Of course, but I don't want to burn it like gasoline, it can be refined to better fuel than that can't it? Let me put it this way, I don't want to use petroleum as the foundation of our internal combustion systems. We can convert another fuel to those with a proper carburetor converter. We should be sparking a nice clean Hydrogen Oxygen explosion for that. We need hydrolysis technology to get up to speed pronto. We need to get "Tesla" on it.
Of course you burn it, but you of course contain your carbon. How's that going to happen? Well, you do it in a high efficient burn environment where you can extrapolate all exhaust through a recycling system. i know what you are thinking besides "WTF?". How to expend that energy in a profitable way? Heat of course, when burned for heating purposes, it can be burned for a lot longer and with more efficiency. So, you say?
Steam! lol.. Stanley Steamer. Yeah baby....boom! Headshot to the system!
Think about this. We have 5 Axis computerized mills that can help us create modern super efficient steam driven technology. Can you say, DUH, Steam Punk! No shit, if there was ever a time and place for that little bit of human tech to bust the fuck out and take off, it would be NOW. You don't have to go insane with turbines, this doesn't have to go all batman, steam piston tech is pretty amazing actually. Come to think of it, one could probably rip out the gas carburetor down to the manifold and cast an interface to replace combustion with steam. It would be interesting to experiment with. I should work it out in Solidworks first though. Which means I need to get back to classes and stop dicking around here.
Indeed, viable solutions. As far as the composting process we haven't began to tap the energy potentials. We waste so much methane into the atmosphere that we should be harvesting. Sewer plants have insanely high levels of methane about them, at least the ones I have seen working do. We need to seriously do the "mad max beyond thunderdome" thing with hog lot slop. Swine produce crazy amounts of biological soups, so do we for that fact. It's disgusting, but that stench is potential energy that should be contained, processed in a highly efficient manor. Methane extractors, I need to look into them I guess.
Another factor that we keep ignoring is our own concrete footprint on the planet. We have set out so many heat sinks on the surface that we have to be effecting over all tempratures. Let me explain, I live in a small town, of about 8 thousand, I can take a quick drive out to the country side. It's far cooler in the country than in town in the Summer. All of that concrete, buildings etc gather a collective heat. This isn't dissipated as it should be like it would be with photosynthesis cooking along in it's spot. Have you ever been out in the deep thick green woods? It's cool inside them. Cooler I should say. But if you head deep into a thick growth, you will find plenty of shade and a canopy above you eating up all of that energy.
We need to foliate the surface, take structure underground. We can adapt plenty of lighting options to naturally light our subterranean environments. Much of what we deal with would be better protected, insulated and heated from the ground temperature. Storms will become an annoyance instead of deadly. One could build observatories above it, a tower so to speak and it should be tall, but take up a low sun facing footprint. It can be like a tall tree, so to speak. One needs its for one's arrays.
Think of it as a subtractive process of engineering, Minecraft for real life.
We engage the warp drive on the hemp production. We will suck every drop of carbon out of the atmosphere with it. Seriously, we have our number one oxygen scrubber growling like a weed. Once upon a time hemp grew like a weed. It was a damn weed and it would grow out of control. It's a pain in the ass if you want to grow corn crops. It makes great rope, in fact we enacted farmers to grow hemp for the war effort. Then we said...no..no more hemp.
It seems the cotton industry hated it. Here is a WEED that people go grab for fibers then that they could weave for themselves cloths and such. Coupled with corn farmers they lobbied it as an evil South of the border thing. And they did their best to eradicate it. It also turned out that the jazz and blues musicians were smoking it in all of those wrong kind of places to be seen at as a decent Christian sort. They were able to demonize it even more with their lobbyists. Preachers thundered on about it, etc.
But lets look at the facts of the matter. This plant has some amazing qualities to it aside from deer and rabbits wanting to eat it like it's a delicacy to them. The seeds of this are from what I understand can be distilled into a petroleum. Yes, I thought that as well. Petroleum? Seriously?
Petro is a hydrocarbon. Correct? What do we have floating about fucking up our atmosphere? Carbon? What thrives on this stuff in the air? Plants? How about a plant that will chew this stuff up and store that carbon in it's seeds as energy for it's babies. Imagine harvesting those seeds for that hydrocarbon? Then you have a very strong fiber resulting from the harvest as well. There are various grades of this fiber to work with. First being very long strong straight strands, then of course pulp fiber which can be pressed into parchment paper such as what the US Constitution is wrote on. Imagine the image quality of a high quality ink printer photo on a paper that ages like our Constitution. I can't get that at Office Max, can you? Let me know if you do, I want to print off pirate maps on some. Arrgh!
Here is the solution. You legalize and authorize hemp production in the US. It has to be licensed and monitored by the Ag department, not the DEA. Don't worry, stoners will not be growing weed in it or near it. They will cry if they do because it will be allowed to massively pollinate with Midwestern native hemp, which will drop the THC levels into the ditch weed category. Not to mention it will become seedy as FUCK. Everyone hates seedy pot. If you go to smoke pot and there is a seed in the pipe or the joint, BOOM! I have seen seeds blow up in a pot pipe someone was smoking and blow all the pot out of it and give them a face full of burning weed. It wasn't like a grenade, it just startles the living crap out of them when it happens. As a kid, I would get a seed, hollow out the tobacco of a cigarette, drop a big fat juicy seed in it, then repack it. We've all sabotaged a smoker like that before, right?
As I digress...
Those same "blow the fuck up in your face, so you better clean them out, NOOB" seeds are the ones that you run through a high pressure roller press and collect the oil. We also have to do this scientifically to appease the most staunch of skeptics. First, it has to be grown by using a strong composing, we can do this by processing a lot of our waste. We can let it process a trashy swampy sewer-ed field into clay, instead of devouring crop land. You just have to engineer the fields according with EPA standards for a land fill situation. It's called, get out the bulldozers time and do some serious earth moving.
We can do some genetic experimentation with this to tweak it to grow insanely big and fast. Plants are amazingly fun to mess with on a genetic level, we have been doing it for quite a time now. We used to call it "breeding". There are an amazing variety of this plant that we can cross breed with. Take for example there is a breed of it in italy that grows 6 inches I day, I would say couple that with so
Hey, that is fun work! I used to work insurance fraud investigations. The company I worked for was small, but made righteous money getting video of people who were "crippled" out doing things they claimed they couldn't. Every job was different, and pretty exciting at times. Ironically, nosy cops were my nemesis. I learned to never divulge an iota of information to cops, they are crooked and dangerous. We investigated a factory one time for massive theft going on. We got spotted by a cop who was the golfing buddy of the ring leader, and we had to flee town to avoid getting killed. We spotted both the cop and the ringleader together combing the area for us.
