Registration is Now Open For [MC]2 2013!

Are you ready? Ready to find out how MTConnect can take your shop floor further?  Ready to discover new applications and ideas for your current use of MTConnect? You can learn about all this and more at [MC]2 MTConnect: Connecting Manufacturing Conference, taking place April 10-11, 2013, at The Millennium Hotel Cincinnati in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Registration is now open for this exciting and dynamic conference, which will once again feature business sessions to show you how MTConnect can improve your bottom line, as well as hands-on technical sessions that will focus on the finer details of using and developing MTConnect. Everyone will come together for general sessions that will give an overarching view of both manufacturing and MTConnect.

All the details are available at MTConnectConference.com. We look forward to seeing you in Cincinnati!

Do NOT Use E15 Gas

Thanks to my father for sending this to me.

Watch this about E15 fuel.   This could be a disaster if you were to accidentally put it in your car that was not designed to take this fuel - which is MOST vehicles.  It damages engines, gaskets, fuel lines and anything that this E15 touches in vehicles that were not specifically designed to take E15.   Many auto companies say they WILL NOT cover any vehicles where the owner has put in E15.  AAA is the company that has come out and stated this warning.

"The AAA says the Environmental Protection Agency and gasoline retailers should halt the sale of E15, a new ethanol blend that could damage millions of vehicles and void car warranties.

AAA, which issued its warning Friday, says just 12 million of more than 240 million cars, trucks and SUVs now in use have manufacturers' approval for E15. Flex-fuel vehicles, 2012 and newer General Motors vehicles, 2013 Fords and 2001 and later model Porsches are the exceptions, according to AAA, the nation's largest motorist group, with 53.5 million members.

"It is clear that millions of Americans are unfamiliar with E15, which means there is a strong possibility that many may improperly fill up using this gasoline and damage their vehicle," AAA President and CEO Robert Darbelnet tells USA TODAY. "Bringing E15 to the market without adequate safeguards does not responsibly meet the needs of consumers."

E15 is VERY corrosive.  E15 is heavier than standard gasoline and will go to the bottom of your fuel tank.   E15 is so corrosive that it is carried in special stainless steel fuel trucks.

My 700th Blog Post - Thanks npg aka Neil P. Groundwater!

This is my 700th blog post and I thought it was a good time to reflect not only on my blog, but on my technical mentor -- Neil P. Groundwater aka npg - and to say thanks to Neil for all of his help and guidance over the past 26 years!

Turning on the WayBack machine -- I got very, very lucky when I started working for Sun Microsystems on May 4th, 1987 when I met Neil.

I was hired as a Systems Engineer (SE) and Neil was the consultant in the office.  Neil was the Jesus/Allah/Buddah of the Sun DC office.  As a consultant, the technical buck stopped with Neil.  When the SEs had a very difficult question, we would walk over to Neil's office.  Neil had an office - we had cubes.  We all knew our places in the IQ food chain :-)  Neil chose his parents well.  Unlike some very technical individuals, Neil also has a great personality and someone you can talk to.  That is not always the case and there are many extremely technical and gifted individuals who are devoid of any social skills whatsoever.

There are many stories I could tell, but I will limit it to just a few.  I am sure Neil will remind me of many more :-)

Neil as the definition of a true Unix Wizard.  Below is the button that Neil created that Steve Jobs saw and wanted to know the whole story about the button and who created it as well.  I will let Neil tell the story via a comment on this blog post.  Update:  Here is Neil's comment on the button below:

"To illuminate the Unix source code reference that Dave leaves as an exercise to this reader, dmr explains the context of the famous Unix comment on a Bell Labs website:

http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/odd.html

The gist is that is glosses over some too-clever code that diddles with Unix context-switching. Later, when Unix was moved to another computer architecture it didn't behave as expected -- the authors didn't fully understand it either! Of course I still have a sweatshirt with the quote on it but I have never claimed "to understand this".

