wmoser

You would think so. I was working on an oil rig and they made a big deal about ‘management by walking about.’ So the heads of each of the departments were supposed to go and check ONE job their charges were working on that day. They were supposed to write a short report about what they observed. This was too much for them so they quickly got in trouble from shore-based management for not filling out their reports. So they promptly delegated to the next-in-line management They promptly delegated it to the people doing the work so once a week besides all the other paper work I had to fill out a report about how I was observing myself working safety while management still had no clue what was happening.

There is a book, “how to ace calculus, the streetwise guide” that sounds a little gimmicky but is actually a bit entertaining to read. Looks like it can be had on thrift books or eBay for about $5. It helped me understand some of the concepts at a deeper level than math text books. The problem with math text books are they’re mostly written by mathematicians who seem to think different than the rest of us, so when they try to explain things it’s in a mathematician way.

From working on controls on ships. Measuring the current using a CT (current transformer) or Rogowski coil to measure the current is a fairly standard way to monitor if something actually turned on when you told it to. A coil is a fairly robust device (no moving parts) so fairly reliable although sometime the connections become loose or the small wires susceptible to vibrations and breaking depending on the application. If you choose to use a CT make sure to never have a live conductor in it without it being connected to a rated measurement device reading. Since it’s a transformer, as current goes to zero, voltage goes to infinity which is generally a large value before it gets to be exciting. There are also devices called wire break detectors that are wired in series (I think they’re a type of galvanic isolator) that can be used to monitor if there’s a break in the wire but some of the cheaper ones are not as robust and have had them fail. Physical movement there are a lot of limit switches. Rotary encoders and rheostats are another way to monitor rotation of an object. I’ve even seen a rheostat used as a switch in a safety critical system before when they didn’t want to risk an open circuit, so just measuring resistance above or below a certain threshold was on or off. Smart camera systems with computer vision are becoming more main stream. Industrial sensors are often 4..20mA. Below 4 mA you might have a break or noise. If your reading is above 20mA you might have a short or noise. Slightly above or below might be a calibration issue.

Your acceptable rate and mode of failure will dictate what kind and how many layers of monitoring you need.

Depending on your use case you might be able to set up a camera and computer running openCV to watch the led and see if it comes on.

As someone that works on a boat in the middle of the ocean, I welcome more accessibility. Being able to talk to my wife and kids while at work is so much better than being cut off. Also the better availability of weather information or technical information if there is a problem can literally be life saving. I also sometimes miss the days when I would go to work and literally have email every few weeks. Things were simpler then but I was young, single without any real responsibilities. Unfortunately time has moved on and even checking my bank account has become impossible without being able to receive 2FA messages. [There was a period of time where I could get enough service to load the app/web site but they insisted on a text l or email which was loading so slowly it would take more than half an hour that the 2FA was good for.] During COVID I had a coworker from Mississippi whose wife had to drive to the school to get photo copies of school work because they didn’t even have internet at their house with cell phones. Modern government and society has made internet connection mandatory to participate. Some people don’t have a choice of being somewhere remote.

I’m gonna have to go with SAP on this one. I know that it’s possible to have a customized polished front end but that costs lots and my company was cheap. I understand that an ERP is a large complicated piece of software but so many basic UI things were awful. Sometimes you hit a check mark to proceed, sometimes a clock with a check mark. The yellow button next to it goes back 1 level, sometimes the red stop does too, sometimes it backs you all the way out. There was no discoverability of commands, you had to know the secret incantation to get the data you needed which resulted in coworkers passing around their ‘favorites’ and home made recipe son how to do things that we did regularly that should have been quicker. “Ok go to transaction IP39, click the square there next to the form, a different search box will open, search for what you’re looking for. Write down all the possible part numbers on this piece of paper over there and then go to transaction SM89 and try each of them.” A real power user opened two windows. Millions of man hours wasted trying to see if there was possibly a lightbulb on the shelf in the warehouse and if there wasn’t, if anyone had ordered more yet.

It may not be sabotage necessarily. I’ve talked to MIT professors and they said one of the things they do at Sloan is emphasize gaining and holding a monopoly. Patents, trade secrets, etc. It’s the ‘moat’ that Warren Buffet and value investors look for in investments. If you do the work figuring out supports, methods, regulatory compliance, you’re not under any obligation to provide that information to anyone else. That could be construed as ‘stacking the deck’. I had a coworker that ran a firearms training company on the side and he had to let go one of his administrators because he was talking with his competition and casually telling them what sort of insurance they carried, what small business programs they had applied for, unexpected regulations they found that they had to comply with. All these things are publicly available but took a lot of time to research and money on lawyers etc. No point in helping your completion start on first or second base.

