Three Phase service

Today we pulled wire into the service, this is a 200 amp 3 phase service. We still have all our feeders to pull out of this panel to our branch circuits.

More Forgotten Moments

The other day I had found some pictures I had forgotten about, This is another one on the memory card from that day. This deer was pretty close and didn't seem too bothered by the fact we were close by. I remember this day because my boys were fascinated by the deer.







This video is from a few minutes ago , one of those video shows was on TV and they had the Jingle cats video, (my link isn't the original) anyhow our cat Baily really did NOT like the video as you can see. every hair on her body was standing up. That's today's laugh and I thought I would share it with you.

Merry Christmas

I got a new Nikon digital camera for Christmas so now I will have lots of new pictures to post. It beats the old camera I was using before and now my wife and I will not fight over her good one.It even has this multi shot function thats pretty cool. The cat made a good test subject lmao.

Christmas

I would like to thank everyone for dropping by and wish everyone a Merry Christmas. Everyone be safe in your travels over the holidays.

Done With Christmas Shopping

After my final trip to the mall I am officially done Christmas shopping. Now I can actually enjoy some of my much needed time off and waste time on the computer or watching Tv. I am actually surprised at the amount of people i have seen shopping it sure doesn't look like there is a problem with our economy after spending a few hours in the local mall, I say this on a good note.

Forgotten Moments

Today I was going through my memory cards from my camera's and came across some pictures I forgot we had even taken. They were from a day of hiking at the Shenandoah National State Park in Virginia.














This sign was at a campground alerting you to the fact that the bears could be nearby. We saw a few but they usually keep their distance from you. Finding these makes me impatient for next summer so we can return and do some more hiking.

New Jobsite Finally

The last few days me and my apprentice have been working at our other job site. It is nice to be in new surroundings that is one of the things I really enjoy about being an electrician, all the different job locations. The only thing bad about that is the driving, I do have a company truck I bring home but just the drive to the job sites can be long some days. This job is about an hour drive one way for me and thats not real bad. Last year around Thanksgiving I did a job about 5 1/2 hours from home so we stayed in a motel all week, I had a great time and got to meet a lot of people, my wife on the other hand did not much care for me being gone all week.

Today we worked on setting the back
box for our panel and getting our conduit into the back box. As for me I am on vacation for a week so I don't have to think about work for a while.

Christmas Bonus

Christmas Bonus

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Humor

Sorry, if you acually use this on Power Point the YES moves away from the mouse, however after uploading it to scribd it took that function away. It still works if you download it and use it in power point though.So much for making a funny post HAHA guess the jokes on me today!

Wordless Wednesday

Random Thought Of The Day

Something my wife said today puzzled me, she told me good things come to those who wait, so I thought about it and asked her if that is true then why is it that the early bird always gets the worm?

Electrical NIghtmare

I got this in my email today, I sure am glad I have never run across something like this, this is a fire waiting to happen or worse. I finally got my outside Christmas lights up, what upset me was it was cold out when I put them up and the following day was actually warm. I was actually hoping it would snow here for Christmas but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

Cocoa's Thoughts on Christmas

Bad Weather Headed Our Way?

Tonight our youngest son told us about how he learned today in school to build a barometer with a bottle and saucer filled with water. Well he did everything he was told and put this thing together, he then told us about the water levels and what they meant and if the water in the bottle goes down it can mean bad weather. So about an hour passed and he runs in to tell us the water level had gone down? hmm interesting we said. The funny part is about a half hour after he put it all together I watched our cat drinking from her new funny looking dish, I just didn't have the heart to tell my son that the cat was the culprit for the "forecast" of bad weather! Maybe that's what our local weather station uses since they are always wrong.

Wet Day Again

What a terrible day it has been , it has rained all day and now they said it is going to cool off and turn to snow over night, I guess I would rather deal with snow than the rain. This is an old Picture but I thought it was cute. It is sort of how I feel today just stay inside and do nothing. Today we started planning for all the work we are going to do at my companies office. We are going to put in a server rack, server, patch panel and security system with a dvr. Now if I could only talk them into open source software.

Securty Cameras

Today I spent some time at our business getting a layout for some security cameras. There are so many different types of cameras and dvr's . We are going to get a complete system that has everything included so all we have to do is basically install it.

We did choose to get a dvr that is network enabled so it can be viewed remotely or after hours.

Christmas Is On Its Way

My wife started decorating this weekend, It is hard to believe that Christmas is almost here again it seems like it was just a couple months ago we were doing all of this. Even the cat isn't amused by it. The part I do not look forward to is the outdoor decorations, the temperature has dropped now that I have decided to do some decorating, last week was bearable outside however the last few days it has been pretty cold.




I found a pretty neat flash Slide show maker that's free not a 15 day trial its really free, all it does is put a banner at the last frame , for free that didn't bother me.

