Rather Switch Than Fight

 

By the way, bonus points if you "get" the pop-culture reference in the title. Nothing else, just bonus points!

We have 7 computers in our home. The one I'm composing this blog on is about the newest, a Dell Latitude E5400 laptop running Windows Vista. I have no complaints about it. I suppose I should mention that I usually buy refurbished Dell computers. The price is right, they do everything I need to do, and I just like them. Most of our computers in use currently were purchased from Discount Electronics though I do have one I got through Ebay and a couple that were gifted.

My wife's laptop, my desktop, and my "backup" laptop are all older Dells running Windows XP. Now, I've had a very good experience using XP so far, and I've been using it since it came out, more or less. My use of personal computers, as I think I've outlined elsewhere, runs back to the Radio Shack/Tandy Color Computer and some low number version of MSDOS. 

The quandary lately is concerning Microsoft and their dropping of support for Windows XP early next year. Of course, the software won't abruptly stop working, but security will be more and more compromised. It will be very risky to continue to use those computers online.  Rather than spend a small fortune (to me) to upgrade to newer computers or even newer Windows software which may or may not run on the older machines, I've been contemplating switching over the older machines to Ubuntu, which is a popular version of Linux. (Also, need I say "FREE")!

For the most part it's no big deal. I have put Ubuntu on a small Asus laptop that I have to check it out, as well as setting up my larger desktop PC for dual booting. I can boot it up as either XP or Ubuntu for a session of exploration. So far, however, a couple of things have stymied me. 

Much of the work with Ubuntu strongly relies on going online. I'm still not savvy enough on Ubuntu to figure out how to make it work with our Sierra Air card. It's supposed to be pretty easy, but it has foiled my attempts to make it work. That's one problem, we don't have any form of wi-fi available at home except for the aircard we have. Now, we may be able to affordably work something else out, now that we may not need the air card for other things. We originally got it to have the ability to run credit cards, etc. when we worked Sherwood Forest Faire, or other outside art fairs without access to wi-fi. Now, we're going to the Square on our iPhones and won't need the air card. Possibly we can find a local wi-fi service that will cost about the same as we were paying for the air card. However, that's another situation. Back to Ubuntu.

I can network the other laptops with my Vista laptop when it is on the air card. The wireless networking built into the laptops works with Ubuntu just fine, or appears to so far.  Getting the wireless USB adapter I have for the desktop to work with Ubuntu is another story apparently. Not exactly plug and play.

Most of the software packages we use regularly have replacements in Ubuntu that are also free and work quite well. However, I have a lot of time invested in one type of CAD package that only runs on Windows. I won't name it, but I'm reluctant to change. There is a very good alternative called Draftsight that I have been looking at that seems to work very well, but I am reluctant to switch horses on it unless I really have to. 

Another critical program is yWriter 5; a writing software that I am using for my novels currently. In this case there is no Linux version available. 

Theoretically these and many other Windows programs will run through another software called Wine that sort of acts as an interface to enable Windows software to run on Linux. I've been running into some snags getting that scenario to work.

The key seems to be solving the networking or the air card problem, since some of the installations are pretty automatic once you can get online. Otherwise you have to download things separately and jump through several hoops to install manually.

Apparently.

Maybe I just need a Linux tutor to guide me through some of it.

Once I get things working the way I want, I may even switch over the Vista laptop, though Windows will keep supporting Vista for quite a while longer. 

The last ditch option would be to just keep the desktop as my main CAD machine, leave it XP and just don't get online with it. That would work for quite awhile, probably. I don't make my living with the CAD anymore, but I still use it almost daily. I'm always helping my wife by drawing or copying patterns for intarsia woodworking or stained glass. I also prefer to use it for desktop publishing-type functions, since I'm accustomed to using the fonts and drawing capabilities. 

Admittedly, some of this is just stubbornness.  Do I really need this many computers? Probably not. When I used previous laptops, they weren't fast enough to run the cad programs, nor did they have the storage I needed. It was necessary to have the "big, powerful desktop" to run the serious drafting software, while my lighter duty laptop could go with me to a hotspot and browse the web. The desktop is also easier to work on, of course. I can replace whatever part may be going bad. Laptops are almost made to be disposable. If something breaks, it's usually easier to replace the whole thing!