If I remember correctly, you also couldn’t moderate on posts that you had commented on so it prevented using downvoting as extra signaling that others agreed with you in an argument. Also, you got 5 moderation points sort of randomly, you didn’t have the option to always be moderating. I browse Slashdot occasionally but once I found HN, the topics and discourse interested me here more, haven’t really spent much time there in years.

It probably is one. There’s nothing particularly special about the hole in the ground. It’s what you are trying to suck out. The oil industry has lots of knowledge about making holes, no point in reinventing the wheel.

I’m a marine engineer who is currently specializing as an electronics technician on a ship. So I guess I get to have a Steady Eddie job all over the map.

I was always interested in computers but when it was time to strike out on a path after high school I thought the idea of being behind a computer screen all the time wasn’t that appealing so I focused on my other interest, ships.

I got to learn about engines, pumps, hydraulics, electricity, etc. (On a ship the engineers fix EVERYTHING) but after a few, ended up on a ship that allows me to focus on the electronics/ computer side and spend most my day looking at a computer.

I program as a hobby (easy to take traveling) still and read and take as many online classes as I can. I helped a coworker develop a system for his side-gig to control some LEDs with some raspberry-pi’s and a web app using Flask.

I still really don’t know what I want to be I guess, but I enjoy the level discourse here and the community’s ability to find interesting stories.

They also have a two part course on Coursera I think. It helped clarify some things that I didn’t quite understand in the book and help keeper me on pace. For full disclosure, I’ve only done part one so far.

ABC++ [1] is a cute book that my wife, fourth/fifth grade teacher even takes to her school for ‘hour of code’ each year to show that there are different programming languages.

The baby loves science [2] series is great.

When my daughter was younger I tried reading Lauren Ipsum to her but she didn’t sit still so we read something else. Some point later we were able to read through it and she was excited to hear the chapter the next night.

I only have a data point of 1, but it doesn’t matter what, just read to your kid. If you have access I’d recommend going to the library and getting a variety of books, about whatever they show interest in at the moment. I think I’ve read probably every animal book in the kids section of our library. Our daughter is in Kindergarten this year and they have a STEM class where they are doing hour of code and I’m looking forward to exploring with her as she shows interest and she’s very excited about it. Every kid is different and has different interests and none of us have an opportunity to raise enough kids to really be considered an expert, so take this for what it’s worth.

[1] https://inedo.com/abc [2] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566615/baby-loves-c... [3] https://nostarch.com/laurenipsum

I’ll repeat the see and eye doctor bit because it’s important but I’ve also found they seem worse if I’m dehydrated and drinking more water seems to make a noticeable difference.

Ok, I glanced at the article and as another engineer, yes it looks sketchy and probably isn’t safe (applying the rule from rigging of: if something doesn’t look right it probably isn’t). I felt the need to address the other issues you brought up about being impossible to calculate because it’s wood. Wood is the original composite material and has been used to safety build bridges, buildings, ships etc. For the most part your calculations won’t be as exact as with metal or other engineered material but there has been lots of research into this. The US Department of Agriculture/ US Forest Service even publish a free book about it. [1] The lumber looks like it was bought from a home center and so likely has minimum strength expectations [6-3 of afore mentioned book].

I just felt the need to dispel this rumor that is quite dangerous that I see all the time at work where people use 1/4 wire rope slings with unrated hardware as part of rigging instead of 1/2 inch Manila rope because “That rope doesn’t have any rating, it’s natural”. (It does, about 1/2 the wire rope, but needs knots or splices to attach it to thing being lifted, not the unrated hardware that comes with the wire-rope.) Like someone posting further down, I’m more immediately concerned that there is no brace to prevent racking or the use of ratchet straps as a lifting device.

[1] https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplgtr/fplgtr113/fplgtr11...

The real fun is when you have to go from Gimpo to Inchon on a short connection because your company’s travel agents don’t know.

How old is she? Lauren Ipsum from NoStarch press was a good read if you are interested in the topics. I think they also sell Python flash cards, don’t know how much experience you’d need for them to be useful.