Early on in my career at Sun I was given the opportunity to lead an extremely large benchmark.  It was the largest and most complicated that Sun Microsystems had ever done.  When I asked a question of Neil, he volunteered to help me out on this benchmark.  We had an entire team of Sun engineers and having Neil was a huge win for us.  It was at this time that the company that was the prime (Sun was the sub) their technical team had some very low level questions that only Neil could answer.  They asked if I could get Neil to come out to their office.   I explained to them, "think of Neil Groundwater as a mountain.  The mountain does not come to you, you come to the mountain."  They then said, "We understand Dave, but there are 14 of us and just one of him, right?"   I said, "Yes, you are correct, but the 14 of you do NOT have the answers and Neil does have the answers, so it benefits you to go to him."   I then went on to say, "if Neil comes here, we will bill you his hourly rate."   They then aske, "what his is hourly rate?"   I tell them Neil's hourly rate and then they ask, "Does Neil charge us when we are asking the questions or only when he is talking?"   I then replied with, "What!?!?!?!, listen, when Neil walks in the room - he is billing, so I suggest that you have your questions all lined up and I would make sure whoever is asking the questions does not have a stuttering problem either, because that will eat into your clock!"  Neil came out and answered all of their questions.

Neil was/is into the history of computing and gave me a number of famous buttons.

Neil also created the triple garlic pizza lunch that all of the SEs had to participate in or they were shunned technically.  It was not an option and it was an IQ test for the new SEs when they were asked if they wanted to go out with Neil for garlic pizza :-)  I remember one time when I had triple garlic pizza with Neil then had Hard Times Chili that night with good friend Mike Groene.  When I got home my wife said I was sleeping downstairs as she so nicely stated, "I don't know what crawled up inside you and DIED, but you are NOT sleeping with me tonight!"  Awwww, true love :-)

Update:  In Neil's comment, he brought up John Gage, Bill Joy, Neil and me at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.  This is a must tell story :-)    Here's the story...  The local Sun Microsystems Washington DC office gave $330,000 of Sun servers to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.  In exchange for the $330,000, the Smithsonian gave Sun the use of the entire National Air and Space Museum for two evenings.  I remember that John Bittenbring was the SR and I was the SE for the Smithsonian (just one of my accounts).  We decided to take the National Air and Space Museum up on their offer in April 1991.   I was tasked with making this happen and luckily for me, Neil said he would help out.  Bill Joy was giving two talks and he wanted a Sun workstation setup for him to present from live.  I suggested that we have two there as a backup.   Neil and I got there in the early afternoon to setup for the first night.  The first night was just for Sun's employees and the second night was for Sun's local customers.  We had it in National Air and Space Museum IMAX theater.  We had it all set up when this small contingent of VIPs from the National Air and Space Museum come into the theater.  The person leading the group asks me, "are you the one responsible for this?"  I replied, "yes I am".  He introduces himself and then says, "great!, I would like to give you a back room tour of Air and Space Museum."   The group then takes Neil and I on this incredible tour of National Air and Space Museum showing us how it works from behind the scenes.  As we are going through the tour, it hits me like a ton of bricks that when he asked the question, "are you the one responsible for this?", what he REALLY meant was, "are you the DUDE who was responsible for the $330,000 gift of Sun servers?"   Well, no I wasn't.  This came from Dick Bowman, the VP for the local Sun DC office.  At that point, it was too late to stop the tour.  We get back on the tour and John Gage shows up.  The National Air and Space Museum VIP looks at me like, "so, who the HELL are you two then?"  We got a great tour!

I remember when Bill Joy showed up and it was time to go through the dry run.  Bill and John were getting a tour and they needed someone to stand in for him in the front to get an idea on how it would look.  Bill looked at me and said, "how tall are you Dave?"  I said I was 6'1"   Bill said, "I am 6'2", you can stand in there for me."   One of the highlights of my life.  Now, I just had to stand there as folks from the Air and Space Museum were checking out how it looked with the two Sun workstations in the front row of the IMAX and a person standing there.  They were concerned about views.  The night was a HUGE success.

