I'm Your Huckleberry

Rambling Commentary On World Events


Oh...where to start this morning?

I'm sort of wild eyed and a little grumpy because I'm going to work through the weekend getting things done I couldn't or didn't manage to do last week, so...

Should I write about the hilarious antics of the Niggras Negros Blacks African Americans members of the Congressional Black Caucus up in DC getting their sorry race baiting demagogue butts into ethics hearings?

Waters and Rangel should have been tossed out on their stupid black rear ends 20 years ago but because of their color no one was willing to call them on their illegal deeds without risking being called "racist".

As the old saying goes..."give an idiot enough rope and they will eventually hang themselves with it"...

Or maybe I'll write about General Motors...aka "Government Motors" getting all the Obamamaniacs astir with the introduction of a $41,000 electric car--the "Volt"--with the interior room to accommodate four midgets and a capability of going 40 MILES before having to fire up the gasoline engine and burn only premium gasoline for the next 300 plus miles.

And then of course since it's summer and it hasn't rained in LA since February, it's big news that most of southern California has burst into flame and is chasing people out of their homes and businesses while the idiot reporters in the newspapers and on the TV act like it's never ever happened before.

Or maybe I'll predict that in the next two weeks that 2 or 3 decent sized tropical events will occur in the Caribbean/Gulf of Mexico and every single person working at ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/MSNBC and the ASSociated press will lose their minds and proclaim doom and gloom and death and destruction because of the Bush Tax Cuts causing Global Warming...and the storms will disproportionately affect minorities and women.

But then again, I'm busy and don't have time to tell you what I really think.

Y'all have a LOVELY Saturday.

Blogging For Blogging's Sake

Words Tumbling Out Onto The Keyboard...


I've got so much stuff going on around here these days I've missed my mid morning nap three of the past four days.

Today looks like it will be day five based on what I see looking at my "to-do" list.

I managed to get four more pneumatic valves out the door yesterday bringing this week's total to eight, and I have three more "master rebuilds" to do next week once the piston shafts come back from the chrome shop and are re-ground to tolerance.

And of course the new PLC panel is still snorting and banging around in the shop waiting on the final software revisions and...

you get my drift...

So I'm going to go now and finish reading the news and getting ready for another eight or ten hour day of beating my head against a computer screen.

Regards Y'all...

Ummmmmmmm...

Errrrrrrrrrr....


Sorry Ladies and Gentlemens, but I'm REAL busy.

Blog more later.

(If anyone knows about Photovoltaic Cells give me a ring.)

Eighty Eight Thousand...Eight Hundred And Eighty Eight Hits

Thanks For Reading


Click on the image for photographic evidence...

An International Dispute In My Basement?

15 Hour Days = No Blogging


Sorry for missing a day of blogging yesterday, but I have a good excuse involving "professional obligations." (and the people that know me in real life are laughing their rear ends off right now when I include "professional" in the same sentence with reference to myself.)

Any way, for some reason I went out in June and sold this touch screen PLC based sensor system which has to measure the temperature of a product on a production line moving past at a rate of as fast as 22,000 units per hour.

Yes, you heard me right ...TWENTY TWO THOUSAND PER HOUR.

Doing the math for those of you that went to FSU and UGA, that's a little over 6 times per SECOND that something comes flying past my two non-contact infrared temperature sensors. (Non contact IR Sensors are expensive...and that's all you need to know if you're not an injuneer.)

I'm using "non-contact" type sensors because obviously you can't actually touch something moving that fast to determine it's temperature because either you or it would get hurt in the process.

Got it?

Then to complicate things further, the customer's existing process is smart and can throttle it's speed downward by about 50% if things start backing up in packaging or somewhere else on the line, and this makes it hard to tell where the bad product my temperature sensors have detected is located afterward because my system is supposed to "kick" the offending product off the line before it gets mixed in with all of the other good product.

You might think that's a hard standard, but believe me it's even HARDER than you think at these speeds...particularly since you can't just guess how fast it's moving.