IBM, Ubuntu Unveil Microsoft-Free 'PC'

As a Linux user this really caught my attention. I am looking forward to following this to see where it leads.



The first offering from Big Blue's anti-Microsoft push relies on a virtual desktop and a mix of open and closed source.

IBM is taking another step forward in its bid to undercut Microsoft's dominance on the PC.

Together with Ubuntu Linux backer Canonical, Big Blue is now rolling out a virtual desktop solution that delivers IBM Lotus software to users.MORE......

Happy Holidays

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Thank God It's Friday

Well the weekend didn't get here fast enough for me, This week seemed incredibly long to me for some reason. Yesterday I had to go to a bank I wired last year and pull an extra data line for a computer. Well everything was OK until I went in the server room and saw the mess someone made of the rack I put in last year. If you have every built something you know the proud feeling you get when you are done and you stand back and look at it, well I was very upset when I saw someone had moved everything around and had patch cables strewn about like spaghetti. One thing I cant stand is when someone takes no pride in their job and just throws things together as fast as possible, especially when it involves screwing up something I had originally done. Anyhow when I was done we certified the cable with our Lantek. It is a really neat tool especially if you have a problem with a wire, it can tell you if there is a broken wire or reversed pair, It can even tell you the distance to the break. We certify most all of our cat 5 & 6 now and I am glad we do one reason is if we do a job and someone else comes in and does something to one or our wires we have the data report that says everything was ok when we were done.

Eagle's nest

There is an eagles nest near a job we are doing that a pair of eagles live in. The nest is HUGE, The other day I had my old camera with me and got the lower picture here where the eagle is in the top of the tree, the picture didn't come out real good though. Today I brought my good camera with me but didn't see the eagles but I took a picture of the nest anyhow just to show the shear size of it.It amazes me at the amount of work they have put into their nest. The picture doesn't really do it justice you almost have to see it in real life in order to appreciate it.



here you can see the eagle in the top of the tree above the nest.

Hard Days Work

What a day we had, today we were met with this obstacle directly in our way. If we didnt have the trench 90% done we could have went a different direction, however it was quicker to move this rock than dig about 100 feet of new trench to get around other obstacles. I was very surprised we even got this monster out of our way. The engineer from the power company stopped by today to set up a time for a hook up on our new service. That will pretty much complete the 1000 amp service on the farmhouse.

Back To Work

Back to work today, we went back to the old farmhouse today and started trenching to get power to last barn we have to update power to. This trench is different though we hit nothing but rock. We have our big trencher today that has a small backhoe on the front, good thing because the trencher only got me about 20 feet then we hit all the rocks.














The only problem with the backhoe is its a slow process and you have all the rocks to try and get out, a few of them were pretty big and I was surprised it even moved them. Our service got inspected too the other day and now we are just waiting for the power company to come and set a new pole for the new transformer.

Fun In The Snow

Well at least my kids enjoyed the snow, this is my oldest boy on his snowboard wiping out. It was nice to see all this snow but I will be happy to be home.










Here he is after the wipe out. reminds me of all the fun we used to have as kids in the snow.
At least we all had fun in the snow. We had a really good time this Thanksgiving, hope everyone else did as well.

Winter Setting In

One thing I do miss about being in upstate NY is the snow in the woods, I love the outdoors and walking in the woods. I just hate having to drive in snow.

Have a Good Thanksgiving

well we arrived in NY this morning, thank god most of the snow has melted as it was a little warmer than it has been according to my family. On our way up we had a good laugh it is about 340 miles, well we had some guy fly by us early on this morning, I by no means can say I obey the speed to the exact number usually within 5 MPH or so, well we ran across the guy pretty soon after this while he was waiting for a PA trooper. My wife made some comment on him deserving this due to the fact he was going so fast. We continue on our journey and about 2 hours later ZOOM same guy flies by us yet again, huh must be he didn't learn anything from his earlier experience, well about 10 minutes later there he is yet again on the side of the road with a NY trooper this time. all i have to say is he didn't save himself any time for all the aggravation he got. Drive safe everyone.




The snow is pretty on all the tree's.






















Here is a nearby lake.

Snow For The Holidays

I got another email from upstate NY today from my folks. We are going up for Thanksgiving and I suppose they want us to see what we are in for. Oh well I can handle it for a few days I did for 30 years before moving south.

My wife hates snow so I am pretty sure she will be miserable the whole time.

Freaky Looking

I received this picture in an email today and my first though was that of a low budget scary movie, kind of like the ones that used to be on Sunday's back in the 70's Eivom i think it was called, movie backwards, but they were always sort of low class movies like the blob and stuff. WOW does that ever make me feel old. Then we got cable just about the time I moved out of the house to take on the world on my own, Huh a thought just hit me, that might have been planned. Now that I am older and wiser It almost reminds me of things me and my wife do. Back to the picture I sure would like to know what all those cats are so interested in?

