Trainee

Still on the writing kick. Only read three of my favorite political blogs last night. After thirty minutes of writing. Today no political blogs yet and it is 7:30 pm. Has to be some kind of a record for me.

This morning before work I spent reading about blogging and internet marketing. Went grocery shopping first thing after work. Then took Janice over to one of her Avon customers. We went scrounging for fire wood. Cooked and ate supper after unloading the wood.

Now it is time for my half hour of writing. A few more things about my day and then I think I will start another piece on some other topic.

I have worked for the last ten years as a machinist. It is a job were you must get good at working with the computers that control the lathes and machining centers. Also gauging (measuring) the parts, reading prints, making adjustments, and reading and understanding the machining programs. For the last three days I have been training someone else to run the lathes. The guy has been working with the machining centers for 4 years, so this is not all brand new to to him just a bunch of it. He is struggling with most every aspect of lathes except for deburring the parts. I imagine (hope) he is as frustrated as I am. There is a whole lot of repetition and not a lot of retention. I would be less concerned about his lack of progress except there are things on the machining centers that he still needs someone to walk him through every time after four years.

I need to think of this as a training exercise for me and a chance for me to up grade my skills as a trainer. One positive is that I believe he has no idea just how frustrated and worried I am. Second positive is that he does ask a lot of questions (again and again). Some people when they are not sure will just bull ahead and run a bunch of scrap before someone notices what they are doing and gets them stopped. Or crash a machine. Asking a lot of questions is a whole lot better. The worry on my part is because if he makes any bad mistakes I will be responsible for them. Questions and caution on his part are a good thing!

When I get done writing this evening I need to do some research on teaching & training.

Well no research was done was done. I went to bed instead. As usual I woke up about three times in the night. One of those times as I was drifting back to sleep I had some thoughts on some helps for the trainee.

I believe that controls on our machines and our machines are physically ten years old and the design of the Fanuc controls are fifteen years or older. They date from a time when memory and other resources of any computer were expensive and very limited. They will hold between ten and twenty programs for ten or twenty different parts. That is less than half of our parts and we occasionally need delete a program and download a new program. We have a floppy disk that holds all thirty of our lathe programs.

Error messages are very cryptic. 2015-A which you look up in a Fanuc manual. The paragraph may or may not help you. It has ten Hard keys off to the side of the screen. They have little pictograms on them that are very faded. Each key will bring up a related group of functions and screens. Under the screen there are the Soft keys and their function varies depending on what hard key function it is in. The screen above labels each key.

This written description would't be much help if you where trying to learn. I need to use PowerPoint to build a map of where things are at. My linux system has Open Office installed and I will try OO Presentation. We will see if I can come up with something that will help a trainee. Also see if I can get it into a web page, blog page.

It is five am and I have not been to a political blog for 36 hours, a current record which is about to end because I'm heading off to check my three favorites now.

Contingency management, further thoughts

After thinking about yesterdays post I believe that Internet use is a bit too general as a reward for after writing. I have bookmarked fourteen political blogs that I read every day. At ten minutes apiece that adds up to two hours and twenty minutes a day. Sounds about right. Some days it eats up even more time than that when there are a bunch of interesting links for me to follow up.

Need to cut back the number of hours a day spent on political blogs if I really want to get some of my projects done. I will rearrange my bookmark folders. There are three blogs that I plan to read every day after my writing block. The rest will be spread out and read every third or fourth day.

Writing

Jim Gibbon.com � Blog Archive � One Simple Technique to Help You Overcome Procrastination and Start Writing Now

This blog post by Jim Gibbon recommends that you write for 30 minutes every day. My contingency management, a reward that I get only get after I write for the day will be not reading and researching on the net.

This evening I started a folder in my bookmarks labeled Tomorrows Posts for anything that I might later want to use Blog This with. If I have nothing in mind to blog about I will be using Text Editor to write notes and ideas. I might try mailing the not ready for prime time ramblings to myself at my G-mail account. It would make them private & searchable.

The post talks about

Contingency management has been around for years, but I just learned about it in a great book by Robert Boice called Professors as Writers: A Self-Help Guide to Productive Writing.

I checked and the local college library doesn't have this book although it does have four of Robert Boice's other books. For $13.57 I should just buy the book from Amazon.com.

Who’s your favorite website hosting company? - Jim Boykin’s Internet Marketing Blog

An interesting thread on reader recommendations for web hosting. SwiftCo has the best price space transfer ratio. Randfish of SEOMOZ.org gave recommendation for swiftco.net. They offer their Bronze Plan $10 and you get 1 gigabyte of storage and 50 gigabytes of transfer.