I remember another time that Neil and I were with John Gage and Bill Joy at the CIA.  We had a series of meetings and then decided to go out that night in Georgetown for dinner.  This was in the early 90s as well.   They give me the wine list.  This was like giving a pig a Rolex watch and asking the pig to tell you what time it is.  I look at the wine menu and say, "I could go for a pitcher of Busch beer."  Neil looks at me like, "you FREAKING HILLBILLY!"  John looks at me a little suspect as well.  It was at that point Bill says, "you know, I could go for some beer first as well."  I am not sure I have had a bigger smile on my face.

Neil also drove home the point to new SEs - RTFM :-)

I remember at the introduction of the Sun SPARCstation 1 when we were room mates in Atlanta.  One night Neil asks me, "what are you doing tonight?"  My reply was, "I don't know, go out with the SEs I guess, how about you?"   Neil replied, "not sure, but I will figure something out."    Well, story of my life, the next morning Neil tells me, "you screwed up dude"   Neil then goes on to tell me that he got hooked up with Scott McNealy in his limo and they cruised bars and hung out all night.  I could have been there!  Crap!  Again, story of my life :-)

Neil is GREAT at computer history because he was there.  When I asked about where the ping command came from, he sends me his "Ping" book and tells me the whole story.

Neil gave me a list of countless books to read to get smart not only on Unix and Unix history, but on computer history in general.  Here is a great one that Neil is in as well:

Neil was the first user of Unix outside the state of New Jersey which is very, very impressive.

We both shared a love of the all time classic, Spinal Tap and specifically, "the numbers all go to 11"  "it's one louder isn't it?" - "This one goes to 11".

When Scott McNealy came to the Washington, DC office, I had the nerve to have Scott sign my Sun Ten Year Anniversary Yearbook with the text below that Neil thought took a lot of balls to have Scott sign it this way :-)

I remember being with Neil at a Usenix when Neil is talking to me and then says, "hold on one second Dave".  Looking over my shoulder, Neil says, "Hey Dennis, come here, there is someone I would like you to meet."   I turn around and it is Dennis Ritchie.  Neil introduces us and I am in complete awe and just say, "Nice to meet you Dennis".

That is the crowd that Neil knew and would work with --  Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, Bill Joy, Rob Pike, Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn, Seymour Cray, Whit Diffie, Mike O'Dell, Dick Gabriel, James Gosling, Ivan Sutherland, Steve Jobs, Grace Hopper, Dan Ingalls, Alan Kay, David Korn, Steve Bourne, John Mashey, Dave Patterson, Jon Postel, Radia Perlman, Jeff Rulifson, Bob Sproull, Scott McNealy, Guy Steele, Linus Torvalds, Alfred Aho, Brian Kernighan, Steve Fritzinger, Brian Wong, John Meyer, Tim Wallace, Dennis Govoni, John DiCarlo, Mike Geldner, Brian Raymor, Joel McClung to name just a few.

One of the phrases that Neil told me about, which is one of my favorite phrases of all time is "Everything You Know Is Wrong".  As Wikipedia points out,  Everything You Know Is Wrong is the eighth comedy album by the Firesign Theatre released in October 1974 on Columbia Records.  I have used the phrase for a number of talks, videos, webinars and presentations. 

Below is Neil on the left, me, Mike O'Dell and Captain Fred Denniston on the GREAT intracoastal waterway trip we took in December of 2009. 

 

Neil told me about Mike O'Dells Laws:

1. Scaling is ALWAYS the problem.
2. If you are not afraid, you simply do not understand.

Here's to you npg - thanks for everything and this 700th blog post is dedicated to you!

