Natural gas drilling is coming back to my region of Idaho after an absence of about 60 years.
People are freaked out about Fracking and Fracking hurting the ground water. But after talking to a couple geologists, and a couple people who worked around gas wells in Colorado, I think something else is going on.
In my region, all the gas is in sandstone layers, so Fracking isn't even being used here.
But about 2/3 of the wells drilled so far are "wet" wells. This natural gas condensate is loaded with a bunch of chemicals, and some is separated at the well head as it condenses out. Some is collected at the processing plant later.
Thiols, Straight-chain alkanes, Cyclohexane, napthenes, benzen, toluene, xylenes, ethylbenzene are all found in Condensate.
Although this condensate has value, according to my friends who have lived in natural gas areas, sometimes accidents, maintenance, mechanical breakdown happens and this condensate gets spilled on the ground around the well.
I would guess that some of the contamination of shallow water aquifers is coming from spilled condensate and has little to do with the fracking itself.
There are laser-sintering machines that can "print" parts out of powdered metals. Titanium, Aluminum, Bronze can all be used in these machines. While most 3d printers use low temp plastics, like ABS, there is one sintering machine in the Midwest that uses PEEK plastic.
Laser-Sintering machines start at about $500k now. Significantly cheaper than they were 10 years ago
I've been running the Consumer Preview on a virtual box for a couple weeks, I hate it, but the more I play with it, the more it reminds me of Windows 7 Home edition.
I think it is purposely crippled for the consumer/home market.
I am thinking there is going to be a Windows 8 Professional/Enterprise version that will be targeted at the Enterprise market.
It will probably have the Start Button and have the Desktop Environment that the Enterprise market wants.
My only problem with this law is it does't apply to just content I create myself, but content other people created. If I take a picture and post it online and later want it removed, I should be able to get it done. Under US Law, I have a copyright interest in the photograph. If I decide I don't want it published, I currently have the DMCA to assist me in getting it taken down, but finding every reposted copy might be difficult.
The problem with the proposed European Regulations is that it can potentially apply to not only my copyrighted content, but the copyrighted content of other people that mentions or depicts me.
If someone post's some story about me, about a night I later regretted, I could demand that it be taken off line. I have violated the other person's right of free speech, because they said something about me, I would rather people not know.
If you don't think this would be abused, you are crazy. Celebrities, Politicians, and Crooks around the world are begging for the chance for you not to know about their misdeeds. If this passes, the only thing you will every be able to look up about people in Europe is positive flattering things. No hearing, no trial, no "but it's true" defense.
IT Generalist/Business Specialist is a role I have found myself in most of my working life. I started programming as a kid back in 1979. But I never wanted to be a professional programmer. I had enough programming experience with enough different languages, that I can write pretty good scripts, and I can follow what you are trying to do, when I look at code. But I am not a programmer.
In College, I was a mixed bag. I started as a Mechanical Engineering major, but eventually switched to business, Production and Operations Management. Never had a business management position though. I was a production technician for a major electronics manufacturer in the early 90's, so I understand circuit design, surface mount assembly, I know good solder joints when I see them. I developed a specialized machine for a specific testing routine, and receive a patent for it, while I was there.
I was a really good Computer Salesman for a while. I sold equipment to Fortune 500 companies
I was a DBA for a major Bank's Document Management system for the Y2K crunch. I was assigned to Business Analysis and designed End - User testing plans
Currently, I am the only IT guy for a small manufacturing company. I have a variety of initials MCSE, CCNP, A+, Server+, Security+. But the certification that I am most excited about these days is my black belt in lean manufacturing/Six Sigma. On top of my IT duties, I am the company's Lean Manufacturing Champion. We are redesigning all of our business and manufacturing processes to be more efficient. I drive several projects simultaneously and consult on more. I design data gathering systems. Work with our ERP vendor to implement design changes to support our new methods. Work with our internal teams to document standard work. Work with multiple teams of people to develop consensus on changes then quickly implement those changes and document the results.
It is a really good job. It isn't an IT specialist job. But I still do IT stuff every day.
I believe that Cops will insist that they need the ability to pull over these vehicles, but will seldom really need to pull one over.
