,” I say, “You were really moving this morning, I was kind of curious.” Then he asks, “Did you see the dead crow there on the road in?” I said, “No. How’d you? Moving that fast?” Which led me to tell him my favorite joke from Mark Turner about why you never see a dead crow on the side of the road (read it here.)

When it was time to go for my morning walk, sure enough I could see something black, fairly large, laying in the middle of the access road. I took a picture to ask him if this is what he saw. When I got right up to it I took another confirmation picture. Then when I walked back by after my walk, I showed him the pictures and told that maybe he better slow down a bit so he can really tell what he’s looking at.

God

The way I’m feeling this may or may not be your bonus post for today. There may be more, way more.

One of the times I got up in the middle of the night I wandered over to the PC, and looked over my Google News feed for distractions. After scanning the headlines and looking at all of the crap that is going on here, there and everywhere it caused me to think of God. Your God, his God, their God. There are a lot of different religions in this world with their own corresponding deity. How the heck does that work? Is there a God Boardroom where they gather and divvy up all the creatures of Earth?3

But a God Collective can’t work, because there has got to be some being making sure nobody gets out of hand with the plagues and pestilence stuff. And all the religions I know about, the one big Tennent is I’m the ONE God, don’t be worshiping anyone else. Hey, maybe that is the way this whole thing works, all the little individual Gods can’t let anyone outside the board in on the secret. Kind of like Fight Club: Both rules #1 & #2 are: You do not talk about Fight Club. But I digress.4

Why would a benevolent god let all this bad crap happen? And from there I spent the next indeterminate minutes discussing God in my head. Well, today on my lunchtime perusal of my Google News feed I came across a headline that got me to click on it: Creationist Ken Ham Blames Atheists For Ark Park Failure. You can click on the link to read the actual article if you want, I found it entertaining in that this fellow is blaming the lack of success on the 3% of America’s Atheists teaming up with America’s new Enemy of the People (mainstream media) to damage the reputation of his big ol’ boat, the Ark Encounter.

I then wandered to the bottom of the article to read the comment section because this is almost always where the fun stuff really resides. It didn’t take long either. Four or five views down the line someone takes a slight dig at atheists and claims he, a mainstream Christian, is the harmed party by being lumped in with the Ark Encounter charlatan5 And then proceeds to state emphatically that the universe we all live in “is just not possible that universes don’t exist that have a ‘God’ of some sort.” And the reply to this is, which I’m going to copy below, is the sort of answer I would like to memorize so I could spout it at the opportune time when confronted with someone making that kind of statement to me.6

i don’t rely on science to justify not believing in god, just as i don’t rely on science to justify not believing in thor or my disbelief that hitler and elvis are living on the dark side of the moon planning an invasion. Your comment seems to suggest that ‘the existence of a universe’ has one of a set of answers in a multiple choice scenario – a. god b. aliens. c. science. d. computer simulation. The correct answer may not be in that set, it may not be something you could even understand at this point – but that does not mean you get to make up an answer or run with one these when the correct answer is “i don’t know, and neither do you”. You’re running with a god of the gaps explanation. The god concept is refutable because there is no evidence to support the claim – if there was, you’d have a fact, not faith. trying to support it by claiming it is ‘the only answer “that makes sense” to you’ regarding ‘why is stuff here instead of not stuff not here?’ no more supports your version of god than it supports thor or magic beans. So, i doubt anyone is “relying on science to justify not believing in god”, if they are that isn’t a very good reason. We don’t believe in god(s) because there is no evidence to back up that claim

For the record, I’m not a believer, nor am I a disbeliever, I consider myself an agnostic.

Well, I Missed Posting a Day

So as a bonus, today you will get two and because it is the Summer Solstice (AKA the longest day of the year) I will have plenty of daylight to accomplish them.

I’m blaming it on the ‘roids. My synapses are firing all over the place, trust me, the stream of consciousness that is going on it there is deafening and somewhat alarming.

