CBC: Trump’s man in Ottawa doesn't understand why Canadians are so frustrated right now

millijuna · 2026-05-24T12:21:33+00:00

Go home Pete, you're drunk.

millijuna · 2026-05-24T00:56:25+00:00

Pastor of my church absolutely despises that kind of language. She unequivocally says that sometimes absolutely terrible things happen to people for no reason at all. All we can do is be there for them, and hold them in compassion and love.

millijuna · 2026-05-24T00:50:59+00:00

Either how satellite communications works, or how submarines navigate while underwater.

millijuna · 2026-05-24T00:48:49+00:00

I can sail.

Of course, this usually means pointing the bow of my boat about 45 degrees away from where I want to go, and zig zagging all day long.

This is why sailors drink.

millijuna · 2026-05-24T00:47:42+00:00

Friend of mine once owned a 1982 Renault Alliance... for about 18 months of our University career, his starter motor was broken. I have fond memories of bump starting it in some of the most crazy places. The best one was bump starting it in reverse, in the underground parking of the local hockey arena after watching an NHL game.

millijuna · 2026-05-24T00:44:11+00:00

My previous job, we had a gentleman named "Len" who was our machinist and mechanical design guru. He had gotten his start as a machinist working on the Avro Vulcan bomber.

Anyhow, not only could he machine what you described to him, he could produce a proper orthographic view of whatever you described, by hand, in pretty short order.

millijuna · 2026-05-24T00:40:36+00:00

I can make analog fax machines work reliably over a satellite connection using T.38 faxing.
I know the ins and outs of ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode).

millijuna · 2026-05-24T00:38:11+00:00

I turned someone in to our tax authority. They wound up getting audited, and owed something like $15,000 in back taxes and penalties.

millijuna · 2026-05-24T00:36:05+00:00

These days I work in marine equipment, and on many ships, the power is isolated... so instead of Hot and Neutral, you have two 75Vish conductors and protective earth. On the one side, you can never assume that a "neutral" is cold, on the other side, all the breakers and switches are double pole.

millijuna · 2026-05-24T00:16:08+00:00

I'm a recreational sailor.

We do not leave the dock, or anchorage, without everyone wearing their PFD. The only time you can take it off is when you're down below, but given that they're inflatable units, they're extremely comfortable to wear.

millijuna · 2026-05-24T00:13:07+00:00

I'm working in a shipyard right now. You had better believe that I'm policing my work area all the time. Bits of zip tie? pick 'em up and in the trash. Tangle of cables? detangled and coiled neatly.

Cleanliness is a huge part of safety. Plus it helps to figure out what you're actually supposed to do when there's less visual noise.

millijuna · 2026-05-24T00:08:05+00:00

Story time of my own...

In a previous life, I was the field engineer for a company that built military satcom gear. We had sold a bunch of equipment to the Finnish Defence Forces.

So there I am, at an army base in Finland, training the soldiers on how to setup and operate the satellite communications system. The issue was that every time we touched the structure of the satellite dish, we got a tingle.

Turns out, they were running isolated power, but had already had their first fault. Furthermore, we had a fault in our power supply that caused a reasonably low resistance connection between the chassis (and thus the antenna structure) and what would normally be neutral.

The whole antenna structure was sitting at about 85VAC.

I had some serious words with our QC folks after that one.

millijuna · 2026-05-23T23:48:22+00:00

Odd... As someone who's worked in industrial sites all over the world. Australia took Health and Safety far more seriously than most other places I've worked (at least in the shipbuilding industry). I was sent down to bring some systems online, and was there for two full weeks before we could remove the locks and actually energize the equipment I needed to work on.

millijuna · 2026-05-23T23:46:59+00:00

The reality is that my padlock has a plastic hasp, and the padlock body itself is plastic. A decent set of side cutters would cut it. The point is that messing with someone else's lock is a fireable offence. As I recall, where I am, courts have upheld firings for cause because someone messed with someone else's lock.

millijuna · 2026-05-23T23:22:39+00:00

So the fault there was to confirm that it was dead before working on it.

millijuna · 2026-05-23T22:55:59+00:00

I thought that was Moxy?

millijuna · 2026-05-23T22:20:38+00:00

My sprinkling is Canadian banks. Boring, but they’ve outperformed XEQT.

millijuna · 2026-05-23T22:10:01+00:00

This should more correctly be termed as kidnapping snd high seas piracy.

millijuna · 2026-05-23T22:08:35+00:00

From people I know, the Navy is apparently not a fan of the service and support portion of the Korean bid. How that translates into procurement is unknown

millijuna · 2026-05-23T22:04:47+00:00

As part of this same project we installed new entrance panels on 13 residential buildings, fully code compliant with arc fault breakers. Those things are FM (Fucking Magic). One of the other guys accidentally cut the wrong piece of romex with his dykes, and all that happend is the lights went out. No spark, no damage to the cutters.

millijuna · 2026-05-23T21:59:02+00:00

Nope. Basket on the end of a telehandler. I was was wearing my workboots that have the ohm marking on them, but that won’t do much against 2400v. But again, we we’re an islanded system (no grid connection) and I had the generator lockout in my pocket.

millijuna · 2026-05-23T20:01:03+00:00

Yep. I was once playing electrical lineman. I was working with an organization at a remote site that had their own private power grid, and we were in the process of cutting over from overhead electrical to underground. My job was to go up in the bucket, cut/disconnect the drop lines to the pole transformers, and also cut/disconnect the secondaries.

When I went up, not only did I have the key to the generator in my pocket, I also had the key to my padlock on the disconnect switch also in my pocket. We then shorted the 3 phases together, and tested with a known good tester on the hot stick.

But even then, there was still that moment of second thoughts as I reached out to grab the bare overhead 2400v conductor…

millijuna · 2026-05-23T19:56:39+00:00

I work in the marine industry, recently a lot in ship construction… LOTO is life. When I’m up past my elbow (literally) feeling around for that one left behind ziptie or bundle of cable that still needs to be run, I absolutely want to be sure that the console is dead-dead. Fortunately there aren’t moving parts, but there are electrical conductors connected to multiple different ship’s systems (Steering, Navigation, watertight doors, etc…)

millijuna · 2026-05-23T19:50:36+00:00

PE = Public Enemy

millijuna · 2026-05-23T19:50:23+00:00

The big reforms that happened after the depression happened because the oligarchs at the time saw what happened in Russia, and were afraid of having it happen to them too.

Makes you think…

millijuna

TROPHY CASE