Narratio

Mid September. The rains are appearing, the wind has turned direction and now comes from the North. Autumn is early this year which usually means it'll be a cold winter. Not looking forward to that.

Today is my Electrical Safety Exam preparation. Every 3 years we have to sit in front of the Kaakh regulatory body and prove that we electrical engineering types know enough about our jobs to not kill either us or others. It's partly useful and partly rubbish. Useful as it nudges the brain about the odder spects of electrical safety in a country which still operates 1950's tech' and holds individuals to personal blame for mistakes made. (Translation: jail time)

And it's rubbish because it still follows old Soviet practice with regards to testing procedures and practices. I mean look, cables built to old soviet spec are lead covered, oil filled and have really, really thick outer PVC insulation that looses polymers and color under 5 mins of so of sunlight. So a 10kV rated cable gets tested at about 60kV. Try that with modern western spec with XLPE insulation and it not only damages the cable, you get clouds of copper plasma incomoding the passers by.

But you cn't argue with the inspectors. So it becomes a matter of knowing the answers they want, not what the real world needs.

Just signed up for another few Open University course. Business Management. I know... 52 years old, why is he doing this? Feelings of Insecurity would be my best guess. I need some more paper to prove I can do the job I've been doing all these years and to balance off against the new grads'. Insecurity, that's all.