Another time, they figured out who we were investigating and they ran told the subject he was under investigation. He really played his game close in public after that, we never got him. But we had other cases to work, you can't win them all. Needless to say, I hated local cops in that job. It was a great job, too bad the owner/boss imploded from the big money and his weakness for bad women and booze.
Greedy people who don't want to pay a fair wage and exploit politicians to open up foreign trade venues that circumvent the order of the stable economy wrecked us. Thank Sam Walton of Wal-Mart for going behind our State Department's back and making deals with China that have wrecked our economy by flooding our markets with cheap junk until our business and manufactures caved in and moved to China.
Free Trade equates into fucking America's economy to further your own bottom line. We need Fair Trade. Unions were the chance of the lower classes to have a decent life and in exchange produce a world class product. It was a good marriage until greed happened into the equation. Yes, both sides were guilty, but to destroy our economy just to fill your pockets with more money at the cost of American livelihoods to me is a form of treason that should have them all dangling from a noose, businessman, corrupt politician and also greedy crooked union leaders as well.
When we are all mostly unemployed and starving, we will shed our civility in this matter and there will be hell to pay. Eat the rich I say. Literally. If we took a Wall Street fat cat, put him on a roasting spit, cooked him with some seasoning, bast him with some BBQ, then yank out his heart and take a big bite, these fuckers would shit themselves. Welcome to Hell, fuckers, you made it this way. Please don't try running, it will only make you taste gamey. You have always prided yourselves in "great taste", don't ruin it now. Don't get me wrong, we will still eat you. Cavender's Greek Seasoning makes everything taste great. We have plenty of it, lots of charcoal, sharp knives, forks, the good kind of paper plates, and of course our kitchen carving knife set that you sold us, it was made in China. Wal-Mart had it on sale, cheap. We couldn't produce it that cheap, our labor costs were too high for you, hence we are out of jobs and now eating you. But thanks for that one last great buy.
How's that? Over the top? Too soon? Relax, it's just dark humor.
lol, I am Irish-Cherokee. I get mistaken for being Hispanic, Italian, Samoan, etc all the time. If I get out in the sun I turn super dark damn near instantly. It used to annoy my xwife to no end. My dad is really dark, his mother as well. The native genes run strong in my family. In a predominately white area, I am always suspected of being a bit "ethnic". It worked out the Italians couldn't be convinced I wasn't one, and hence I ended up working for them. My black girl friends always like my skin tone, and often commented on how beautiful they though my dad's skin was. I don't even want to talk about the attention I got from Hispanic girls.
So fuck you and your presumptions about my heritage. Trail of tears, 'nuff said. I figure the "Trail of tears" gives me license to say whatever I want about who's living here. Guess what? White people died along with mine on that force march. Christians who felt the Government betrayed the people, marched along with those "indians" and died with them in protest. Things that make you go "hmm...".
Let me explain something to you. Illegals are a bane to both of our societies, American and Mexican. They get exploited when they come here. They are given jobs at substandard wages that companies refuse to give decent wages for. They cut our throats by letting these vermin companies get away with it and make a fortune in the process. People in turn look down upon the illegals, and treat them badly. We seem to ignore the plight of Mexico while we dish out fortunes to countries overseas that spit in our faces. Our Southern neighbor needs our help far more.
The Mexican people shouldn't burn us by coming here illegally. They get exploited, and our system suffers as well. They should go home. If that puts us in a bind for labor that is great. It would force the legal channels to open up for LEGAL immigration and we could filter out the criminal riffraff that slips in with the workers. The workers would be paid a fair wage and not be exploited, or have to deal with the dangers and criminals involved with illegal immigration. Everyone but the bad guys would win.
But do they do the right thing? No. It's more "screw you gringos, I will get mine and fuck you". Hence I want to set on the border with a 50 and blow heads off them until they get the point. But only if they cross the border illegally. Legally, I want to welcome them and have a party.
Blacks? They want reparations for slavery? They can get in line after the US Government makes good on all the treaties they broke with Native Americans, then we can get to addressing their bitches and complaints. Until then, they need to shut the fuck up, they are grating on my last nerve with their "victim mentality". At least most of them grew up were there was stuff like electricity and running water. They could take a bus to get to a job. I had to walk, ride a bicycle, or just run 15 miles a day just to get to work/school/home or even socialize. I was 16 years old before we had running water. They whine, I don't want to hear it.
On a serious note, popping illegals at the border is just a sentiment, not a real threat, just to clear that up. It takes a dark heart to deal out death like that for real, it's a path I have refused to go down. I don't see how one could ever return from it even if they wanted to. I don't even like to hunt anymore, there is a darkness to it, that goes beyond the taking of a life. There is a blood lust, and a thrill to it that is savagery. I like it too much. Being part of the wilderness, and running through it like an animal has always been something I enjoyed when I was young. I guess that is why I did it in the military as well, but I never had to kill anyone thankfully. Hunting was something we did to put food on the table, it's amazing what you will eat when you are hungry enough. But even so, there is a horror to it, to slay something, skin it, gut it and cook it, then eat it. But the real horror is that you like it and are good at it. I guess I suck at being an "indian".
Not to throw gas on the fire, but both sides practice this. Observe Ann Coulter who literally demonizes liberals in her book "Demonic". Listen to "hate radio" in the daytime ran by the usual perpetrators, and you will get a major dose of it. Here's a mental exercise for you. Every time you hear the term "liberal" and it being used by the right, substitute it mentally for "Jews", and see if you see a parallel in history. If you find that disturbing do a quick google of the term fascism and compare and contrast the rise of it in history.
Free trade and globalization are terms used by modern robber barons. No country in their right mind puts up with trade policies that screw over their own economy, but the whores we have on both sides of isle in Washington will. We need fair trade. I would suggest a "mirror policy" to start with. If they don't let us sell to them, then they can't sell to us. This is the job of our Government, to tend to the ecology of the environment of our nation's business. They aren't doing their job, in fact, they have sold us out.
What we have now is "slash and burn" capitalism, that exploits this "free trade" situation to saturate our economy with goods that come cheaply from outside of our economy's ecology. This burns our jobs to the ground and puts us in dire straights, puts us in debt, we lose industry, etc. We need trade policies that are healthy and aggressive for us. Business is war and Trade is the mother of all business wars.
Big money that is in power now due to these exploits control our politicians, both sides are bought and paid for. Until we have political reform in the form of removing legalized bribery, we will never have any progress. That isn't going to happen, that is like asking the fox to fix the hen house. Politicians aren't going to fix themselves. This is going to have to play out to the bitter violent end, and it will be a lesson hard learned in blood, not just for us, but the whole planet as well.
You can't fix a machine that vast, that has run that wild for so long and is so far gone from its purpose. It will run you over if you get near it, if you get on it, it will chew you up to human hamburger. Hide from it, let it run out of gas, then cannibalize it for parts, and never build one that stupid again.
