The Achievement Thread

[Knothead]

Fantastic! Thanks a lot for sharing. Those are wonderful achievements!

 

I agree. Thanks.

 

I don't have much to add to this thread. The things that I've accomplished in my life are trivial at best and mostly could be attributed to luck, the blessing of God and the support of those that love me. My marriage has been successful due to my stubbornness and my wife's forbearance.

Also, I've had it pounded into my head that I shouldn't be proud.

But one thing came to my mind when I started thinking about the subject of this thread.

 

I was around 12 years old I think. My dad, brother and I were driving from California to New Orleans with everything we owned in an old station wagon. It was around '67 or '68.

The back of the station wagon was loaded to within a foot or so of the roof with just enough room to allow someone to lay on top of all the gear and sleep. My brother was just old enough to help dad with the driving and was catching up on sleep. It was hot and the back window of the car was down a little to get some air flow. Unfortunately it was more fumes than air. When dad pulled into a rest area my brother couldn't be aroused. He was close to death but eventually came to.

During this drama, being a pretty much useless 12 year old. I wandered away and roamed around the deserted rest area. I came across a wooden cane leaning against a picnic table. There wasn't another soul around so I ended up taking it back to the car. I remember my dad asking me what I needed with a cane, but I don't remember what my answer was.

Anyway, we soon arrived in New Orleans and at an intersection I saw an old black man limping down the sidewalk leaning on a broomstick. I don't remember asking permission to get out of the car or receiving it, but I do remember the look on that man's face when I handed him that cane.

That's about as proud as I think I've ever been about anything that I've done and I don't feel like I really had much to do with it at all.

[Tormod]

I do remember the look on that man's face when I handed him that cane.

That's about as proud as I think I've ever been about anything that I've done and I don't feel like I really had much to do with it at all.

 

Wow. It's like a good book. Great story! :)

[Donk]

“Achievement” can be large or small. Rather than brag about my many, many major achievements ;) , I'll talk about a small one.

 

Today I met a pair of sisters, both in their sixties, wanting to cheer up their mother who had just gone into hospital. She'd asked for a photograph of her late husband for her bedside. Almost all of their photographs had been taken by one or the other of them, so there were very few of them as a couple. Of those, only one that was “good” of her husband, but she'd blinked as the shutter clicked, so her eyes were closed :(

 

They had a few other photographs, just of their mother. Could I somehow put one of those on to the good one of their father? I looked at the problem. The skin tones in the pictures didn't match: not too much of a problem. But the lighting didn't match on any of them. I explained that if you photoshop two pictures together, one taken in sunlight and one by flash, it's always going to look like two pictures photoshopped together. But I said I'd see what I could do, and asked them to come back in an hour.

 

Simple: I scanned the happy-couple picture, plus one of the others. Then photoshopped a pair of happy, smiling eyes on to the face marred by the blink. It didn't take long, but the result looked absolutely authentic. They were thrilled at the thought of their mother seeing this old-but-brand-new picture by her bed. “It'll do more for her than all those doctors”, one said.

 

And I was happy as well. I work for wages, as we all do, but every few days I get something like this.

 

Make someone happy; make just one someone happy :phones:

[Tormod]

so, here's the thread from the start: Environmental Study of Lechtenberg Park

A lot of steps for a man, and a wonderful tale to be told to mankind (couldn't think of anything better to paraphrase... )

 

Good going, Turtle. It's threads like your that keep this place interesting week after week.

[Turtle]

over the course of a career i taught thousands of people how to swim & water safety, trained & certified a few dozens of lifeguards, and rescued 2 drowning children. one might wonder if that has anything to do with my low tolerance for monkey-business. :omg: :naughty:

 

[Tormod]

over the course of a career i taught thousands of people how to swim & water safety, trained & certified a few dozens of lifeguards, and rescued 2 drowning children. one might wonder if that has anything to do with my low tolerance for monkey-business.

 

Now that's a true achievement! You are a mystery man. :lol:

[Turtle]

Now that's a true achievement! You are a mystery man. :lol:

 

all part of my plan to achieve famous anonymity. :hihi:

 

today's achievement is that i woke up not dead enough to make some coffee. anything further is mere speculation. . . . .

