Planet Olin

This was given to me by a family member.

If you are a scatter-brained blonde and would like me to post something equally disparraging toward all other people please comment below and I will give you equal space to respond. :)

I have to admit, I got really lucky in where I ended up in P&G this summer. Everyone always asks what a ME is doing at a company that makes shampoo and household cleaners, but believe me, I have plenty to do that doesn’t involve lots of organic chemistry. Unfortunately, I can’t say anything about my project, but I can assure everyone that it is indeed cool and exciting and interesting and I’m learning an incredible amount. After this summer, I will never look at laundry detergent or shampoo or Mr. Swiffer the same way again – the amount of science and engineering that goes into making them all work at essentially zero cost is incredible.

But on to more fun topics I CAN talk about: my department and team bonding day. My department, hard surface cleaners, is made up of some 60 people, with all kinds of backgrounds. The department is pretty young, with most everyone around 30 or so; we have a lot of Belgians, but also plenty of French, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch people, along with a smattering of Germans, Greeks, and Czechs (that would be me!). Everyone speaks English, although the Belgians do have a tendency to go off in Dutch when they’re alone. I’m getting used to the sound, but it’s definitely a bit bizarre – it’s a lot like German, with enough modifications to make it difficult for me to read, and with a pronunciation that makes everything sound like there is an r in every syllable. Some things are especially funny, since the same word in German and Dutch mean very different things; for example, gekocht in German is the past participle of to cook, whereas in Dutch it’s the past participle of to buy. Especially in museums, where every painting says gekocht 1XXX, this just looks hilarious.

Anyway, by common consensus, my department is one of the funniest ones at BIC (Brussels Innovation Center), which was also proved to me Monday, during our department team bonding day, a.k.a. Fun at an Amusement Park Day. As this implies, team bonding took place at Walibi, an amusement park near Brussels, and was really just an excuse to have fun for a day. We arrived at the park in the morning, and were broken up into seven groups and given a questionnaire to fill out (with questions like “What’s the name of the hotel in Lucky Luke City?”) until lunch. After lunch until park closing, we could wander around the park and ride all the rides. The day was great; I was randomly put into the group with my and my office mate’s supervisors, along with a couple of other people I didn’t know very well, so I wandered around the park with them for the day. The only thing marring the day were the terrible lines we had to wait in; it turns out, this is the last week of school, so there were hordes of kids at the park celebrating the end of the year. But the rides were really fun, and it was fun to just hang out and get to know people. Dinner was provided by P&G, a barbecue, during which the Italians were watching the Italy vs. Australia game (which Italy won, but by a penalty during overtime which was a dubious call by the ref.) Part of the amusement park is also a water park, which is open much later than the remainder, and the restaurant we were in is immediately adjoining the water park, so during dinner we got to watch people frolic in the water park in bikinis and Speedos. After dinner, which was generally quiet, some of the Belgians caught their second party wind, and proceeded to accompany our exit from the park with loud singing. The singing continued well into the bus ride back. I’m dead tired and sunburned now, but the day was great fun. And I got paid for it ;-)!

The Beetle is coming along slowly. I have been spending my time in the engine compartment tuning the engine so it likes the new carburetor I just installed. Tuning the engine is nothing like tuning a piano. It’s much louder and requires standing over the non-emission controlled exhaust pipe while I rev the engine -probably not the best thing for my health.

The engine's mechanical components are behaving relatively well but while it was in storage for the last couple of years a new problem developed. Humor me a bit while I give a little lesson about VW’s…

There are two a total of six lights on my dashboard.

• One is so I can see the speedometer and fuel gage at night.
• A second is on the radio (which had the serial numbers filed off).
• A third tells me when I have turned on my turn signal (in either direction).

Since VW didn’t design the dash with separate left and right turn signals you would be correct to assume they didn’t waste the other three lights on reminders for routine maintenance items. Of those three lights:

• One means that half of your brakes have failed. (not all your brakes though, the sensor only measures the pressure differential between the front and rear brake cylinders. VW assumes any idiot can figure out that all the brakes have failed so it doesn’t need a light)
• Another light informs you the oil pressure is less than 10% of what it should be. When Ferdinand Porche wasn’t designing the Panzer and Tiger tanks for Pre-War Germany he was put to work on “the people’s car.” Porche thought a radiator would be excessive for the practical German Folk and put in an extra-big oil cooler so the engine’s own oil would be its coolant. If this light comes on for more than a split second in a turn when the oil is sloshing around it means the engine has no coolant and is about to turn itself into a block of Aluminum-magnesium alloy.
• The final light tells the driver that the generator has stopped generating power. The generator recharges the battery so if this light comes on it tells you the battery is the only thing running your spark plugs and the engine will stop running once the battery runs out. In his enthusiasm for liking systems together Porche also extended the shaft that turns the generator through the generator and installed a big as fan on the other side to blow air past that extra-large oil cooler I mentioned. The generator light coming on can also mean the belt that turns the combination generator/fan has broken and there is no air cooling that oil which prevents the engine from to turning itself into a block of metal.