Go try to teach in an inner city public school and get back with me. I have had friends who move to the city and are given culture shock by how racist the black elements are towards whites. I chuckle at the irony of what they call and tell me. This is something I knew back in the early 80s. But its not all of them, I explain, you have to give each individual a chance. I get cussed for that from my ex-politically correct friends who swore they would never, ever say a racist thing. Oh the irony.
I have no problem with any brown people, I like them. But I don't care for the fact that we have a flood of ILLEGAL ones here. We have a system in place for a reason, and I am sure that reason is beyond the comprehension of many, hence they "run home to momma" mentally and start calling people names. If what you come up with is the "bigotry card" I am sure you are well beyond my ability to communicate the big picture in which this reason exists.
Fiction writers obviously do that, but engineers often lack balls and imagination. I think it stems from the inherent need to be "right" that comes from the field. You obviously can't be another drone, or lackey or salary slave and expect to pave new frontiers. Nor can you expect the corporate mindset or government mindset to produce it either. You have to get tired of waiting for it to happen and just do it yourself. Of course we are lacking sorely of people of that freedom, and caliber.
I think the problem is we don't inspire kids in the right direction. It takes a lifetime to develop breakthroughs. You have to learn how to stand on the shoulders of giants, meaning you have to first understand what has come before you, then have the ability to build on it, or discard it and build anew, learning from their mistakes. This takes a lot of time and education.
I wonder how many kids these days list Astronaut as one of those dream things they want to be?
So driving full throttle into becoming a 3rd world country is your idea of where we should go? You can't rebuke fools into wisdom, but it's fun trying.
It's completely a culture thing, as in blacks are in a "you owe me" mindset, so it's hard to educate them. English is the language of technology, and if you are too lazy to learn English, then you need to go back home Juan. "Press 1 for English 2 for Espanol" makes me want to set on the Mexican border with a 50 caliber sniper rifle, and a semi truck load of ammo, and pick off anything that sets a toe on OUR soil.
I seriously don't give a fuck if either group is "under represented" in silicon valley. Nor do I give one if you think I am "racist". What I am sick of is whiny bullshit excuses from either of these groups and pathetic self loathing "white guilt". Success is a combination of factors that are too complicated to distill down to some politically correct bullshit trying to get ink.
If you want "success" and you aren't born with it, then you need an education. The problem if there is one is an economic one in regards to limitations of education for the poor. This covers whites, blacks, browns, yellows, etc. Solve the problem and you solve it for everyone.
The more the merrier. But unless we find more resources, such as in space, this planet isn't going to sustain this many damn people. Especially as they wish to start raising their lifestyle up the carbon footprint scale. We are dragging our feet at planetary atmosphere scrubbing technology. It's right in front of us in our bongs, but we haven't been smart enough to realize it. Hemp will scrub the shit out of carbon in our atmosphere, give us petroleum, feed us, give us construction materials, paper, clothes, etc, but we are hampered by "church lady mentality", corrupt politicians, stupid politicians, drug money interests, the prison industry's need to keep people in their jails for stupid shit, etc, etc.
I don't know if we as a species are going to make it. Trying to get us to go in the right direction is like herding cats.
We should be out populating the solar system, then galaxy, then universe. Of course human population should rise, but Earth's population should slack off at some point. We need new worlds, even if we have to build them until we can find them.
What is your malfunction with Wikipedia? As far as calling America backward, [rightly..lol] the motivation is one of calling it as it is. Now I am sorry if that offends your precious perception, but frankly fuck off. Keeping your head deeply rooted in the sand or up the asses of the political machines in this country is exactly how we end up the "backward" bunch of idiots that are thumbing a ride to space with our economic enemies. Would you step closer so I can kick you square in the balls for your blind nationalism that is so easily exploited by anyone waving the colors red, white and blue at you? Here, let me wave a flag at you, just a little closer....
BOOM, NUT SHOT! And the crowd goes crazy.
Your points: Playground equipment removed. High insurance cost, due to health care being insanely high and douche bag lawyers who sue, and punkassed greedy parents who play law suits like the lottery. End result: pussy kids who never get to learn important life lessons learned from possibly getting fucked up by doing something stupid, all the while missing out on the fun of great play.
180 degree scalding hot coffee, served by idiots at the drive through who can't get a simple order right. Handed to some dumb bitch who doesn't have enough sense to handle hot coffee like HOT COFFEE. Enter greedy lawyers and 12 people not smart enough to get out of jury duty. So much for tongue scalding hot coffee in the morning to burn your ass awake.
My motivation for busting America's balls. I hope it get's it head out of its ass. The American dream needs to become the American reality. We need to think as a nation, and not a collection of individuals trying to "get theirs". It would be nice to think that way if we were still a frontier nation and we were out fucking the Indians over still. But it's 2011, and the planet is full. The others are working as a team and beating our asses. What part of the current situation do you and your ilk not understand? It's not the 50s, we aren't the rulers of the universe anymore. We are vastly outnumbered.
China will soon be the largest English speaking country in the world. Seriously, you need to understand some things. The fact that in a world of 7 billion people, we are barely over 300 million. I am going to let that one simmer in your brain for a while.
Who the fuck marked this as insightful? You really aren't serious are you?
There's plenty to be found on the moon. We should be investing in the tech to get there cheaply, so we can start exploiting the assets around us and stop gouging holes in our own home rock when there is a universe of materials floating around us. We have to evolve out of our reptile brained thinking at least long enough to understand "the big picture" and get moving on it.
How many billion of us are there now? 7? We either have to expand or start thinning the herd. The last option is the one that complete idiots take, just a clue. You're welcome.
The private sector is at least trying to pick up the slack, give them a break. Our "government" has turned out to be a bunch of whores in this "slash and burn" capitalist environment. We need industry in America or we will not be able to produce pop bottle rockets if we keep going. Wall Street has turned into the new Vegas, and "fuck 'em all" financial practices have rendered us a nation of fast food industries. Face it, we are seriously screwed.
Is there any end in sight? Yes, a bad one. The fact that we are hitching rides with Russians and Chinese to space should be embarrassing enough that our politicians should just shoot themselves in the head if they had an iota of American pride or character left. They don't, nor do they care, because they are just political whores looking to fill their pockets.
Maybe after the Second American Revolution, and the status quo are all dead, burned and ashes pissed on, and we drag honest people kicking and screaming, fearful for their lives into office to represent us and our interests again, can we again start rebuilding our space program. If we get busy, we might actually get off this rock in time to stop some deadly asteroid bombardments from turning the whole planet into churning molten slag.