1. Law will most likely require the vehicle to be following all traffic laws. So no pulling it over for speeding, failure to yield, turn signals will be perfectly used, the car won't tailgate 2. If the car is autonomous, and following the rules, DUI, Talking on Cell Phone etc all become meaningless. The driver (the computer) won't be distracted or drunk 3. With forthcoming changes to vehicle lighting systems, the computer will be very aware if there is a problem with a turn signal or brake light. With LED lighting for signals becoming more and more common, we aren't very far from these never being replaced during the life of the car. Any other "road hazards" computer will also know about. Pulling over an autonomous car because of these things might happen, but will be rare 4. License Plate checks? Sure cops pull people over because their tags are expired, but they don't have to. The laws could very easily be rewritten so the cop radios in the plate "expired tags", Dispatch issues a ticket to the registered owner. No need to pull anyone over. Heck, Laws could be written to issue expired tag tickets to the registered owner automatically every year if the car isn't reregistered. Being registered in a new State would be a defense. 5. Vehicle is stolen - Plausible reason to pull it over. But as OnStar has shown, it is very easy to design these things to be remotely disabled by the owner when they are stolen. Then the owner can call the police with the GPS coordinates. It is so trivial, that autonomous cars may be undesirable in the stolen car world because they will be too easy to track down
Law Enforcement will insist they need to pull these vehicles over regularly anyway. Why, because they arrest so many people at traffic stops for unrelated issues to the operation of the car. Without traffic stops giving them the excuse to check out the driver closer, they will miss out on these arrests.
My local school district in Idaho (Weiser) has a couple Telepresence Classrooms. The students take Japanese and Calculus being taught by teachers in other locations. A local teacher teaches a popular Holocaust Literature class that is attended by students from more than 6 other school districts.
This is the type of technology the teachers and the schools wanted. It is much cheaper than putting a tablet or a laptop in every students hand and easier to support.
But no, we had to go the unproven expensive route.
Idaho Native in one of those rural towns. I have friends on the local school board that are having to deal with this idiotic law.
Our high school averages 500 kids, 125 per class. In 4 years, there will be 500 laptops or tablets needing support. The school district doesn't even employ a full time IT person now. They have one of the high school business teachers be the Network administrator.
With the additional support load, now they are going to have to have an IT department. It is going to be beyond 1 person.
Now add on other laws about requiring schools to filter internet access on computers that kids have access to. The law doesn't say that it only applies to equipment located at the school. It applies to all school district equipment, no matter the location. So your IT department has to be sophisticated enough to manage web filtering for traveling equipment so that it is filtered no matter where it is. I know there are products out there that do this, but is a step up in sophistication. One thought being tossed around by the school board is that they won't allow the students to take the laptops or tablets home.
They thought maybe they could save money on textbooks by buying the e-book versions and issuing those to the students to use on the laptops or tablets. But for the most part, the textbook publishers are charging the same price for e-book or hard bound. With DRM schemes, the textbook publisher is forcing faster refresh cycles too. So they charge the same price, but you have to buy them more often
There are school districts that are even smaller. They might have 40 kids in their high school. They have even less IT skills in their schools, but will have to have much more sophisticated networks now.
Our school has several "smart classrooms". They are telepresence equipped classrooms. One of our local teachers teaches a course on Holocaust Literature not only in our school, but through this kind of technology, to six other high schools in our region. This is good technology. This is the kind of technology that the schools wanted more of. It is relatively cheap to equip these classrooms these days and the equipment is simple to maintain. But this kind of technology isn't getting funded. Instead we are getting more expensive solutions that require more maintenance and support.
It is one thing to bring in enough engineers to do design work, or the modest scale production that Tesla currently does.
It is another thing to bring in the 100's of engineers needed to operate a manufacturing plant of the scale to build even 50,000-100,000 cars per year. The skill set of engineers who have been writing code for many years doesn't translate to production and manufacturing engineering in heavy industry.
The greatest concentrations of those types of engineers is in communities that already have automotive or other industrial factories. You would have to recruit them and pay them a high enough wage to make them want to move away from their current homes and be able to afford comparable homes in the Silicon Valley region.
Those kinds of wage scales will make Tesla's dreams of selling $15-$20k cars unobtainable.
I work for a company that has spent a lot of time trying to lean out our RMA and Shipping processes. I can guarantee that unless you have very good procedures in place, it will take more than 10 minutes to RMA a part and package it for shipping. You are probably off by a factor of 3.
At a minimum, you probably left out the whole debit/credit memo process that your accounting department would want you to go through to make sure the books are correct. Even more so for a Government agency.
Unless you have a packaging area set up special for this, most days rounding up the packaging supplies so that you can package a UPS acceptable box will take longer than 5 minutes.
Sure, we can do somethings that don't put us at much risk
Helping a critically injured person that isn't in a burning building? Absolutely. But in this case there was no one injured. If there had been injuries, I am sure they would have helped.