My lovely bride has to except a little of the fault for the ‘no post’ too though. When I got home from work she was already a bit hungry, so we did the evening meal an hour early. Compound this with the fact the FRS are playing ball in the mid-west, so their games are starting an hour later, I now had 2 extra hours to kill until I had something to occupy my brain enough to tamp down the cacophony.

I tried reading a book I’m partway through on the Kindle and I couldn’t concentrate on the sentences because all I could think of was poor Jeff Bezos who is just missing out on being the richest man in the world with only Bill Gates left to catch. I wanted to help, but didn’t think running down to Whole Foods and buying a gallon of milk that the money would get back to him yet.

I tried watching a Season 6 Episode of VEEP, but it had already started to lose it luster before my head got this N20 shot. I’m just watching now out of morbid curiosity to see if body man Gary ever gets to hook up with Ex-President Selina. Sort of like I keep reading the Beetle Bailey cartoons hoping for Beetle and Miss Buxley to do something besides casually date.

With still another hour to go, I thought maybe plugin some headphone to Radio Paradise and just close my eyes. Well that worked. Only too well. I fell asleep. Donna went inside to accomplish some stuff, clean up after dinner, etc. and when she came back an hour later I was snoring peacefully. Thinking I needed more rest, she suggested taking a shower and going to bed early. This sounded like a great idea. So, about the time the Red Sox came to bat in the top of the first inning in Kansas City I was pulling the covers up to my chin and exhaling slowly. Perfect.

Until about 12:23 AM this morning when my eyes snapped open. Suffice to say there is another 10,000 words I can write here to tell you all about the machinations I tried to get back to sleep and all the random, tangential thoughts that developed in my head, but you’d be exhausted reading them. And frankly I think that they exhausted me enough that I did manage to fall back sleep about 3 hours lateranyway…

25 Years Ago – Summer 1992

Miata Design Just Won’t Hold Water

– by M. Kevin Parfitt

Several times in my extensive readings concerning the origin of the design of the MX-5 Miata, I came across references to one of the goals of the design phase of Project P729 was to create a shape so that a drop of water placed on any surface would simply roll off. This would not be an engineering test for aerodynamics but a measure of how well the surfaces literally flowed together in harmony as well as function. Considering the aerodynamic shape and overall results of the design, I didn’t give this a second thought….at first.

As time went on, the notion that an automobile could be shaped so that every surface would shed water started to arouse my curiosity. Actually it was worse than that. An architectural engineer by profession, one that combines aesthetics and advanced engineering technology, I actually started to worry about this idea. After all, let’s get real, a car that sheds all water? No way!

Other engineers out there should already see this coming, the “OBSESSION SYNDROME”, that is. A statement such as the one in question cannot be left to stand without a thorough and complete scientific investigation of the highest standards. Alright, at least an experiment that could be carried out in the driveway in front of my garage using sophisticated measuring instruments. OK, OK, in front of my garage with a few crude devices starting with a garden hose and a plastic bucket.

With that resolved, the next step was to make a list of the actual items needed to conduct the experiment. Here’s what I came up with for starters:

1. A Miata. Fortunately, I happen to be the proud owner of a Special Edition BRG Miata No. 1579 which I was willing to wash and rinse for the sake of scientific discovery. ( Not to mention that I was not yet ready to let my 13 year old wash the Miata since I was still recovering from the time he washed the family sedan in frill sun with dishwasher detergent.)
2. Garden hose. No problem, my kids quit using it for a rope to the tree house last week when they discovered Mom’s clothes line works much better. Finding dry towels could be a problem however.
3. Water. Check! When we built the house, the well tested out at 65 gallons per minute. That’s enough water to wash every Mazda at Rider Mazda, the dealer in State College, Pennsylvania who sold me the “test vehicle”.
4. Towels to dry the Miata just in case the water doesn’t roll off. Check the clothes line. No, better make that the dryer.
5. Scientific Fluid Measuring Device (ie. wash bucket).
6. Carpenter’s level. To check for flat part of driveway.
7. Notebook.