I'm not too optimistic. We have the finest police state the world has ever seen to keep us all in line as the wage slaves that we are. There isn't enough fighting spirit left in any of the minds capable of leading these uneducated heathens we have reared, to up end this system. Hence we are doomed to ride it to the bitter end as it takes a full throttle plunge towards the bottom. Set back and enjoy the fiddle playing as Rome burns around us.
American Space Program, that is about to be a joke on par with the Ethiopian Space Program. Who's to blame? We all are. We should have burned every Wal-Mart to the ground when they started dumping Chinese junk on our markets. We should have executed Clinton for all the secrets he let the Chinese steal and for giving them MFN trade status. We should have knocked the teeth out of anyone who said the term "free trade markets" for it not only being a complete oxymoron, but a complete traitorous sell out of every American worker. We should have been off our fat asses and watching politics just as much as we watch sports. Most of us don't even vote, and if we do vote, we vote down party lines which is fucking retarded. We couldn't find "grass roots" unless we stood on our heads in our lawns and dug.
We are handed mental pablum in sound and video bites customized for our wee brains that have the attention span of fruit flies with ADD. Considering our technology, and our dwindling advantages, we are collectively retarded in contrast to the rest of the world's population. It's no wonder multinational corporations and their puppet politicians are able to gang rape us.
Forget how to get to the moon? WTF is this "moon" you speak of?
The Department of Fascist Enforcement of the Police State of America, because frankly that's what it is.
Seriously, it's all some Nazi bullshit that we should jam in their ass this next election. I got a feeling this next election cycle will be another "fuck you all, your fired" voter reaction. We just need some people that will actually do as we want them, not as they are bribed.
I can't imagine the insanity that must have been to work with, complex projects without CAD of any kind. "Tools, Gentlemen, use your tools" is what our instructor tell us. Solidworks, you design it in 3D and if you need a "sketch", you can put it out to a three view layout with ortho projection in less than a minute. You can make adjustments in the various views and update it across the board. For example, if you see on the sketch something is "off" or you want to change it, you can redefine it and it will update to the 3D as well.
The goal is to spend less time monkeying with the mechanics of design and more into design itself. Instead of having to erase all of that on paper, and make corrections which would have to eat up time, one just makes a fast correction and you are moving along to something else. Things like, "why isn't this part mating to this other one the way it should be?" You don't have to make prototypes, they are simulated. Just understanding the software and what it's capable of is where we are at. We are newbies to the whole industry. I am excited about the 3D printer we eventually get to fiddle with. 5 axis mills are fascinating as well, but I doubt we will see one of those unless we take a field trip.
Anyway, I am just first semester into this. I am hoping nobody drops out, we are suppose to get one more student this winter and we will be a solid 7 of us total. Sad, huh? It normally is packed full, but these past two years its been slow and we are their smallest class in their history. Ever. It works out good for us students, we are like baby birds always with our mouths open with questions. Newbies.
I just know we learn it as a basic foundation, because there are still parts of the industries that still use AutoCAD. We are doing Solidworks for our 3D stuff at the moment, which I like a lot more than AutoCAD, personally. 30 years ago, before there was a thing called CAD, I was using pencil and paper in High School drafting classes. You are right, it's infinitely more easy with a computer. I still have a journal to sketch in, so the old ways aren't completely gone.
What's a lisp macro? It sounds like a henweight, but only with a lisp to it.
When I was in High School, I was next to the last in my class. I would have been the last, but there was a girl who just never showed up, and they counted her. I was disappointed. I was shooting for the rock bottom. Now in my 40s, I hold 4.0 and get invites to "we're smart clubs" and such. But I switched majors to an Engineering field. That 4.0 isn't going to hold this first semester. If it was Literature, or English Composition, I can bullshit my way through it, half asleep. Speeches, no problem. I can crank them out like putting a quarter in a gum ball machine. Simple stuff, it's criminal it's so easy.
But now engineering is challenging. AutoCAD is now like "old timer stuff", but we have to understand it as a basic knowledge. It's now about 3D design software. And they have thrown us off the end of the pier to get us to swim in it. What is odd, is our class is normally about 20 to 30 students, this one is 6 on a good day. This is fortunate for me, because I get to then not feel sheepish about asking questions. The instructor has time for all of our idiot questions and I feel like we the students are somewhat of a team.
The math is practical stuff, but hard. You have to pay attention, focus and do the exercises and keep good notes. The blue print reading is tough, because it tosses me into a world of industrial standards of which I had no clue existed. I didn't know people could get so particular about something like a "hole". Designing for the manufacturing process, so that you can apply the right tolerances, yeah that is a lot to take in, by the way, what is a tolerance? Yeah, it's like that, but our class is seeming to handle it, myself included.
We are doing math now that I would never have dreamed about. Geometry, figuring out cubic measurements of odd shaped items and then coming up with industrial solutions like; how much concrete will we need to make this bridge support? And this bridge support isn't something simple. It's not overly complicated, but at the same time, we have to break it down in our heads and paper to get the accurate answer.
Two of the kids have been talking about dropping out. They say "Fuck this! What was I thinking?" I tease them then, "Pussies!" I say. If my old ass can do it, why can't you?
Our first project, I wanted to ask the instructor if he was high or something. I didn't think it was possible for us to construct in our heads first and on paper a working puzzle cube that had to go together. We didn't get to build it. We designed it and put out the instructions for another student to follow in order to construct it. Amazingly, there were steps to getting this done that we learned, and we did it. Everyone's cube worked.
I am getting the drift of the mental magnitude of which one has to operate at. The math and physics are just the beginning, and are actually the simplistic elements of this. They are just tools in the mental tool box. The projects are what will be complex. I like it. As Engineers, we take science and do something with it.
What I hate is how our department has to work with antiquated computers. We are doing 2011 3D software on XP machines. That should be criminal, right? Our instructor has to deal with complicated parts assembling with his piece of shit computer running out of memory and crashing. I come home and do stuff on my home computer because it's a gaming rig, which means it has a video card that chews all of that software up and spits it out like it's a punk bitch.
Here we are trying to produce "engineers", yet we have to work with junk. Our entire IT structure at our little campus is pathetic. The library is operated off of "dumb terminals" that grind your last nerve. Not because they are dumb terminals, but you can't change anything and have to deal with Internet Explorer as a browser. Then we all huddle by one printer and hope to get our shit before we have to get to class.
We have some of the better computers on campus and we get kicked out one day of the week so the Nursing students can use ours for wh
We have slacked off on students over the past several decades, making it an easier experience, and we produce dumber students. When they get to the "hard sciences" they are shocked by the need to actually apply themselves and study hard. It's hard to sugar coat science, math and other terminology rich and study intensive fields.
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Of course, but I don't want to burn it like gasoline, it can be refined to better fuel than that can't it? Let me put it this way, I don't want to use petroleum as the foundation of our internal combustion systems. We can convert another fuel to those with a proper carburetor converter. We should be sparking a nice clean Hydrogen Oxygen explosion for that. We need hydrolysis technology to get up to speed pronto. We need to get "Tesla" on it.
