Hello from Springfield, MO

Hello from Springfield, MO

Friday Evening,  May 30, 2014   (First post of this travelogue)

I am staying at the Candlewood Suites (map).  I have two activities that brought me here from Prescott, IA.  The first is to attend an amazing Antique Truck Historical Society (link) annual convention/show.  The second activity was to meet with a person that I am doing some joint work with. 

Let’s step back and catch up with the rest of the trip so far.  We left Denver on Saturday 5/24 after attending our granddaughter’s graduation party.  We left from the Thornton area about 4:00 Pm and drove until it started to get dark.  We parked the bus in a great rest stop in Julesburg, CO.  The next day we drove a bit over 400 miles and arrived in Prescott, IA in the late afternoon.  Our bus is parked in its “reserved” spot at the Birt house.  We spent Memorial Day decorating graves and attending a special luncheon at the local church. 

Thursday morning I drove the PT Cruiser to Springfield, MO (about 6 hour drive).  I will return to Prescott tomorrow.  The ATHS show (their national convention) is amazing.  There are hundreds of trucks.  The photo below is not the best, but it shows a long shot of some of the trucks.  There are all shapes and sizes and years.  I would guess that about half of the trucks are semis.  I have been there for a few hours Thursday and Friday and will go back for a couple of hours tomorrow morning before I start back.

This is my third ATHS national convention.  I have been a member for many years. The national conventions are almost beyond description.  The owners are very friendly and love to show their trucks.  As I said, the variety is amazing.  Each time I make a lap around the huge fairground, I see something new and interesting.

That is all for now.

Hello from the Sacramento

Hello from the Sacramento

Thursday  afternoon,  May 1, 2014   (One post travelogue)

I am in Sacramento doing a couple of training sessions for NTT.  This week it is two days of Mechanical Drives and two days of Vibration Analysis.  Mechanical Drives is old hat for me, but Vibration analysis is a new class for NTT.  To put it nicely, the course was not well developed before it was released.  The class is based on a text book, but the slides were very primitive.  I have spent MANY hours developing new slides that present the data in a better format.  Luckily, I am co-teaching with a person who has a great deal of experience in the latest technology. 

My part of the vibration class was to set the stage for advanced discussion by the other instructor.  I did the first three chapters and discussed how we used to do vibration analysis on belt drives with very basic tools.  Indeed, most of my work was in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s.  To put that in perspective, personal computers did not become available to the public until the mid to late ‘70s!! The computer based “tools” today are amazing!

This is a “regional” class.  What that means is that the students come from different companies and the classes are held in a hotel.  That kind of class is quite different from what we call onsight classes where we go into a plant and do a class specifically for a business.  Boeing would be an example of the latter.  In my first NTT employment (2000-2002) most of the classes were public at hotels.  Today most are onsight.  I much prefer the public class atmosphere.  There is always a broad base of experience and the students seem to be willing to exchange examples that reinforce what we are teaching. 

The other nice feature of public classes is that they are held at normal hours {grin}.  At Boeing, we teach on either first shift (6:00-2:30) or second shift (2:30-11:00).  A week of that kind of schedule will really mess up your internal clock!

I am staying at the Hampden Inn in Sacramento (map).  The class is being held at the same location.  When I searched out the location on Google Maps, I noticed that they had changed the map format significantly.  It will be interesting to see how the above link displays.

Surprisingly, I am actually posting this blog before I leave town (at airport).

That is all for this blog.