God Bless AnnMarie Edstrom Getting

My Aunt AnnMarie passed away suddenly on December 31, 2012.  She was a GREAT Aunt and very, very funny.  I have nothing but great memories of AnnMarie.  My parents flew back yesterday morning for the services. 


Below is the Edstrom family farm were AnnMarie and all of her brothers were born:

My sister tells a great story to AnnMarie's two sons - Daniel and Tom - in the paragraph below:

    "I have such wonderful memories of your mom.  One summer when I was a little girl and we were home, I walked into Grandma's kitchen and your mom said, "Well then what's your name?" and I said, "You know."  She said that was a funny name but called me "You Know" from then on.  As a little girl I would just giggle and as an adult it always made me feel very special.  She was a kind and loving woman with a great sense of humor!"

As stated on the Lundberg Funeral Home site:

"She is survived by husband Richard of Northfield; son Thomas (wife Tami) of Kenyon and their children, Paige and Grace; son Daniel (wife Roseanney Liu) of Redondo Beach, CA and their children, Morgan and Jackson; brothers John of Burke, VA and his family, LuVerne of Northfield and his family, Merle of Cannon Falls and his family, Gene of Luverne, MN and his family; and lifelong friend Betty Taubman of Northfield and family; and extended family members throughout Minnesota.

AnnMarie was born January 11, 1945 on the family farm between Randolph and Cannon Falls to Kenneth and Dorothy Edstrom. She will be deeply missed.

Friends and family are invited to the memorial service to be held at Lundberg Funeral Home in Cannon Falls, MN starting at 1:00 PM on Friday, January 4, with visitation amongst close family and friends from Noon to 1 PM."

Redskins Beat Dallas 28-18 to be NFC East Champs!!

I attended the Redskins - Dallas NFC East Championship game last night with my youngest son Tim.  This was the final season game and it was the first time ever that it was a win or go home for the NFC East Championship between the Cowboys and the Redskins.  Tim dressed in classic RG III Redskins jersey and I dressed for warmth :-)    As I told Tim, you will tell your kids someday, "I was AT THE GAME!"  Julie and Tim will be going the Redskins vs. Seahawks Playoff Game on Sunday the 6th of January at 4:30 eastern. 

Above is the outside of FedEx Field before the 8:30pm, 25 degrees with a wind game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins.

Below is the sign congratulating the skins for winning the NFC East.   Alfred Morris ran smash mouth football and ran over the Cowboys for 200 yards and three touchdowns on 33 carries — all career highs for Big Al!

Great Manufacturing Book - Overall Equipment Effectiveness by Robert C. Hansen

I read a great manufacturing book over the holiday break:

Overall Equipment Effectiveness 

A powerful Production/Maintenance Tool 

for Increased Profits

by Robert C. Hansen

Thanks to John Ratray and Dave McPhail of Memex, I received a signed copy of Bob Hansen's fantastic book on OEE.  Memex have been tremendous supporters of MTConnect and we can not thank Dave, John and the whole Memex team enough for their support.

I first met Bob at IMTS 2012 and was very impressed.  We are very fortunate that Bob is giving a talk at [MC]2 2013 MTConnect: Connecting Manufacturing Conference.

Bob's book is rich with specific examples, as well as detailed discussions and formulas on how to quantify a plant's efficiency and effectiveness.

In the beginning Bob lays out the big picture:

"World-class manufacturing areas share two common characteristics.  They are data driven and they are led by synergistic multi-function leadership teams.  Accurately measuring and driving key success parameters contributes to higher productivity for both the area and the plant.  A method called Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) can help you better understand how well a manufacturing area is performing, and identify what is limiting higher effectiveness."

I highlighted data driven and accurately measuring because that is exactly where MTConnect comes into play.

Bob writes:

"Measurement is a significant part of factory life.  Nearly every job involves measures and controls, if for no other reason that to evaluate good and bad product and work."