You have to KNOW...

Exactly.

Then, as my title suggests, I'm having trouble getting all of the sensors to get along because they're from different manufacturers.

But hey...all three are all built in Germany, and I thought that by default that they'd all speak the same language and all I needed was a good translator so that I could understand what they were saying and things would be good.

But NooooooOOOOOOO...

I'm not sure what it is...maybe the guys that designed my proximity sensors are fans of a different Rugby or Soccer team from the ones designing my IR sensors or something.

And my PLC was made here in the good old United By-God States of 'Merica (by non-union employees...I've been to the factory) and everyone knows how most Germans feel about Americans.

And with the switches and warning lights made in China and Taiwan and some of the other stuff made in Costa Rica, it almost seems like that for the past month I've had a regular United Nations Security Council sub-committee meeting going on in my shop inside a 16" x 20" x 8" steel box.

And apparently up until now, everybody gets to vote but ME.

I just spent about 22 hours over the past two days trying to "sprint to the finish line" on this project and late yesterday I think I had my final breakthrough on getting everyone to agree to work together and not pass any resolutions against the US and more specifically, anyone living here at the Turbo Pup Compound.

In the interest of diversity the Council demanded I get some woman's involvement into the process, so Pat looked at everything and was impressed and said it looked "cool".

And little Missy the Turbo Pup's a girl puppy, so I'm gonna hold her up to the front of the cabinet today and let her put a good puppy "snoogh" right in the middle of the touch screen.

Unfortunately I was unable to comply with the racial diversity part of their request because I don't know any African Americans here in Knoxtown with PLC programming skills.

I told them that the Chief plant electrician at my customer's facility is a very competent Black guy so the Chinese talked the Germans into letting me off the hook on that one.

So now, Ladies and Gentlemen, having explained where I've been for the past 48 hours, I'm going to collapse back into a coma for another two or three hours before getting back downstairs to make sure one group of parts hasn't started another war with the other groups.

Regards Y'all...

"Above Average" Hurricane Season?

Sniveling Global Warming Weenies Weep In Their Tofu...


I want to remind everyone that after eight weeks on the Hurricane calendar we've only had TWO named storms this season.

And here's the current forcast map:



Probably going to be an exciting August and September based on the law of averages, but still...

I Need An "Electronics Exorcist"

My Shop Is Haunted...


So I cooked bar-B-que ribs and fresh corn on the cob and new potatoes for dinner last night after basking on the deck like a lizard for most of the afternoon.

Smoked my last cigar and sweated on the newspaper did most of the crossword in the process, and I vaguely recall some Vodka in the form of "Seabreezes" crossing my lips once or twice...OK...maybe four or five times.

Then I collapsed into bed before dark but then by 3 AM I was half awake and puzzling over the final details of this stupid PLC programming exercise I'm going through.

I finally gave up sleeping any longer and stumbled down into the basement and by 5AM I had managed to go backwards to about where I was last Thursday.

For some reason the Laptop computer and the PLC got together and decided to barf up every time I tried to download my revised code saying there were errors in instructions I hadn't changed in over a week.

So I had to go back to Wednesday's version of the program and then reconstruct all of the code and screen edits I had done, and now at 8 AM I'm back to slightly ahead of where I started at 3 AM.

If you're not a programmer you can just think I'm sloppy or crazy, but the people out there that live working on the inner thought processes of all of the machines which we take for granted today know that many if not most are like spoiled "mentally challenged" children.

They don't know how to do anything and they spend most of their time unable to understand else just plain ignoring instructions on how to do whatever it is you're trying to get them to do.

I spend half my time ready to throw everything out in the yard and the other half celebrating some small victory which many times is only short lived.

Any way...my brain is fried for the time being...

...so I think it's time to go out while the temperature is still under 100 degrees and fire up the weed eater and wake up the neighbors early on a Sunday morning.

Regards Y'all...