Creating potential escape routes by dousing portions of a house with water? This is very tricky. Just the act of putting water on the fire changes where the smoke and hot gases are going inside the building. Unless you know where the person is, you might make the situation worse. But again, in this case, there was no one in the building. The Fire Department has stated several times, they would have attempted a rescue, if one had been needed.
Collapsed structure? what kind of structure, what materials were used, what construction methods. Is it stable or unstable? How collapsed is it? Why did it collapse? Does the hazard still exist? Building collapse is a specialty technical rescue situation. How much if any training does the department have? If they have no collapse training, then they are the same as anyone else on the scene.
My preference is for this county to step up, have the voters approve fire protection taxing districts as fast as possible.
In the short term, the County is finally working on the paperwork that gives the City fire departments operating in the County areas the legal authority to be there and the responsibility to handle all emergencies. This authority wasn't there before.
I understand from other sources that County Officials are finally negotiating Memorandums of Understanding with all those communities that will officially give the Cities fire protection assignments in the Rural areas around their communities.
While they will probably remain subscription areas for the time being, this gives those community fire departments legal authority to respond to all emergencies in their area of authority, not just to the subscribers. It will also give them authority for cost recovery from non-subscribers.
Remember, they're not *his* firefighters, they're from the next town over. His nonexistent local government has no fire service: I bet it would have no objection if you wanted to buy yourself a tanker truck and set up your own private fire company.
But nobody does this, because fire protection is an absolutely shitty way to make a living in the 21st century. There's no profit in it unless you run around setting fires yourself.
Unprofitable but indispensable social services: this is what government is good at.
Actually, this isn't quite true. There are numerous private companies that fight fire for a living. They are primarily in the Wildland Fire world though. Most of the airplanes and helicopters you see are privately owned on contract to the Federal Government. Lots of brush trucks, water tenders, caterers, shower and laundry facilities, EMTs, etc.
My fire department gets contracted for wildland structure protection sometimes. I made $700 in 3 days this year. Most years the department gets between $10,000 and $35,000. In 2007, we netted over $100,000. But, we don't put ourselves out for National dispatch either. Some departments do.
However, here is where things get unpleasant: Because the Cranicks didn't pay, the firefighters allowed the fire to burn merrily, growing and spreading until it hit somebody who had paid. Now, since the paying householder's property is on fire, they likely suffered some thousands or 10s of thousands in direct combustion, smoke, and water damage. They paid, and they got shitty service. Had the firefighters used the Cranicks property to fight and stop the fire, they could have saved their customers from any damage, and done a much better job of serving them, the ones who actually paid.
Actually, in this case, the neighbors had a small grass fire that was put out. No damage to any building. The grass will grow back by next year. But your point is valid.
There is something analogous going on with wildland fires that start on Federal Land now. The Federal Government has decided they no longer have any legal responsibility to protect structures from wildfires that start on Federal Land. It is up to the local jurisdiction to pay for that protection. If you don't have any local fire protection, you are SOL. The Feds will help the locals request additional structure resources, but it is up to them to pay for it. My department has a contract through the State to supply structure protection equipment. The contract rate is $2700 per day, and you have to feed us.
I was on one structure protection assignment this year. The local Fire Chief was told when the fire started, that if it was declared a disaster area, he would get some Federal Help with the bills. After it was declared a disaster area, he was told that he wouldn't get any help unless his jurisdiction had over $100,000 in out of pocket costs. He was sitting at $65,000 that day. His whole budget is only about $200,000 per year. He didn't have $65,000 sitting around to pay for these resources.
If there is a forest fire coming, the Feds will put a dozer line in to provide a fire break. But when they get to private land, they will pick up the blade and not make a line until they get back to government owned land. Landowner is responsible for putting in his own fire break. Of course, if there is a local Fire Chief there, he excercise his authority to have the fire break made, but his agency will get the bill now too.
60% of my county has effectively no fire protection.
I live in Idaho, my county is almost the size of the State of Delaware. We have less than 12,000 people in the whole county.
Most of the land without fire protection is Federal land. The Federal Government has 1 wildland fire truck in the County.
The Feds asked us to respond to a fire in a Cabin near Federal land one time. It took our truck almost 1 hour to get to the scene over narrow, one lane gravel roads.
Idaho State Law states that if a fire protection district is set up, it requires approval of 2/3rd of the voters in the area. The people who live in the unprotected areas vote regularly to not be annexed into existing fire protection districts.
I agree that some career departments have outrageous budgets.
