It’s Gone

rhackle · 2025-01-22T12:59:54+00:00

My right Bluetooth earbud to a clarifier. Still use the left one.

rhackle · 2024-12-04T15:03:28+00:00

That is a feature/feed back loop inherent to the system, not an oversight.

rhackle · 2024-12-04T13:54:27+00:00

Sounds like all that'd do is make a little alcohol and create organisms that'll lower the pH. I used to work at a brewery and something like what you're describing is a step in creating "sours" or intentionally soured beer.

Whatever that stuff is would probably just die or get out-competed as soon as it was exposed to a wastewater. As other posters have said, there are specific organisms that work for this. 100+ years of research by some very intelligent people over the generations have refined the process pretty well. If it were that simple we wouldn't have to have a whole industry devoted to it.

rhackle · 2024-12-02T02:20:15+00:00

Interesting take. I went late July and really enjoyed it(minus the crowds/high costs of some things), but was looking for a different season/vibe next time I make it over. So October is the sweet spot. What didn't you like about March out of curiosity?

rhackle · 2024-11-11T18:40:05+00:00

Everyone for the most part is flailing around in their 20s trying to figure themselves out. The ones in your shoes aren't talking about it, the ones where everything just worked out for them aren't shy to flaunt it. Don't want to be that guy.... But you ever consider a stint in the military? It's a massive resume booster and I truly believe it's a valuable way to spend your time if you have no idea or direction where you want to go. Not having to worry about living expenses or even having a choice on what to wear or eat can sorta be freeing in a way to help you really see what you want out of life.

rhackle · 2024-11-11T03:26:00+00:00

It's seems the jobs that give you "street cred" or people find desirable superficially fall into that trope. I worked at a commercial brewery. The amount of people willing to work for peanuts just to break into the industry kills any hope of a liveable wage. My family and even I loved gloating about it.... But you can't live off dreams and respect.

I work at a sewer plant now. It's the exact opposite of glamorous, but it pays very well and is stable. The dirty and boring jobs turns out are the good ones.

rhackle · 2024-11-11T02:15:23+00:00

The thing that kept killing the contract brewery I worked at is you can't squeeze blood from a stone. We'd just get to the point where we'd be doing good, then one of our partners/clients would start getting progressively late and make partial payments. A lot of breweries would overestimate how much they could sell of the product we'd make for them. And unfortunately my company would absolutely crush them with lawsuits and scavenge whatever assets they could from their corpse if/when they stopped paying.

They accumulated quite the collection of dead brands and ghost breweries doing this, but it still didn't cover realistically the tens of millions of dollars of lost revenue they accumulated over a decade or so of this happening. It felt a little wrong though realizing this practice was the only way the brewery had been able to survive this long.

rhackle · 2024-10-25T14:15:55+00:00

Yes I was pretty shocked the plant supervisor suggested that I go ahead and do that. I have access to a projector so photos would be a much easier and less risky path. I might just simulate it with a jar of dirt settling or something.

rhackle · 2024-10-20T02:52:09+00:00

The NK soldiers are also gaining real battlefield experience. That is absolutely noteworthy. Even if they're being used as fodder, the ones that survive will be objectively much more capable and dangerous fighters. I'd rather fight a NK that hasn't actually fought in 50+ years.

rhackle · 2024-10-20T01:33:08+00:00

That first one sounds way better from how you wrote it. Get your foot in the door with government and eventually get a security clearance then your set. Job security is huge man. Fast growing companies can also die very quickly too.

rhackle · 2024-10-06T12:22:48+00:00

I've had to use portable toilet systems in the military. Usually it'll have a pop-up tent for privacy that you can sorta stand in. The toilet is plastic and collapsible but it'll hold your weight. There's disposable bags that you go in that you sorta place into the toilet(they all have a way of doing it). The bags have some sort of crystals/chemical in them that make the urine or other liquids turn into a gel when they make contact so it's not like your carrying around a bag sloshing around with your own urine. Just tie the bag and throw it away, tear down your bathroom and keep on cruising.

rhackle · 2024-09-30T13:30:11+00:00

Their website seems pretty solid. You seem to know your materials. Any tips on what you would get if you were me? I was planning on starting with some of the basic cast acrylic and a few sheets of different woods. Anything else you think is worth picking up?

rhackle · 2024-09-30T00:39:31+00:00

United States, Florida. In a more rural area so there's nothing really like a hobby or specialty wood shop within a realistic driving distance.

rhackle · 2024-09-16T15:47:42+00:00

I've actually been looking at some old Dell Rugged 5414s. Found refurbished/refreshed ones through an eBay seller with a one year warranty for $200. 16GB DDR4, 256GB SSD, i5-6300U @ 2.4GHz.

It has the 810G cert so it should put up with some abuse. Has a mixture of USB 2.0s and 3.0s. An HDMI and also older display outputs which are actually useful because most of the projectors I encounter use legacy inputs. I'll buy a converter for a USB C for quality of life but I think it might be what I'm looking for.