For recording the measured data and results. With the necessary equipment assembled, I gave the Miata a close inspection looking for obvious locations where “ponds” of water were sure to develop. After all, you don’t really think I believed all that “shed water” stuff; did you? This task soon became much tougher than I had originally anticipated. How about just behind the crest of the hood bulge? Or, the spot in front of the gentle tail rise on the trunk lid? Maybe it would puddle on top of the front fenders where they begin to flatten out to meet the windshield assembly. These were my best possibilities? This was going to be one tough experiment. Not one to accept defeat easily, I considered leaving the window down a little as I was sure the floor pan would hold….Wait a minute, this is MY Miata!

Finally, I found it, the Achilles heel of Miata water shedding. The spot on the door between the back of the outside mirror base and the “snap” assembly for the tonneau cover. It literally screamed out to be wet down.

So elated was I with my find that I almost forgot this was a “scientific” experiment. Before claiming victory, it would be necessary to actually complete the tests. Okay, let’s get started.

To be fair, I started by giving the Miata a good wax job with Meguiar’s. In order to be totally impartial and not prejudge the results, I convinced my teenage son to wash the car for me by promising him he could ACTUALLY DRIVE THE MIATA when he turns 16 and gets his license. Right…he probably still believes in the Tooth Fairy too. At this point I made a mental note to lock up all the dishwasher detergent in the hall closet and told him to fill the bucket with plenty of cold, dear water.

I found a “perfectly level” spot on the driveway 89.2 inches long, equal to the Miata wheelbase, pulled the Miata out into the sunlight and grabbed my test equipment.

I filled the bucket with water and found a measuring cup from a shelf in the kitchen. Next, I began “stalking” the MX5 from end to end. Working quickly, I poured a few drops on all the obvious locations: the hood, the trunk, the fenders, the top of the rear bumper. They all yielded the same incredible results.

The water rolled off faster than you could say “Bob Hall”! I even tried the spot behind the mirror only to watch it drain forward and then slip away in a trickle.

Discouraged but not defeated, I resigned myself to go to “the next level of scientific inquiry”. That is, just how much water really slides off a Miata anyway? After all, a few droplets always remain even on the somewhat vertical sides of any car door. Not wanting to take any chances this time, I decided to really wet down the mean green machine and measure how much water remained (as opposed to trying to actually figure out how much drains oft) after a randomly selected time of say three minutes.

Cranking up the garden hose, I proceeded to flood the car with water. Yes, I did remember to roll up that window. The Miata was soon drenched. Determined to give the Miata the full three minutes required by the parameters of the experiment, I stared intently at my watch. After what seemed like an eternity, I glanced up at the MX5. Eureka! There were actually tons, well OK, some water droplets beading on the various surfaces.

Now the work could really begin. I started with a highly sophisticated weight measurement device, a “talking” bathroom scale given to us last Christmas by Uncle Fred. Placing several dry cotton towels on the base, I listened quietly as the scale called out…. “one pound, two ounces”. How these towels had managed to escape cleaning up the “Super Blaster” squirt gun battle held earlier in the day by my two youngest boys, I’ll never know.

Working quickly, I dried the Miata from top to bottom. As each to became too moist to efficiently soak up water, I tossed it in a “zip lock” bag to keep it from loosing moisture by evaporation. Finally the job was done. The Miata stood gleaming in the sunlight looking every bit as good as before it had been subjected to this grueling battery of tests. Unlocking the plastic packages, I took the contents over to the scale, dumped them onto the platform and listened. “One pound, six ounces”. “That’s it?” I blurted out in disbelief. Four lousy ounces of water! All that scientific effort and all I got out of it was a brilliantly clean and shining sports car along with a few ounces of water?

