From the Bucket

Dead Data: What Industrial Data Can (and Can't) Do for You

This episode is a detour from the career story because I've spent a big part of this year buried in compressor data, and it's been some of the most interesting work I've done. Industrial data collection is a spectrum, from an operator with a clipboard all the way up to full historians logging every point. In this episode I talk through what each level actually lets you do, how the questions change between industries, and how I physically pull and analyze this data in the field. Plus three real compressor stories: a pressure valve failure you could only see in the data, a bearing quietly failing across a month of trending, and using startup data to prove a system is healthy instead of hunting for what's broken. And then there's the trap I see all the time: dead data. Collecting everything and looking at none of it until something fails. Because the value of your data isn't how much you collect.It's whether anybody's actually paying attention before they're forced to.

The shop, Where Everything Works in CAD

Two years in Dallas. Sixteen-hour days. Full autonomy to make decisions, fix problems, and drive a project forward. And the you come home. In this episode, I talk about the part of field engineering nobody really warns you about: the transition back to the shop. The pace whiplash. The committees for decisions you used to make in thirty seconds. And the moment I realized where the phrase "it worked in CAD" actually came from. Also, we made it to ten episodes. I have some thoughts on that too.

Someday I'll Teach You How to Program

There's a reputation that follows controls engineers around. Arrogant. Difficult. Convinced they're the smartest person in the room. I'm not going to tell you that reputation is completely undeserved. In this episode I talk about how the field builds that arrogance almost by design, what it actually looked like when I was inside it and couldn't see it, and why the honest answer is that it never fully goes away.

The Last Thing Dallas Taught Me

Every big chapter ends somewhere. This is where Dallas ends for me with miles of overhead conveyor, a burned motor, and a welding hood I hadn't picked up since high school. What two years in one place actually made me.

Your Machine, My Line

Every machine that comes into a production line has its own PLC, its own logic, and its own idea of how the world should work. As the system integrator, that's your problem to solve. In this episode, we break down the reality of integrating third-party machines into a line control system. Why fillers are the hardest machines to work with, why Ethernet doesn't actually mean access, and what it took to stop showing up to projects blind. From a bottle jam nobody could see to vendors who just said no, this is the dull work that determines whether a line actually runs.