Work

Guess I should mention what I do at work. I go in once a week during semester, which is great. For me, it's the day that breaks up the rest of the week. Just doing uni work can get a bit boring at times, and I'm really lucky to have engineering work while I'm at uni. I love it this semester - my day off uni is a Friday, so that's the day I go into work. That means I get jeans day, and any celebration lunches/morning teas, etc. Surprisingly, I do actually get some work done too :p.

Most of the time I just use Vulcan (which is basically CAD, but made for mining). We use this to make plans of mines at various stages. It's pretty cool what you can do with it. For instance, you can create a solid object from the lines drawn in your plan. The volume, and other things can be given from this solid object. Sometimes though, it's just incredibly frustrating. It can take hours to do something that seems so simple, all because a line didn't join properly, or something really small. It can take ages to find out what the problem is. They say engineers are problem solvers, but I didn't ever think that referred to computer/software problems.

I'm also trying to sort out a few things for my final year project at the moment (which I have to do next year). I've got an awesome project to do, which will hopefully save the company some money, but it will need a bit of money to do the project as well. I've got to write a proposal, so I can get approval to do the project in the summer break.

Guess I better get back to the study :(

More Youtube

Uni is pretty full on at the moment with exams and assignments, but I seem to be so much better at procrastinating. Pity it's not a useful skill. Here is some more Youtube, showing the coal mine to ship process. It jumps around a bit at the end, but hopefully it helps show how it all happens. It might be more helpful to understand it if you already know the process, or have been on a site or two. I'm not sure, let me know what you think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwhIQDRBAT8&feature=related

Quote

"The optimist says the glass is half full. The pessimist says the glass is half empty. The engineer says the glass is too big."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh01gBodg18&feature=related

As far as I can tell, this looks like an awesome blast. There is very little rock thrown up in the air - it is all thrown sideways. This means they don't have to move it there by trucks and excavators, which takes longer.

Video of a blast

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i34tUq1JK7g&feature=related

I love the comment at the end of this - "I hope my car is ok...."

The big booms are not what they aim for - it's just wasted money, and pretty dangerous to get all of that rock flying around