I am a Captain in a Volunteer (Paid on Call) department. I get paid $10 per hour per call. I might make $1000 this year.
Our department budget is $135,000 per year. We are a municipal department. The property tax hit is about $85 per $100,000 in home value. Pretty darn cheap if you ask me.
Oh, and we are an ISO Class 4 department, which less than 10% of the fire departments in the country obtain. The difference in property insurance rates for my community between ISO 4 and 5 is $250,000 per year (according to the agents who testified at the hearing when we had to replace our ladder truck)
There is a whole history of Common Law about billing for services at the scene of an emergency.
It goes back to Roman times when fire brigades were a private enterprise. One Roman would go to someone who's home was burning and offer to buy it. If the person sold the property, then this guy's fire brigade would go to work.
Under Maritime Law, if a ship is having an emergency and needs to be towed to save it, the Tug can't charge more than their usual rates.
The Duress in this situation is the Stress of "the house is on fire and losing value per minute". Note the 911 call from the homeowners wife offering to pay "whatever you want".
Contracts signed at the scene of a fire, run the risk of being thrown out of Court. The Court will evaluate the contract under the terms of "If the person's house wasn't on fire, would they have agreed to these terms".
From an administrative stand point, they are a pain-in-the butt to manage.
The fire department has to send out bills every year. They have to track who paid and who didn't. They have to follow up with the non-payers.
When your pay rate is variable, anticipating revenue in advance becomes difficult. Without a good subscription payment record, banks won't loan money to buy new equipment.
If you have the MOA's in place, so that you can respond to non-subscribers and bill them, now you have a billing and collection issue with those responses.
All and all, from a management standpoint, taxing districts are far easier to manager. That is part of my "subscription districts suck" comment.
The only Legal Authority the Fire Department had to respond to fires in the County was to people who had contracted, individually, with the City, via payment of subscriptions, for fire protection.
That Legal Authority is a big deal. Fire Departments, who respond out of their areas of authority, risk not being covered by their own insurance carries for damage to fire department equipment or firefighter injuries.
In this case, the County had never signed a Memorandum of Understanding giving the City of South Fulton the authority to respond into the County for fire protection. The only legal authority they had was the contracts with individual home owners.
My understanding is that Olbion County now realizes that mistake and is working with community fire departments in the area to draw up those MOAs and define jurisdictional boundaries. I am sure the homeowner's will sue. But they won't win.
The Fire Department was operating under the policy implemented by their Mayor and City Council.
They can't be fired for doing what their Mayor and City Council told them to do. They could have been fired for failure to follow the policy.
It was their Job to protect their City. It wasn't their Job to protect people who had intentionally declined their services (failed to pay subscription fees)
There is no law in this country that requires anyone to take action to help save someone's property. Human lives yes, but property no. In this case, no lives were are risk, so what would the crime be?
I hate subscription districts. I hate rules about jurisdictional boundaries. But they exist.
I have personally watched the rural fire department in my area drive up to their boundary and stop their response to fires outside their jurisdiction. In one case, the fire ended up growing from 20 acres to 35,000 acres. Because the fire started on Federal Land, no local departments would respond until it crossed into their jurisdictions
If the County and the City have a pre-arranged agreement (Memorandum of Agreement or Contract), this can be effective.
But those fees, and the authority to collect them, have to be in the Agreement. The Agreement also gives the Fire Department the legal authority to respond to emergencies in the area.
My understanding in this case, that County didn't have any MOA's with any of the City Fire Departments in the County. They now realize the stupidity of this, and are in the process of working out the MOA's and the jurisdictional boundaries.
They will probably continue to be subscription districts, but now the fire departments will have legal authority to act in them.
OSHA considers a house fire to be "Immediately Dangerous to Life and Health"
All my personal protective equipment comes with warning labels that even when wearing the equipment properly, I can still be killed in a fire that the equipment will survive.
Every time I enter a building that is on fire it counts as "substantial personal risk". I am definitely at less risk than someone without the training or equipment, but I am still at risk.
If I am injured on a fire that my department has no legal responsibility to respond to, the Workman Comp Insurance provider can deny my claims.
Unless there is a pre-written agreement between the County and my Community, responding to a non-subscribers house fire is an out of jurisdiction response. The Subscription fee is what gives my fire department jurisdiction.
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Natural gas drilling is coming back to my region of Idaho after an absence of about 60 years.
People are freaked out about Fracking and Fracking hurting the ground water. But after talking to a couple geologists, and a couple people who worked around gas wells in Colorado, I think something else is going on.
In my region, all the gas is in sandstone layers, so Fracking isn't even being used here.
