Hello from Sacramento, CA

Hello from Sacramento, CA

Friday morning,  September 19, 2014   (First post of this travelogue)

Posted: Sunday evening September 21, 2014

As happens too often, I started this post and was not able to finish it till I got home.

I traveled to teach a four day class.  The first two days were bearings and lubrication and the last two days were shaft alignment.  This is a “regional” class which means that it is held in a hotel and the students are from various companies.  I really prefer this type of class (as opposed to an “on-site” class held at a company with their employees attending).  In the public class, you often get better discussion because of the varied backgrounds.

The class is being held at the Holiday Inn Express (here).  The meeting room was very large for our small group (5 students).  That is great, as we have to set up the shaft alignment labs and that takes a fair amount of space.

In the past, the shaft alignment class used rather simple tools (straight edges, calipers, and dial indicators).  When the class had somewhat experienced students, it was difficult to fill the full two days.  We recently added laser alignment equipment and that really makes the class powerful and fun!

For a change, the travel went well.  The flight out was typical, but I had a good seat.  When I went to pick up the rental car they said that the company had reserved a premium car.  That is not the norm, but the lady that does the scheduling had a special offer and gave it to me.  The bad news was they did not have a premium car so I had to “settle” for a Camaro {big grin).  Sure wish I had had an opportunity to “open it up”.  The flight home was about half full and I had a great exit row seat. 

My fun rental car

I arrived in Sacramento early Monday afternoon.  That allowed me to drive the Camaro up to Nevada City to have dinner with a great friend.  It would have been a good route to have some fun, but the traffic did not permit very aggressive driving.

That is all for this trip.

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.