The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.

[T42]

Welcome to Monday in the office - where little old me, a mere minion, got added to emails, invites and tests that by the time comes down to me is hearsay, chinese whispers and mentioned as a “by the by”.

And is clearly waaaaayyy above my paygrade and not in my ballpark - e.g. I got no clue whatsoever what the issue is and why such a test is needed.

So asking me about x.y.z after said test was done, will result in "I dunno" as an answer, I surely wouldn't have asked cause I don't know about x.y.z or what is what or that it might have been a good idea to confirm with the client that. If only you could be arsed to join the call yourself you would have known to ask that question.

Oh and wouldn't it have been grand to have someone from support and engineering on the call too, especially when the system they take care off fell over last week when the client tried to hook something up to it.


ohh that turned into more of a rant than a grumble, sorry.

Don't worry Woolly, I got asked a couple of weeks ago to provide engineering support on site as Ops undertook a flow test. All the production techs have been saying with a flow rate >X the site falls over and stops. OK so today the production manager and I planned to go to >X with all the systems timestamped so we could identify the initiating event. Production manager had to cover the oncall last night and got called out twice, he was on sleepy time so it was just the techs and me. Still alls good the techs have a task that ideally wants the site stopped so lets stop the site by tripping it, I'll gather my data while they do their task and then we'll start up again.
Set flow to X; site runs sweet as a nut
30 minutes later set flow to X+50; site continues as sweet as a nut
30 minutes later "I can't go any higher while equipment A is offline, the final step to coming online will be a good test lets do that" ... Site doesn't bat an eyelid A is now online
1 hour later, "I guess we'll go to X+100 then". Still running sweetly, "Lets do Y and see if it stays up" Y completes fine...
1 hour later, "A bit later OK lets try X+150 and leave it there overnight." 

When I finally left site I felt it was probably sensible to tell the central control room that we are producing circa 15% more water from site than they expect and let them monitor and flex as they need to. Tomorrow I get to try to step up further and see if we can push the site to full capacity (X+375) but we will need to warn control about that or we could overflow the reservoirs, which would be bad. I suspect if we get to full capacity then the techs will want to turn down a bit (X+150-200) and their management will want to stay there. It's far easier to treat our own water than buy it from the neighbouring water company through the established bulk transfer.

Retirement has much to recommend it.

[andytheflyer]

I wondered why my kettle wouldn't turn on a couple of days ago - but it does now. 

Now I know.  Excessive flow rates somewhere in the water production system.

[ElyDave]

Never descale a metal kettle, it only reveals the holes.   

DAMHIKT

[Cudzoziemiec]

while barakta appeared sheepishly at the door with a torch.

Trying hard to imagine Barakta looking sheepish.

Hopefully it will have dried out by morning, otherwise TEA production may be affected.

That would be a disaster. Happened to us once in India but we were saved by the local chai stall, which you don't have.

In further water related grumbles, our hot water pressure has been miserably low since about the start of lockdown. The cold's fine, so it's not the mains, and it's still hot. I suspect the pipes and heat exchanger are just furred up. We'd been warned they were on the way out. Unfortunately now is not the time for pre-emptive plumbing.

[Andrij]

barakta appeared sheepishly at the door with a torch.

 

Oh.  Over 20 years in this country, and I still need to remind myself about the British use of the word torch. 

[Cudzoziemiec]

barakta appeared sheepishly at the door with a torch.

 

Oh.  Over 20 years in this country, and I still need to remind myself about the British use of the word torch. 

Surely you knew that Barakta and Kim hold a torch for each other? 

[Kim]

24Ω live to earth.  That's not good.

Don't panic...camping equipment to make tea...

Emergency back up kettle coming online now...

[Kim]

Surprisingly, I was able to get the base off with a normal screwdriver.  It's the element, rather than anything that might be repairable.  Bah.

[matthew]

That has all the setups for a classic engineering disaster.

I bet the second shift are scratching their heads at strange readings as we speak, and you'll arrive tomorrow just in time for the water, erm, meltdown

Nope, the night shift is unmanned and the on call man has been briefed and has instructions for what to do if he gets called out. I'm hoping he doesn't, but if he does he knows what data I am going to be looking for and can happily revert to X-50. 

Also prior to about 2017 the site regularly ran at X+150 and was previously tested up to 107% of full capacity. What we can't work out is what has changed since, though that has just given me an idea.