Well, that’s science. Tough work, but someone has to test these theories. I decided it was time for a break. Besides, my eldest son Mark was looking at me like he was going to ask to drive the Miata up and down the driveway for practice. Lowering the top, I jumped behind the wheel and told him to get in and buckle up. Within minutes, we were cruising down my favorite section of the Julian Pike. With a sly grin on his face, Mark slipped a Nelson disk in the CD player and punched up track three. “After the Rain” echoed appropriately out of the speakers as I blipped the throttle and downshifted for the next bend.

Copyright 1992, Miata Magazine. Reprinted without permission.

 

I’m Juicing

or ENT Update

I kept my Ear, Nose & Throat appointment last week. Because I was complaining of the hearing diminishing in my left ear, the first thing they wanted was a hearing test. The Audiologist takes a peek inside the left, goes, “Hmmm.” Takes look in the right and goes, “I’m going to send you back to the doctor, you’ve got some wax build-up in that needs to come out.

I go back down the hall and wait again for DR. Ent to come back. When he returns he looks and says you have no issue in the right ear? “Well, I think it is OK, but maybe that is because the left is so wacky.” He goes, “All right hold still, there is going to be a little tug.” So he puts one hand on the side of the my head to steady me, with another hand he pushes some sort of reverse spreading forceps and with his third hand he reaches in with the pliers and wiggles and wiggle and yanks. “Wow, look at that,” as he shows it to me. My first thought was, “That looks like a giant bacon bit.” Guess I won’t be eating salad for lunch today,” he retorts.

I go back down the hall and wait on the bench for the hearing test. Now, a local hospital comes out to the the valve store every year to test the hearing of everyone works in the machining areas to keep track if anyone is going deaf and evaluate what sort of protection they should be using. So I’m used to the testing process. Sit in a little room with a headphones on, press a button every time you still hear the sound. I get in the booth, I get the headphones. I don’t get a button and I don’t see one hanging anywhere. I don’t ask (would she hear me I’m in a soundproof booth?) I’m just gonna roll with it. Dummy, she’d have heard me, if they can pipe in sound, they can pipe it out, er, ever hear of a microphone Brian?

Turns out you answer yes every time you hear the tone. First one ear, up in tone and down in tone in diminishing volume. “Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes.” After a while I get bored and mix it up, “Yeah, Yesss, YEss, yeSS, Yeaah..” Then bored again and just go back the plain old yeses. There were a couple of places where I quit saying yes so frequently, so I knew there were going to be points of loss. Didn’t stop with the tones either, next up is repeating words back at my tester. First some 2-word phrases: Swimming pool – ironing board – step sister – left field. Then we toss some one worders back at each other through the wall: – ladder – drive – center – phrase – carrot.

Back down the hall to wait on the doctor again. He shows me my little chart. The right ear was pretty good until 12kHZ then dropped off, the left had a small drop at the lowest point, hovered OK, and plummeted at i12kHz. Diagnosis, probable Inflammatory Audio Nerve. The nerve runs through a bony canal from the the ear to the brain, and when it gets swoll’ up (as we say in the south) the nerve presses the bone walls and rubs on there and gets damaged. If caught in the first couple of weeks, they prescribe steroids to reduce the swelling and hopefully things return to as before.

I’m about halfway through a 10-day diminishing dose of Dex-something-or-other and I think I’m doing pretty good. the muddiness is gone and it seems like I’m hearing about like I was. The thing with the steroids is they kind of build up, the first few days on the high doses they didn’t bother me much, but today they kicked in, I was wired all day at work. And as you can tell from the length of this missive I’m still flying along.

Because of the hearing test at work and now a real doctor one I wanted to mash them up and see what the numbers were like compared to last October and now. Probably should have waited until now to try because the steroids might have helped. It took me a couple hours of monkeying with excel over the weekend to come up with the following, but I’m not too sure it is clear enough to convey just anything but colorful stalagmites.

The two tests don’t test all the same frequencies. Four color bars is where they coincide, if you see just two hangers that is only one test. The doctor’s test did the two extremes and work one tested more of the middle frequencies. Blue is right ear, red is the left. I go back on the 29th, so maybe I’ll be able to compare apples to apples then.

Try and contain your excitement.