Subject: Re: Selling energy via the grid

From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 4 Oct 1995 06:20:30 -0400

Harry H Conover <[email-masked]> wrote:

>...How about my engineering supervison of six 10-Mw substations...

You ARE a manager! I knew it :-)

Nick

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From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 4 Oct 1995 06:18:42 -0400

>Harry H Conover ([email-masked]) pontificates:
>
>: Unlike some of you, I am seldom politically correct -- but I'm
>: usually technically correct. [Humble, too.] This is not because I am more 
>: intelligent, or even equally as intelligent as some of you, but because
>: I majored in my subject, worked hard to fully understand the concepts
>: presented to me during my studies, and have practiced my profession for 
>: many years. Let me just say that at this point in my life, I have a grasp
>: of the fundamentals and am immune to the flames from neophytes.

>: Flame away.

OK Harry :-) If you've been doing engineering for years, perhaps you are
a manager by now (success in engineering being often defined as getting out
of engineering.) If so, one wonders what your underlings think of you.
Perhaps they take solace in Kipling's words:

"Nothing is more satisfying than taking orders from fools."

Nick

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From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 5 Oct 1995 22:24:19 -0400

Harry H Conover <[email-masked]> wrote:
>Nick Pine ([email-masked]) wrote:
>: Harry H Conover <[email-masked]> wrote:
>:  
>: >I've been posting actual engineering information addressing technical
>: >aspects of selling power back to the grid.
>
>: Trouble is, a lot of it's wrong.
>
>Oh?  Which part bothers you...?

One of the things that bothers me about your postings is that you don't
understand the difference between a stand-alone inverter and a simple
synchronous inverter. You made this quite evident in your previous posting.
Ignorance is excusable. So is stupidity. So is mispelling. But when you
combine all this with arrogance I find it amusing, and a waste of time. 

Nick

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From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 5 Oct 1995 05:35:25 -0400

Rod Adams  <[email-masked]> oozed:
>[email-masked] (Nick Pine) wrote:

>Nick, what a bunch of hogwash!  A man with technical knowledge and experience disputes what you, as a student, assume you know about=
> the world.  You then criticize him, and all other engineering managers, by stating that they succeed by abandoning the profession.

Well, Rod, at least I know how to format postings to 80 columns :-)

I'm not a student. Perhaps you will feel foolish for making that assumption,
and the poisonous prose that follows it, and you will want to apologize.
But I doubt it. You will probably just go blithely on. 

I'm 49 years old now, with BS and MSEEs, and a registered US patent agent,
having passed the same federal bar exam that patent attorneys take. I've
worked as an engineer for 30 years, mainly designing computer and
telecommunications and aerospace hardware, eg some early synthetic aperture
radar systems, a floating point processor for the space shuttle, and a
900 MHz IC for the European digital cellular phone system. For the last
three years, I've worked as a manager :-) I'll probably get a PE in a year
or so.

I assume that I've learned something about the world in all this, among those
things that most managers are fools, or worse. One interesting manager's
trick that I've learned is to just listen to people, even tho you know nothing
about what they are talking about, and nod your head, until you find an
inconsistency in what they have said, and then you ask a question, and so on.
Thus you can learn, and appear to have a critical grasp of a subject, even,
while never revealing your ignorance :-) Wearing a nice suit helps, too.

Engineering really is a rotten, sleazy, slimy profession, especially if you
work as an employee, with lots of unpaid overtime, salary compression, and
aerospace companies who hire 10,000 engineers when they get a contract
and lay them all off a year or two later. And one works with such peculiar
introverted non-verbal colleagues. Then there's the rest of the world who
understand little of what engineers do, but are so quick to act as if
they do, and criticize it. Academics make money by training engineers,
so they were still telling the world all about the shortage of engineers
while degreed engineers were working for job shops in Florida for $7 an hour
a few years ago. Irwin Feerst might have changed that... With PCs, engineers
are doing more and more clerical work these days. At the moment, I would not
advise anyone to make engineering a career, and I don't think the profession
will improve any time soon. The only profession that seems worse is lawyering,
but at least lawyers get paid well, and sometimes even respected.