Of course you burn it, but you of course contain your carbon. How's that going to happen? Well, you do it in a high efficient burn environment where you can extrapolate all exhaust through a recycling system. i know what you are thinking besides "WTF?". How to expend that energy in a profitable way? Heat of course, when burned for heating purposes, it can be burned for a lot longer and with more efficiency. So, you say?
Steam! lol.. Stanley Steamer. Yeah baby....boom! Headshot to the system!
Think about this. We have 5 Axis computerized mills that can help us create modern super efficient steam driven technology. Can you say, DUH, Steam Punk! No shit, if there was ever a time and place for that little bit of human tech to bust the fuck out and take off, it would be NOW. You don't have to go insane with turbines, this doesn't have to go all batman, steam piston tech is pretty amazing actually. Come to think of it, one could probably rip out the gas carburetor down to the manifold and cast an interface to replace combustion with steam. It would be interesting to experiment with. I should work it out in Solidworks first though. Which means I need to get back to classes and stop dicking around here.
Indeed, viable solutions. As far as the composting process we haven't began to tap the energy potentials. We waste so much methane into the atmosphere that we should be harvesting. Sewer plants have insanely high levels of methane about them, at least the ones I have seen working do. We need to seriously do the "mad max beyond thunderdome" thing with hog lot slop. Swine produce crazy amounts of biological soups, so do we for that fact. It's disgusting, but that stench is potential energy that should be contained, processed in a highly efficient manor. Methane extractors, I need to look into them I guess.
Another factor that we keep ignoring is our own concrete footprint on the planet. We have set out so many heat sinks on the surface that we have to be effecting over all tempratures. Let me explain, I live in a small town, of about 8 thousand, I can take a quick drive out to the country side. It's far cooler in the country than in town in the Summer. All of that concrete, buildings etc gather a collective heat. This isn't dissipated as it should be like it would be with photosynthesis cooking along in it's spot. Have you ever been out in the deep thick green woods? It's cool inside them. Cooler I should say. But if you head deep into a thick growth, you will find plenty of shade and a canopy above you eating up all of that energy.
We need to foliate the surface, take structure underground. We can adapt plenty of lighting options to naturally light our subterranean environments. Much of what we deal with would be better protected, insulated and heated from the ground temperature. Storms will become an annoyance instead of deadly. One could build observatories above it, a tower so to speak and it should be tall, but take up a low sun facing footprint. It can be like a tall tree, so to speak. One needs its for one's arrays.
Think of it as a subtractive process of engineering, Minecraft for real life.
Seriously, here it is.
We engage the warp drive on the hemp production. We will suck every drop of carbon out of the atmosphere with it. Seriously, we have our number one oxygen scrubber growling like a weed. Once upon a time hemp grew like a weed. It was a damn weed and it would grow out of control. It's a pain in the ass if you want to grow corn crops. It makes great rope, in fact we enacted farmers to grow hemp for the war effort. Then we said...no..no more hemp.
It seems the cotton industry hated it. Here is a WEED that people go grab for fibers then that they could weave for themselves cloths and such. Coupled with corn farmers they lobbied it as an evil South of the border thing. And they did their best to eradicate it. It also turned out that the jazz and blues musicians were smoking it in all of those wrong kind of places to be seen at as a decent Christian sort. They were able to demonize it even more with their lobbyists. Preachers thundered on about it, etc.
But lets look at the facts of the matter. This plant has some amazing qualities to it aside from deer and rabbits wanting to eat it like it's a delicacy to them. The seeds of this are from what I understand can be distilled into a petroleum. Yes, I thought that as well. Petroleum? Seriously?
Petro is a hydrocarbon. Correct? What do we have floating about fucking up our atmosphere? Carbon? What thrives on this stuff in the air? Plants? How about a plant that will chew this stuff up and store that carbon in it's seeds as energy for it's babies. Imagine harvesting those seeds for that hydrocarbon? Then you have a very strong fiber resulting from the harvest as well. There are various grades of this fiber to work with. First being very long strong straight strands, then of course pulp fiber which can be pressed into parchment paper such as what the US Constitution is wrote on. Imagine the image quality of a high quality ink printer photo on a paper that ages like our Constitution. I can't get that at Office Max, can you? Let me know if you do, I want to print off pirate maps on some. Arrgh!
Here is the solution. You legalize and authorize hemp production in the US. It has to be licensed and monitored by the Ag department, not the DEA. Don't worry, stoners will not be growing weed in it or near it. They will cry if they do because it will be allowed to massively pollinate with Midwestern native hemp, which will drop the THC levels into the ditch weed category. Not to mention it will become seedy as FUCK. Everyone hates seedy pot. If you go to smoke pot and there is a seed in the pipe or the joint, BOOM! I have seen seeds blow up in a pot pipe someone was smoking and blow all the pot out of it and give them a face full of burning weed. It wasn't like a grenade, it just startles the living crap out of them when it happens. As a kid, I would get a seed, hollow out the tobacco of a cigarette, drop a big fat juicy seed in it, then repack it. We've all sabotaged a smoker like that before, right?
As I digress...
Those same "blow the fuck up in your face, so you better clean them out, NOOB" seeds are the ones that you run through a high pressure roller press and collect the oil. We also have to do this scientifically to appease the most staunch of skeptics. First, it has to be grown by using a strong composing, we can do this by processing a lot of our waste. We can let it process a trashy swampy sewer-ed field into clay, instead of devouring crop land. You just have to engineer the fields according with EPA standards for a land fill situation. It's called, get out the bulldozers time and do some serious earth moving.
We can do some genetic experimentation with this to tweak it to grow insanely big and fast. Plants are amazingly fun to mess with on a genetic level, we have been doing it for quite a time now. We used to call it "breeding". There are an amazing variety of this plant that we can cross breed with. Take for example there is a breed of it in italy that grows 6 inches I day, I would say couple that with so
It's high time the 99% cannibalize the 1%. Add them to the list of "against the wall and shot" when the revolution comes.
Hey, that is fun work! I used to work insurance fraud investigations. The company I worked for was small, but made righteous money getting video of people who were "crippled" out doing things they claimed they couldn't. Every job was different, and pretty exciting at times. Ironically, nosy cops were my nemesis. I learned to never divulge an iota of information to cops, they are crooked and dangerous. We investigated a factory one time for massive theft going on. We got spotted by a cop who was the golfing buddy of the ring leader, and we had to flee town to avoid getting killed. We spotted both the cop and the ringleader together combing the area for us.
Another time, they figured out who we were investigating and they ran told the subject he was under investigation. He really played his game close in public after that, we never got him. But we had other cases to work, you can't win them all. Needless to say, I hated local cops in that job. It was a great job, too bad the owner/boss imploded from the big money and his weakness for bad women and booze.