I use compositions books. They are mostly used for strengthening my short term memory. At work I take a lot of electrical readings. Some of my coworkers are able to rattle off a bunch of readings right after taking them but I prefer to write it down as well as system state. Has saved a lot of time for everyone in y department when trouble shooting extends over a few days. For coding, sometimes I have an idea in the middle of something else do a few lines of pseudo code or sketches to help remember the idea fully later. And in my workshop take down measurements and do calculations. If I measure the width of a board and then try to figure out the half way point, I can refer back right away. Also has saved some times on gifts when I’ve made one and then my wife wants another for someone else as a gift. The other notebooks I like are the Dot journal ones, help keep everything lined up but closer to blank paper. I try to go cheap though because otherwise I stress if I’m putting the right thing in the notebook and wasting space etc.

[edit] Sorry, meant to reply to root, but my app on my phone has issues with that apparently.

Land of lisp by Conrad barski is a pretty great book too.

Since you called out working on a container ship, a lot of these have a nautical bent but that’s an area of my personal interest as well.

Looking for a ship, John McPhee, Book about a sailor looking for work and eventually catching a ship.

Born A Crime, Trevor Noah, not about another career but Apertheid South Africa, I enjoyed it and wished I would have read it before traveling through S.A. For work.

Don’t Tell mum I work on the rigs, she thinks I’m a piano player in a whorehouse, by Paul Carter, read this one awhile ago but it’s about an oil well driller. The industry has changed quite a bit since this book was written but I remember really enjoying it.

Salvage: a personal odyssey by Ian Tew. I enjoyed this book about a a salvage master out of Singapore

The ride of a lifetime by Robert Iger, book about Iger’s journey to being CEO of Walt Disney Company. A bit of insight to what the company executives are doing/ supposed to be doing?

Quench Your Own Thirst, Jim Koch, the founder of the Boston Beer company. He discusses some of the mistakes he made along the way too.

Good clean fun, Nick offerman

I don’t take it myself but our 17 year old dog takes a dog version in the morning and night and there is a noticeable difference in her stiffness and being able to navigate the stairs if she misses a dose. It was recommended by the Vet.

I took a weekend skin-on-frame canoe building class at Yestermorrow in VT [1]. Also, I’ve been working on wood carving with Mary May’s online school of wood carving. [2] It works better than you might expect because you can pause and rewind sections that you miss. I normally have my laptop on my workbench and work and then when she gets to the next step, pause and rewind slightly when I catch up.

[1] https://yestermorrow.org/ [2] https://www.marymaycarving.com/carvingschool/

My four year old daughter loves books. I have been buying her books since she was born about math and science and engineering. [1] There are a lot of good children’s books now [2] that she enjoys hearing the story and they are just on the shelf with the other books. Someday it’s all princess books others it’s animal books. Recently I’ve found my How Things Work book and I’ve been reading a page or two of that in between the stories when she wants to read the whole Mickey and Friends anthology. Another great resource has been my wife got us a RaddishKids [3] subscription for Christmas and we’ve really enjoyed making the recipes and they are very kid friendly and highly recommended. We’ve found quite a few new favorite recipes that we keep going back to. I’m not an expert seeing as my Datapoints == 1, but I personally feel even an exposure to great many things helps breed interest in things. If you don’t know something exists how can you think about it? My ultimate goal is to help her become a self sufficient human not necessarily an Engineer or Scientist or Programmer. She has helped me change light switches and fix stripped screws for door hinges, she helps cook dinner when we’re not in a rush and sits on my wife’s lap when she’s using the sewing machine.

[1] Baby loves science books by Ruth Spiro [2] Books by Andrea Beaty, Ada Twist scientist etc, Grace Hopper:Queen of computer Code that I bought from Adafruit, How things work and sorry I don’t have the authors name right on hand but he has some other great books on architecture ‘built to last’ I think was one that are beautifully illustrated and fun. [3] https://www.raddishkids.com

I don't know if it's what you're looking for but there was a recent comment on another thread that mentioned ProjectWren [1] which is a PBC backed by YCombinator. While researching that came across Terrapass [2] for carbon-offset credits. While checking out the ProjectWren site discovered that apparently there are audit/verification companies that certify some of these projects [3,4] so they might act as a charity-watch type organization for climate change projects. Might have to cross reference, and there seems to always be at least some degree of trust that the money is being used as intended. I have no affiliation with any of these besides surfing the internet but I'm thinking about using ProjectWren specifically because of their affiliation with YCombinator, who again I have no personal relationship with as a company but I trust that at least the organization exists and does what they are saying and not fraudulent.