 

[HydrogenBond]

When I was a young development engineer, I won an award for an engineering achievement. The same process won many awards with one presented by a General who flew in from Washington to present a military applications award, since I worked at the Y-12 plant run by DOE. The achievement was connected to a biological process for decommissioning waste acids ponds. I had never taken a single biology course in my life and was asked by my boss, to see if it was possible to develop an anaerobic process that could run within these open acid ponds, where there were high levels of heavy metals and little pH control due to earthen walls and a permeable clay bottom. According to the experts, the lack control meant it would not work, especially since the levels were 10-70 times higher than worked in the best available technology. But I had some success in the lab and I a small pilot plant. I attributed this success to my green thumb, with bacteria sort of like growing plants. In my case ignorance of biology was my advantage, since I was not biased by traditions.

 

After some basic process development, we requested to use one of the acids ponds to test the process. But I was overridden by engineering and production who felt I would mess up the pond and cause a disaster to their seepage basins. That should have killed the idea. But as fate would have it, a few days later, the local newspaper did a story about the acids ponds that got the local and federal EPA's hair in a bunch. They came down hard on the plant and threatened the plant if something was not done, immediately.

 

So the plant manager gathered his experts and asked what could be done. But everything required over a year with high cost. I told him about my development process, but I was yelled at by the managers who had shut me down before I could finish. They preferred the expensive monument approach. Luckily the plant manager was so stressed, not sleeping for several days because of the publicity, he slammed his hand and the table yelled, "Put up or shut up!" It got real quiet, so I spoke up again and told him I would give him 5 to 1 odds that the process would work. Since nobody else could put up, he looked at me and said, do what you got to do. This meant I could by-pass the normal system since this was an emergency. After the meeting ended, we designed what we needed on the back of an envelope in about an hour, and through begging, borrowing and stealing, we were up and running in 2 weeks.

 

This was the biggest experiment I had ever done. While my crude neutralization and mixing device was being built, by the fabrication team, I shopped for my other supplies. The experimental pond was 10M gallons with a pH about 2. It had almost the entire periodic table of elements due to the nature of the Y-12 production plant. I went to a local lime quarry and bought 150 tons of ground limestone for my pH adjustment. The water was to be discharged, so I could not use too much Na+. I only used about 5 tons of 50% NaOH to fine tune the pH. I also bought an entire tanker truck of 100,000 pounds of 50% acetic acid for my bacteria food (like bacteria steak). About 30 gallons 50% phosphoric acid for the DNA and ATP, and a few tankers of sludge from a sewer plant and an active bioreactor. With a few days the pond began to bubble and in a few weeks it was done. Near the end it began to reduce sulfates to hydrogen sulfide. I let the pond stink bad for a few days, since the sulfide was allowing us to lower the heavy metals by forming metal sulfides. Then aeration to eat up the remaining carbon. It then became the technology for their new state of the art waste acid treatment facility.

 

After the transfer, I was given another emergency project which involved treating 2M gallons of low level mercury water due to a water main break in the sub-basement of the decommissioned Lithium Isotope separation facility. I knew very little about mercury, but it only took me two weeks to invent the best available technology. After that I was known as the mercury man and given a long term project to develop what was needed to reclaim the Li isotope facility. But I was not good at the slow pace of talking without action, so I left to invent new ideas.

[IDMclean]

Achievement unlocked: Underachiever

Unlock no achievements for seven or more consecutive days.

[Knothead]

Here's something that I helped accomplish recently that renewed my optimism a bit.

 

 

http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/story/19138919/want-to-help-pull-a-boat-off-gulport-beach-on-wednesday

 

http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/news/region_pinellas/volunteers-free-grounded-sailboat

 

Here's a private video that is more complete.

 

 

The most satisfying and inspiring part of the whole thing was bringing the community together to get something accomplished that the local government seemed unable to do.

From the online community, the local sailing community, the local media to just everyday towns folk. They all came together and we did something good.

It warmed my heart.

 

Respectfully submitted,

Steve

[CraigD]

I applaud you, Steve!

 

At first glance, I thought I knew that beach! I spent much of my childhood sailing around there (my extended family had a summer cottage a few miles west/south of Guildford Connecticut, in Maltby cove (AKA Summer Island), near Branford. I've only been near or on it a few times, but a daysail from Summer Island, around Faunkner Island (with its lighthouse) and back I've done more times than I can count.

 

Other than one time I got the keel of a friends 24' boat nastily wedged in some rocks among the Thimbles (which we managed to get free of with some waiting on the time, and skedging, the swimming-while-cluthing-an-anchor kind, not the more graceful kind involving a dingy), I've not had any mishaps approaching the one you rescued that boat from on your Florida beach, but being aground is pretty much the same experience in any state or country.

[belovelife]

i got a 1 min 55 sec on einstiens puzzle,

 

and a friend i tought to play,

 

she has a 2 min 1 sec :P