(Image stolen from my blog buddy Steve over at Tools of Renewal blog.)
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Azeotropic Rectification
Living In Technical Information Overload...
I just noticed that I hadn't written anything here in nearly two days.
It's not that I'm not reading and writing these days, it's just that after reading two or three hundred pages in the past week and writing another several dozen pages of notes and calculations I guess my blogging enthusiasm is a little off.
Take today's information flow, for instance.
In the middle of proof reading mass and energy balance diagrams and developing preliminary site plans with railroad sidings and tractor trailer access I noticed we were producing a sizable waste VOC (volatile organic compound) stream and decided to take a look at what the heck was in the stuff we were writing about.
Turns out that when you heat a bunch of wood chips up the way we're planning we capture several thousand TONS per year of Acetic Acid...the same stuff in tomato sauce, orange juice, and of all things cooking vinegar like you have in your kitchen.
Problem is, our Acetic Acid is mixed with an even larger quantity of water along with some trace tars and resins and the only way to get the stuff all separated involves a process called "Azeotropic Rectification."
Besides not being sure if it's legal to "rectify an Azeotrope" in Tennessee and most other southern states, I'm also still not exactly sure what's involved in such goings on.
I guess that I'll know a lot more about how much it costs to do the "rectification" on my fluid sometime next week and in the mean time it makes my head hurt thinking about it...so I think I'll go watch TV and rest my reading glasses for a while.
Talk to y'all later...
I just noticed that I hadn't written anything here in nearly two days.
It's not that I'm not reading and writing these days, it's just that after reading two or three hundred pages in the past week and writing another several dozen pages of notes and calculations I guess my blogging enthusiasm is a little off.
Take today's information flow, for instance.
In the middle of proof reading mass and energy balance diagrams and developing preliminary site plans with railroad sidings and tractor trailer access I noticed we were producing a sizable waste VOC (volatile organic compound) stream and decided to take a look at what the heck was in the stuff we were writing about.
Turns out that when you heat a bunch of wood chips up the way we're planning we capture several thousand TONS per year of Acetic Acid...the same stuff in tomato sauce, orange juice, and of all things cooking vinegar like you have in your kitchen.
Problem is, our Acetic Acid is mixed with an even larger quantity of water along with some trace tars and resins and the only way to get the stuff all separated involves a process called "Azeotropic Rectification."
Besides not being sure if it's legal to "rectify an Azeotrope" in Tennessee and most other southern states, I'm also still not exactly sure what's involved in such goings on.
I guess that I'll know a lot more about how much it costs to do the "rectification" on my fluid sometime next week and in the mean time it makes my head hurt thinking about it...so I think I'll go watch TV and rest my reading glasses for a while.
Talk to y'all later...
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
"You Know, and We Know, and You Know That We Know..."
You Can't Spend You Way Out Of Recession...Or Borrow Your Way Out Of Debt...
These words were expressed in British Parliament...Directed at British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
I wish someone in the current House or Senate had the balls and mental aptitude to talk to our current president and his fellow "congressmen/congresswomen."
Just once...
Please?
MORE: (I found the Video on YouTube)
These words were expressed in British Parliament...Directed at British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
I wish someone in the current House or Senate had the balls and mental aptitude to talk to our current president and his fellow "congressmen/congresswomen."
Just once...
Please?
MORE: (I found the Video on YouTube)
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Biting The Hand That Feeds Them
Dumbasses Running Wild...
This whole "Excessive Executive Compensation" hysteria bullshit has my ever greying, ever balding head spinning at just slightly less than orbital rotational velocity for a couple of reasons this morning.
Let me lay my view of things out there for your consideration and in a few minutes we'll see if you agree with me that we've hired a new bunch of government morons that are leading us into dangerous territory.
In a nutshell, it seems to me that much of the population and almost all of the government "officials" have the opinion that exceptional performance should be controlled and limited by government mandate--rewarded with financial compensation and employment benefits only slightly greater than that earned by a high school dropout working at the local McDonald's or Seven 11 convenience store...
because it "ain't fair."