In another section of Bob's fantastic book he writes:

"Two of the most important steps in promoting RAM (Reliability Availability Maintainability) are collecting and analyzing data."

 This review can not do justice for how good this book really is.  I like how Bob wraps up his book in Chapter 10 discussing "The Success Riddle".

"Having good tools is one thing.  Being able to apply the right tool at the right time in the right place is another.  The success riddle is unique for each factory, as no two factories are alike."

This book is a must purchase for anyone in manufacturing!

Great Example of Mazak's MTConnect Leadership

I was thrilled to hear that Mazak is having a conference called: “MTConnect: Downstream Applications to Increase Productivity and Competitiveness” and led by Neil Desrosiers.  Neil is the,Mazak applications engineer/developer and a real thought leader in manufacturing and in the MTConnect community, plus he is just a great guy.  The announcement lists the following points as the main agenda for the Jan. 30 at 2 p.m. ET webinar:

• How MTConnect exists to set the standard communication method for retrieving data from manufacturing equipment,
• How MTConnect works and what capabilities can be gained via the protocol,
• How Mazak makes it easy to implement the MTConnect standard,
• What an MTConnect-enabled facility looks like,
• Upcoming MTConnect advancements, including dynamic scheduling.

The site also states   "All it takes to participate is a computer, an Internet connection and a web browser. Registration for the webinar is now open at www.mazakusa.com/webinar."

Today's Weather Forecast - Per The Mayan Calendar

iPhone 5 versus Samsung Galaxy SIII - Why I Went With iPhone

Tim, my youngest son, both upgraded to the new iPhone 5 this past Saturday.  Tim went with the 32GB and I went with the 64GB. 

I hesitated going to the iPhone 5 because of the great things I read about the Samsung Galaxy SIII and Android being an open platform.  I also hesitated because of Mike Briggs post on, "8 Reasons Why I Hate My iPhone 5".   Having tremendous amount of respect for Mike, this caused me great pause.  I spoke to many individuals who switched from the iPhone to  Samsung Galaxy SIII .   Then Mike wrote a follow up post, titled "8 Reasons Why I Love My iPhone 5".  At first, I thought this was going to be a tongue-in-cheek type of post, but Mike has changed his point of view with some great points.

What really caused me to go to an iPhone 5 was all the benchmarks of the iPhone 5 versus the Samsung Galaxy SIII.   In every single benchmark the iPhone 5 was faster.  This is important to me as I tend to quickly check things on my iPhone and do not need the bigger screen that the Samsung has.   Having 130 iPhone apps was less of an issue, but not a non concern.

I have had it five days now and I am very impressed.  The quality is tremendous.  The battery life is very impressive.  Google put their maps back on iTunes which is a great thing.  Siri is better than I thought if you stick with the basics.  The best quote on the iPhone 5 was Tim the other night, "this is almost too fast" he said half jokingly.

Moving from an iPhone 4 running 6.0.1 to an iPhone 5 running 6.0.1 was painless.  I do encrypt my backups so that I do not have to re-enter any login/password information after I upgrade.  I nearly did a big FUBAR when I encrypted my iPhone backup (a different password than your phone of course) and nearly forgot which of my 8 "standard" haystacked passwords that I used.  That would have been a big D'OH, but I got it on my third attempt.  I was almost at capacity with my 32GB iPhone 4, so the total process was a few hours, but there were no problems.  

I picked up a nice bumper as well the Photive Hybrid iPhone 5 Bumper Case - Black. Designed for The New iPhone 5. Updated Lightning Port Cutout for $9.95.

Most interesting to me is the speed difference between LTE and WiFi as illustrated below:

 

 I run the full WPA-2 security here at home and that accounts for some of the slow speed.  I never thought in 2012 I would just turn off WiFi because it was slower on my phone.

I sold my iPhone 4s on Gazelle for $149.  I should have sold them last week when they were paying $165.   The sales almost paid for my iPhone 5 which was nice.