So much for that hope, the Electricity Board had an issue that shut all three local works from 8:30pm till 11:30pm due to power flicks. The poor operators were onsite till 4am restarting them all. 

[Kim]

Water and electricity, never ends well...

(New kettle ordered from the Mega-Global Sounds-Like-A-River Corporation of Seattle, USAnia.  Barakta's cooking on gas in the interim.)

[matthew]

Water and electricity, never ends well...

(New kettle ordered from the Mega-Global Sounds-Like-A-River Corporation of Seattle, USAnia.  Barakta's cooking on gas in the interim.)

Particularly when you need the electricity to pump the water, pump the treatment chemicals and run the monitoring instruments.  fortunately they didn't mix but the voltage dropped enough to take out the UV reactors and the Ozone generators!

[ElyDave]

barakta appeared sheepishly at the door with a torch.

 

Oh.  Over 20 years in this country, and I still need to remind myself about the British use of the word torch. 

If the sentence doesn't involve pitchforks as well, you're generally OK

[Cudzoziemiec]

Hopefully it will have dried out by morning, otherwise TEA production may be affected.

That would be a disaster. Happened to us once in India but we were saved by the local chai stall, which you don't have.

Possibly the definitive First World Problem: lack of chai wallahs.

[andrewc]

Water and electricity, never ends well...

(New kettle ordered from the Mega-Global Sounds-Like-A-River Corporation of Seattle, USAnia.  Barakta's cooking on gas in the interim.)

As long as she's caffeinated.... 

[hellymedic]

I have a stove-top kettle for times when there is no leccy or the electric kettle fails.

Sainsbury's have delivered electric kettles in the past and list them with groceries online.

[Giraffe]

In other water-related engineering disasters news... our kettle has developed an earth fault.

I was about to go to bed when I was bombarded with alarming messages from smokeping, while barakta appeared sheepishly at the door with a torch.

Hopefully it will have dried out by morning, otherwise TEA production may be affected.

Last time I saw that was in a cafe where I had ordered tea. I could just see the kettle and had noticed that it took a long time from boiling to switching off.
Lass said that she couldn't do much as the power had gone, so I told her to unplug the kettle and reset the RCD. That worked; I advised how to avoid it again but never went back so don't know the outcome.
I set my kettle to 90 if I want it boiling then do a manual start-stop to get to the boil - on a small amount it just boils at 90.

[Giraffe]

24Ω live to earth.  That's not good.

Ouch - 10A - should take out the 30mA RCD.

[hellymedic]

How do you get water to boil at 90 at an altitude of less than 100 metres?
Does Ashton have a different SVP?

[rafletcher]

I suspect it’s a lag between indication, sensing and residual heat.

[Kim]

24Ω live to earth.  That's not good.

Ouch - 10A - should take out the 30mA RCD.

Yes, that's why various electronics stopped responding and barakta appeared sheepishly with a torch.

[Feanor]

24Ω live to earth.  That's not good.

And presumably that's as measured with a low-voltage multimeter.
Bet it's much worse at 240v!

[Mr Larrington]

DJ Random, pray tell, what have you got against Blanck Mass that you refuse to play them – and them alone – in your frivolous selection of the works of Popular Beat Combos

[Mrs Pingu]

DJ Random, pray tell, what have you got against Blanck Mass that you refuse to play them – and them alone – in your frivolous selection of the works of Popular Beat Combos

DJ Random is trying to tell you that Fuck Buttons beats Blanck Mass?

[Giraffe]

I suspect it’s a lag between indication, sensing and residual heat.

Precisely - and the residual heat, mostly due to the remote element, is about the same for any amount of water, so +<½-litre just about boils.

[woollypigs]

Welcome to Monday in the office - where little old me, a mere minion, got added to emails, invites and tests that by the time comes down to me is hearsay, chinese whispers and mentioned as a “by the by”.........

Update to this, yes doing the week I got many more emails, invites and requests to do someone else's job that didn't have a clue about. And felt like any minute I would become the messenger who got shot.

I ended up doing the work that they were testing for on Monday. Other than learning on the fly what is going on, as no one had told little old me what the plan was, who was whom and when what did that.

We ended up on a "back end" phone bridge with people from all corners of the world and background having a good old natter, while the people were doing their thing, for about an hour.

So at the end of the week, I can only grumble as it didn't blow up in my face, but I could happily have lived without four days of "why the feck and arrgghhh and oh shit"