MOre Snow

Today I got an update on the weather in upstate NY, this is what the roads are looking like at my mom and dad's house. We are going up on Wednesday, how lucky we are. It's been a few years since I have seen a good snowfall so I actually hope it snows while we are up there. I miss the appearance of the snow just not the driving in it or the cold.

Back to NY

Well this is what we will have to look forward to this week as we will be heading to upstate NY for Thanksgiving. I dread the drive, and it seems as though we were just there, well its only been a few weeks but anyhow I wish it wasn’t so far.It will be good to see everyone and ride my 4 wheeler. As for us we have not got any snow as of yet, a few flurries but that’s it. My kids will love it if they have enough snow to sled on since they don’t get to do that very often here.

Restoration

Anyone who has rewired an old house has come across the old pushbutton switches and normally the home owner is never given an option to keep the old switches since they are usually broken or just worn out. This place has them and they also have some switch plates for them also. They also have old style light fixtures among other things.

These will be good because sometimes you need to keep the original appearance of a home.

Arc Flash and PPE

An article in the May/June issue of the NFPA Journal discusses the changes in arc flash labeling requirements that are included in NFPA 70E - 2009. The opening paragraph states:

"Since arc flash labels were first required in 2002, there have been many differences throughout the industry between the wording and the choice of signal word and color. The 2009 edition of NFPA 70E, Electrical Safety in the Workplace, will require, for the first time, that one of two pieces of information be on the label: either the required level of personal protective equipment (PPE) to wear or the available incident energy. However, it leaves the color and signal word of the label and any other information the facility wants to put on the label up to the discretion of facility management."

This is what we have to look forward to in the coming months, Here is a video with some good information.

Wordless Wednesday

Yet another good day to stay indoors where it is warm.

Tuesday Tune up

If you didn’t notice I have placed a new Entre card widget in my blog today courtesy of Google Gadgets. It will display the top Entre card droppers of all time with a link to them. It was really simple to set up, in google gadgets they have a bunch of RSS feed readers so I simply took the rss feed from my entre card statistics page and placed the web link into the gadget. On another note my wife stopped to fuel up on her way home from work today and paid $1.76 for gas, what a difference from a few weeks ago. I haven’t personally be effected by the job market and lay offs but some of my fellow employee’s have mentioned that family members have been. I sure hope things pick back up. Well I think the cat has the right idea for tonight since its so cold outside. I had gathered everything up to start a fire in our fireplace and he decided this empty Pepsi box was a nice place to nap, I WAS going to use it to start the fire.

Service

Today we pulled the wire between the farmhouse and our service. We had 3 pulls that are very long but it went well and that part is done now. Tomorrow after a few hours I can try and call in for my inspection if everything goes ok. We have done a lot in this house in the last few months, we still have a lot to do also. Now we can concentrate on retiring the old service we are still using as temporary power. We used our new wire puller and it worked really good, our old one used to take a long time to set up this new one is pretty fast to set up and worked without a flaw.

Summer Wonders

Today I have been going through photo’s from the summer and I ran across the ones from a weekend of hiking we did in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia this past summer. I really enjoy spending time there are so many trails to hike and things to see. After looking at my pictures I am wishing spring was here. You can still hike during the winter but should be prepared for inclement weather.

This was from a hike we did that went way off the beaten path it took us the better

part of a day to hike in and back out but it was well worth it. I have many more pictures in the coming months of cold I may post more to remind myself of the warmer weather. I think the other thing I would like to spend more time doing is geocaching. We used to try and do a few each weekend with our boys but then for whatever reason we haven’t spent as much time doing it this year.

High Bay Lighting

Over the past few months I have started to see many more T-5 fixtures going in as replacements for HID fixtures. One of the school districts we are working for replaced all their HID fixtures in their gyms with these type fixtures. One reason would be a 60% energy savings over HID fixtures,The other would be there is no start up issue as with an HID fixture.

• 35,000 hour rated life


• 
  
  Colors appear more vibrant and defined

Most of these I have seen are also Universal voltage (120/277) so there isn’t an issue of rewiring them and makes them great as a replacement.

Technorati Tags: High bay lighting, Electrical, HID, Electrician, Lights for HID fixtures.

FORD

That would stand for "Fix or repair daily" when things like this happen I feel like giving up especially when we are at a customers house. This poor old trencher has seen better days the bar and chain are worn out beyond repair and now the bushings are all but gone so maybe now we will get a new chain on it so it can once again dig.

Building The Service

The back box to our panel finally came the other day and today we finally set it in place. Now comes the fun part of pulling 250 XHHW from here to the house X3. Once we get the wire pulled and I can get everything terminated we will be one step closer to getting some permanent power turned on. This job has been a lot of fun because nothing on it has been normal.