Member Introductions / Origin of your Username

Engineering Potpourri Pat's Pub
#1

I started this thread so folks can introduce themselves, if they so desire. It doesn’t matter if you are a new member, or we’ve known you for years.

And, it’s always interesting to see peoples user names on the SE forum. Some are straightforward, some are funny, some leave me guessing. How did you come up with your user name? Does it mean anything?

I’ll start us off.

I’m a 1979 BS ChE from NCSU. Go Pack!

Since 1988, I have worked for a business that makes synthetic latex products for many, many applications, the most common one being house paint. I have been directly and indirectly involved in the design and construction of many emulsion polymerisation plants and dozens of emulsion polymerisation reactor lines around the world. My family and I have lived in Dubai, Singapore, and five states (NC, WV, NJ, MI, and TX) in the U.S.

I suspect house paint made from latex from plants/reactor lines I designed and built are in almost everyone’s home(s) here.

So, along the lines of Tony Stark, “I am . . .” Latexman. :wink:

:rofl:

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#2

I chose SLTA because it was literally what was left after eng-tips refused my application to join about 15 times because of technical glitches, or so they claimed :upside_down_face:. It’s the first letters of my family first names in order of age.

I graduated from Cornell undergrad and Northeastern grad in structural engineering. I had my own company for years doing investigations on existing structures. I now work engineering administration for NCSU (Go Pack again!) at a satellite program and I teach an intro class. No more arguing with clients that they have to pay me even if they don’t like my findings!

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#3

My real name is ‘Richard Alexander Coates’… I use ‘Dik’; it’s much easier to remember with my advancing age. When I was a toddler, everyone called me ‘Dickie’… my baptismal certificate uses ‘Dickie’. I won a baby contest in 1947 sponsored by the T.Eaton Co. I still have the cup engraved ‘Dickie, King of Toyland’. My graduation paper (written on lined paper and signed by the teacher) from Kindergarten to Grade 1, lists me as ‘Dickie’. When I grew up, maybe Grade 3 or 4, I was known to everyone, but my relatives as Dick. My relatives always referred to me as ‘Dickie’. The only time ‘Richard’ was used was when my mother was angry at me for some reason. After graduation from university, on all documents I signed, I used Dick. Over a period of time the ‘c’ disappeared from my signature due to the haste of signing, so I just used the name ‘Dik’. I’ve used ‘Dik’ for the last 40 or more years. My old drivers license was always signed ‘Dik’ (I no longer drive). My engineering seal signature is ‘Dik’. It is now permanent.

As far as engineering goes… I have fun, but should have gone into medicine.

Dik

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#4

And then you would have been ‘Dik the Doc’.

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#5

Heheheheehe would that be Dok?

Dik

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#6

My ‘handle’ is based on the initials of my first and middle name, but ending with a twist on my last name since I was told one should never use one’s last name as part of their e-mail address.

My wife and I use a very similar handle as the identifier portion of our shared e-mail address except that the first two letters are the initials of my and her first names.

When my younger brother saw what the forename of our e-mail address was, he heartily approved and took a similar tack…although he applied even more guile and misdirection by spelling his forename as ‘sheersound’ even though the more correct spelling of the forename would be ‘shears sound’ - but without the space, of course.

This post should provide you enough clues to figure out my last name, if you care that much; I have included it in a few of my posts at Extra-Terrestrial - um, I mean, “The Other Site;” where I use the same handle.

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#7

I chose the user name BAretired because my initials are BA and I am retired; I thought it was obvious, but the first time my brother saw it he thought it meant I was “bare” and “tired”.

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#8

I know. Replacing worn out tires is tough on a pension.

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#9

Chose my “handle” to reflect the time period of my formal education and first job. Also, to this day I do math on a calculator in a way that would make sense when using a slide rule.

Have a “BS In Engineering” from the USC (University of South Carolina) and am licensed by my state for the “Practice of Engineering”. When I took the PE exam (1974), NCEES had just one exam for all engineering disciplines… hence, the general license. This has come in handy, too. Have had a total of four careers, each in distinctly different aspects of engineering, covering a variety of disciplines, often intermingled on a project.

Worked mostly for end-users, heavy construction, and heavy industry… never an engineering firm nor on a project with an architect.

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#10

Simple nothing complex:

art from first name
I from my second
si from my surname

artisi

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#11

Completely random. As a child I used to have a subscription to the BBC Wildlife Magazine. There was an article about Siberian Tigers, also known as Ussuri Tigers. Something about the word just stuck with me, no idea what or why. It lurked in that dark area of my brain where useless information is kept, waiting for the internet and the dawn of usernames, to be resurrected. My avatar is the crest from my Coat of Arms.

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#12

Great namesake…

Dik

#13

Hello Ussuri, any idea why the female Great Spotted Woodpecker is used in your Coat of Arms crest?

#14

Separate reply about my background and experience, as well as my qualifications or lack thereof:

I am a certified Operating Engineer, Third Class, in Ontario, Canada.

