A Giant Step
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On Monday I'll energize my new 69kV substation for the first time. It's sorta like giving birth, or as close to it as I can experience physically. The breaker has been tested, the monitoring devices have been checked, we've forced current through the system to simulate a fault and found all the programming and wiring to work correctly. So why can't I sleep? It's been two months of 12 hour days trying to keep a schedule that started out with plenty of slack built in, in anticipation of a few delays. But I didn't anticipate the boss pulling the linemen off the job for 5 weeks to build a parade float, or firing 40% of my workforce 3 months ago, or 2 unseasonable storms that washed out the road to the substation, or a framing contractor who had to rebuild one wall of the control house I designed three times to make the hole for the air conditioner the right size, or a stucco contractor who covered the exterior electrical boxes and then couldn't find them, or the concrete contractor who poured the foundation with cable trenches too wide to mount cabinets above them without them falling in, or the radio contractors who have spent a week and a half trying to make a link that has a clear line-of-sight... :sigh: It's been an adventure, to say the least. I never dreamed when I took a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering that I'd one day be called upon to design concrete foundations in sandy soils, design and procure steel support structures, design and build a framed building, level and compact a hillside to make a switchyard, cut and weld support structures to hold up heavy cabinets over a trench, fabricate mounting brackets for devices that don't arrive with them included in the box, and mix electrolyte solutions for NiCd batteries in the middle of the desert with nothing but plastic cups and bottled water to work with. Maybe I should have paid more attention in those other classes they made me take. Monday morning about 8AM Arizona time be watching for smoke over Mohave Valley; maybe Google Earth will cover it... :-D On a fun note, after I place the station in service providing power to the city of Needles, CA for about a week, I plan to restore normal service to them through another station, but this time I'm going to try it from my office, using a mouse on a laptop, via radio. We've never tried our remote switching capability before, though we've had the ability to do so since I built our last 69kV station. The best part of being an engineer is that you always have new toys to play with
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On Monday I'll energize my new 69kV substation for the first time. It's sorta like giving birth, or as close to it as I can experience physically. The breaker has been tested, the monitoring devices have been checked, we've forced current through the system to simulate a fault and found all the programming and wiring to work correctly. So why can't I sleep? It's been two months of 12 hour days trying to keep a schedule that started out with plenty of slack built in, in anticipation of a few delays. But I didn't anticipate the boss pulling the linemen off the job for 5 weeks to build a parade float, or firing 40% of my workforce 3 months ago, or 2 unseasonable storms that washed out the road to the substation, or a framing contractor who had to rebuild one wall of the control house I designed three times to make the hole for the air conditioner the right size, or a stucco contractor who covered the exterior electrical boxes and then couldn't find them, or the concrete contractor who poured the foundation with cable trenches too wide to mount cabinets above them without them falling in, or the radio contractors who have spent a week and a half trying to make a link that has a clear line-of-sight... :sigh: It's been an adventure, to say the least. I never dreamed when I took a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering that I'd one day be called upon to design concrete foundations in sandy soils, design and procure steel support structures, design and build a framed building, level and compact a hillside to make a switchyard, cut and weld support structures to hold up heavy cabinets over a trench, fabricate mounting brackets for devices that don't arrive with them included in the box, and mix electrolyte solutions for NiCd batteries in the middle of the desert with nothing but plastic cups and bottled water to work with. Maybe I should have paid more attention in those other classes they made me take. Monday morning about 8AM Arizona time be watching for smoke over Mohave Valley; maybe Google Earth will cover it... :-D On a fun note, after I place the station in service providing power to the city of Needles, CA for about a week, I plan to restore normal service to them through another station, but this time I'm going to try it from my office, using a mouse on a laptop, via radio. We've never tried our remote switching capability before, though we've had the ability to do so since I built our last 69kV station. The best part of being an engineer is that you always have new toys to play with
Congratulations :thumbsup:
Roger Wright wrote:
