August 31, 2005
Beloit Corp and K&T Machining Center
I ran this K & T MilwaukeeMatic Machining Center from late 1989 to the end of 1995. (The longest time I spent doing the same job in my 21+ years at Beloit Corp. I think these were taken in something like 1990 or 1991?)
This machine had four 3' by 4' pallets where various jobs were preset/preloaded. You could have two pallets loaded to the machine at a time. In the photo above, you can see two jobs. I have my hand on a dryer bearing housing and there's a steamfit part ready to shuttle over and run.
One might wonder at the odd composition in these photos, but there was a reason. These photos were to supposed to be used in promotional materials, with accompanying videos at trade shows. The photos needed to obscure fixturing and machining methods while showing off our "modern" machining processes. I never did see the finished videos, but I think my dad got a surprise seeing his son in a video at a trade show. (Dad worked for Valmet/Metso, one of our competitors.)
In the next photo, you can just make out the "Automation Intelligence" control station, screen and keyboard. These were PC-based controls that were originally designed for Boeing. Beloit Corp purchased 4 of these in 1987 to retrofit onto all our K&T Machining Centers, replacing their out-of-date Allen-Bradley Controls. (Due to start-up issues we actually installed only 3 of the AI controls, saving the 4th for parts.)
The AI Control employed two motherboards, running 12 Mhz Intel 80286 processors, with 2 megs of RAM, sharing a single RLL 20 MEG hard drive, connected to a VGA monitor. (Lucky me, too! The first machine fitted got an - ugh, yech - EGA monitor!) One PC controlled machine motion/motors (MCP), while the other was the User Interface. The OS was IBM/MSDOS 3.3 with a primitive multitasker/shell interface called TASKVIEW. The AI control had a neat - and at the time unheard of - full-screen Wordstar-based Text Editor that was quite handy for tweaking our CNC programs.
That AI Control is a lot of the reason I ended up learning about PCs. It's what you might call the 'root' cause that sent me into the world of MS/DOS and PCs. So, in a weird sort of way, those controls continue to influence my life to this very day.
For those who think these machines just banged out thousands of the same thing day in and day out, that was not the case at Beloit Corp. Paper machines are custom made. This K&T alone had a library of well-over 10,000 programs for that many different parts. We called it a "long run" when we had more than 40 of the same part to machine.
And, yes, I still have an "I 
DOS" bumper sticker from PC/Computing magazine in my desk downstairs.
August 29, 2005
Beloit Stone Water Tower Window
August 28, 2005
History of Beloit Iron Works Page
The story of the Beloit Iron Works from the 1936 Book of Beloit.
"So the more paper Americans use and the more uses to which they put it, the better Beloit will like it. For Beloit men will build the machines that make the paper---and that will be fine for them, for the community and for the state."
And checking the referral links from that page, I came across the Paper Industry Web (PIW) page. I urge you to check out the Paper Industry Web page while it's still up!
http://www.paperindustryweb.com/newstuff.htm
According to the main page, it's only got a week left - September 1st! Can a host/mirror be found and set up in that short amount of time?
Siren Photo
One of my favorites. Thanks to the vari-angle LCD on the Canon A80, I was able to hold the camera above my head and capture this view of O.V. "Vern" Shaffer's Siren statue.
The Siren sits atop a six-foot pedestal and isn't really very large so this photo might represent a "new look" at a familiar object for some Beloiters.
Right now, this is my Windows desktop wallpaper.
Here's a photo of the dedication plaque from the statue's base:
Find more information on this sculpture at Beloit College's Public Art Page.
August 22, 2005
Happy Anniversary!
Twenty four years ago Suzanne and I were married in a civil ceremony at The Green Shutters restaurant in Whitewater, Wisconsin. The formerly antique-filled restaurant/home is now the location of the Mercy Whitewater Medical Center, seen in the photo below.
We had a simple wedding for 75 friends and family. The ceremony was at [high] noon, and was followed almost immediately by a luncheon reception where the champagne flowed freely.
Most people don't know my 3-piece suit cost 4 times more than Suzie's wedding dress! And, damn, nobody warned us that getting hit with thrown rice HURTS!
We drove ourselves from the reception in our nicely decorated Omni 024. No chauffeurs for us! We then took it - fully decorated - all the way to Colorado for our honeymoon.