I call bullshit on your calling bullshit.
Greedy people who don't want to pay a fair wage and exploit politicians to open up foreign trade venues that circumvent the order of the stable economy wrecked us. Thank Sam Walton of Wal-Mart for going behind our State Department's back and making deals with China that have wrecked our economy by flooding our markets with cheap junk until our business and manufactures caved in and moved to China.
Free Trade equates into fucking America's economy to further your own bottom line. We need Fair Trade. Unions were the chance of the lower classes to have a decent life and in exchange produce a world class product. It was a good marriage until greed happened into the equation. Yes, both sides were guilty, but to destroy our economy just to fill your pockets with more money at the cost of American livelihoods to me is a form of treason that should have them all dangling from a noose, businessman, corrupt politician and also greedy crooked union leaders as well.
When we are all mostly unemployed and starving, we will shed our civility in this matter and there will be hell to pay. Eat the rich I say. Literally. If we took a Wall Street fat cat, put him on a roasting spit, cooked him with some seasoning, bast him with some BBQ, then yank out his heart and take a big bite, these fuckers would shit themselves. Welcome to Hell, fuckers, you made it this way. Please don't try running, it will only make you taste gamey. You have always prided yourselves in "great taste", don't ruin it now. Don't get me wrong, we will still eat you. Cavender's Greek Seasoning makes everything taste great. We have plenty of it, lots of charcoal, sharp knives, forks, the good kind of paper plates, and of course our kitchen carving knife set that you sold us, it was made in China. Wal-Mart had it on sale, cheap. We couldn't produce it that cheap, our labor costs were too high for you, hence we are out of jobs and now eating you. But thanks for that one last great buy.
How's that? Over the top? Too soon? Relax, it's just dark humor.
I cordially invite you to die in a fire.
lol, I am Irish-Cherokee. I get mistaken for being Hispanic, Italian, Samoan, etc all the time. If I get out in the sun I turn super dark damn near instantly. It used to annoy my xwife to no end. My dad is really dark, his mother as well. The native genes run strong in my family. In a predominately white area, I am always suspected of being a bit "ethnic". It worked out the Italians couldn't be convinced I wasn't one, and hence I ended up working for them. My black girl friends always like my skin tone, and often commented on how beautiful they though my dad's skin was. I don't even want to talk about the attention I got from Hispanic girls.
So fuck you and your presumptions about my heritage. Trail of tears, 'nuff said. I figure the "Trail of tears" gives me license to say whatever I want about who's living here. Guess what? White people died along with mine on that force march. Christians who felt the Government betrayed the people, marched along with those "indians" and died with them in protest. Things that make you go "hmm...".
Let me explain something to you. Illegals are a bane to both of our societies, American and Mexican. They get exploited when they come here. They are given jobs at substandard wages that companies refuse to give decent wages for. They cut our throats by letting these vermin companies get away with it and make a fortune in the process. People in turn look down upon the illegals, and treat them badly. We seem to ignore the plight of Mexico while we dish out fortunes to countries overseas that spit in our faces. Our Southern neighbor needs our help far more.
The Mexican people shouldn't burn us by coming here illegally. They get exploited, and our system suffers as well. They should go home. If that puts us in a bind for labor that is great. It would force the legal channels to open up for LEGAL immigration and we could filter out the criminal riffraff that slips in with the workers. The workers would be paid a fair wage and not be exploited, or have to deal with the dangers and criminals involved with illegal immigration. Everyone but the bad guys would win.
But do they do the right thing? No. It's more "screw you gringos, I will get mine and fuck you". Hence I want to set on the border with a 50 and blow heads off them until they get the point. But only if they cross the border illegally. Legally, I want to welcome them and have a party.
Blacks? They want reparations for slavery? They can get in line after the US Government makes good on all the treaties they broke with Native Americans, then we can get to addressing their bitches and complaints. Until then, they need to shut the fuck up, they are grating on my last nerve with their "victim mentality". At least most of them grew up were there was stuff like electricity and running water. They could take a bus to get to a job. I had to walk, ride a bicycle, or just run 15 miles a day just to get to work/school/home or even socialize. I was 16 years old before we had running water. They whine, I don't want to hear it.
On a serious note, popping illegals at the border is just a sentiment, not a real threat, just to clear that up. It takes a dark heart to deal out death like that for real, it's a path I have refused to go down. I don't see how one could ever return from it even if they wanted to. I don't even like to hunt anymore, there is a darkness to it, that goes beyond the taking of a life. There is a blood lust, and a thrill to it that is savagery. I like it too much. Being part of the wilderness, and running through it like an animal has always been something I enjoyed when I was young. I guess that is why I did it in the military as well, but I never had to kill anyone thankfully. Hunting was something we did to put food on the table, it's amazing what you will eat when you are hungry enough. But even so, there is a horror to it, to slay something, skin it, gut it and cook it, then eat it. But the real horror is that you like it and are good at it. I guess I suck at being an "indian".
Not to throw gas on the fire, but both sides practice this. Observe Ann Coulter who literally demonizes liberals in her book "Demonic". Listen to "hate radio" in the daytime ran by the usual perpetrators, and you will get a major dose of it. Here's a mental exercise for you. Every time you hear the term "liberal" and it being used by the right, substitute it mentally for "Jews", and see if you see a parallel in history. If you find that disturbing do a quick google of the term fascism and compare and contrast the rise of it in history.
Free trade and globalization are terms used by modern robber barons. No country in their right mind puts up with trade policies that screw over their own economy, but the whores we have on both sides of isle in Washington will. We need fair trade. I would suggest a "mirror policy" to start with. If they don't let us sell to them, then they can't sell to us. This is the job of our Government, to tend to the ecology of the environment of our nation's business. They aren't doing their job, in fact, they have sold us out.
What we have now is "slash and burn" capitalism, that exploits this "free trade" situation to saturate our economy with goods that come cheaply from outside of our economy's ecology. This burns our jobs to the ground and puts us in dire straights, puts us in debt, we lose industry, etc. We need trade policies that are healthy and aggressive for us. Business is war and Trade is the mother of all business wars.
Big money that is in power now due to these exploits control our politicians, both sides are bought and paid for. Until we have political reform in the form of removing legalized bribery, we will never have any progress. That isn't going to happen, that is like asking the fox to fix the hen house. Politicians aren't going to fix themselves. This is going to have to play out to the bitter violent end, and it will be a lesson hard learned in blood, not just for us, but the whole planet as well.
You can't fix a machine that vast, that has run that wild for so long and is so far gone from its purpose. It will run you over if you get near it, if you get on it, it will chew you up to human hamburger. Hide from it, let it run out of gas, then cannibalize it for parts, and never build one that stupid again.