the boss pulling the linemen off the job for 5 weeks to build a parade float, or firing 40% of my workforce 3 months ago, or 2 unseasonable storms that washed out the road to the substation, or a framing contractor who had to rebuild one wall of the control house I designed three times to make the hole for the air conditioner the right size, or a stucco contractor who covered the exterior electrical boxes and then couldn't find them, or the concrete contractor who poured the foundation with cable trenches too wide to mount cabinets above them without them falling in, or the radio contractors who have spent a week and a half trying to make a link that has a clear line-of-sight
:omg: thats almost graussian amount of trouble
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On Monday I'll energize my new 69kV substation for the first time. It's sorta like giving birth, or as close to it as I can experience physically. The breaker has been tested, the monitoring devices have been checked, we've forced current through the system to simulate a fault and found all the programming and wiring to work correctly. So why can't I sleep? It's been two months of 12 hour days trying to keep a schedule that started out with plenty of slack built in, in anticipation of a few delays. But I didn't anticipate the boss pulling the linemen off the job for 5 weeks to build a parade float, or firing 40% of my workforce 3 months ago, or 2 unseasonable storms that washed out the road to the substation, or a framing contractor who had to rebuild one wall of the control house I designed three times to make the hole for the air conditioner the right size, or a stucco contractor who covered the exterior electrical boxes and then couldn't find them, or the concrete contractor who poured the foundation with cable trenches too wide to mount cabinets above them without them falling in, or the radio contractors who have spent a week and a half trying to make a link that has a clear line-of-sight... :sigh: It's been an adventure, to say the least. I never dreamed when I took a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering that I'd one day be called upon to design concrete foundations in sandy soils, design and procure steel support structures, design and build a framed building, level and compact a hillside to make a switchyard, cut and weld support structures to hold up heavy cabinets over a trench, fabricate mounting brackets for devices that don't arrive with them included in the box, and mix electrolyte solutions for NiCd batteries in the middle of the desert with nothing but plastic cups and bottled water to work with. Maybe I should have paid more attention in those other classes they made me take. Monday morning about 8AM Arizona time be watching for smoke over Mohave Valley; maybe Google Earth will cover it... :-D On a fun note, after I place the station in service providing power to the city of Needles, CA for about a week, I plan to restore normal service to them through another station, but this time I'm going to try it from my office, using a mouse on a laptop, via radio. We've never tried our remote switching capability before, though we've had the ability to do so since I built our last 69kV station. The best part of being an engineer is that you always have new toys to play with
You complain, but we both know you're living the engineering dream. :)
...cmk The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying. - John Carmack
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On Monday I'll energize my new 69kV substation for the first time. It's sorta like giving birth, or as close to it as I can experience physically. The breaker has been tested, the monitoring devices have been checked, we've forced current through the system to simulate a fault and found all the programming and wiring to work correctly. So why can't I sleep? It's been two months of 12 hour days trying to keep a schedule that started out with plenty of slack built in, in anticipation of a few delays. But I didn't anticipate the boss pulling the linemen off the job for 5 weeks to build a parade float, or firing 40% of my workforce 3 months ago, or 2 unseasonable storms that washed out the road to the substation, or a framing contractor who had to rebuild one wall of the control house I designed three times to make the hole for the air conditioner the right size, or a stucco contractor who covered the exterior electrical boxes and then couldn't find them, or the concrete contractor who poured the foundation with cable trenches too wide to mount cabinets above them without them falling in, or the radio contractors who have spent a week and a half trying to make a link that has a clear line-of-sight... :sigh: It's been an adventure, to say the least. I never dreamed when I took a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering that I'd one day be called upon to design concrete foundations in sandy soils, design and procure steel support structures, design and build a framed building, level and compact a hillside to make a switchyard, cut and weld support structures to hold up heavy cabinets over a trench, fabricate mounting brackets for devices that don't arrive with them included in the box, and mix electrolyte solutions for NiCd batteries in the middle of the desert with nothing but plastic cups and bottled water to work with. Maybe I should have paid more attention in those other classes they made me take. Monday morning about 8AM Arizona time be watching for smoke over Mohave Valley; maybe Google Earth will cover it... :-D On a fun note, after I place the station in service providing power to the city of Needles, CA for about a week, I plan to restore normal service to them through another station, but this time I'm going to try it from my office, using a mouse on a laptop, via radio. We've never tried our remote switching capability before, though we've had the ability to do so since I built our last 69kV station. The best part of being an engineer is that you always have new toys to play with