What the owners of the companies in question--the shareholders--think is immaterial because the American public and the assholes in Washington DC have decided that in spite of running a failing deficit spending, feckless, obtuse government they know more about business than the "businessmen/businesswomen."
You want "curbs" on executive compensation?
I have a suggestion to test the results of your program in about ten years.
How about you jump in your "hybrid vehicle" and drag your stupid, sympathetic, tree hugging, booger eating, liberal ass down to the local government health clinic after a week of passing a load of blood in your urine or feces.
Then sit there in your paper shirt with your ass hanging out on the cold stainless steel examination table and remember the outcome of your "consultation" is a direct result of events happening this year when you and your senators/representatives voted to limit executive compensation.
Smile and say hello as you bend over and let some idiot making $64,000 per year (limited by government mandate) spread your butt cheeks and peek up inside your neither regions and remember that they missed that day in class when they studied rectums and urethra's because they were out of free government medical school for the day in "sensitivity training class."
Then let's talk about the next time you go on your government mandated "Vacation."
As you walk out of the Jetway in the international terminal at your local airport, take a peek inside the cockpit and see the freak show sitting there programming the autopilot--another group of government supported beneficiaries of "racial and ethnically disadvantage socio-economic class members" that learned how to fly last month and have a government grant to study the "societal impacts of race and gender stereotypes" on the air transport system.
Yeah...that's the ticket...I want to go careening around at 44 thousand feet above mean sea level at 500 MPH with some idiot beneficiary of an official government mandated experiment in social engineering running the flaps and throttle of the aircraft.
(Hopefully Gretta Van Sustren will twist her crooked mouth for several hours describing the accident scene while "experts" pontificate on the icing conditions over Jamaica in July.)
So if the hysteria continues and the Democrats get their way we're all going to somehow benefit by your banker and your dentist and your septic tank pumper and your clerk at Target all making within ten dollars an hour of the same salary?
Funny thing, but it seems to me that if high incomes are outlawed, at some point the tax structure and tax base is going to disappear and when the government runs out of people to steal money from--who's going to pay the taxes to support the social programs?
Don't you want the airliner on your next trip flown by some guy making a shit load of money?
Do you want your doctor to be some poor slob that can barely afford gas in his car to get to the hospital each day? Further, do you want your MD to be the smartest guy in his high school graduating class or the towel boy for the football team in Community College?
And suppose you or one of your kids manages to invent something valuable or get hired to do something special for a company that's willing to pay you more money than you ever managed to THINK about earning in your life.
Do you honestly want to wake up and have the GOVERNMENT have the ability to tell you and your employer/customers that all you can make is $50 or $60 per hour?
And if you don't "win life's lottery" in the words of the politicians, and you have to settle for the status of being in the class of people defined as "working families", don't you still want to believe that one day you or your kids can do better financially if not for the government boot stomping on your earning potential?
Yes?
No?
Well then, put that in your pipe and smoke it... I have injuneering to do...
This whole "Excessive Executive Compensation" hysteria bullshit has my ever greying, ever balding head spinning at just slightly less than orbital rotational velocity for a couple of reasons this morning.
Let me lay my view of things out there for your consideration and in a few minutes we'll see if you agree with me that we've hired a new bunch of government morons that are leading us into dangerous territory.
In a nutshell, it seems to me that much of the population and almost all of the government "officials" have the opinion that exceptional performance should be controlled and limited by government mandate--rewarded with financial compensation and employment benefits only slightly greater than that earned by a high school dropout working at the local McDonald's or Seven 11 convenience store...
because it "ain't fair."
What the owners of the companies in question--the shareholders--think is immaterial because the American public and the assholes in Washington DC have decided that in spite of running a failing deficit spending, feckless, obtuse government they know more about business than the "businessmen/businesswomen."
You want "curbs" on executive compensation?
I have a suggestion to test the results of your program in about ten years.
How about you jump in your "hybrid vehicle" and drag your stupid, sympathetic, tree hugging, booger eating, liberal ass down to the local government health clinic after a week of passing a load of blood in your urine or feces.