But about 2/3 of the wells drilled so far are "wet" wells. This natural gas condensate is loaded with a bunch of chemicals, and some is separated at the well head as it condenses out. Some is collected at the processing plant later.
Thiols, Straight-chain alkanes, Cyclohexane, napthenes, benzen, toluene, xylenes, ethylbenzene are all found in Condensate.
Although this condensate has value, according to my friends who have lived in natural gas areas, sometimes accidents, maintenance, mechanical breakdown happens and this condensate gets spilled on the ground around the well.
I would guess that some of the contamination of shallow water aquifers is coming from spilled condensate and has little to do with the fracking itself.
There are laser-sintering machines that can "print" parts out of powdered metals. Titanium, Aluminum, Bronze can all be used in these machines. While most 3d printers use low temp plastics, like ABS, there is one sintering machine in the Midwest that uses PEEK plastic.
Laser-Sintering machines start at about $500k now. Significantly cheaper than they were 10 years ago
forget that Roundup isn't a Pesticide
Roundup is an herbicide and acts on an enzyme not found in humans or insects
I don't what pesticide you are concerned about, but it isn't Roundup. Roundup has other issues, ie plants becoming Roundup resistent
I've been running the Consumer Preview on a virtual box for a couple weeks, I hate it, but the more I play with it, the more it reminds me of Windows 7 Home edition.
I think it is purposely crippled for the consumer/home market.
I am thinking there is going to be a Windows 8 Professional/Enterprise version that will be targeted at the Enterprise market.
It will probably have the Start Button and have the Desktop Environment that the Enterprise market wants.
My only problem with this law is it does't apply to just content I create myself, but content other people created. If I take a picture and post it online and later want it removed, I should be able to get it done. Under US Law, I have a copyright interest in the photograph. If I decide I don't want it published, I currently have the DMCA to assist me in getting it taken down, but finding every reposted copy might be difficult.
The problem with the proposed European Regulations is that it can potentially apply to not only my copyrighted content, but the copyrighted content of other people that mentions or depicts me.
If someone post's some story about me, about a night I later regretted, I could demand that it be taken off line. I have violated the other person's right of free speech, because they said something about me, I would rather people not know.
If you don't think this would be abused, you are crazy. Celebrities, Politicians, and Crooks around the world are begging for the chance for you not to know about their misdeeds. If this passes, the only thing you will every be able to look up about people in Europe is positive flattering things. No hearing, no trial, no "but it's true" defense.
IT Generalist/Business Specialist is a role I have found myself in most of my working life. I started programming as a kid back in 1979. But I never wanted to be a professional programmer. I had enough programming experience with enough different languages, that I can write pretty good scripts, and I can follow what you are trying to do, when I look at code. But I am not a programmer.
In College, I was a mixed bag. I started as a Mechanical Engineering major, but eventually switched to business, Production and Operations Management. Never had a business management position though. I was a production technician for a major electronics manufacturer in the early 90's, so I understand circuit design, surface mount assembly, I know good solder joints when I see them. I developed a specialized machine for a specific testing routine, and receive a patent for it, while I was there.
I was a really good Computer Salesman for a while. I sold equipment to Fortune 500 companies
I was a DBA for a major Bank's Document Management system for the Y2K crunch. I was assigned to Business Analysis and designed End - User testing plans
Currently, I am the only IT guy for a small manufacturing company. I have a variety of initials MCSE, CCNP, A+, Server+, Security+. But the certification that I am most excited about these days is my black belt in lean manufacturing/Six Sigma. On top of my IT duties, I am the company's Lean Manufacturing Champion. We are redesigning all of our business and manufacturing processes to be more efficient. I drive several projects simultaneously and consult on more. I design data gathering systems. Work with our ERP vendor to implement design changes to support our new methods. Work with our internal teams to document standard work. Work with multiple teams of people to develop consensus on changes then quickly implement those changes and document the results.
It is a really good job. It isn't an IT specialist job. But I still do IT stuff every day.
I believe that Cops will insist that they need the ability to pull over these vehicles, but will seldom really need to pull one over.