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On Monday I'll energize my new 69kV substation for the first time. It's sorta like giving birth, or as close to it as I can experience physically. The breaker has been tested, the monitoring devices have been checked, we've forced current through the system to simulate a fault and found all the programming and wiring to work correctly. So why can't I sleep? It's been two months of 12 hour days trying to keep a schedule that started out with plenty of slack built in, in anticipation of a few delays. But I didn't anticipate the boss pulling the linemen off the job for 5 weeks to build a parade float, or firing 40% of my workforce 3 months ago, or 2 unseasonable storms that washed out the road to the substation, or a framing contractor who had to rebuild one wall of the control house I designed three times to make the hole for the air conditioner the right size, or a stucco contractor who covered the exterior electrical boxes and then couldn't find them, or the concrete contractor who poured the foundation with cable trenches too wide to mount cabinets above them without them falling in, or the radio contractors who have spent a week and a half trying to make a link that has a clear line-of-sight... :sigh: It's been an adventure, to say the least. I never dreamed when I took a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering that I'd one day be called upon to design concrete foundations in sandy soils, design and procure steel support structures, design and build a framed building, level and compact a hillside to make a switchyard, cut and weld support structures to hold up heavy cabinets over a trench, fabricate mounting brackets for devices that don't arrive with them included in the box, and mix electrolyte solutions for NiCd batteries in the middle of the desert with nothing but plastic cups and bottled water to work with. Maybe I should have paid more attention in those other classes they made me take. Monday morning about 8AM Arizona time be watching for smoke over Mohave Valley; maybe Google Earth will cover it... :-D On a fun note, after I place the station in service providing power to the city of Needles, CA for about a week, I plan to restore normal service to them through another station, but this time I'm going to try it from my office, using a mouse on a laptop, via radio. We've never tried our remote switching capability before, though we've had the ability to do so since I built our last 69kV station. The best part of being an engineer is that you always have new toys to play with
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On Monday I'll energize my new 69kV substation for the first time. It's sorta like giving birth, or as close to it as I can experience physically. The breaker has been tested, the monitoring devices have been checked, we've forced current through the system to simulate a fault and found all the programming and wiring to work correctly. So why can't I sleep? It's been two months of 12 hour days trying to keep a schedule that started out with plenty of slack built in, in anticipation of a few delays. But I didn't anticipate the boss pulling the linemen off the job for 5 weeks to build a parade float, or firing 40% of my workforce 3 months ago, or 2 unseasonable storms that washed out the road to the substation, or a framing contractor who had to rebuild one wall of the control house I designed three times to make the hole for the air conditioner the right size, or a stucco contractor who covered the exterior electrical boxes and then couldn't find them, or the concrete contractor who poured the foundation with cable trenches too wide to mount cabinets above them without them falling in, or the radio contractors who have spent a week and a half trying to make a link that has a clear line-of-sight... :sigh: It's been an adventure, to say the least. I never dreamed when I took a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering that I'd one day be called upon to design concrete foundations in sandy soils, design and procure steel support structures, design and build a framed building, level and compact a hillside to make a switchyard, cut and weld support structures to hold up heavy cabinets over a trench, fabricate mounting brackets for devices that don't arrive with them included in the box, and mix electrolyte solutions for NiCd batteries in the middle of the desert with nothing but plastic cups and bottled water to work with. Maybe I should have paid more attention in those other classes they made me take. Monday morning about 8AM Arizona time be watching for smoke over Mohave Valley; maybe Google Earth will cover it... :-D On a fun note, after I place the station in service providing power to the city of Needles, CA for about a week, I plan to restore normal service to them through another station, but this time I'm going to try it from my office, using a mouse on a laptop, via radio. We've never tried our remote switching capability before, though we've had the ability to do so since I built our last 69kV station. The best part of being an engineer is that you always have new toys to play with
Wow, real engineering!
