Gotcha.

I use mine in winter, and have failed to condition it since the day I installed it due to laziness and apathy.

At my rate of driving, it'll take me around 43 years to do 45k miles. Given the amount of rust that's accumulated in the past five years, I don't think the body is going to make it to the year 2058.

Also, Kenosha, Wisconsin is not "the Chicago area." That's the only explanation I can think of for putting 4,000 miles a year on a car. :D

Today, I did something I hoped I'd never do.

I threw the Big Switch.

Because, you know, the equipment room was full of smoke, and the halon system was chirping.



This morning, we did a planned power shutdown at the TV station. Part of the main equipment room and three control rooms downstairs, to cut over to a new 400a three-phase distribution panel. It's been in the planning / prep for about two months, and the work went well. Power was back on after about three hours, and all of the equipment came back up uneventfully.

Just as we were all patting ourselves on the back and getting ready to go home, security calls. Fire alarm in the main equipment room.

... which is where the new panel is.

I ran upstairs, and could smell it even before I got in there. You know that specific smell that burning electronics make?

Figuring that something in the new wiring had failed, after aborting the halon system I ran to the new panel and threw the main breaker. It takes a surprising amount of force to operate a 400 amp three-phase breaker. First time for me.

Which, of course, took news off the air. (Master stayed up.)

Then the fire department showed up. "Hi, my name's Joe, I'm the chief engineer." When an alarm happens, security is supposed to investigate in person. They didn't, and just called 911.


Long story short: we have four large air conditioners in the rack room. Similar to Lieberts.

You know how when a large three phase AC motor loses a phase, it gets really unhappy? Yeah. The controller didn't shut it down, so it sat there and cooked for who knows how long until the insulation melted and the grease ignited.

So it was totally unrelated to the new panel, and just a huge coincidence.


Fortunately, the GM and the News Director both agreed that, under the circumstances, killing the power was an appropriate action to take.


So we just got done powering all of the equipment back up for the second time in four hours, and everything appears to be operating normally.


Between this and the fact that I woke up yesterday to find sewage running through my hallway, I've had an exhausting couple of days. I think I'm going to have another drink or four.

Sounds to be about par for the course where I'm from. ;)

Threw a 1200a just the other day. (Any larger than this are automatic, just hit a button)

Toasty electronics is always fun.
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...0cda25b149.jpg
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...9486ebb8df.jpg
Gotta love getting hit in the face with the black smoke at 7am. Then find an already bogged repair on the failed part. Clamp that holds one of those liquid cooled SCRs. Rubber coated aluminum.

I know what you mean about the button. I have a pair of the "charge a spring by pumping this lever several times until the display flips, then push the button to release all of that stored energy" type breakers in one of my transmitter rooms. We also have 'em on the boxes out in the switchyard. We take in three separate mains feeds, from different substations, for redundancy. Only two are active at any given time. There are two ways to access the panels: a key in the building engineer's office, and a large axe hanging on the exterior wall of the building beside the switchyard.

And, actually, the biggest "big switch" in this plant (there are many of them in parallel, at different locations throughout the building) is just a simple little red pushbutton behind a plastic cover. It's the shunt-trip. Push that little button, and the whole UPS (2,000 KVA) disconnects immediately.

Aside from initial teasing, that button has never been pushed. I have seen the mechanism which it operates, and it's impressive. Short of explosive bolts, I don't think I've ever seen an emergency disconnect mechanism quite that scary-looking.

I don't even want to think about the circumstances which might require me, or one of my crew, to push that button.

Pushing those buttons isn't a big deal when there is no load. But if you're in failure mode with billowing black smoke and you have to push that button, i would try and do it with a stick. lol

Speaking of, i finally got approval to purchase one of those really expensive infrared flir's. (like $6,000) It's about time for our annual check thermal imaging of everything with electricity. We used to pay a company something like $4,300 to come on site and do it. Now i get to open everything up. Yay, i love new toys!

https://external-content.duckduckgo....3D1&f=1&nofb=1

Back in the days of tube-type transmitters, we used to keep a broomstick in the transmitter room for this exact reason.

When you've just changed out a 25,000 watt VHF tube, and you don't really know if the tuning is right or not (these rigs were extremely sensitive to the tiny variations which occurred in manufacturing from one tube to the next), the machine has a tendency to react somewhat violently when you first power it back up if not. I don't know of anyone ever actually being injured by this, but in general, it just felt a lot safer to be four feet away from the machine with a wooden pole, rather than standing right next to it and touching it with your finger, when that happened.

Is anyone else taking advantage of the crazy low refinance rates?

I'm locked in under 3%, just hoping the appraisal (which happens here in a few) comes out where it should. I don't know if all this slowdown stuff is already impacting the housing market. But of course, here in the flyover states, our real estate doesn't boom/bust like it does on the coasts.

I bought my last house in 2012 and got a 2.875% rate. The loan officer said that was the lowest she had ever seen. I just sold it about a month ago, but I am not in the market to buy right now. I have a sweet deal on a rent house that is 2.4 times bigger than my old house and has double the garage space. I think I might refinance some car loans, though.

Yeah I also bought in 2012 and got in at 2.9%. Now, I'm on a 15 year bi-weekly plan. I highly suggest this If you can swing it.

isn’t there an app for that now? in all seriousness, I think Flir or another company makes a thermal imaging device for phones

At WGN, I did buy a couple of IR cameras which attach to Driod / IOS phones about a year ago.

They've proven useful not just for looking at panels, but also for troubleshooting the gas furnaces on the satellite dishes out in the farm.

I have no doubt that they're nowhere near as accurate as a $6k NIST-traceable camera, but for everyday use at $150 each, they do a pretty good job.

Wow. $150 is attractive even to have one for around the house. I didn’t realize they got that cheap.

Correction closer to $200.

It was something like this:
Probably not super-accurate, but perfectly adequate for seeing that "this one specific thing is a lot hotter than all of the other things around it," which is what matters when you're looking at electrical panels, satellite dish heaters, rectifier arrays, RF combiners, etc.

I do like the $150 phone ones. But they don't hold a candle to the good ones. Plus my phone takes type-c, and it seems nobody else has the same. (This why we need to protest iPhone and their stupid proprietary connectors.)They are great for home use, but not much better than a simple infrared thermometer. But, there are a number of other reasons for a business to spend $3000+ on a legit one. The one I have is also wifi wif connects to any phone or tablet. Plus the flash drive allows me to ingest thousands of images at once into our server without dealing with a phone.

My nearly 3-year old Pixel 2 also uses a USB-C port for everything.

FLIR makes everything from consumer phone attached devices to military grade equipment installed in vehicles.

But what is confusing is that FLIR is also a generic term for Forward-Looking InfraRed

so you might be somewhere saying "i used my FLIR(TM) to see if my walls had any head loss" or you might be driving your M1A1 down the street saying "On the FLIR, I just saw 3 meat-shaped silhouettes behind that wall"

Just got the appraisal, it was the same guy who appraised the home before I bought it. Apparently to him it's increased roughly 13% in value in since Sept '17.

All we've done is taken down some trees and added a garbage disposal. Makes me happy, means we can go ahead with the refi.

I had no idea that FLIR was the name of a company. I assumed it was just a description of the technology.

Like, there's no company called RADAR, for example.

"LASER"