Then sit there in your paper shirt with your ass hanging out on the cold stainless steel examination table and remember the outcome of your "consultation" is a direct result of events happening this year when you and your senators/representatives voted to limit executive compensation.
Smile and say hello as you bend over and let some idiot making $64,000 per year (limited by government mandate) spread your butt cheeks and peek up inside your neither regions and remember that they missed that day in class when they studied rectums and urethra's because they were out of free government medical school for the day in "sensitivity training class."
Then let's talk about the next time you go on your government mandated "Vacation."
As you walk out of the Jetway in the international terminal at your local airport, take a peek inside the cockpit and see the freak show sitting there programming the autopilot--another group of government supported beneficiaries of "racial and ethnically disadvantage socio-economic class members" that learned how to fly last month and have a government grant to study the "societal impacts of race and gender stereotypes" on the air transport system.
Yeah...that's the ticket...I want to go careening around at 44 thousand feet above mean sea level at 500 MPH with some idiot beneficiary of an official government mandated experiment in social engineering running the flaps and throttle of the aircraft.
(Hopefully Gretta Van Sustren will twist her crooked mouth for several hours describing the accident scene while "experts" pontificate on the icing conditions over Jamaica in July.)
So if the hysteria continues and the Democrats get their way we're all going to somehow benefit by your banker and your dentist and your septic tank pumper and your clerk at Target all making within ten dollars an hour of the same salary?
Funny thing, but it seems to me that if high incomes are outlawed, at some point the tax structure and tax base is going to disappear and when the government runs out of people to steal money from--who's going to pay the taxes to support the social programs?
Don't you want the airliner on your next trip flown by some guy making a shit load of money?
Do you want your doctor to be some poor slob that can barely afford gas in his car to get to the hospital each day? Further, do you want your MD to be the smartest guy in his high school graduating class or the towel boy for the football team in Community College?
And suppose you or one of your kids manages to invent something valuable or get hired to do something special for a company that's willing to pay you more money than you ever managed to THINK about earning in your life.
Do you honestly want to wake up and have the GOVERNMENT have the ability to tell you and your employer/customers that all you can make is $50 or $60 per hour?
And if you don't "win life's lottery" in the words of the politicians, and you have to settle for the status of being in the class of people defined as "working families", don't you still want to believe that one day you or your kids can do better financially if not for the government boot stomping on your earning potential?
Yes?
No?
Well then, put that in your pipe and smoke it... I have injuneering to do...
Monday, March 23, 2009
Back In The Saddle Again Home
Major Injuneering Effort Ensues...
I was too tired and lazy to write anything yesterday, but needless to say we made it home mid-afternoon Saturday to find every thing in order here at the Turbo Pup Compound on the Banks of the Mighty Tennessee River.
Sunday I took a break and shuffled mail and laundry and files around in my office (laundry in the basement) and generally just chilled in front of the computer catching up on what was going on in the world.
I'm busy, busy, busy...and it feels good, good, good to be working for myself again instead of having to sit through Monday morning cheer leading sessions wasting a half hour each week instead of doing productive work on a project.
I've got to design about $2,000,000 worth of equipment and get it on site in North Carolina and installed ASAP, so you'll have to excuse me if the blogging suffers a little over the next few months.
Hope everyone has at least half as much fun as I'm having thumbing my nose at the "economic downturn recession."
I was too tired and lazy to write anything yesterday, but needless to say we made it home mid-afternoon Saturday to find every thing in order here at the Turbo Pup Compound on the Banks of the Mighty Tennessee River.
Sunday I took a break and shuffled mail and laundry and files around in my office (laundry in the basement) and generally just chilled in front of the computer catching up on what was going on in the world.
I'm busy, busy, busy...and it feels good, good, good to be working for myself again instead of having to sit through Monday morning cheer leading sessions wasting a half hour each week instead of doing productive work on a project.
I've got to design about $2,000,000 worth of equipment and get it on site in North Carolina and installed ASAP, so you'll have to excuse me if the blogging suffers a little over the next few months.
Hope everyone has at least half as much fun as I'm having thumbing my nose at the "
