Work entertainment

[McGrandpa]

Yeah, but now you have control over heat/cool temps in there!   

[Jherrith]

Yes we do and that in and of its own self make me a happy camper

[McGrandpa]

a blower motor and control board don't cost that much.  I have repaired a bunch of HVAC units on the job and the blower motor and cycle timer are always the two  most replaced items.  Then too, plenty of idiots chop up thermostat control lines (4 conductor phone wire) doing even minor renovations.  so, resplicing that was also common.   But I only got paid $20 an hour.  Back then that was considered eye popping.  but it wasn't even scale for the day.
Those motors were 220vac, two wire, grounded.  But the supply was most often 480 v 3 phase.
 Ahhh enough of that dotage!  Bleah!   :yeow:

[McGrandpa]

Well, Merry Christmas to ye Jherrith!   

[Jherrith]

Thanks for the early holiday wishes

[Jherrith]

Well, the paralyzingly dull boring and tedious part of the semester has arrived. Administering the final exam, hands on and written.

Then the "just kill me now" part ... writing a final report card... for 17 students ... by all that resides above and below this mortal realm I loathe this task with great intensity.

[McGrandpa]

Got to be easy, really.   Just give them exactly and only what they EARNED.   Fewer people become collateral damage!

[Jherrith]

Trust me I do, what the hard part is, I have to do it in a positive manner.

Which leads me to the statement I wish I could put on it but am not allowed.

"At least he wasn't picking his nose while ignoring the class discussion"

Or in this semester at least he didn't snore while sleeping during class ...

[McGrandpa]

Armco Steel hired a maths professor to teach us our "Industrial Math" academic portion of our apprenticeships.   He was highly paid too.   And we had to keep up with all the work, averaging an 82 percentile or get kicked from the program.   I was having marital problems, bad ones.  Desperate to keep a failed marriage together I left Armco to try and save it.   It didn't work at ALL.   I hate talking about it because it makes me think of HER.  And I hate doing that.  But moving back to Houston, I was not accepted for re-employment.  And the facility shut down the end of that year.  Sad, very sad. 
NEXT!   I took my year of learning to metals reclamation, a huge scrap metals outfit.  I learned how not to be an electrician there!  LOL!   It was SO Cord City.   I learned to work on and with higher voltage gear as well as the 'normal' run of 500 V or less motor and controls.  Got my 4 year letter, at least, and I was damn proud to receive that from the company Electrical Engineer!   That last place, I do really miss the Maintenance Shop and ALL the work I did in the facility.   Yeah, even replacing our sewer lines to the 1 foot main line for the City.   I was selected to give a 30 minute course on "Non Toilet Paper Disposal".
Which ended my having to yank commodes off the floor to dig out the feminine napkins and the like.   Yeah, THAT bit was not so fun. 
I'd much rather be crafting, building projects, setting up repairs for any production  line.  Installing the new Fiber Optics!   That was cool stuff.  We had to get exact length measurements for the new orange sheath cable.  Only about 3/8" diameter.  BUT we were told to have x size coils of spare cable at each end.  No problemo!  Heh!  Then we set up and installed the media converters at every station.   Suddenly we had instant unhindered communications with all points in the entire facility.  Me and the bosses were totally pleased with ourselves for that.  Even though we knew darn well the IT Techs set the cables up before sending to us, 1,400 miles away.  it was very nice to have a plug n go,  system START actually started right.  Lovely. 
So, nowdays the multiplexers/converters are all one tiny card I hear?  Not back then.  The muxers resembled big power strips with coax ports.  Anyway, have a lovely Friday Jherrith!   Mine is going ok so far.  Got hot COFFEE!  :D

[Jherrith]

Got to say some of the customers have some truly unrealistic expectations. It can be so troublesome, newest task a commercial group has had problems updating their radios to the latest firmware on RM (radio management) a week long trip has been scheduled for all of in the shop to go and sort their problem out.

My only problem with all of this is that I am as green as the grass is long in how to use RM.

The sales rep did bring some radios in for me to get started on, so the fun has begun

One I used my regular CPS to do the firmware update that they seemed to be having trouble getting RM to do for them. A couple of issues did arise and I was able to still get through all of them.

The real problem I am seeing is trying to duplicate the same results on my RM database.

The typical sequence is to add the radios first, then read the radios into the database. Next you can add the config which would program the radio you also have the options to update firmware add features and so forth , which I have not done previously.

Oh joy

The first stumbling block I see is that to read this customers radio I need a password.

Which I do not have

Makes no difference when I update firmware as I am not changing the code plug.

However am I able to read a radio into RM without the password? Don't know, have not tried that before ...

The real task I have heard alluded to is that we are to get there RM database working so they can do their thing in the future.

Oh great, out of the three of us in the shop we have MTS (Mister Thin Skin) and green beyond even my imagination. My senior bench tech who knows even less then I do about the software. Then me the only one with a modicum of experience. Basically very little ...

Great I barely know what am I doing and fought with it in the shop for about three days to get it updated to the latest version and to get the latest firmware to get the cruise ship configurations to work.

Oh by the way the length of time delay is partly in fact to getting the other two peoples laptops to work, in addition to the staging computer I have in the staging rack. My laptop went relatively smooth once I got past the language packs being corrupted ... yep they released an update that had no English language packs in it but the firmware did have it, so talk about a "clash" basically half my battle.