Times change. My current laptop doesn't really have the power problem, it runs everything just fine. With external hard drives and flash drives getting larger and cheaper all the time, the storage isn't so much a problem either. 

Having two working laptops all my own is a bit of a luxury I guess. I like having a backup. It's paid off a few times. However, we find ourselves doing more and more of our online stuff on our iPhones. I even posted one of these blogs directly from the phone awhile back. It was a challenge, I admit, but I did it. 

In fact, the lines between PC/laptop/phone/TV/stereo/radio are getting really blurry, aren't they? It is rapidly getting to where smart phones can do just about any "usual" computing task we want to do. I can now even view CAD files on my iPhone. 

And reference work? I think we've about reached Isaac Asimov's Encyclopedia Galactica. We have more and more reference resources available every day. I used to spend hours running down references in the library in dictionaries and encyclopedia. I called it hunting rabbits, since I easily got sidetracked and ended up finding information that had nothing to do with whatever I started on. Now I have the whole internet to get lost in. Pure joy!

Now if I can just get the Ubuntu to behave!

Logarithms For The Only Slightly Off

Logarithms and steel.

Remember logarithms? There was a time I used them constantly. If you think a logarithm is something an aborigine might bang out on a fallen tree, you're not getting my drift.

Umm. No.

From Wikipedia:The logarithm of a number is the exponent by which a fixed number, the base, has to be raised to produce that number. For example, the logarithm of 1000 to base 10 is 3, because 1000 is 10 to the power 3: 1000 = 10³ = 10 × 10 × 10. More generally, if x = b^y, then y is the logarithm of x to base b, and is written log_b(x), so log₁₀(1000) = 3.
Logarithms were introduced by John Napier in the early 17th century as a means to simplify calculations. They were rapidly adopted by scientists, engineers, and others to perform computations more easily and rapidly, using slide rules and logarithm tables. These devices rely on the fact—important in its own right—that the logarithm of a product is the sum of the logarithms of the factors:

The present-day notion of logarithms comes from Leonard Euler, who connected them to the exponential function in the 18th century.

Forget all that.

I suppose mathematicians still use them somewhere, but back in the days before portable computers and scientific calculators, logarithms were a necessary tool.

When I started as a draftsman just out of college there were no handy electronic calculators of desktop computers. No one had even conceived of a laptop computer. Mainframe computers were around, actually, but mostly in large businesses. It would be ten years or so before Alamo Steel, the company I worked for, would have access to a mainframe for accounting.

I was a draftsman, fresh out of college. My math skills were, umm, a bit shaky. Sure, I was okay with basic math, and I had geometry licked. In high school I basically taught my geometry class. The math teacher used to duck out of class for a cigarette in the duplicator room after telling me to explain the homework to the rest of the class. I'd had trigonometry in college, although I'm afraid little of it stuck.

I finally learned, though. When I started working on hip and valley beams and stairs and handrails I was using trig constantly.

This means doing higher math while juggling feet, inches and sixteenths of an inch!

Sure , you can convert to decimals to calculate some things, but ultimately you have to convert back since the required outcome of the procedure was to produce drawings for our shop employees to fabricate steel members with. Our shop guys were great guys, I was friends with many, but quite a few barely spoke English, others could not read. They learned to use a steel tape measure, but it was considered a bit much to subject them to more than the most simple measurements to work with.

So, we in the drafting room were called upon to simplify, and especially to do all of the math and conversions in advance.

One of the first calculating tools I worked with was a slide rule. 

This was, by the way, toward the very end of the heyday of the slide rule. Slide rules use logarithms. The beauty of logarithms is to simplify calculations. When you have multiplication, division, and other complicated operations to perform, you only have to use a conversion table to change the factors to their logarithms, then all operations become addition and subtraction problems.