If the Lord God Almighty had consulted me before embarking upon the Creation, I would have recommended something simpler. -- Alfonso the Wise, 13th Century King of Castile.
This is going on my arrogant assumptions. You may have a superb reason why I'm completely wrong. -- Iain Clarke
[My articles] -
On Monday I'll energize my new 69kV substation for the first time. It's sorta like giving birth, or as close to it as I can experience physically. The breaker has been tested, the monitoring devices have been checked, we've forced current through the system to simulate a fault and found all the programming and wiring to work correctly. So why can't I sleep? It's been two months of 12 hour days trying to keep a schedule that started out with plenty of slack built in, in anticipation of a few delays. But I didn't anticipate the boss pulling the linemen off the job for 5 weeks to build a parade float, or firing 40% of my workforce 3 months ago, or 2 unseasonable storms that washed out the road to the substation, or a framing contractor who had to rebuild one wall of the control house I designed three times to make the hole for the air conditioner the right size, or a stucco contractor who covered the exterior electrical boxes and then couldn't find them, or the concrete contractor who poured the foundation with cable trenches too wide to mount cabinets above them without them falling in, or the radio contractors who have spent a week and a half trying to make a link that has a clear line-of-sight... :sigh: It's been an adventure, to say the least. I never dreamed when I took a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering that I'd one day be called upon to design concrete foundations in sandy soils, design and procure steel support structures, design and build a framed building, level and compact a hillside to make a switchyard, cut and weld support structures to hold up heavy cabinets over a trench, fabricate mounting brackets for devices that don't arrive with them included in the box, and mix electrolyte solutions for NiCd batteries in the middle of the desert with nothing but plastic cups and bottled water to work with. Maybe I should have paid more attention in those other classes they made me take. Monday morning about 8AM Arizona time be watching for smoke over Mohave Valley; maybe Google Earth will cover it... :-D On a fun note, after I place the station in service providing power to the city of Needles, CA for about a week, I plan to restore normal service to them through another station, but this time I'm going to try it from my office, using a mouse on a laptop, via radio. We've never tried our remote switching capability before, though we've had the ability to do so since I built our last 69kV station. The best part of being an engineer is that you always have new toys to play with
Keep us posted, I miss the real world. I'm creating statistical reports. And Good luck! :thumbsup:
"When did ignorance become a point of view" - Dilbert
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Congratulations :thumbsup:
Roger Wright wrote:
the boss pulling the linemen off the job for 5 weeks to build a parade float, or firing 40% of my workforce 3 months ago, or 2 unseasonable storms that washed out the road to the substation, or a framing contractor who had to rebuild one wall of the control house I designed three times to make the hole for the air conditioner the right size, or a stucco contractor who covered the exterior electrical boxes and then couldn't find them, or the concrete contractor who poured the foundation with cable trenches too wide to mount cabinets above them without them falling in, or the radio contractors who have spent a week and a half trying to make a link that has a clear line-of-sight
:omg: thats almost graussian amount of trouble
SachinBhave wrote:
thats almost graussian amount of trouble
Graussian amounts maybe, but nothing else Graussian. He would have kept us updated with at least three posts peer issue with subjects like "Why concrete contractors sucks today".