It was the final light that came on. Luckily for me the belt has not broken so Porche’s monster lives, for now.

A test with a volt-meter confirmed, however that the generator is not charging the battery so if I want to drive it anywhere other than my driveway I’m going to need a battery charger and an extension cord.

Another aside: If you know cars you will notice I didn't say "alternator" before, until 1973 beetles got their electricity from a DC generator. Most cars today use an AC alternator with a rectifier to turn the power back into DC. If you are intrigued by the generator/alternator debate there are lots of pages about it on the internets; I will spare the rest of you.

Anyway the generator has a charged coil of wire, which is rotated through a magnetic field that is created by a stationary coil of wire. Changing the voltage in the stationary "field coil" changes the strength of the field and the power output of the generator. A voltage regulator underneath the beetle’s back seat (next to where I stow my jumper cables) controls the field voltage. Right now it isn’t sending any voltage to the field so I don’t get any energy out of the generator.

The regulator isn't solid state, it has two electro-magnets with spring loaded contacts and resembles an old telegraph. With a constant field generators create more power as you spin them faster so when the regulator is working and I rev the engine it quickly opens and closes contacts to reduce the average current flowing through the field coil. This has the side effect of creating a clicking sound under the back seat when I rev the engine which is very assuring to my passengers. :)

The reg seems to be broken so I disconnected the car’s battery and tore the cover off last night to poke around inside and see if anything was obviously wrong. Everything seemed good with the power off so I cleaned off all the contacts reconnected the battery and tried poking it with a screwdriver while the car was running. (Poking at live circuits is probably not the smartest thing in the world to do but it’s a 12V system so in theory it can’t hurt me too much) For once I was glad all this electrical stuff was under the back seat since I could play with it while the engine was running and still see the generator light on the dashboard.

A continuity test showed me one contact is suspiciously closed no matter where it is positioned. I didn’t touch that one in this test. Instead I closed the other contact which was normally-open. There was a mild blue spark but it did get the generator light to go off. Impressed by my initial success I shut the engine off.

With the engine off, however the generator light was still on and magic smoke seemed to be finding its way out of the regulator. Having read the generator light being on when key is off means the battery is trying to turn the generator like a motor, and knowing magic smoke getting out is always a bad thing I pulled the negative strap off the battery again to kill all the power in the car.

Post-mortem examination revealed closing the contact by hand allowed the contact to weld itself shut. It was easily opened again but at present I am not any closer to getting the regulator to work; if it was kind of dead before it’s probably really dead now.

Luckily new regulators are only about $30 but I would like to figure out how this thing is supposed to work. If anyone finds wiring diagrams for electro-magnetically controlled 12V generator voltage regulators let me know. In the mean time I hope your summers are going well.

No Worries

Since I’m making a few posts today I figure putting up one political related one won’t hurt anyone:

http://vernonrobinson.com/twilightzone.shtml

As I understand it, this is being run by a real candidate in North Carolina. He doesn’t really say what he is going to do about anything he mentions in the ad but but I give him credit for making an ad that looks different than other campaign ads.

Normally it would just be a figure of speach but today I actually was awakened by an ant crawling into my ear. It took me quite a while to get it out, stabbing it with a q-tip didn't work and eventually I had to wait patiently while it grew tired of made loud noises by walking across my eardrum and worked its way back to the surface. I felt no remorse for crushing it when it did finally come out. *disgusted shiver*

Right, so while I'm not getting insects out of my skull i've been working on getting my deployment paperwork ready for Antarctica, working on my beloved, but still moody air-cooled VW beetle and catching up on my reading.

Someone posted a comment on my last post about internet "on the ice." The NSF still warns the connection is primarily for uploading scientific data but I should be able to push some bytes back and forth periodically. I even hear McMurdo station (aka. Mac-Town) recently had wireless installed in the coffee shop so I can have a Starbucks-like experience while I am drinking my hot fluids to thaw out.



I dug this picture out of the pre-deployment handbook of what our end of the internets will look like. Since I am a "general assistant" it may be my job at some point to go knock the icicles off.

I started writing a description of how my adventures with the VW have been going and the books I've been reading, but each is probably a post unto itself so I'm going to post those sepparately in the interest of your attention spans.

No Worries

Poked and Prodded

While getting undressed in an exam room on Monday I heard the nurse telling someone outside the door to “give the guy in there everything but a pregnancy test.” I was free to go from my Antarctic medical exam after two hours but only after I had been plugged into an EKG, had numerous reflex tests, was asked about every scar on my body (and why I only have freckles on half of my neck) had given a urine sample and lost five vials of blood; which, by the way is fun if you haven’t been allowed to eat anything in the past 12 hours. There were a few other more routine things but luckily for me I’m under 40 so I got to skip the prostate exam.

