Have you ever been frustrated at a young hire in your office? “Kids these days! Schools don’t teach them anything! How can they keep making such stupid and obvious mistakes?”
Or maybe instead, you are a person new and inexperienced in your profession. Have you ever been frustrated by the impatience and lack of guidance that comes from your supposed “mentors” who seem to assume you’d magically think of everything and catch every problem? Or maybe you’ve ever gotten angry at yourself for being “so stupid” and despairing that you will never get it right, never become a master? It seems impossible and out of reach that you will ever succeed.
This post might help both sides see the situation through a new light. But to do that, I want to introduce a unit of measure, the eight-hour year. Or ehy for short. An ehy is when you’ve been doing something for roughly eight hours a day, the entire year.
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Popularity: 2% [?]
I found some great tips on designing machined metal parts. How to design parts that are cheaper and easier to produce. How to provide clear, helpful drawings and instructions to the machinist shop. How to avoid making costly mistakes.
I found it pretty interesting even though I’m not in the business myself.
CAD model and CNC machined part
Read it here: http://www.omwcorp.com/how-to-design-machined-parts.html
Read below if you want an interesting, rambling side story from my past:
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Popularity: 2% [?]
Regardless how you feel about the issue, most people would agree that the Copenhagen Climate Conference certainly didn’t resolve very much. But don’t worry – this post isn’t going to inundate you with more vague talk about climate change and energy independence – rather, it’s going to be introduce a fun, FREE, book:
Have you heard about Sustainable Energy – Without Hot Air by David JC MacKay? You can buy it or read it free online. It takes a fresh, numerical look at sustainable energy: trying to actually put numbers to today’s problems and see what ideas really add up, instead of relying on adjectives and weasel-words. For any of the hot topics flying around these days: energy independence, global warming, peak oil, etc., I’d recommend this book. It provides a bit of fact-checking reality, whether you are for or against mandating renewable power. It’s also got a sense of humour.
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Popularity: 3% [?]
This beset a few people I know:
KB977165 (aka MS10-015) is causing some people to get the blue screen of death.
A solution for some, which did not work for me: http://www.krebsonsecurity.com/2010/02/new-patches-cause-bsod-for-some-windows-xp-users/
Edit: Microsoft has withdrawn the patch for now. Should be safe to update.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Small Excel tip today: use the Excel functions VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP to allow you to use tables of data in your calculations. You can configure these commands to “look for the closest match” or to “only find an exact match” by setting the final argument in the functions to TRUE or to FALSE.
When could this help you? Any time you’d like to automate the reading of a table of information. Or any time you can put the action you want to perform into a table form. Or, any time looking in a table of values suits better than trying to use an equation or curve-fit to predict the values.
I have 100 items to enter into this cost estimation. If I have to lookup the material multiplier each time, I'll go make a mistake. Or I'll go crazy. Lets use VLOOKUP instead!
Here are some ideas to use these functions:
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Valentines Day is coming up! So lets go off topic with some dating ideas. Everyone needs these. Even once you’re married, going on a “date” every so often is good relationship maintenance.
But rather than make a list of Valentines Day date ideas, I’ll just drop a general list, so this post helps all days of the year.
Not having a plan when you call to make the date is weak. Unorganized. Lack of effort. It really makes you look lame. Almost as lame as this picture.
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This post will introduce the practice of adding fins to shell-and-tube heat exchanger tubes to increase the surface area, and discuss when to consider it and when to avoid it. This is not a post about air coolers.
Image of finned tubes: Heft Engineers Website
Review: When fluid flows through tubes in a heat exchanger, the total resistance to heat exchange is the sum of: tubeside fluid convection resistance, tube material conduction resistance, shellside fluid convection resistance. Often there is fouling, which will add tubeside and/or shellside fouling conduction resistance. The shell-side fluid resistance is governed by the equation:
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It’s a new year, and maybe time for new jobs! Or at least performance reviews. Knowing your “fair salary,” or the “going market rate” that is paid for your position, can be very helpful. It’s also great to know when you’re a student graduating into your first real job.
Salary Negotiations by Mike "Dakinewavamon" Kline CC by 2.0
It’s a tricky subject, dependant on factors like your profession, location, your specific experiences, how much the interviewer likes your jacket, broad economic and demographic trends, the rigours and demands of the position you are applying to, and frankly–luck.
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Let’s have a quick discussion about engineering ethics: what it is, why it’s important, and a database of ethical case rulings. I think this post might help you if you’re ever in an ethical conflict.
In many places around the world, the title of a professional engineer is closely regulated by professional engineering bodies. Much as you cannot practice medicine without a license, or cannot be a lawyer without passing the bar exam, you cannot do some key engineering activities without a license…or at least close supervision by someone with a license. To get your license, the rules vary from place to place. I know that, annoyingly, all the states of the U.S. and provinces of Canada are different. But normally you need to prove your technical and academic skills through schooling and/or competency exams, build some engineering experience in general, get specific experience in the region you are applying, prove a grasp of legal and ethical concerns, show good character, and reach the age of adulthood.
The ethical rules in each jurisdiction are different, and probably you can get the list for free by contacting your local engineering board. But usually the rules revolve around the same priorities and advise you how you must meet them:
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Interesting little article I found: How to be a Star Engineer.
What the [Bell Laboratories] wanted to know was: what separates the star from the average performer? Is it innate or can star performance be learned? Could a program to improve productivity be designed that would help turn average performers into stars?
The article emphasizes making the most of non-technical skills, like building networks of people who know things, avoiding political problems, volunteering ideas and volunteering for tasks, improving themselves.
I showed it around at work: a few people thought it was very helpful. Others that “this is advice is all good, but pretty obvious.” One woman thought it was all just talking about “a person’s natural charisma, which you either have or you don’t.” (I disagree).
What do you think?
Popularity: 10% [?]
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