Go try to teach in an inner city public school and get back with me. I have had friends who move to the city and are given culture shock by how racist the black elements are towards whites. I chuckle at the irony of what they call and tell me. This is something I knew back in the early 80s. But its not all of them, I explain, you have to give each individual a chance. I get cussed for that from my ex-politically correct friends who swore they would never, ever say a racist thing. Oh the irony.
I have no problem with any brown people, I like them. But I don't care for the fact that we have a flood of ILLEGAL ones here. We have a system in place for a reason, and I am sure that reason is beyond the comprehension of many, hence they "run home to momma" mentally and start calling people names. If what you come up with is the "bigotry card" I am sure you are well beyond my ability to communicate the big picture in which this reason exists.
Fiction writers obviously do that, but engineers often lack balls and imagination. I think it stems from the inherent need to be "right" that comes from the field. You obviously can't be another drone, or lackey or salary slave and expect to pave new frontiers. Nor can you expect the corporate mindset or government mindset to produce it either. You have to get tired of waiting for it to happen and just do it yourself. Of course we are lacking sorely of people of that freedom, and caliber.
I think the problem is we don't inspire kids in the right direction. It takes a lifetime to develop breakthroughs. You have to learn how to stand on the shoulders of giants, meaning you have to first understand what has come before you, then have the ability to build on it, or discard it and build anew, learning from their mistakes. This takes a lot of time and education.
I wonder how many kids these days list Astronaut as one of those dream things they want to be?
So driving full throttle into becoming a 3rd world country is your idea of where we should go? You can't rebuke fools into wisdom, but it's fun trying.
It's completely a culture thing, as in blacks are in a "you owe me" mindset, so it's hard to educate them. English is the language of technology, and if you are too lazy to learn English, then you need to go back home Juan. "Press 1 for English 2 for Espanol" makes me want to set on the Mexican border with a 50 caliber sniper rifle, and a semi truck load of ammo, and pick off anything that sets a toe on OUR soil.
I seriously don't give a fuck if either group is "under represented" in silicon valley. Nor do I give one if you think I am "racist". What I am sick of is whiny bullshit excuses from either of these groups and pathetic self loathing "white guilt". Success is a combination of factors that are too complicated to distill down to some politically correct bullshit trying to get ink.
If you want "success" and you aren't born with it, then you need an education. The problem if there is one is an economic one in regards to limitations of education for the poor. This covers whites, blacks, browns, yellows, etc. Solve the problem and you solve it for everyone.
The more the merrier. But unless we find more resources, such as in space, this planet isn't going to sustain this many damn people. Especially as they wish to start raising their lifestyle up the carbon footprint scale. We are dragging our feet at planetary atmosphere scrubbing technology. It's right in front of us in our bongs, but we haven't been smart enough to realize it. Hemp will scrub the shit out of carbon in our atmosphere, give us petroleum, feed us, give us construction materials, paper, clothes, etc, but we are hampered by "church lady mentality", corrupt politicians, stupid politicians, drug money interests, the prison industry's need to keep people in their jails for stupid shit, etc, etc.
I don't know if we as a species are going to make it. Trying to get us to go in the right direction is like herding cats.
We should be out populating the solar system, then galaxy, then universe. Of course human population should rise, but Earth's population should slack off at some point. We need new worlds, even if we have to build them until we can find them.
I smell "hate radio" emulating from your brain.
What is your malfunction with Wikipedia? As far as calling America backward, [rightly..lol] the motivation is one of calling it as it is. Now I am sorry if that offends your precious perception, but frankly fuck off. Keeping your head deeply rooted in the sand or up the asses of the political machines in this country is exactly how we end up the "backward" bunch of idiots that are thumbing a ride to space with our economic enemies. Would you step closer so I can kick you square in the balls for your blind nationalism that is so easily exploited by anyone waving the colors red, white and blue at you? Here, let me wave a flag at you, just a little closer....
BOOM, NUT SHOT! And the crowd goes crazy.
Your points: Playground equipment removed. High insurance cost, due to health care being insanely high and douche bag lawyers who sue, and punkassed greedy parents who play law suits like the lottery. End result: pussy kids who never get to learn important life lessons learned from possibly getting fucked up by doing something stupid, all the while missing out on the fun of great play.
180 degree scalding hot coffee, served by idiots at the drive through who can't get a simple order right. Handed to some dumb bitch who doesn't have enough sense to handle hot coffee like HOT COFFEE. Enter greedy lawyers and 12 people not smart enough to get out of jury duty. So much for tongue scalding hot coffee in the morning to burn your ass awake.
My motivation for busting America's balls. I hope it get's it head out of its ass. The American dream needs to become the American reality. We need to think as a nation, and not a collection of individuals trying to "get theirs". It would be nice to think that way if we were still a frontier nation and we were out fucking the Indians over still. But it's 2011, and the planet is full. The others are working as a team and beating our asses. What part of the current situation do you and your ilk not understand? It's not the 50s, we aren't the rulers of the universe anymore. We are vastly outnumbered.
China will soon be the largest English speaking country in the world. Seriously, you need to understand some things. The fact that in a world of 7 billion people, we are barely over 300 million. I am going to let that one simmer in your brain for a while.
Who the fuck marked this as insightful? You really aren't serious are you?
There's plenty to be found on the moon. We should be investing in the tech to get there cheaply, so we can start exploiting the assets around us and stop gouging holes in our own home rock when there is a universe of materials floating around us. We have to evolve out of our reptile brained thinking at least long enough to understand "the big picture" and get moving on it.
How many billion of us are there now? 7? We either have to expand or start thinning the herd. The last option is the one that complete idiots take, just a clue. You're welcome.
The private sector is at least trying to pick up the slack, give them a break. Our "government" has turned out to be a bunch of whores in this "slash and burn" capitalist environment. We need industry in America or we will not be able to produce pop bottle rockets if we keep going. Wall Street has turned into the new Vegas, and "fuck 'em all" financial practices have rendered us a nation of fast food industries. Face it, we are seriously screwed.
Is there any end in sight? Yes, a bad one. The fact that we are hitching rides with Russians and Chinese to space should be embarrassing enough that our politicians should just shoot themselves in the head if they had an iota of American pride or character left. They don't, nor do they care, because they are just political whores looking to fill their pockets.
Maybe after the Second American Revolution, and the status quo are all dead, burned and ashes pissed on, and we drag honest people kicking and screaming, fearful for their lives into office to represent us and our interests again, can we again start rebuilding our space program. If we get busy, we might actually get off this rock in time to stop some deadly asteroid bombardments from turning the whole planet into churning molten slag.