1. Law will most likely require the vehicle to be following all traffic laws. So no pulling it over for speeding, failure to yield, turn signals will be perfectly used, the car won't tailgate
2. If the car is autonomous, and following the rules, DUI, Talking on Cell Phone etc all become meaningless. The driver (the computer) won't be distracted or drunk
3. With forthcoming changes to vehicle lighting systems, the computer will be very aware if there is a problem with a turn signal or brake light. With LED lighting for signals becoming more and more common, we aren't very far from these never being replaced during the life of the car. Any other "road hazards" computer will also know about. Pulling over an autonomous car because of these things might happen, but will be rare
4. License Plate checks? Sure cops pull people over because their tags are expired, but they don't have to. The laws could very easily be rewritten so the cop radios in the plate "expired tags", Dispatch issues a ticket to the registered owner. No need to pull anyone over. Heck, Laws could be written to issue expired tag tickets to the registered owner automatically every year if the car isn't reregistered. Being registered in a new State would be a defense.
5. Vehicle is stolen - Plausible reason to pull it over. But as OnStar has shown, it is very easy to design these things to be remotely disabled by the owner when they are stolen. Then the owner can call the police with the GPS coordinates. It is so trivial, that autonomous cars may be undesirable in the stolen car world because they will be too easy to track down
Law Enforcement will insist they need to pull these vehicles over regularly anyway. Why, because they arrest so many people at traffic stops for unrelated issues to the operation of the car. Without traffic stops giving them the excuse to check out the driver closer, they will miss out on these arrests.
My local school district in Idaho (Weiser) has a couple Telepresence Classrooms. The students take Japanese and Calculus being taught by teachers in other locations. A local teacher teaches a popular Holocaust Literature class that is attended by students from more than 6 other school districts.
This is the type of technology the teachers and the schools wanted. It is much cheaper than putting a tablet or a laptop in every students hand and easier to support.
But no, we had to go the unproven expensive route.
Idaho Native in one of those rural towns. I have friends on the local school board that are having to deal with this idiotic law.
Our high school averages 500 kids, 125 per class. In 4 years, there will be 500 laptops or tablets needing support. The school district doesn't even employ a full time IT person now. They have one of the high school business teachers be the Network administrator.
With the additional support load, now they are going to have to have an IT department. It is going to be beyond 1 person.
Now add on other laws about requiring schools to filter internet access on computers that kids have access to. The law doesn't say that it only applies to equipment located at the school. It applies to all school district equipment, no matter the location. So your IT department has to be sophisticated enough to manage web filtering for traveling equipment so that it is filtered no matter where it is. I know there are products out there that do this, but is a step up in sophistication. One thought being tossed around by the school board is that they won't allow the students to take the laptops or tablets home.
They thought maybe they could save money on textbooks by buying the e-book versions and issuing those to the students to use on the laptops or tablets. But for the most part, the textbook publishers are charging the same price for e-book or hard bound. With DRM schemes, the textbook publisher is forcing faster refresh cycles too. So they charge the same price, but you have to buy them more often
There are school districts that are even smaller. They might have 40 kids in their high school. They have even less IT skills in their schools, but will have to have much more sophisticated networks now.
Our school has several "smart classrooms". They are telepresence equipped classrooms. One of our local teachers teaches a course on Holocaust Literature not only in our school, but through this kind of technology, to six other high schools in our region. This is good technology. This is the kind of technology that the schools wanted more of. It is relatively cheap to equip these classrooms these days and the equipment is simple to maintain. But this kind of technology isn't getting funded. Instead we are getting more expensive solutions that require more maintenance and support.
It is asinine.
Apparently Microsoft never saw this device before either
http://www.dentalrat.com/
(My company used to make the machined parts for the V.1 of the this device)
It is one thing to bring in enough engineers to do design work, or the modest scale production that Tesla currently does.
It is another thing to bring in the 100's of engineers needed to operate a manufacturing plant of the scale to build even 50,000-100,000 cars per year. The skill set of engineers who have been writing code for many years doesn't translate to production and manufacturing engineering in heavy industry.
The greatest concentrations of those types of engineers is in communities that already have automotive or other industrial factories. You would have to recruit them and pay them a high enough wage to make them want to move away from their current homes and be able to afford comparable homes in the Silicon Valley region.
Those kinds of wage scales will make Tesla's dreams of selling $15-$20k cars unobtainable.
I work for a company that has spent a lot of time trying to lean out our RMA and Shipping processes. I can guarantee that unless you have very good procedures in place, it will take more than 10 minutes to RMA a part and package it for shipping. You are probably off by a factor of 3.
At a minimum, you probably left out the whole debit/credit memo process that your accounting department would want you to go through to make sure the books are correct. Even more so for a Government agency.
Unless you have a packaging area set up special for this, most days rounding up the packaging supplies so that you can package a UPS acceptable box will take longer than 5 minutes.
Sure, we can do somethings that don't put us at much risk
Helping a critically injured person that isn't in a burning building? Absolutely. But in this case there was no one injured. If there had been injuries, I am sure they would have helped.