My new career/hobby, alternative energy engineering, specifically solar
house heating, is worse in some ways, because everyone thinks he/she knows
how to design an efficient solar house, but it seems to me that very few
people do. I can only think of three: Norman Saunders, PE, Howard Reichmuth,
PE, and Steve Baer, (? :-) All three are fairly peculiar people... Most
engineers have nothing to do with this. They are off designing more
lucrative and conventional HVAC systems for skyscrapers. (Architects
are basically artists, not engineers.)

>Where do you get your information, the Dilbert comic strip?

No. Real Life. I've been watching people for years and years. 

>Having spent some time in engineering supervisory roles, it was pretty clear to me that I, and the people I dealt, needed a detailed=
> and comprehensive understanding of whole systems that was not necessarily required at the technician level.  Managers and superviso=
>rs often upset narrow minded people because they understand more than just one component.

Or fail too. So you are a manager too :-)

>On the other hand, good engineering managers gain the respect of their best workers by explaining their decisions and training junio=
>r people.

I agree. But there are so precious few of them. More typically, the scum rises
to the top. Do you know the Kliban (?) cartoon with the caption "Business on
Parade"? A bunch of guys on their hands and knees in a circle, all wearing
three-piece suits, each with his nose up the behind of the one in front of him. 
Perhaps they are all managers. Or lawyers.

>BTW, Kipling, like most writers, was a loner who never had to get involved in the completion of complex projects with lots of interc=
>onnecting pieces.  Again, his management guidance is on the level of Dilbert, the disgruntled employee.

Never read Dilbert myself...

Nicholson L. Pine                      System design and consulting
Pine Associates, Ltd.                                (610) 489-0545 
821 Collegeville Road                           Fax: (610) 489-7057
Collegeville, PA 19426                     Email: [email-masked]

Microprocessor hardware, memory, ASIC, and computer design. Telecommunication
system design. Computer simulation and modeling. High performance, low cost,
residential solar heating and cogeneration system design. BSEE, MSEE. Senior
Member, IEEE. Registered US Patent Agent. Fluent in French.

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From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 5 Oct 1995 05:35:25 -0400

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From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 5 Oct 1995 05:48:12 -0400

Harry H Conover <[email-masked]> wrote:
 
>I've been posting actual engineering information addressing technical
>aspects of selling power back to the grid.

Trouble is, a lot of it's wrong.

Nick

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From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 6 Oct 1995 11:41:38 -0400

Stephen Lajoie <[email-masked]> wrote:
>Nick Pine <[email-masked]> wrote:
 
>So, his working in the industry disqualifies his opinions as bias.

No, his management experience correlates well with his foolishness.

>Then you would also disqualify everyone working in the solar industry as 
>bias too. 

Of course not.

>Is anyone allowed an informed opinon?

Only those who can spell one.

Goodbye to you too, Steve. You are not worth arguing with either. 

Another one for the ol' killfile.

Nick

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From: [email-masked] (Nick Pine)
Date: 6 Oct 1995 11:36:49 -0400

Harry H Conover <[email-masked]> wrote:
>: >Nick Pine ([email-masked]) wrote:
>: >: Harry H Conover <[email-masked]> wrote:
>: >:  
>: >: >I've been posting actual engineering information addressing technical
>: >: >aspects of selling power back to the grid.
>: >
>: >: Trouble is, a lot of it's wrong.
>: >
>: >Oh?  Which part bothers you...?
>
>: One of the things that bothers me about your postings is that you don't
>: understand the difference between a stand-alone inverter and a simple
>: synchronous inverter.
>
>Strangely enough, I don't recally ever even addressing a stand-alone inverter.

They say the legs are not the first thing to go, as you get older... Or
perhaps you just didn't realize what you were talking about. No problem :-)

>Perhaps your confusion here stems from your previous post in which you
>attempted to equate the electronics of a lamp dimmer with that of a power
>inverter.

Perhaps your confusion here stems from your previous post in which you
attempted to equate the electronics of a grid-tie inverter to a standalone
power inverter.

>If you have a technical correction to make, please do so.  

I've given up arguing with you Harry. You post a load of erroneous bullshit
and I point out in simple technical words exactly HOW you are full of shit,
and you don't get the point. You just ask irrelevant questions or move
blithely on to throw rocks at some other idea. You've done this to me once
before by email, and now again in posted form. Twice is enough. Goodbye.

I talked with an extremely good lamp dimming engineer this morning. His part
of the conversation went like this: "Yes...yes...yes...yes..." It's very
simple and gratifying to talk to someone who knows what I'm talking about.

Nick