Day 3

The flight WAS fun! We had some turbulence, and a couple of moments of roller-coaster drops, then it steadied out. Deb and I watched Balboa videos until my laptop battery ran out, then I took a nap and she looked at home decorating ideas.

We had an excellent dinner at Bahama Breeze, then headed to the hotel for a nap before dancing. I was pretty worried about dancing with this caliber of dancers, but I just sucked it up and asked some ladies to dance. I did notice some differences between what I expect a follower to do, and what some followers who aren't from Cleveland do.

I'm getting sleepy. It's after 2am. Going to bed and start off tomorrow with breakfast in bed, then lessons all day.

Trip to Raleigh

I'm sitting at Cleveland Hopkins airport, just messing around while I wait for my boarding call. I haven't flown in several years, so this is going to be fun. It's also a small plane, so I'm hoping for turbulence. I found what must be the only outlet on the concourse, got on the wifi network, and I'm just click, click, clicking away. I'm a bit nervous about dancing at this place, because the skill level is high, while mine is low. I am looking forward to the classes though.

Last night, I started learning Blues dancing. It's a lot of fun, with a similar close connection to Balboa, which is one of the reasons I like Bal. With Blues, though, it's so slow, it takes a lot of concentration to try to follow the music. The main idea of Blues dancing is to interpret the music with body movements. More attention is required than with Jitterbug, which I use more structured moves for.

Day 2

Today is the last day on a really fun job that has lasted the last 6 weeks. One of the research test cells where I work needed to be able to rotate their main motor backwards. They use that motor to test turbine blade geometry under various atmospheric conditions and rotational velocities. The turbines are used in jet engines. Since researchers view the rotation from the front of the turbine while aeronautics companies view the rotation from the pilot's viewpoint, in order to test private sector turbines, the motor must be able to turn counter-clockwise. To understand this, take a pinwheel and blow on it to get it spinning. Notice which direction it is turning while it faces you, then slowly rotate the stick until it's facing the other direction, and you'll see that from your new perspective, the pinwheel is rotating in the opposite direction.

In order to make any three phase motor reverse direction, any of two phases much be switched. That isn't too hard to do in a small motor, but this one is 15,000 horsepower. It can draw almost 1000 amps at full load. The main problem is that the high voltage cables that power the motor are 59 years old, and beyond their life expectancy by 10 years. With that in mind, we didn't want to have to move them very much, or very often. The trick was to come up with a way to switch phases, without having to move the cables every time.

The best method would have been to use a reversing disconnect switch, but the switch alone cost $80,000. The head engineer wanted a more cost-effective method, so I redesigned the existing switch to enable us to swap out pieces of buss (4" wide x ¼" thick copper plates that are used instead of wires) for clockwise and counterclockwise rotation.

The first thing to do is determinate the existing cables, so they can be tested. This picture shows the cabinet, with the cables removed from the buss.

Here is the other end of the cables, where they terminate on the motor buss. They are taped up with insulating tape to keep the 6,900 volts contained.

The cables tested out fine, so we continued. Since only two of the phases need to be interchanged, the third phase (also called Phase C) was put back on the same buss. We had lowered the cables to give us as much room as possible to form them where they needed to go, so we had to manufacture a short buss extension before landing the Phase C cables. A nice cup of java to start the day...

The next step was to start fabricating the other buss pieces. This is a buss bender. We used to to bend right angles in the copper plates. This was fuuuun!

We were meticulous with our layout and measurements. In all, there were 12 pieces of buss that had to be measured, cut, drilled or punched out, polished, and put together. My partner, Bill is cutting one of the straight pieces.

This is a picture of the Phase B buss for clockwise rotation. The cables will land on that angled plate, then the circuit continues up to the same spot the cables originally landed. You can also see the Phase C cables (with the blue tape). The three shiny vertical cables in the back are the incoming feeders.

Bill and I bent up the Phase A buss pieces next. This is the layout for clockwise rotation also, since the circuit goes from the cables right to where they were landed previously. You can see the 1½ inch offset that brought the buss closer to the side of the cabinet. This was to make it easier to land the first Phase A cable. The piece on the bottom with the holes punched in it is where the cables will be bolted in. I didn't like how this was looking because it would require me to bend the cables too far, violating the bending radius specification, so I moved that angled plate, and rotated it.

My ride is here! I'm flying to Raleigh, North Carolina to participate in the weekend long Eastern Balboa Championships! I won't be competing, but I'll be taking classes for 4 days, and dancing each night. I'll post more about this fascinating job when I get back.

I'm going to try to write every day of November, starting today.

This Lifehacker post gave me the idea to write every day, and try for 50,000 words by November 30th.

This blogpost that my niece linked on her facebook page got me thinking about how I view women, so that will be my first topic.

I've got a lot of women friends. I can't imagine treating any of them the way this woman was treated by her husband, and I can see why she felt the need to work out, get big, and get strong. But I'm writing about me, not her.

I like smart women; those who aren't afraid to tell me when I'm wrong (one of you tell me if I'm using the semi-colon properly). I like strong women; those who can have different opinions than mine, but still respect my opinion, and I theirs. Mostly, though, I like girly-girls! They wear make-up, don't fart in public, enjoy showing off their legs with high-heels and thigh-length skirts. They like to look pretty, like to be twirled around on the dance floor, and enjoy my hugs.

I truly enjoy the way a womanly woman makes ME feel! I'm talking about a woman who LIKES to be a woman, and who enjoys the attention of men. My most recent lover was such a woman, and she allowed me to be masculine. In fact, she wanted me to be masculine, and I wanted her to be feminine. Simply resting her head on my chest with my arm around her made me feel fantastic! It made me feel protective, strong, trusted, manly, important. She liked that I had a strong sex drive, liked to look at her naked, liked to touch her, and thoroughly enjoyed having sex with her. She made me happy I was a man. Killing spiders and opening jars was part of the deal too, along with walking my female friends to their cars at night, asking for text messages when they got home safely, and offering to be there should they get in a jam and need a flat tire replaced.

I don't have to bully a woman (or anyone) to feel strong and manly. A woman shouldn't have to feel she should be "weak and fair (complected)" to be womanly.