I have 35+ years of experience in the electrical power industry; that experience having a consist of the operation of fossil-fueled and hydraulic generating stations, plus grid operations including transmission & sub-transmission from 13.8 kV to 500 kV.

I don’t think I overstate when I claim that I am strong in operational experience, but weak in plant design.

As to CR: I initial a lot of documents at work. I had several colleaugues with the initials CS, but only I initialled things using CRS, and CR as a name stuck.

As to my trailer text on ET / TOS ( “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” [Proverbs 27:17, NIV]), I like the elemental reference to sharpening and blacksmithing, and I appreciate the way that appropriate contributions are welocmed both here and on ET / TOS.

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#15

Username is self explanatory. Graduated from MTU in 1972. Grew up in UP six miles from campus. Third generation CE, but first Structural. 40 year career with two jobs in lower Michigan, one in Hibbing, MN. (mining and mineral processing facilities), and four in Wisconsin (primarily in paper industry).

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#16

You should come out of retirement… you missed half the fun in life…

Dik

#17

I got my chemical engineering BS from Rowan University here in NJ. So far, I’ve spent time as an R&D chemist in lubricant manufacturing and a plant engineer in general chemical manufacturing.

I’ve always called Lakehurst, NJ home, and I hope I always can.

I don’t remember what made me think of my username. I think I was just saying “soup or salad” in my head, for whatever reason, and I put the two together. Later on, I searched it online and found out “super salad” is a bit of a joke among food servers because apparently many customers order the super salad after being offered soup or salad.

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#18

About usernames.

I once worked at the C E Johanson HQ in Eskilstuna, Sweden. Only in the Electronics department there were three Gunnar (which is an old Viking name meaning - well, I have forgotten - let’s say Odin’s best friend or something). And there were more of us in the rest of the company. Very awkward it was. So we added little identifiers. I was the only one living outside the city. Not exactly in the woods (skog) but my identifier was Skog. The short for Gunnar is Gurra and then that ubiquitous “s” that we use as a glue when making a single word out of several words (Yes, we have words like “Höghastighetsjärnvägsvagnshjul” and many much worse). The result? Obviously: Skogsgurra. And it stuck. I have been such a one since the mid-seventies.

So, now that you know my dark secret, please have a Wet Martini on me! Or several. It is one of those drinks that look classy, tastes good and still doesn’t influence your driving skills.

SKÅL!

#19

OK, I forgot about my background. This is the short version:

But first – how did I get involved in electric systems at all? I was more interested in cooking and spent summer holidays as a cooks’ apprentice on ships as a teen. Explanation given below.

I blew my first fuse when I was around ten years old. I did it by connecting a wire with “no load” to a 220 V AC outlet. There was a sharp sound, some arcing and then – darkness. My father couldn’t understand how someone – especially his own offspring – could be so incredibly stupid.

I explained that there wasn’t any load. Just a short piece of wire connecting the two prongs in the plug. That convinced him that my mother probably had had an affair with the local genius. He, who was known to turn all wheels on the car 180 degrees when filling air. “To avoid vibrations”, as he said.

I have learned a lot the years after that and even if “I couldn’t spell ellecrisity then, I now are wun”.

That experience made a long lasting and deep impression on my young and inquiring mind. My father, who calmed down after a few minutes, told me about voltage and current. And, also that power was voltage and current multiplied. Not bad for a carpenter in the early nineteen-hundred-fifties.

I asked how there could be any power in a short-circuit? I had somehow figured out that there couldn’t be much voltage between the two prongs. And, therefore, no power. He explained to me that the power had developed in the wiring and the fuse. And that the fuse was there to avoid stupid people like me from setting houses on fire. A jump-start as good as any into what later became my field of work for more than sixty years. And still is.

Used to hang around the local radio shop and got quite good at old radio sets. Then made military service in the Signal Corps (yes, there was an army worthy of the name back then). ASEA/ABB was eagerly looking for nerds for their electronics developments, I couldn’t resist their offer. The position was as a “Trainee” which meant nothing to me. But a great experience with insights in the operation in large companies and traveling to many different countries. After a few years, Siemens phoned me an offered more than double pay. Which I couldn’t resist.

Design work and field support for ten years and then, the kids wanted me to stay home more. So started with “Jo blocks” Johansson HQ in Eskilstuna, Sweden for first microprocessor development - remember the i4004 with 10,8 us cycle time? Incredible crude. Hand-coding, but got a terribly slow development system eventually.

Started on my own summer 1977. Tough, but had lots of contacts from ASEA, Siemens and C E J. And new contacts were added as the years went by.

All that taken together, plus a certain amount of audacity (spelling?), made my life interesting. And it still is.

And same wife all these years - I appreciate that. A lot.

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#20

The Cheers! TV show had been borrowing my name for all those years, so I took it back with any name recognition coming out of that as being interest on the loan. I have no idea what I’d have been able to come up with for a username otherwise.

The thing is, I’d actually hoisted a few pints in the very downstairs bar that appears in the show’s introduction, back about a dozen years before the show debuted. I’ll always wonder if it was more than cosmic coincidence . . .

Norm

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