Creating potential escape routes by dousing portions of a house with water? This is very tricky. Just the act of putting water on the fire changes where the smoke and hot gases are going inside the building. Unless you know where the person is, you might make the situation worse. But again, in this case, there was no one in the building. The Fire Department has stated several times, they would have attempted a rescue, if one had been needed.
Collapsed structure? what kind of structure, what materials were used, what construction methods. Is it stable or unstable? How collapsed is it? Why did it collapse? Does the hazard still exist? Building collapse is a specialty technical rescue situation. How much if any training does the department have? If they have no collapse training, then they are the same as anyone else on the scene.
My preference is for this county to step up, have the voters approve fire protection taxing districts as fast as possible.
In the short term, the County is finally working on the paperwork that gives the City fire departments operating in the County areas the legal authority to be there and the responsibility to handle all emergencies. This authority wasn't there before.
I understand from other sources that County Officials are finally negotiating Memorandums of Understanding with all those communities that will officially give the Cities fire protection assignments in the Rural areas around their communities.
While they will probably remain subscription areas for the time being, this gives those community fire departments legal authority to respond to all emergencies in their area of authority, not just to the subscribers. It will also give them authority for cost recovery from non-subscribers.
Remember, they're not *his* firefighters, they're from the next town over. His nonexistent local government has no fire service: I bet it would have no objection if you wanted to buy yourself a tanker truck and set up your own private fire company.
But nobody does this, because fire protection is an absolutely shitty way to make a living in the 21st century. There's no profit in it unless you run around setting fires yourself.
Unprofitable but indispensable social services: this is what government is good at.
Actually, this isn't quite true. There are numerous private companies that fight fire for a living. They are primarily in the Wildland Fire world though. Most of the airplanes and helicopters you see are privately owned on contract to the Federal Government. Lots of brush trucks, water tenders, caterers, shower and laundry facilities, EMTs, etc.
My fire department gets contracted for wildland structure protection sometimes. I made $700 in 3 days this year. Most years the department gets between $10,000 and $35,000. In 2007, we netted over $100,000. But, we don't put ourselves out for National dispatch either. Some departments do.
However, here is where things get unpleasant: Because the Cranicks didn't pay, the firefighters allowed the fire to burn merrily, growing and spreading until it hit somebody who had paid. Now, since the paying householder's property is on fire, they likely suffered some thousands or 10s of thousands in direct combustion, smoke, and water damage. They paid, and they got shitty service. Had the firefighters used the Cranicks property to fight and stop the fire, they could have saved their customers from any damage, and done a much better job of serving them, the ones who actually paid.
Actually, in this case, the neighbors had a small grass fire that was put out. No damage to any building. The grass will grow back by next year. But your point is valid.
There is something analogous going on with wildland fires that start on Federal Land now. The Federal Government has decided they no longer have any legal responsibility to protect structures from wildfires that start on Federal Land. It is up to the local jurisdiction to pay for that protection. If you don't have any local fire protection, you are SOL. The Feds will help the locals request additional structure resources, but it is up to them to pay for it. My department has a contract through the State to supply structure protection equipment. The contract rate is $2700 per day, and you have to feed us.
I was on one structure protection assignment this year. The local Fire Chief was told when the fire started, that if it was declared a disaster area, he would get some Federal Help with the bills. After it was declared a disaster area, he was told that he wouldn't get any help unless his jurisdiction had over $100,000 in out of pocket costs. He was sitting at $65,000 that day. His whole budget is only about $200,000 per year. He didn't have $65,000 sitting around to pay for these resources.
If there is a forest fire coming, the Feds will put a dozer line in to provide a fire break. But when they get to private land, they will pick up the blade and not make a line until they get back to government owned land. Landowner is responsible for putting in his own fire break. Of course, if there is a local Fire Chief there, he excercise his authority to have the fire break made, but his agency will get the bill now too.
60% of my county has effectively no fire protection.
I live in Idaho, my county is almost the size of the State of Delaware. We have less than 12,000 people in the whole county.
Most of the land without fire protection is Federal land. The Federal Government has 1 wildland fire truck in the County.
The Feds asked us to respond to a fire in a Cabin near Federal land one time. It took our truck almost 1 hour to get to the scene over narrow, one lane gravel roads.
Idaho State Law states that if a fire protection district is set up, it requires approval of 2/3rd of the voters in the area. The people who live in the unprotected areas vote regularly to not be annexed into existing fire protection districts.