We all learned multiplication tables in school. Those work great for simple whole numbers. If you are working with complex numbers of many decimal places it can be tedious to sit there and multiply or divide the whole thing out the long way. For instance, if you are multiplying two numbers, you use the tables to convert them to their logarithms, add the two logarithms together, then convert the logarithm sum back to real numbers. That's your answer.

Remember, electronic calculators were not available!

A slide rule, or slip stick, manually added and subtracted logarithms. The scale was a logarithmic scale. If you lined it up to multiply two and two, the answer was four. What it was doing was adding the logarithms for the two numbers graphically, and letting you read the answer.

For a while slide rules, well, ruled! A skilled engineer could read one to several decimal places, and do complicated problems all day long.

Other sorts of slide rules appeared. Not really technically slide rules, as they didn't use logarithms as such, but they did match up factors to show pre-calculated answers. They were common for many fields that required quick and practical calculations. My chosen field before drafting was electronics. I made use of, and still own, several cardboard cutout calculators that were this sort of slide rule. Very practical and quick to use. I still use them from time to time. 

Ohmite Capacitor Calculator

 Once in awhile one of the hobbyist magazines would even print a similar one to copy, fold and tape together.

Did I mention useful?

 Anyway:

Eventually my original K&E slide rule, or slip stick, got replaced.

 

For simple adding and subtracting of measurements, we did have electrical adding machines with special keyboards and a paper tape readout. 

Monroe Foot-Inch-Sixteenth Machine

Victor Foot-Inch-Sixteenth Machine

 These were great. Some of us even used mechanical adding devices, known as Addiators, that used a metal stylus. You used the stylus to advance numbers in one direction for adding, the opposite direction for subtracting. With many of them you kept track of sixteenths of an inch manually, literally, by holding up a pinky finger when you had a sixteenth in the number, folding it away when you didn't. A very few of the Addiator models actually handled sixteenths of an inch.

Addiator

 

No electricity, but so much more portable! That was important for those of us who, shall we say, labored with side jobs in the same industry?

The engineers in the company often used a specialized adding machine that allowed you to reset the decimal point, to more rapidly work with big numbers. It did require the conversions to be made from feet and inches to decimals, but once those conversions were made, their calculations could be carried out and the answers converted back at the end. 

Shifty Monroe Machine

You actually manually moved the carriage over to the correct decimal place column. Some of these had a little crank below the keyboard to do this! Sure, it was electric, but still, can you say Fred Flintstone?

An integral part of the calculating process was a book. Several of our available books did have the foot-inch-sixteenth to decimals of a foot conversions available, but one book was our math “bible”. 

Smoley's

Smoley's Tables were available either as four separate books, or all four combined into one volume. The fourth volume, Segmental Functions, was useful for circular calculations, critical when needed, but rarely used. The first three volumes had to do with decimal equivalents, squares, logarithms, and trigonometric functions. Those we used constantly. We were each required to obtain our own Smoley's books. When we could, we got the first three together in one volume, and the fourth separately. That fourth Segmental Functions volume would last forever, and did! We could often wear out two or three of the first three volumes before the fourth would even show wear.

Those logarithms and trig functions really came in handy! Perhaps I should also mention that this was in the days of manual drafting as well. Lead pencils, T-squares, triangles, lettering guides, drafting tape, tracing paper. CAD programs did not exist. Dinosaur days. This was in 1971 and years following.

We had to know the mechanics of drawing a pencil line, and construct various shapes to put together a useful drawing, and then to hand print the lettering to explain and dimension everything. Then, copies were made with a smelly ammonia Ozalid process to produce real “blueprints”.

We ended each day with liberal amounts of graphite and rubber eraser dust on ourselves.

TI Calculator

Well, after a few years, Texas Instruments came along with a series of hand held electronic calculators. Now THAT was revolutionary! We still had the conversion problem to deal with, but suddenly it was less of a chore. The so-called “scientific calculators” appeared with more and more functions, including trigonometric functions that made things easier. We were able to rely less and less on the Smoley's tables, and go straight to calculating.