I'm not too optimistic. We have the finest police state the world has ever seen to keep us all in line as the wage slaves that we are. There isn't enough fighting spirit left in any of the minds capable of leading these uneducated heathens we have reared, to up end this system. Hence we are doomed to ride it to the bitter end as it takes a full throttle plunge towards the bottom. Set back and enjoy the fiddle playing as Rome burns around us.
American Space Program, that is about to be a joke on par with the Ethiopian Space Program. Who's to blame? We all are. We should have burned every Wal-Mart to the ground when they started dumping Chinese junk on our markets. We should have executed Clinton for all the secrets he let the Chinese steal and for giving them MFN trade status. We should have knocked the teeth out of anyone who said the term "free trade markets" for it not only being a complete oxymoron, but a complete traitorous sell out of every American worker. We should have been off our fat asses and watching politics just as much as we watch sports. Most of us don't even vote, and if we do vote, we vote down party lines which is fucking retarded. We couldn't find "grass roots" unless we stood on our heads in our lawns and dug.
We are handed mental pablum in sound and video bites customized for our wee brains that have the attention span of fruit flies with ADD. Considering our technology, and our dwindling advantages, we are collectively retarded in contrast to the rest of the world's population. It's no wonder multinational corporations and their puppet politicians are able to gang rape us.
Forget how to get to the moon? WTF is this "moon" you speak of?
The Department of Fascist Enforcement of the Police State of America, because frankly that's what it is.
Seriously, it's all some Nazi bullshit that we should jam in their ass this next election. I got a feeling this next election cycle will be another "fuck you all, your fired" voter reaction. We just need some people that will actually do as we want them, not as they are bribed.
She's a WITCH!!!
Burn her!
I can't imagine the insanity that must have been to work with, complex projects without CAD of any kind. "Tools, Gentlemen, use your tools" is what our instructor tell us. Solidworks, you design it in 3D and if you need a "sketch", you can put it out to a three view layout with ortho projection in less than a minute. You can make adjustments in the various views and update it across the board. For example, if you see on the sketch something is "off" or you want to change it, you can redefine it and it will update to the 3D as well.
The goal is to spend less time monkeying with the mechanics of design and more into design itself. Instead of having to erase all of that on paper, and make corrections which would have to eat up time, one just makes a fast correction and you are moving along to something else. Things like, "why isn't this part mating to this other one the way it should be?" You don't have to make prototypes, they are simulated. Just understanding the software and what it's capable of is where we are at. We are newbies to the whole industry. I am excited about the 3D printer we eventually get to fiddle with. 5 axis mills are fascinating as well, but I doubt we will see one of those unless we take a field trip.
Anyway, I am just first semester into this. I am hoping nobody drops out, we are suppose to get one more student this winter and we will be a solid 7 of us total. Sad, huh? It normally is packed full, but these past two years its been slow and we are their smallest class in their history. Ever. It works out good for us students, we are like baby birds always with our mouths open with questions. Newbies.
I just know we learn it as a basic foundation, because there are still parts of the industries that still use AutoCAD. We are doing Solidworks for our 3D stuff at the moment, which I like a lot more than AutoCAD, personally. 30 years ago, before there was a thing called CAD, I was using pencil and paper in High School drafting classes. You are right, it's infinitely more easy with a computer. I still have a journal to sketch in, so the old ways aren't completely gone.
What's a lisp macro? It sounds like a henweight, but only with a lisp to it.
When I was in High School, I was next to the last in my class. I would have been the last, but there was a girl who just never showed up, and they counted her. I was disappointed. I was shooting for the rock bottom. Now in my 40s, I hold 4.0 and get invites to "we're smart clubs" and such. But I switched majors to an Engineering field. That 4.0 isn't going to hold this first semester. If it was Literature, or English Composition, I can bullshit my way through it, half asleep. Speeches, no problem. I can crank them out like putting a quarter in a gum ball machine. Simple stuff, it's criminal it's so easy.
But now engineering is challenging. AutoCAD is now like "old timer stuff", but we have to understand it as a basic knowledge. It's now about 3D design software. And they have thrown us off the end of the pier to get us to swim in it. What is odd, is our class is normally about 20 to 30 students, this one is 6 on a good day. This is fortunate for me, because I get to then not feel sheepish about asking questions. The instructor has time for all of our idiot questions and I feel like we the students are somewhat of a team.
The math is practical stuff, but hard. You have to pay attention, focus and do the exercises and keep good notes. The blue print reading is tough, because it tosses me into a world of industrial standards of which I had no clue existed. I didn't know people could get so particular about something like a "hole". Designing for the manufacturing process, so that you can apply the right tolerances, yeah that is a lot to take in, by the way, what is a tolerance? Yeah, it's like that, but our class is seeming to handle it, myself included.
We are doing math now that I would never have dreamed about. Geometry, figuring out cubic measurements of odd shaped items and then coming up with industrial solutions like; how much concrete will we need to make this bridge support? And this bridge support isn't something simple. It's not overly complicated, but at the same time, we have to break it down in our heads and paper to get the accurate answer.
Two of the kids have been talking about dropping out. They say "Fuck this! What was I thinking?" I tease them then, "Pussies!" I say. If my old ass can do it, why can't you?
Our first project, I wanted to ask the instructor if he was high or something. I didn't think it was possible for us to construct in our heads first and on paper a working puzzle cube that had to go together. We didn't get to build it. We designed it and put out the instructions for another student to follow in order to construct it. Amazingly, there were steps to getting this done that we learned, and we did it. Everyone's cube worked.
I am getting the drift of the mental magnitude of which one has to operate at. The math and physics are just the beginning, and are actually the simplistic elements of this. They are just tools in the mental tool box. The projects are what will be complex. I like it. As Engineers, we take science and do something with it.
What I hate is how our department has to work with antiquated computers. We are doing 2011 3D software on XP machines. That should be criminal, right? Our instructor has to deal with complicated parts assembling with his piece of shit computer running out of memory and crashing. I come home and do stuff on my home computer because it's a gaming rig, which means it has a video card that chews all of that software up and spits it out like it's a punk bitch.
Here we are trying to produce "engineers", yet we have to work with junk. Our entire IT structure at our little campus is pathetic. The library is operated off of "dumb terminals" that grind your last nerve. Not because they are dumb terminals, but you can't change anything and have to deal with Internet Explorer as a browser. Then we all huddle by one printer and hope to get our shit before we have to get to class.
We have some of the better computers on campus and we get kicked out one day of the week so the Nursing students can use ours for wh
We have slacked off on students over the past several decades, making it an easier experience, and we produce dumber students. When they get to the "hard sciences" they are shocked by the need to actually apply themselves and study hard. It's hard to sugar coat science, math and other terminology rich and study intensive fields.
Don't be a knave, hold on a second. What is her data? Let her present her data and equation before we burn her at the stake?
Cue the Monty Python.
She turned me into a newt! ....
Well..I got better.