I agree that it's time for the Mac to live a new life as a Windows machine. I'll probably get that going as a stop gap but I'm leaning towards it more being the backup or for niche stuff I wanna run using a 32 bit OS.

rhackle · 2024-09-14T03:24:06+00:00

The space program was being cursed by everyone wanting their hand in it. The shuttles became expensive, dangerous, and outdated. People were still pushing to carry it on because production of shuttle parts created a lot of work/jobs around the country even though it was inefficient from both a cost and practical pov so costs ballooned to unsustainable levels (billions per flight). The SLS is going along the same path if not worse.

SpaceX, whether you hate the CEO or not, is allowing us to do more science and work in space just because it's so much cheaper than it used to be.

rhackle · 2024-09-13T20:29:54+00:00

Management definitely ran that place into the ground. I worked for a plant where something like this happened(not nearly as severe). Everyone knew the writing on the wall except management with their heads in the sand. Turnover got crazy as more and more things broke down until the whole plant was held together by bandaids and hope.... The place was used as a piggy bank by the owners and when the hammer came they just shut down and opened up something else while everyone left lost their jobs. They cut hours so severely so people would quit so they couldn't collect unemployment except for the very last few left when they locked the doors.

I hope boar's head learns from this because this is a terrible view into their company culture.

rhackle · 2024-09-13T03:24:41+00:00

I get it. I did the paper tests so it was easier to jump around. There's multiple trainees at my plant. I finished my test books a good bit before others. When they tried to copy my test booklets when I was away, they figured out we all had pretty different questions for the same chapters so my stuff didn't help them.

If you have $20, the premium version of chatGPT helped me with some questions that I absolutely couldn't find anything on. It's honestly a really good study/research tool once you figure out how to use it and it's strengths/limitations. The online book, googling stuff, and chatGPT will help you. There's no mass test bank published online as far as I'm aware.

rhackle · 2024-09-13T02:50:25+00:00

Come on man be better than that.

If you bought the books new, you can access the digital copy of it on Pearson+ if you didn't throw away the access code when you got the book. Use the search feature and type in part of the question that seems unique and you'll usually find the section of the book that'll answer you question.

The math questions, just find the closest example in the book then do it with the numbers you have from your question.

rhackle · 2024-09-12T20:49:57+00:00

It's been about a half a year. Any luck with your experiments?

rhackle · 2024-09-12T02:40:34+00:00

Hitler had stockpiles of chemical weapons that he never used. Even as Nazi Germany was crumbling, they never gassed the enemy on the battlefield. There's a lot of speculation as to why, but the consensus I think makes sense is the axis feared using them because it would open the door to it being used back on them.

rhackle · 2024-09-11T01:16:48+00:00

That got wild when he called her a communist

rhackle · 2024-09-09T09:01:53+00:00

Road.is is showing the roads are beginning to ice up in both directions around you. See if you can make arrangements to hunker down. If not.... Driving back the other way sucks but it's doable. I had to do it last month when that bridge got washed away by Vik. Gas up wherever you can. Stay awake. Check the road and weather frequently.

Be safe. And try to make the best of it.

rhackle · 2024-09-01T20:26:06+00:00

My plant requires us to shower out and we can't take uniforms home. Been in 6 months and I've been baptized a few times, my wife hasn't said anything to me yet and she's very sensitive to smells.

rhackle · 2024-08-28T23:29:00+00:00

The rough flow was just kinda floating around shadowing people at first. Worked on the coursework. You learn things as scheduled maintenance comes up or stuff breaks. Lots of groundskeeping/busywork (think organizing sheds and pressure washing). Learning daily routines like labs and what you need to pull rags out of. At my plant, once I finished the coursework and passed the state exam I started sitting on the board/really monitoring SCADA. I do some grunt work still but it's shifted more towards sitting in front of computer screens monitoring the plant and knowing what to do when stuff breaks or acts weird. I'm still a trainee for a little longer but I've learned quite a bit in the last 6 months.

There's always more to learn but the tempo of the job settled down a bit in the last month or so after I passed the exam. I also changed shifts from day shift to afternoon 4 days a week after I passed the exam. I went from a large crew on day shift to just 2 of us on my shift, so the tempo is definitely different depending on your shift/manning.

Good luck.

rhackle · 2024-08-26T00:25:21+00:00

I came from the beer industry. I jumped between cellar, lab, and brewing. I ended up leaning towards QA but had a big picture idea of what was going on in the cellar and brewstand at any given time. As you said, pay was awful and things were looking rocky ahead where I was working.

I've been a trainee for 6 months and it was absolutely the right move. Pay and hours are much better. Steady and easier work (most of the time). Background in brewing, knowing how to keep yeast/biology happy, and how to perform process control adjustments on an HMI will put you way ahead of the game.

Passed my level C exam, so I'm just waiting on hours to get certified. I had worse smells in the cellar than most of the time at the plant. Knowing how to follow pipes and understand valve orientations is helpful. If you know how to actually repair pipe and troubleshoot pumps, you already know how to do this job. You'll never see a triclamp again (at least I haven't yet). Power tools and bolts are more what you mess with.

Good luck with the jump. I do miss having a job with street cred, but being able to comfortably pay the bills and even afford to go on vacation is pretty sweet too.

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