Bigger than a breadbox Wang

About the time that mainframe computers became more accessible and user friendly, programmable calculators appeared. The first were pretty large affairs. The Wang programmable was one we utilized for awhile. Pretty nifty! I actually taught myself to write programs for it! (As a mere draftsman, this was a bit above my station, but I tended to color outside my lines a lot!) Two number pads with memories meant you could perform more than one operation at a time and merge the answers. Also, it sported a cassette tape program storage, so you could record and reload several programs as you needed them! Display screens were still in the future, all usable output was preserved on paper tape printout.

After only a couple of years, those same hand held calculators we were using became programmable as well. First one, then many programs could be stored and used. The Wang was fairly obsolete in no time. It still worked well for some situations, but for everyday calculations the hand helds were the thing.

It was not until the mid '80's that we were able to finally ignore that conversion problem. Development of calculators that actually worked with fractions and inches was ignored until then. The United States was considering going metric for many years but there was a lot of resistance. Most of us dinosaurs didn't really want to learn a new system. 

The manufacturers finally gave in and designed a few calculators that actually worked in feet-inches-sixteenths. This is the one I have now. It has taken the place of every machine/calculator/book that came before.  This is the Jobber 6 by Calculated Industries. It's great! Online versions are even available, so you can use it without taking your hands off the computer keyboard.

That's important, since Computer Aided Drafting also took over from manual drafting. Of course, most of the major CAD programs like Autocad have several calculating functions built right into them, but... remember those aforementioned dinosaurs? 

I still have my board and pencils, too. I might even have my copy of Smoley's around somewhere!

I admit I've gotten a bit rusty on interpolating logarithm tables. On the other hand, it's been awhile since I've detailed steel as well. Still drafting, though, with CAD and my Jobber!

My Resume

Thought it might be to my benefit to re-post this now and then. Job market being what it is.

Thanks for looking!

RESUME

WILLIAM C. (Bill) SEWARD

Cell. (512)468-7835

Email  raincrow_permaculture@yahoo.com

EXPERIENCE

3/08-5/09            Optimum Steel Industries. Steel detailer. Strucad.

10/07-2/08            L&M Steel Inc.  Rebar detailing/estimating. Shear 97.

10/05-10/07            Dennis Steel Inc. Structural/misc steel detailing. Macrosoft Detail, Ssdcp.

12/03-10/05            Reinforcing Steel Supply. Rebar estimating, detailing, drafter. Acad2004, Shear 97.

1/00 – 12/03                 Lamar Steel &Supply.  Rebar Estimating, drafting, counter sales. Autocad 14

4/98  - 1/00             Self‑ employed full time. Contract drafting, computer, other consulting services.

7/97  - 4/98                  Tips Iron &Steel, Inc. Structural/misc. steel detailing and checking.

3/97  -7/97                  Construction Metal Products.  Structural/miscellaneous steel detailing and checking.

10/96 ‑5/97                Capitol City Trade and Technical School.  Drafting/AUTOCAD (12/13) instructor. (Evening)

10/89‑ 8/96               Self‑ employed full time. Contract Structural Steel detailing on Autocad 11. Consulting, Architectural and Engineering drafting by contract.

8/88 ‑ 9/89                Advance Metal Systems  Detailing, Listing and Preparing for fabrication Pre‑engineered Steel Buildings.       

11/86 ‑8/88                Self‑ employed full time.  Structural Steel Detailing, Checking and Estimating; Reinforcing Steel Estimating; General and Architectural Drafting.

6/71‑11/86                Alamo Steel &Machine Company, Austin, TX.  Steel Detailer/Checker,

Chief Draftsman.

PROFESSIONAL SKILLS

Certified Permaculture Designer-2009

15 Years experience research on internet.

20 Years experience in Autocad up through Acad2004.

Experience with DCA Structural Steel Detailer (Now Softdesk), SSDCP, Macrosoft Detail.

Trained in CADKEY CAD program and Bausch & Lomb CAD System

Operated NCR Terminal(VAX), personal computer (DOS & Windows), & programmable calculators

Type 30 ‑ 40 wpm.                    