Man, I loved that car! It was truly my last new car until we bought the PT Cruiser in 2004.
Well... enough reminiscing for now...
August 21, 2005
Boats, Rock River and BMHS
I defy anyone to go to Janesville or Madison or Clinton or Rockford or Rockton, and find one school - new or old - even 1/2 as beautiful as BMHS.
Why aren't students from around the area beating paths to the door trying to get in via Wisconsin's School Choice program? Does our district even attempt to market or use BMHS's proximity to the river and parks for anything except complaining about traffic? Does our school district even have a rowing team, or canoe or kayaking club?
Adopt Cats at Rock County Humane Society
"MILI is a short haired female. She is a spayed female so she is all ready to go to her new home. She has short, dense, black fur--she's very pretty. Mili's birthday is June 1st, 2004. #19652"
"PEANUT and Penny (19539) are littermates. You might consider our Double the Love for Less program with these two siblings Peanut was born in March of 2003 so she is just about 2 years old. She is spayed and front declawed. She is a little shy being here and probably wouldn't like to live with small children. Peanut just needs someone to be patient with her and to go slowly while she gets used to you. #19542
August 20, 2005
Self Portrait
Since the last one was 2 years ago, I guess it was time.I planned to post this to my Y!360 Blog, but that lame service doesn't want to accept this photo upload.
Oh well... time for another ride...
August 13, 2005
Geotagging is soooooo cool!
Click the screen shot below for the actual Geotag page -
August 12, 2005
Pirated Version of Mac OS for PCs
"However, several enterprising hackers have figured out ways to bypass the security chip and run the developer's version of MacOS for x86 on any x86-based PC, according to a posting on the Web page of The OSx86 Project. Posters on that site, as well as other sites within the Mac community, claim to have used the instructions to run Mac OS X on their Intel or AMD PCs, with some posting pictures and videos of x86 PCs booting Mac OS X.
"The process requires a copy of Mac OS X version 4 (Tiger), VMware's virtualization software, the PearPC emulator that can run operating systems written for PowerPC on any architecture, Apple's Darwin 8.0.1 software, an x86 processor that supports SSE2 (Streaming SIMD Extensions 2), and two files created by an independent developer that can be downloaded using the BitTorrent file-sharing system."
August 09, 2005
Interesting Google Search Results
Go to http://www.google.com/ and put the words - useful webpage - in the box and click the I'm Feeling Lucky! button.
Oh yeah... while you're at it, try the words - Beloit Staples - in the box and click the I'm Feeling Lucky! button again.
Here... I'll save you the trouble...
Google search result - "useful webpage"- Click here!
Google search result - "Beloit Staples"- Click here!
What a hoot!
August 06, 2005
Massive Identity Harvesting!
Sunbeltblog: Identity Theft Update: "This was discovered by Patrick Jordan, a senior staff researcher here. Patrick is a veteran of spyware, and even he admits to never having seen something like this before. It's pretty staggering. "
Sunbeltblog: More on the identity theft ring: "Here is a quick idea of what happened: ... our most senior CoolWebSearch (CWS) expert, was doing research on a CWS exploit. During the course of infecting a machine, he discovered that (a) the machine he was testing became a spam zombie and (b) he noticed a call back to a remote server. He traced back the remote server and found an incredibly sophisticated criminal identity theft ring."
Hmmm... apparently linked to CWS? Connected to the Russian 'Mafia?' Harvesting personal information? Why doesn't this surprise me? It won't be long now and masses of the non-tech-literate will see and hear about this on CNN, FOX and NPR.
CWS uses spam email that exploits WindowsXP vulnerabilities and/or socially engineers the reader to get itself installed on the PC. Make sure your PC has installed all critical updates for Windows and its Internet Exploder browser.
(How bad is it online these days? Example: If you're online, running WinXP connected directly to the Internet without SP2 and without a firewall or router, it's already too late! Your PC was compromised in the time it took you to read this message!)
Remember: "It ain't free for nothing!"
While there are good, free online downloads, even they have a price! And that price is the cost of YOUR time and trouble to do your own research on it before you click that OK button! Fail to pay that fee and your PC will be owned and that owner will not be you.
Be smarter than the sleazeballs!