Who’s your favorite website hosting company? - Jim Boykin’s Internet Marketing Blog: "So to update everyone. My first test has been “Will someone answer the phone if I call them”.

THose’s who’s passed are:
http://www.rackspace.com (due to your comments)
http://www.natnet.com/hosting/
http://www.wedohosting.com
http://www.swiftco.net
http://www.alentus.com
http://www.cyberwurx.com
http://www.liquidweb.com (maybe)

There’s 7 - that was worth the work.
I’m going to ask that this thread be closed to comments - I can’t continue to check hosting companies - I don’t have time for that.
Maybe we can play this game again someday soon."

Sea Salt why the premium price

I was reading an article by Jon Udell Jon Udell: Hunting the elusive search strategy: which got me to thinking that I need to start recording my searches and how they twist and turn.

A friend and I where talking and he was telling me about noticing Sea Salt and Morton salt in the grocery store. He was wanting to know if I knew why Sea Salt is eight times as expensive as Morton. So this will be the first go at recording.

Tracing a query.

I will start with "sea salt" in Google. Opened up the First three entries and an interesting paid result. Read result number two from wikipedia first. Said about what I expected, that Sea Salt is evaporated sea brine. It has naturally occurring minerals in addition to the sodium chloride. The top result is selling Sea Salt and goes on about the taste and aroma and origins. Number three talks about taste and also health benefits. The paid result simply is selling (at high prices $22 per lb.).

Scanning the rest plus following up on Google's related pages there are a bunch of sites emphasising health benefits.

A way simple search. It could have been made more complex if I cared enough to sort out the health claims. Future simple queries will be posted in less detail but I will still list them just to accumulate some numbers.

The Simple Dollar

New blog looks like four months worth of financial advice. The month of January 2007 has 31 posts on “31 Days To Fix Your Finances”. They are a must read! The wife and I plan to start working through then together this weekend.

The Simple Dollar: "Every once in a while, life will deal us a disaster: someone dies, the primary household income disappears, or a major benefactor stops paying for things. Suddenly, you find yourself with more monthly expenses than income and no obvious way to bolster that income immediately. What do you do?

Here are eight things you can do if life deals you a serious blow."

Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog

A variety of personal growth essays. Longer essays, posts two or three times a week on a variety of subjects.

Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog: "As a companion to 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job and 10 Stupid Mistakes Made by the Newly Self-Employed, here are 10 positive lessons I learned from more than 12 years as an entrepreneur. A few of these are rehashed from the 10 Mistakes article, but most are new.

This list is the result of the liberal application of the advice from item #5, "Fail your way forward.

"

Jon Udell: Hunting the elusive search strategy

A thought provoking article. Makes me think that I need to record queries, outcomes and lateral moves.

Jon Udell: Hunting the elusive search strategy: "Last night an old friend who runs a small software company confessed a secret. When he and his staff answer technical questions for clients, they are often 'only' searching Google. At one point, he even asked a client: 'Do you really want us to search Google for you at $100/hour?' Yes, in fact they did."

Search Engine Features Chart

A current chart of the basic features of seven search engines

Search Engine Features Chart: "Search Engine Features Chart

Last updated Sep. 17, 2006.
by Greg R. Notess"

Choose the Best Search for Your Information Need

Different resources/tool for different needs.

Choose the Best Search for Your Information Need: "I need help to define my topic...
I need a topic"

Renishaw - Tool setting for lathes

Need to check this out for work.

Renishaw - Tool setting for lathes: "Tool setting
Using traditional techniques, tool setting is time consuming and can be prone to human error. Performing test cuts and then inspecting the workpiece can tie up the machine tool for long periods,

"


On our lathes trial cuts and adjustments for an insert index can take ten minutes. Part change setup trial cuts,adjustments and measurements can take half an hour on the first piece.

Renishaw - NC3 system kit

For use on a machining center.

Renishaw - NC3 system kit: "The NC3 is a compact 2 axis non-contact tool setting probe, with broken tool detection capability.

Tools as small as �0.2 mm can be measured anywhere along the laser beam and set-up is more simple than focused laser systems as there is not focal point to identify. "

Getting The Fastest Tool Setups Possible

Article on lathe tooling and speeding up setup.

Getting The Fastest Tool Setups Possible: "FOR EVERY MINUTE A SHOP SPENDS SETTING up tooling, a lathe's spindle is not working. And, when spindles are idle, shops do not make money. However, there are ways to reduce lathe-tooling-setup time"

Modern Machine Shop Online - Article Archive

A good source of online articles about machining.

Modern Machine Shop Online - Article Archive

The Fallacy of Technorati and Adsense � Expert Idiot

Ok that looks better. Quoted material in block quotes. Next I need to see if BlogThis lets me do this directly instead of using the edit option.