I agree that some career departments have outrageous budgets.
I am a Captain in a Volunteer (Paid on Call) department. I get paid $10 per hour per call. I might make $1000 this year.
Our department budget is $135,000 per year. We are a municipal department. The property tax hit is about $85 per $100,000 in home value. Pretty darn cheap if you ask me.
Oh, and we are an ISO Class 4 department, which less than 10% of the fire departments in the country obtain. The difference in property insurance rates for my community between ISO 4 and 5 is $250,000 per year (according to the agents who testified at the hearing when we had to replace our ladder truck)
There is a whole history of Common Law about billing for services at the scene of an emergency.
It goes back to Roman times when fire brigades were a private enterprise. One Roman would go to someone who's home was burning and offer to buy it. If the person sold the property, then this guy's fire brigade would go to work.
Under Maritime Law, if a ship is having an emergency and needs to be towed to save it, the Tug can't charge more than their usual rates.
The Duress in this situation is the Stress of "the house is on fire and losing value per minute". Note the 911 call from the homeowners wife offering to pay "whatever you want".
Contracts signed at the scene of a fire, run the risk of being thrown out of Court. The Court will evaluate the contract under the terms of "If the person's house wasn't on fire, would they have agreed to these terms".
From an administrative stand point, they are a pain-in-the butt to manage.
The fire department has to send out bills every year. They have to track who paid and who didn't. They have to follow up with the non-payers.
When your pay rate is variable, anticipating revenue in advance becomes difficult. Without a good subscription payment record, banks won't loan money to buy new equipment.
If you have the MOA's in place, so that you can respond to non-subscribers and bill them, now you have a billing and collection issue with those responses.
All and all, from a management standpoint, taxing districts are far easier to manager. That is part of my "subscription districts suck" comment.
They used to charge $500 to respond to non-subscriber fires.
Less than 50% of the people paid. The City talked to their lawyers and found out they would have to go to court to collect from the non-payers.
When word got around about that, even fewer people paid the $500 fee.
The only Legal Authority the Fire Department had to respond to fires in the County was to people who had contracted, individually, with the City, via payment of subscriptions, for fire protection.
That Legal Authority is a big deal. Fire Departments, who respond out of their areas of authority, risk not being covered by their own insurance carries for damage to fire department equipment or firefighter injuries.
In this case, the County had never signed a Memorandum of Understanding giving the City of South Fulton the authority to respond into the County for fire protection. The only legal authority they had was the contracts with individual home owners.
My understanding is that Olbion County now realizes that mistake and is working with community fire departments in the area to draw up those MOAs and define jurisdictional boundaries. I am sure the homeowner's will sue. But they won't win.
The Fire Department was operating under the policy implemented by their Mayor and City Council.
They can't be fired for doing what their Mayor and City Council told them to do. They could have been fired for failure to follow the policy.
It was their Job to protect their City. It wasn't their Job to protect people who had intentionally declined their services (failed to pay subscription fees)
There is no law in this country that requires anyone to take action to help save someone's property. Human lives yes, but property no. In this case, no lives were are risk, so what would the crime be?
I hate subscription districts. I hate rules about jurisdictional boundaries. But they exist.
I have personally watched the rural fire department in my area drive up to their boundary and stop their response to fires outside their jurisdiction. In one case, the fire ended up growing from 20 acres to 35,000 acres. Because the fire started on Federal Land, no local departments would respond until it crossed into their jurisdictions
If the County and the City have a pre-arranged agreement (Memorandum of Agreement or Contract), this can be effective.
But those fees, and the authority to collect them, have to be in the Agreement. The Agreement also gives the Fire Department the legal authority to respond to emergencies in the area.
My understanding in this case, that County didn't have any MOA's with any of the City Fire Departments in the County. They now realize the stupidity of this, and are in the process of working out the MOA's and the jurisdictional boundaries.
They will probably continue to be subscription districts, but now the fire departments will have legal authority to act in them.
OSHA considers a house fire to be "Immediately Dangerous to Life and Health"
All my personal protective equipment comes with warning labels that even when wearing the equipment properly, I can still be killed in a fire that the equipment will survive.
Every time I enter a building that is on fire it counts as "substantial personal risk". I am definitely at less risk than someone without the training or equipment, but I am still at risk.
If I am injured on a fire that my department has no legal responsibility to respond to, the Workman Comp Insurance provider can deny my claims.
Unless there is a pre-written agreement between the County and my Community, responding to a non-subscribers house fire is an out of jurisdiction response. The Subscription fee is what gives my fire department jurisdiction.