BreakPoint
This is Hooovahh
@Hooovahh wrote:
So he went into photoshop, scaled the image and resubmitted. This time they accepted it, and he was eventually published.
I could have done it directly in LabVIEW by e.g. just turning every pixels into a 8x8 pixel area of the same color. for 64 times more pixels.
(It actually might not really have been "policy", but a limitation of the typesetting system they use).
(I still remember when the professor complained about the size of his PowerPoint files until I noticed that he had slides with dozens of stamp sized pictures, each actually a resized multi-megapixel image. 😄 )
@thoult wrote:
Sorry to say, PDF generation was done without the Carya toolkit - we already had a different system for use with C#, so I wrote a wrapper for LV - but it was a reminder of just how painful of how reporting can be without the right tools!
No worries, it's free now. If I have a few weeks time, I'll open source it. Just remember that iTextSharp is only free for open source projects. Not even when it's used in a free LV toolkit.
@thoult wrote:That long?! 🙂
The first release of the PDF Toolkit was written in LV6, in 2006 IIRC. I'm sure I had rudimentary (insert a jpg on a page) PDF creation way before that. So [22, 25) years.
Drawing a graph isn't hard, it's just lines, dots and text...
Making a universal API is very hard though. It got easier with OO though.
Search LabVIEW like a graph! 
Union Experiences
I was onsite working on a test system and a coworker needed to get up high to get a cable we had installed. He saw a ladder leaned up against the wall so he grabbed it, climbed up two steps, then put it back. Well the union guys that work there were very upset and had a meeting about the inappropriate use of the ladder. Not that he wasn’t safe, but that the ladder was to only be used by union workers. So the next day he bought a ladder from a local Home Depot and used it, then expensed it to the program and when he went home he strapped it to the roof of his car and kept it. He wasn’t allowed to use theirs, and he wasn’t allowed to leave it.
Same customer, same facility. I wrote some software to control their test system. My software had the ability to send an EStop condition that stopped everything from functioning, and this could get tripped for several reasons. The problem was to reset this meant putting the system into a known good state (which I could do) and then pressing a single Green button that I was not allowed to press. It wasn’t that it wasn’t safe to do, the button was next to the computer monitor where I sat most days. The issue was that the green button could only be pressed by a union guy due to some contract. So I abided by the rules. I’d sit there validating the software and occasionally I would invoke a halt function. Then I would have to go get the one union guy whose job it was to press the button. He would get up from playing solitaire (not a joke), press the button and go back. I’d test another halt condition and go get him. After about 4 trips the guys said “well you can just push it”. So now instead of his job being to press a single button, it was to tell me I can push this single green button for him.
This place also had occasional contract disputes. I was told one day to call in the morning to see if they are striking. If they were, I was told not to come to the facility or they would “destroy my rental car”. I was a bit confused since I figured vandalism was a crime, but apparently during a strike it was expected.
@Hooovahh wrote:
Union Experiences
And people look at me funny when I say that unions are not a good thing anymore.
I was doing some work for GE Engines and moved a cable that was wrapping around an engine turbine so it would not break. I was told the next day to never do that again because the union would complain. The lead engineer told me "If they break the cable, it is on them." All I could do is shake my head.
My dad worked for a grinding shop (they where given parts that came from molds and were told to grind them down to exact specifications for size and smoothness). The owner told many unions "If you come in here, I will shut down." The shop never unionized and he took good care of his employees.
@crossrulz wrote:
@Hooovahh wrote:
Union Experiences
And people look at me funny when I say that unions are not a good thing anymore.
I like this one though:
In the UK we have unions too, but they largely spend their time enforcing equality and fairness within the business, protecting employees rights when a business attempts to crap on them (legal disputes etc.).
They almost never have anything to do with creating discord between staff and contractors. Why should a ladder be for unionised staff only, for crying out loud!?
In the last few years I've seen a lot of negative sentiment towards US unions. The recent strike action of GE automotive workers demanding a 40% pay rise and a reduced working week. On what planet is that reasonable!? Its reported that unions have become the hobby of political career wannabes, people of influence looking to make a name. If I was American I wouldn't want anything to do with them.
In the UK I've never needed a Union, don't expect I ever will, but I still believe they're working in the best interests of a balanced negotiation with employers, not making ridiculous demands that put impossible pressures on businesses.
I worked with a Human Resources guy that related a story that I'll never forget. The guys in the machine shop would keep a cleaning rag in their back pocket. This rag was often damp with volatile compounds and other guys would light it on fire, you know, as a joke. Well, this joke went too far one day and a machinist was injured, resulting in the termination of the joker. The union went to bat for the joker and got the termination reversed because "he had never set anyone on fire before." That I heard the story is a true story. It can't possibly be that the story is true.
I once got scolded for using a production machine to make prototype parts because we're supposed to offer overtime to the operators first. I just ended up doing it myself when nobody was willing to help, and just letting them get paid for overtime they didn't do.
Oh boy, I'm not sure why I didn't think this would cause a bit of discussion. I tried writing my union story in a way that was matter-of-fact based. Not so much trying to say what is good or bad about unions, or their place in society. Mostly just as neutral story as I could post about the humor I found in its involvement in my story.
@Thoric wrote:
Why should a ladder be for unionised staff only, for crying out loud!?
Because there likely is a contract that states equipment (like a ladder) can only be touched by someone who is part of the union. Possibly with penalties, or an escalation if it continued. This is a way to ensure union members' jobs are protected. Keeping anyone but union members off of a ladder, means it is more likely a union member will do a task, and not someone else. That's how I understood it at least. As an engineer who is most excited about getting stuff done, it was a different experience. One where I needed to set my expectations of task completion to be much slower.
@Thoric wrote:
In the last few years I've seen a lot of negative sentiment towards US unions. The recent strike action of GE automotive workers demanding a 40% pay rise and a reduced working week. On what planet is that reasonable!? .
I believe their demands were based on the increase in pay, and decrease in hours, that upper management was receiving. I again want to be neutral here, but they likely saw this as a negotiating tactic. The argument being if they gave themselves a 40% raise while reducing their output, why was it unreasonable for other employees to get the same treatment.
One last union adjacent story. I worked at a place that made a simulator for a thing we were testing. The idea was that the device we were testing was so large and complex that to test our hardware we needed to simulate their hardware. The end customer got both our testing services, and the simulator which they were extremely excited to have. When we delivered the system we realized why they wanted a simulator so badly. Their device sat in a very large test cell where 5-10 workers would be needed for every test along with expensive consumable materials. These guys were union, and we had difficulty just getting them to be in the same room at the same time. Turns out if our customer had a simulator that just sat in an office, they could test lots of the functionality of the system, including verifying harnesses, basic IO, and various software features, without the $5,000/hour cost of the test cell, labor, and material. The simulator was not cheap but it paid for itself very quickly. The program manager at the time made it clear not to tell the union guys about this simulator hardware. It wasn’t explicitly against the union policy, it was just that it might bring up questions of who would be allowed to use it. The current contract said only union employees could use the test cell. If the union discovered that a 19 inch rack and DAQ hardware could replicate some of the functionality of the test cell, they might put into the next contract that only union members would be allowed to use our simulator.
Sorry if I derailed your thread from humorous to serious, I just found myself flabbergasted at the situation in the story. As neutral as you're being, every union-related story appears to make my blood shiver (as a businessman). It entirely depowers a business from managing itself efficiently, having to serpentine the whims of an unrelated entity that can dictate its structure and impose costly operating restrictions. But anyway, I'll shush up now 🤣.