That paperwork is now all filed and sent in. Now I just have to wait for the test results and a dental exam and I should be cleared for departure to “the ice” in August.

I got my computer re-imaged last week so this week I decided to go for the FullGoogle and installed the Google Pack with all of its wonderful options for indexing my personal data. The scary feature I saw was sharing information on what websites have been viewed across computers. I know Google had stood up for privacy but I don’t really want a list of all the websites that I’ve been to kept anywhere, much less a server that could be in a foreign country. Guess I’ll have to stop looking at those anarchist-weapons-of-mass-Pr0n sites.

I probably wouldn’t have thought too much about the data aggregation if I hadn’t just signed a paper three days ago saying I waved my rights to privacy in the mail being sent to me through the US Air Force while I am in Antarctica. So please refrain from forwarding me any copies of Anarchist-Weapons-Of-Mass-Pr0n Monthly.

In other news this week I was volunteering at the Hospital where I got to deliver all the flowers from the loading dock to the patient rooms. Being the “flower guy” has its perks since everyone is instantly happy and grateful when you walk into the room. (unless, of course, they are comatose) It beat the job I had a couple years ago of bringing people to the morgue.

The hospital also seemed to be having a special on newborn babies. I must have gotten to every room in the maternity wing. One person got a bleeding heart hanging plant that was more like a bush and took up half of the elevator on the way up. A couple of neo natal rooms had multiple deliveries. (of flowers that is)

I have a job on Monday as a “patient” for medical technicians and nurses who are being tested on caring for bed-ridden patients. Apparently I have to lie in a bed and seem grumpy and in pain while they try adjusting the bed, changing bandages and being tested on other skills for dealing with people who can’t move very well. Should be fun. :)

\begin{gloat}
We just beat the US 3:0. Yippee! (That would be World Cup soccer, for all y'all Yanks ;-)!)
\end{gloat}

And it was a nice looking match, as compared to some I've seen this weekend. For everyone not in Europe, World Cup fever has fully broken out, and will last for about another month or so. All games are shown on multiple channels (French, Dutch, German, English), and owing to the lack of a time difference, in primetime. There are at least two matches every day, so I can come home from work every day and veg in front of the TV while watching other people run around in coordinated fashion. It's really fun, especially watching the various styles of play.

In other news, the weather has finally gotten summer-like here - it's warm, even hot, sunny, and generally really nice summer weather. And not too humid either, just perfect for hanging out in the shade and eating ice cream. Which is precisely what we did on Saturday - there's a huge forest on the outskirts of Brussels, part of which is very civilized and park-like. We went hiking there for several hours, sampling the wares of intrepid ice cream sellers that appeared like mushrooms after a rain. And they make good ice cream, too. That night we went out ostensibly to go salsa dancing, but what actually happened was that we went to the club, saw that it was empty, and went out for a drink or two. We came back sometime later, to a very hot and crowded club that played mostly techno, with a live congo player who approximated something like a salsa beat on top of techno. I didn't stay long, but then again, I'm not one for clubbing.

On Sunday morning we went to an open-air market, which was quite interesting. Brussels has a large Middle Eastern population, and apparently all of them go to this market, so it was densely populated by Turkish sellers yelling at the top of their lungs that their tomatoes were sweeter/redder/cheaper, etc. And they have the best olives. Good times indeed. After coming home and stashing the loot, I headed off to the Museum of Ancient Art, because I wanted to see it, and also because the one place that is guaranteed to have climate control is an art museum. In fact, I was cold and had to go outside to warm up.

Work otherwise is going well, I'm very busy and starting to work in the lab/plant, which makes me very happy. Stressed, but happy. I blame Olin.

Trying out my "blog this" button in Firefox:

Heroic Computer Dies To Save World From Master's Thesis | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

I've been in Boston for the second half of this week getting some repairs done on my laptop and just generally hanging around. The "official" reason for my being here is to tell the summer students who took over my team's SCOPE project the nuances of how things work on the tractor and the stories behind "Why the hell did you do that?" Hopefully it was helpful for them.

I stayed up too late last night watching funny videos on the internet and now it's time to get up and be a functional human being.

P.S. This is something else that was on randomness.

GOP takes aim at PBS funding - The Boston Globe

``Dick Cheney and the Republicans have decided to go hunting for `Big Bird' ...once again," -Rep Edward J. Markey , a Malden Democrat

The past week has been quite interesting.