The Fallacy of Technorati and Adsense � Expert Idiot: "It%u2019s amazing what one simple blog post can do to perpetuate a misconception throughout the blogosphere, but that is what Guy Kawasaki%u2019s year in review has done. The misconception that is being passed around is that Adsense doesn't make sense for blogs, when it should be it doesn't make sense for all blogs"

Expert Idiot
is the main site


This is a new blog that was started in mid Dec 2006. It is about starting and running a for profit site. Keep an eye on this one.

How to Make Money From Your Blog

The whole post is a must read. This is just one of Steve Pavlina's points in this post. I have printed out this list of technologies and am working on really learning them at more than the basic (read the FAQs page).

How to Make Money From Your Blog: "Web savvy

What do I mean by web savvy? You don't need to be a programmer, but you need a decent functional understanding of a variety of web technologies. What technologies are "key" will depend on the nature of your blog and your means of monetization. But generally speaking I'd list these elements as significant:

* blog publishing software
* HTML/CSS
* blog comments (and comment spam)
* RSS/syndication
* feed aggregators
* pings
* trackbacks
* full vs. partial feeds
* blog carnivals (for kick-starting your blog%u2019s traffic)
* search engines
* search engine optimization (SEO)
* page rank
* social bookmarking
* tagging
* contextual advertising
* affiliate programs
* traffic statistics
* email

Where am I at with this list of elements? I am obviously using blogger (new) and getting hands on experience with this platform. I will be signing up for a wordpress.com account and getting some hands on with it in the coming week.
Three years ago I was learning and using HTML/CSS to make a web site. Will need to refresh my memory on this and move past where I stalled out before.

Just spent 5 minutes turning on comment moderation and word verification for Mike'sScratchboard. From what I have read this is enough for a small blog but the work load involved with comment moderation of a large circulation blog can be over whelming.

With the rest of the list I am at the I have read the FAQs stage. Got some work to do.

Amazon.com: Effective Online Searching (Books in Library and Information Science): Books: Borgman

Amazon.com: Effective Online Searching (Books in Library and Information Science): Books: Borgman: "Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
search strategy construction, search service vendors, commercial information retrieval systems, online information retrieval systems, printing terminals, following search strategy, searching staff, advanced searching techniques, database being searched, good searcher, home mortgage rates, online retrieval systems, search intermediary, offline printing, search analyst, database producers, vocabulary control, smart terminals, acoustic coupler, searching operation, searching performance, online searching, searchable fields, search aids, references containing"

I may be doing a lot of these Amazon links to SIPs. Look like an excellent source of Key words to search the Internet on.

Amazon.com: Information Literacy Instructions for Educators: Professional Knowledge for an Information Age: Books: Dawn M. Shinew,Scott Walter

Amazon.com: Information Literacy Instructions for Educators: Professional Knowledge for an Information Age: Books: Dawn M. Shinew,Scott Walter: "Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
information literacy instruction, comprehensive information literacy program, information literacy development, information literate student, school library education, information literacy outcomes, more information literate, school library programs, information literacy standards, information literacy skills, tertiary literacies, literacy competency standards, school library media programs, library instruction sessions, information literacy programs, joint doctoral program, library instruction programs, faculty librarian, education librarians, library research skills, unsuccessful schools, subject coordinator, electronic subscriptions, literacy competencies, school librarianship"

Ok First try at BlogThis.

Planned Purpose of the New Blog

This afternoon I was reviewing the tools available on Blogger. Looking at the BlogThis button it struck me that it combined with a new blog should be an excellent tool for taking notes on my Internet wanderings. I need something better than bookmarks to keep track of interesting web pages and sites. I just opened up Bookmark Manager and opened all the folders and counted bookmarks. Two hundred and forty one bookmarks. I all so have a web page stored on my wife's machine and bookmarked on mine that is nothing but older bookmarks(that I still use). I am not going to go count them right now but I would guess over one hundred and fifty stashed there. No wonder I am starting to do the senior thing of knowing that I just looked at that page two days ago and I bookmarked it now where is it and can I find it with out doing a full search through the main Google site.

My system is a Linux Ubuntu operating system so Google desktop search will not work. I am going to try using the BlogThis button to to put URLs and a snippet from the page plus any notes on this blog. It will help if I learn about and use tags effectively. I am going to start by visiting a bunch (or all) of my bookmarks and BlogThis with them. I already had button up on the links bar that will open a Google site search for the site I am at. So it will be a sequence of; open Mike'sScratchboard and scan the past twenty four hours entries, use the tag link, or use the Google Site Search button and the right search terms. Once a data set gets past a certain size search software is faster than scanning. This is a small data set but large enough to lose things in.