Light Minds Think Alike

Of old jobs and Vulcan mind-melds

A couple of weeks ago, at lunchtime on a Friday, Steve Short (of Lite-Trol fame) sends me an email wanting to know if we have spare parts for an old LMI dimmer panel.  He even included a very fuzzy picture from his cell phone and said the job is the Marriot Glen Pointe.  

I wasn't able to find the job in our system right away but in looking at the photo I surmised it must be an ACS rack.  This was based only on looking over old drawings years ago as I had never seen one in person.  Flash (Bill Florac) confirmed it was an ACS rack and that he had originally done the job turn in 1983!!

I tracked down the job in our system and noted that it was job #00015!!  Yes, I ran around the department exclaiming that I had the old job for the week, the month and the year!  Not really a formal policy around here, I still think it's fun when one of us gets a job that starts with two or three zeros.  Yes, a lot of them are running everyday.

Unfortunately I had to tell Steve that we don't have spare driver cards.  He's working with the ballroom on site to figure out how to keep lights on as I offer to bring the card in for a quick repair.  We both come up with different solutions that would work and it dawns on me that Lite-Trol can fix this in their shop as long as I can find documentation.

Now most of you know Steve and Lite-Trol but I guess almost none of you know Roger.  I've only met him over the phone and he certainly doesn't get out in the field, but when it comes to bench repairing products, there's probably no one to hold a flame to him.  Some even says he bonds with the circuits, a kind of Vulcan mind-meld, and intuitively knows just where to poke and prod to bring things back to life.

Turk, Spencer and I wandered over to 3036 Laura Lane - yes, we still have stuff in one of the old buildings - to dig through the flat files of drawings that never got converted to pdfs.  There's definitely some cool stuff in the drawers which of course appeal to an old technology geek such as myself.  Not far above the ACS drawings I found Bill Smith's sine wave dimmer drawings from 1990.  LMI was definitely a technology leader!

There they are!  Hand-drawn ACS dimmer card schematics and PCB layouts with lots of erasure marks on them.  Lauren was nice enough to take them out to get scanned and printed and the next day Steve and Roger had the electronic copies in their email.

Steve emails me a week later and says that after a couple of LM324s and a cap the card was up and running again.  The customer was thrilled and Lite-Trol has saved another system.  I roll up the original job drawings and put them away with all the others waiting for the day one of us can once again say, "Old job of the week!"

Another ETC innovation reaches retirement

The recent arrival of a new automated coffee machine in the Finance/Sales/Marketing kitchen has brought delicious dark roast coffee to many - and the end of an era for one.

With the fancy schmancy new coffee dispenser, the brew-your-own lineup of coffee pots has been put away. And, with no responsibility falling on the taker of the last cup to make a new pot, the ETC Coffee Cam, symbol of justice and respect, has been disassembled.

Rest in peace, little buddy.

Updates to the Unison Minisite!

We recently completed an update the Unison minisite at www.etcconnect.com/unison.  The most exciting change is the removal of the movie of me! ;)

Another important change adds interactive features to the riser diagrams found at http://www.etcconnect.com/minisite/unison/products-Paradigm.html and http://www.etcconnect.com/minisite/unison/products-SmartLink.html when you click on a link to a riser in the left-hand column.  These changes allow us to post datasheets and product details in a more organized way.

Also, the links to the Paradigm and SmartLink brochures connect you to the latest revision – adding new photography to the Paradigm product line.

We are hard at work right now in completing the product pages for the new products, including full family pages, product pages, and a full complement of downloads including more datasheets than we've ever had for legacy Unison! Look for an annoucement of the changes to the website soon!

Enjoy!

Joe Bokelman

A new look at Net3

Someone said to me recently, "I honestly believe you shouldn't have to know Net3 from the wind in your hair." Perhaps that's a fair statement - how many people in any office around the world have the slightest idea what's going on behind the scenes with their computer network? Still, we certainly think an ETC system connected with Net3 brings many, many benefits to the system's users, and starting today, there's a new way for people to discover those benefits - even if they may not need or want to understand what's going on under the hood.

Check out our new Net3 feature on etcconnect.com for a dynamic, humanized look at the benefits that Net3 delivers to you. We encourage you to use the feedback from on the site (or the comment form here) to share your comments on what you see, and, if you're so inclined, to use the demo request form to make an appointment to get a closer look at Net3.