"When did ignorance become a point of view" - Dilbert
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On Monday I'll energize my new 69kV substation for the first time. It's sorta like giving birth, or as close to it as I can experience physically. The breaker has been tested, the monitoring devices have been checked, we've forced current through the system to simulate a fault and found all the programming and wiring to work correctly. So why can't I sleep? It's been two months of 12 hour days trying to keep a schedule that started out with plenty of slack built in, in anticipation of a few delays. But I didn't anticipate the boss pulling the linemen off the job for 5 weeks to build a parade float, or firing 40% of my workforce 3 months ago, or 2 unseasonable storms that washed out the road to the substation, or a framing contractor who had to rebuild one wall of the control house I designed three times to make the hole for the air conditioner the right size, or a stucco contractor who covered the exterior electrical boxes and then couldn't find them, or the concrete contractor who poured the foundation with cable trenches too wide to mount cabinets above them without them falling in, or the radio contractors who have spent a week and a half trying to make a link that has a clear line-of-sight... :sigh: It's been an adventure, to say the least. I never dreamed when I took a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering that I'd one day be called upon to design concrete foundations in sandy soils, design and procure steel support structures, design and build a framed building, level and compact a hillside to make a switchyard, cut and weld support structures to hold up heavy cabinets over a trench, fabricate mounting brackets for devices that don't arrive with them included in the box, and mix electrolyte solutions for NiCd batteries in the middle of the desert with nothing but plastic cups and bottled water to work with. Maybe I should have paid more attention in those other classes they made me take. Monday morning about 8AM Arizona time be watching for smoke over Mohave Valley; maybe Google Earth will cover it... :-D On a fun note, after I place the station in service providing power to the city of Needles, CA for about a week, I plan to restore normal service to them through another station, but this time I'm going to try it from my office, using a mouse on a laptop, via radio. We've never tried our remote switching capability before, though we've had the ability to do so since I built our last 69kV station. The best part of being an engineer is that you always have new toys to play with
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You complain, but we both know you're living the engineering dream. :)
...cmk The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying. - John Carmack
Yup. Personally, I think the reason the boss is so grumpy much of the time is that he doesn't have time come out and play in the dirt with us. :-D
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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Keep us posted, I miss the real world. I'm creating statistical reports. And Good luck! :thumbsup:
"When did ignorance become a point of view" - Dilbert
Jörgen Andersson wrote:
I'm creating statistical reports.
:omg: I feel for you, Jorgen, I really do! They keep pestering me to do much the same, reporting and planning and managing, but so far I've held them at bay by building stuff. I'm not sure what's going to happen when I run out of things to build.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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Yup. Personally, I think the reason the boss is so grumpy much of the time is that he doesn't have time come out and play in the dirt with us. :-D
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
I can't help picturing you in a hardhat making "Bpppt" noises with construction equipment in the sand. ;P "Oh noes here comes a storm" - pours a pitcher of water on the mini-site.
I need an app that will automatically deliver a new BBBBBBBBaBB (beautiful blonde bimbo brandishing bountiful bobbing bare breasts and bodacious butt) every day. John Simmons / outlaw programmer
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Jörgen Andersson wrote:
I'm creating statistical reports.
:omg: I feel for you, Jorgen, I really do! They keep pestering me to do much the same, reporting and planning and managing, but so far I've held them at bay by building stuff. I'm not sure what's going to happen when I run out of things to build.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
It's not AS bad as it sounded. I'm programming our web reporting system. But sometimes a customer wants a report that doesn't exist... And it's quite a sport to create fast SQL queries. But it's just that I sometimes really really miss hands on good honest work where you see the result. I also want to be able to say: "Look over there son, that powerstation I built"
"When did ignorance become a point of view" - Dilbert
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I can't help picturing you in a hardhat making "Bpppt" noises with construction equipment in the sand. ;P "Oh noes here comes a storm" - pours a pitcher of water on the mini-site.
I need an app that will automatically deliver a new BBBBBBBBaBB (beautiful blonde bimbo brandishing bountiful bobbing bare breasts and bodacious butt) every day. John Simmons / outlaw programmer
I actually did that as a kid. Grandpa gave me a set of Tonka construction toys - the real metal ones - with 9 different tractors and trucks. Dad finally built a fence across the yard to contain my construction projects and preserve his landscape efforts. :-D
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"