[1] https://projectwren.com/ [2] https://www.terrapass.com/ [3] https://verra.org/ [4] https://www.goldstandard.org/

I think that you pretty much hit on the gist of the post. Professor needs to practice to draw cartoons, students need to practice to draw graphs, he shouldn’t be frustrated with students inability to draw graphs because they are at the beginning of their journey. Just as a cartoonist could possibly draw Bert and Ernie without any reference material compared to an amateur who can’t even when copying from a picture. A student can’t “draw” the scatter plot as well as a professor who has worked with the data for their whole career because they may be putting marks on the paper but they don’t necessarily “see” the data/ information. Certain data is going to have a certain form to it that may only be apparent to someone who works with it regularly so if asked to draw the data, you leave out details that are obvious to an expert such as making the made up data conform to the regression line or failing to include non-negative numbers. The exercise made the professor empathize with the students about being expected to do something trivial for the expert but difficult for the beginner.

On the one hand that would assist with the immediate problem but might cause another problem down the line. Most small refrigerated appliances use hermetically sealed compressors and you’re actually supposed to wait a bit 24hrs ish before starting them to allow the oil in the system to drain back to where it belongs. So theoretically after the power came back on and you flip it back upright you should wait to turn it back on. In reality, lots of people move freezers and fridges and window a/c units and plug them back in and use them right away with no problem. But it is possible that you might severely shorten the life of your equipment too.

It really comes down to everything is a trade-off of some sort. The companies hiring us look at our safety records as part of the vetting process, no one wants their name in the news for bad reasons or dealing with the liability that comes with a worker being injured. Also, nothing slows down a job like an accident investigation.

Some of it is depending on how high up you are something can bounce pretty far, possibly outside the barricaded area. The term used is ALARP- As Low As Reasonably Practicable. The trade off is, when someone's working really high up you can make everyone else stay inside but this wouldn't really be productive so you barricade off directly under where the work is going to take place and where you could anticipate something bouncing too, then do everything to still prevent dropping something. I mentioned with the tools, everything needs to be secured, so for example if I'm removing a CCTV camera, I need to attach some form of attachment to the camera before un-bolting it. Of course it's still not possible to secure the nuts or bolts holding the equipment in place so move slowly, pay close attention to every move made. If something does get dropped, there is more paperwork to do and everyone in the company is notified. They calculate what the potential harm to someone is [1].

[1] https://www.preventdrops.com/safety-regulations/understandin...

I do electronics repair on an offshore oil rig, so not quite the same as construction. When I'm working, using a harness usually doubles to quadruples the time it takes. There is extra paperwork, you need to verify that what you are tying-off to can support the dynamic shock load of a person falling, they tell us 5000 lbfs. We have to put together a plan for if we do fall how the person going to rescue us is going to retrieve us. Also, we can't work alone because if you fall someone needs to be able to notify the rescue team. A 30 second job for one person on the ground may take 2 people an hour when the job is at heights. If you aren't working from scaffolding, you may be working from an unstable work position. There is also intolerance for dropping anything, even if the area under the work area is barricaded off, so each move and fastener removed requires much more concentration. We use special no-drop-tools that are all on lanyards that no matter what sort of organizational strategy frequently end up in a knot.

I don’t know how old your son is but for a high level and amusingly written book was How to Ace Calculus, The Streetwise Guide. I know it sounds a bit gimmicky but even after years of calculus classes I found it helpful for the higher level view. I always found from engineering school there being a stark difference between the classes taught by engineers and those taught by mathematicians. It always made more sense to me to have a concrete example of why I might use something before diving in than to have all this abstraction and be expected to abstract it to other problems.

I think they are more expensive, but I’ve had a Bosch small drill driver that I’ve used regularly for over 10 years now. Still use the two original batteries although I do have to switch them on the charger more often. At work we use Bosch battery tools too. Our chief electrician just bought his own set because as he pointed out, some of them have been in use for years and oil field roughnecks aren’t known to be kind to their tools. Whatever you buy make sure it comes with two batteries so you can use one and charge the other.

If the ship is at sea (>12 NM) it can be put directly into the ocean but when it comes close to land it needs to be mashed up and disinfected. Also there are some places called special sea areas that have different rules even if you are more than 12 NM. There are different rules for less then 3 NM and between 3NM and 12NM too.

Having one system for when the ship is out at sea and switching to something else causes even more engineering problems. Even if you're not processing the waste, the vacuum sewage system would still be used to collect the waste to discharge it.

MARPOL Laws: http://www.imo.org/en/about/conventions/listofconventions/pa...

https://www.dco.uscg.mil/Our-Organization/Assistant-Commanda...

Special Sea Areas: http://www.imo.org/en/OurWork/Environment/SpecialAreasUnderM...