Assistant Chief Draftsman ‑ 9 years                    

Chief Draftsman ‑ 2 years                    

BASIC and COBOL programming knowledge 

Practical knowledge of DOS. and Autolisp.

RELATED SKILLS

Good writing skills and experience. A produced playwright and published journalist.

Proficient in conversational American Sign Language

Dale Carnegie graduate 1974                    

Good mechanical skills                    

Experience training adults. 

Enjoy installing and troubleshooting software.

HONORS AND ORGANIZATIONS

Former member, actor, director Way Off Broadway Comm. Theater.

Liberty Hill Public Library District  Founder, Elected Trustee  (Former)

Past Vice‑President Friends of Round Rock Public Library

Texas Historical Commission Distinguished Service Citation

Boy Scouts of America, 7 years as Leader Trainer.

Travis County Blood Bank (6 Gallon + donor)                   

Scholastic Leadership Roll, ACC 1984 ‑ 1987

Dean's Honor Roll, Central Texas College 1971

Engineering Society, Central Texas College

EDUCATION

Colleges:      

1/09-3/09            Austin Permaculture Guild - Austin. Permaculture Designer Certificate course.

9/78 ‑                    Austin Community College, Austin ‑ 31 sem. hrs.‑

                        General studies including Technical Report Writing, CAD,

                        COBOL, BASIC, Quality Assurance, Creative Writing.

6/68 ‑ 5/71                Central Texas College, Killeen ‑ Associate in

                        Applied Science ‑ Drafting and Design. (90 sem. hrs.

                        total...primarily Tech. Drafting, Electronics Technology

                        and General Academics)     

 

Catching Up

   It's been a good while since I posted here. I've been busy. Avatar has been going well. I just took a new student through an intro, and half of a Resurfacing class, (she'll take the second half soon), as well as helping with other students. We're planning on taking some students to Colorado in a month or so, and definitely planning to take the Wizard's course in Orlando in January.
   My '84 Honda Shadow was down for a few days, and I put some time in fixing that. I've got it going again. I'm enjoying riding around and exploring this part of the county. Some of that is taking pictures and research for my books. I enjoy seeing old cemeteries and small towns. 
   In addition, a few days ago the slave drive on my desktop computer crashed. It is a 120 gig drive, and I had been using it for overflow until it was nearly filled, then it died. It's not too horrible, and I may even be able to get some of it back. My more critical stuff was on my main drive, all my writing and reference stuff stays on a 4 gig flash drive, so I can use it either on my desktop or laptop. So, I still have that safe. It took me a few days to get the desktop back online, re-install a few things that I needed that had been on the second drive, and so on. But, I'm using it now. A friend in Austin thinks maybe he can revive that second drive for me, get my data back. I guess the worst part is all my music, and much of my drafting files were on that drive. 
   Still looking for a paying job. Unemployment insurance has ended, again, although I read that congress is trying to extend it some more. Here's hoping. With construction still at a low, there doesn't seem to be any demand for 60 year old steel detailers. In the year plus since I was laid off, Texas Work Force Commission has come up with exactly one job referral that fit any of my qualifications, and I didn't get it. Oh well. 
   Anyone need a draftsman with background in steel construction, a bit of structural engineering, permaculture, handymanology, farm/auto mechanics and writing skills?
   Actually, I wondered about hiring myself out as a mentor of sorts. A lifetime of "jack of all trades" and so on. I'm not physically up to a lot of the heavier aspects of, say, re-building a farm tractor, or an old car. But I could mentor someone who wanted to. I grew up in a rural garage, I've done most of my own work on cars and tractors, etc. all my life. There's not so much I want to tackle in cars and trucks since they grew computers and such, but most of pre-1980's vintage I can help with. 
   The ideal situation would be a rural intentional community, where I could exchange knowledge and skills for living/working space for Cat Dancing and myself. 
  Actually, through Avatar, it is impossible to get down about any of it. It is more of a "glass half full" situation. 
  Boogie on.