Dearest Friend & Subscriber:
I'm a happily married man.
Not only that, I'm monogamous.
Which means that if I want a date on Valentine's Day, basically all I have to do is, like, remember that it's February 14 and not wind up in the doghouse through my own sheer negligence or stupidity.
(Not that I always pass this test with flying colors, you understand, but that's a story for a different day...)
But anyway, I was thinking back to when I was a single guy, full of vim and vigor and insecurity. And I just gotta tell you, women have it easy.
See, I'm an engineer. And I work in a male-dominated profession. Wherever there's one woman-engineer, she's got nine guy-engineers to pick from, and of course all of them are wonderfully industrious and smart.
And it's not just that way in engineering. Like one astute observer said, a lady can get a steady boyfriend way quicker with a drum set or a lab coat-and-calculator than she can with a gallon of hairspray and Chanel pumps.
Me, on the other hand, if I want to be surrounded by women, I have to go to an aromatherapy workshop or Tupperware party. This, in my opinion, is horribly unfair.
Dear reader, I do not have a solution to this and cannot possibly solve this problem for you in this email issue.
So instead of attempting the impossible, I am going to tell you what's Hot in the non-romantic end of my world. Can't do relationship communication tips, so I'm punting in favor of electronic communication tips instead.
(Whoa baby, watch out, it's gonna get steamy in here.)
~~~
It's become rather passe (old-fashioned? un-romantic?) to connect a serial device directly to a PC's serial port. The rage is to connect all your serial-port equipped devices to the LAN with a serial server so you can access it from anywhere, eliminating the need for long serial cables, or installing a PC in harms way.
Just so long as you don't need pink, we've got lots of flavors of Ethernet Serial Servers to do the job. And now we've expanded that line even further with a couple of mini versions that aren't much more than a bump in a cable.
Check out page 15 of the B&B Electronics catalog. Available in both wired and wireless 802.11b versions, it's now easier than ever to step into the "connected" world. It's so small, dare we say it's sexy? It's at least got a strong Wife Appreciation Factor:
http://www.bb-elec.com/product_family.asp?FamilyId=240&s=e021406
Page 27 is another one for people in heavily male-dominated professions. If you haven't started using 802.11 wireless yet, you likely will be soon. But one of the snags in deploying 802.11 in an industrial application has always been finding an Access Point that's made for the job. Not some lightweight sold at the local big-box store but something you can count on in your panel.
Bubba, your woman doesn't want a lightweight. She knows the trials and tribulations that go on inside a panel and she's looking for dependability.
Our Access Point is 802.11b/g compliant. Redundant DC power inputs, PoE support, DIN rail mount, IP30. 0-60 degrees C temp range. From now on, she's going to know you've got things taken care of:
http://www.bb-elec.com/product.asp?sku=AWK-1100-US&s=e021406
Don't know if you recall an old song from the late '90s called "Fieldbus Man" - never made it onto MTV but yes, it was a real song. And in that song, Pia growls a bluesy industrial declaration:
When it's time to take control
I've got a Fieldbus Man for my I/O
To get control as fast as you can
You can't do better than a fieldbus man
This decade, Fieldbus Man has been superseded by Wireless Man. So if you deal with any remote I/O, be sure to check out the new stuff on page 64. Digital I/O and counters over 802.11b mean that you can monitor and control contacts in places that you can't easily reach with a wire:
http://www.bb-elec.com/product_family.asp?FamilyId=239&s=e021406
Show This To Your Honey....
B&B Electronics has Product animation on the web! This is pretty cool. Let's you grab, spin, zoom, measure. Get very "hands on" (easy Bubba!) with a product without ever touching it:
Vlinx ESR
http://www.bb-elec.com/product_family.asp?FamilyId=120&s=e021406
Vlinx Wireless
http://www.bb-elec.com/product_family.asp?FamilyId=145&s=e021406
Mini wired and wireless serial servers
http://www.bb-elec.com/product_family.asp?FamilyId=240&s=e021406
Industrial Serial Isolators
http://www.bb-elec.com/product_family.asp?FamilyId=12&s=e021406
Elinx Industrial Ethernet Switches
http://www.bb-elec.com/product_family.asp?FamilyId=144&s=e021406
(Seriously, I want you to click on one of those links right now and take a look at this - let me know what you think. Useful? Fun? Like to see more products done that way? Less?)
Now:
Understand that guys who use all these cool tools suffer extreme humiliation if the wireless transmission gets stopped by a stainless steel enclosure (DOH!). So when
you get ready to install wireless in your panel, remember to use a fiberglass enclosure. These wireless-friendly NEMA boxes (pages 74 - 77) will save you the trouble of configuring an external antenna and eliminate the temptation for some slug to snap the antenna off your panel. We've got a huge selection of fiberglass enclosures ready to meet all your UL, CSA and NEMA requirements:
http://www.bb-elec.com/productcat.asp?topLevelid=24&s=e021406
I love DIN rails. Remember my eConnections issue "The Trusty DIN Rail & My Crusade Against Velcro?" In the movie Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts has her first date with Richard Gere, and she says to him "This car corners like it's on rails."
I thought of DIN rails. Those would be even better than regular rails.
So with Julia Roberts in mind, it's no coincidence that we've got DIN rail versions of most every product category in the catalog. And we've just expanded our line of DIN rail power supplies. We've got more sizes and options than ever, including both plastic and metal on pages 90 and 91:
http://www.bb-elec.com/SubCategory.asp?SubCategoryId=695&s=e021406
Earlier in this email, I said I was punting on the romance. But... now that I think about it, I've given you everything you could possibly need to impress a highly educated woman. Especially one who's Wired. Any of these goods I just described to you, if she's quality, these things are going to light her fire. (If.)
If (what)?
IF you remember that it's Valentine's Day.
Today is Valentine's Day, bubba.
Don't screw this up through negligence or stupidity, dude. Now that you're a B&B Electronics customer, the days of being forgetful are behind you.
Happy Connections,
Mike Fahrion
(815)433-5100
support@bb-elec.com |
