OT: Signs you're spending too much time around PLC's

[Psymon]

It's a Saturday, and I had a couple minutes to kill so I made up my list, please add your own, I can't wait to see what you all come up with!

1. When you watch shows like “How It’s Made” you think to yourself “I could’ve done that way better”.

2. When watching the aforementioned TV program, you get excited to show someone else a piece of hardware you work with, and try in vain to explain while the DVR is running in slow motion.

3. You realize when you try to explain how you program a PLC to someone outside of your career field, they ultimately say “So you just say if this is on and that’s off, you turn this on?? Sounds pretty easy.” And you just get mad.

4. You want to know what servos the robots in iRobot were running on.

5. You fall asleep with a question about how to pull off a piece of programming in your head, and wake up in the middle of the night with the answer.

6. You’ve asked your boss for OT because while technically sleeping, your subconscious is doing work, therefore should be
compensated accordingly.

7. If you aren’t working out programming while you sleep, your dreams are consumed by nightmares of someone removing the battery and then turning off the circuit breaker.

8. You think about all the ways your house would be tricked out if only your boss would let you have a PLC and a couple of I/O cards.

9. You see this size of a hard drive, and the size of the biggest program you’ve worked on, and you realize that computer software programmers must be really inefficient.

10.When you go into a new plant, and they ask you if you’re wearing bracelets, watches, or any loose fitting clothing, you look at him like he just asked you if you were on fire, because you haven’t been able to wear a watch in 7 years.

[Firejo]

You use PLC to run your xmas lights

[OkiePC]

At the top of the hill, you are more excited about the guy with the laptop in the j-box at the top, and how the motor is coupled to the chain, than the fact that your roller coaster is about to make a 70mph 110' drop.

[DairyBoy]

This one could be dangerous... When I start thinking very conciously about the control loop that is the eye/brain/foot thing that maintains a constant velocity on the road. Hey, I'll have to try an auto-tune next time I pull out

Re "How it's made", I have to watch that with the sound off. I don't know about the US one but the producers of the UK version have used a machine that they don't show us that removed the brain of the presenter. He couldn't change a tyre. I'm sure the script writers have a few laughs at his expense, like the injection moulding m/c that's running at say, 2000 psi and they've converted it so that he says "...and the molten plastic is pushed into the mould with a force of nine hundred and seven kilograms per two point five centimetres squared." WTF?

As for middle of the night stuff, well we all twitch a bit from time to time but when I spent two years working on a machine development for forming fine tubes into heat exchanger parts, my nocturnal psyche took on the actions of just about all the servo axes at once! That job nearly cost me more than I care to think about.

How it all permeates into the family: Handing my daughter a cup of tea and she goes to take it with a smooth, controlled, perfectly horizontal outreach of an open hand (that made me smile) but then when she's a few inches away the hand/wrist/grip action totally screws up and she makes fizzing, graunching noises. She's heard too many tales of misguided servos. That one had me in tears.

Well, thank you Dr. Kroger, see you tomorrow at eight...

[TConnolly]

[Ken Roach]

Brilliant... one of my very favorite XKCD comics.

[Mickey]

Your logged on to PLCS.net at 2:00AM

[sfindley]

Or even 12:30 am!!

[OkiePC]

You go to work with an ear infection on one hours' sleep so you can get a rare opportunity to modify a PLC-5.

You then come home, sleep ten hours, and jump on PLCTalk.net before going to work at 5 am on Sunday.

[daba]

Never sleeps.......

[TConnolly]

Daba, by my estimation it was well after midnight in the UK when you made that last post.

[daba]

its 00:25 now - our clocks just changed for DST otherwise it would have been 23:30

i suspect your calculation needs refining, lol

[Firejo]

Shouldn't the sheep have gone into error mode?

[JeffKiper]

If you use a PLC forum more that just troubleshooting or asking for help.

I think of this as a PLC geek facebook. You can see who is doing what or what area the other guy is strong in.

I have made more than a few friends on here. So I fall into this category.