Friday morning was spent at the Commune, the equivalent to a city quarter city hall, where I, and a couple of the other interns had to register as residents. It was a perfect example of bureaucracy gone berserk. The Commune is only open from 8am-1pm, but there are so many people every day that you have to come at 7am, write your name down on a piece of paper, and receive your ticket when they start giving them out. Then you wait several hours (and I do mean 3-4) until your ticket is called. Because so many people come, they stop giving out tickets at 8:30, because if you get a ticket after that, they won’t get to you before they close. To add to the entertainment, the secretaries only speak French (not even Dutch!). Thank goodness the HR intern coordinator came by to translate for us. I, being a new EU resident, waited in a separate line to get registered; because I theoretically don’t have to be registered since I am an EU citizen, my wonderful interpreter had to argue them into letting me do it. (I have to register, so that I can apply for a visa to go to the UK, to the P&G Newcastle center, which I might need to do some work at.) So I waited in line, only to then be told that I need passport pictures and a photocopy of my passport. Trick is, there was no copier on site, so one of the other interns (who also needed copies) and I ran around the area for a while trying to find a copy shop that was open. We finally broke down and went to Citibank, where there was some hope of finding someone who spoke enough English to point us in the right direction. Sometimes, transnational corporations are a blessing… After the copies were settled, the rest of the morning was spent just uneventfully waiting in line.

After lunch, we finally went to work, and proceeded to get allergy tests for the specific chemicals we might be exposed to at P&G. No undue reactions on my end, thank goodness. That afternoon I also got my desk #1, and computer, and proceeded to try for the first time to log in and access e-mail. An hour and half’s worth of IT support time later, I could at least log in and access the internet. But not e-mail or Sametime, which is the chat program P&G uses.

The weather finally cleared up over the weekend, and it was warm and sunny enough that we spent Saturday walking around inner Brussels. It’s small enough that it’s easily covered on foot and without getting lost. And there aren’t too many tourists, so it was really pleasant. That night we went out to a famous pub, Le Mort Subite (the Sudden Death, named after a card game). The beer was wonderful, and the bar was filled with locals, not tourists, which made it nice and homey-feeling. One of the Belgian beer specialties, deservedly so, is kriek – this is cherry-flavored beer, which sounds strange, but tasted absolutely delicious. It’s only one of several kinds of flavored beers (apple, strawberry, raspberry), but is definitely the best. And Le Mort Subite brews their own, so it was extra good.

Sunday was spent sleeping off both jetlag and the pub, in about equal measure. The other five interns who all started June 1st are all really fun, so we hang out all the time. It makes the hotel a little homier. Plus, we’re all working on different projects in different areas, so we have lots of notes to compare.

Monday is a national holiday (Whit Monday, I think), and the weather was so nice I just roamed around Brussels again. I got to bed very late, so getting up on Tuesday was not so much fun – it’s hard adjusting to a schedule where I get up at 6:30 and go to bed at 11, when there’s still light out. But the fact that I almost fell asleep several times while reading articles today suggests that I just need to get with the program and to bed early.

I was finally able to start reading up on my project on Tuesday, and spent it getting trained, and trained some more. And I get lots more training next week. Wednesday, I got a tour of the pilot plant, where I’ll be spending lots of quality time. It smells wonderfully of detergent, although the signs everywhere are in Dutch. Good thing red buttons are universal. Wednesday, I also received my desks #2 and #3 – when I got in to work in the morning, my desk #1 was gone and my things out in the hallway. The whole department is being moved, and I’m getting a new office next week, but I guess someone forgot that in order to move things, you need a vacant space to move them to, so no one realized I would get booted out of my desk. Thankfully one of the other researchers found me a new (and better) office and let me use her desk while my things were begin relocated from the hallway. As they say, good times…

Work is otherwise going well, which is about all I can say about it. I’ll be starting to work in the pilot plant next week, so I’ll be able to get my hands dirty, which makes me very excited. I also have a place to live next year at Stanford. I was getting a little nervous, since they hadn’t responded with my housing assignment, but now everything is settled. And I even got my first choice housing!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2078944470709189270&q=al+gore

A trailer for the new Documentary on global warming called "An Inconvenient Truth"

Critic Roger Ebert says: "You owe it to yourself to see this film" In the same review he likens the "debate" over global warming to the "debate" tobacco companies created between the 1960's and 1980's around the reality that smoking increasing the risk of cancer.

Despite the "debate" around smoking many smokers did get cancer.

I acknowledge some may see this as political because of the name on the documentary but there is a lot to back up what is being said. Peer reviewed journals overwhelmingly acknowldege what is going on. Climatic scientists unfortunately do not have the advertizing budgets to get their message on for-profit news channels which are sponsored by oil company commercials.

Please at least watch the trailer and if you are an over-achiever go see the movie. At the very least you will be better informed. I for one think it is time to stop branding everyone who talks about the environment and conservation as a liberal.