There is an interesting event in Livonia, Michigan next week on Wednesday, May 5.
This is a Cinco De Mayo pre-celebration event called Great Designs in Steel 2010 hosted by the American Iron and Steel Institute.
See you all there!
About, Events 
3 Comments This is the start of week three with my new employer … and I absolutely love it!
For the first time in decades, I am happily content. This the perfect position with the best people I have worked with since the 20th Century.
I realized today that I have come full circle.
Sure, returning to my roots here in Detroit is part of it.
All my life, folks called me “Timmy”.
I remember correcting someone early on at GM about that. From that point on, everyone, including CEO Jack Smith – believe it or not – called me Timmy.
There was a time when you could walk into just about any die shop in town where they only knew Timmy. Tim Stephens meant nothing to them. Most never bothered to learn my last name.
Well, there is another “Tim” in my department of six.
It has been confusing to everyone having two Tims.
Until today.
“Do you mind if we call you Timmy?” my boss politely asked.
“You mean instead of ‘no – the other Tim?”
So, there you have it. Full circle.
And I could not be happier.
Events, Tips & Techniques 2 Comments You will immediately notice the new look and feel of the site. The retooling is just about done. Do you like it?
I made several formatting changes. Besides the new theme, you will notice I made the home page an excerpt of recent posts instead of showing the complete post. My thinking is this will give you an overview of the post topics for the past week or so instead of scrolling through each post.
I also moved the archives, categories, and tagcloud to the footer. This keeps the main content and sidebar length manageable. It also puts all site navigation in the header and footer … where it should be.
Added a few names to the blogroll … and a short “about me” since I am getting new readers from other industries around the world.
I have more ways for the stalkers and smores (social media whores) to find me online.
Some of the older posts need to be reformatted … will clean this up soon …
Back to the business of blogging on dies next week!
Demos, Web Technologies No Comments Here is some eye candy for you die guys out there:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUhoHE6kMZk
Speaking of eye candy, it is about time I update the look and feel of this site. I like this one, but I want to take it to the next level.
Look for a new theme in a week or so.
Demos, Events No Comments My friend Erkan is involved with a tradeshow in Bursa, Turkey that takes place May 18, 2010.
Here is a video teaser:
The Art of Die Making (Teaser)
Gazi University Tool and Die Teaching Department gives 4 years degree ( B.S. ). Graduates works in different positions in industries; like automobile industries, aerospace, as tool-die designers, surface developers, simulation designers, CAD/CAM designers, tool-die production team leaders, project responsibles.
If you would like more information, please leave a comment or reach me through the contact form.
Engineering Decisions, Rants No Comments I am always amused when smart people behave irrationally.
A few years ago, (judging from my picture in the articles, it has been more like a few decades) I wrote two articles about foolproofing practices in dies: Foolproofing Dies Part 1 and Foolproofing Dies Part 2.
Then came the phone calls and emails.
“It is not politically correct to call people ‘fools’,” was the theme.
The term ‘foolproof’ does not characterize anyone as anything.
Accoring to Merriam-Webster, foolproof is defined as:
Main Entry: fool·proof
Pronunciation: \ˈfül-ˌprüf\
Function: adjective
Date: 1902
: so simple, plain, or reliable as to leave no opportunity for error, misuse, or failure <a foolproof plan>
Sounds about right to me. Webster has not let me down yet. Rest assured, foolproof is OK to say in the workplace, library, or church. Tell your friends that Webster said foolproof is not an f-bomb.
In fact, according to Webster, foolproof is the proper term relative to errorproof.
Where is the proof?
As it turns out, errorproof is not a word recognized by the authority on words. Click here to see for yourself.
Events, Tips & Techniques 3 Comments You don’t realize what you take for granted until you don’t have it anymore.
After a couple years out West, I began to miss Fall time, going “Up North” (why we call it that baffles me), family, and friends.
Above all, there is a bunch of Michigan foods that I missed. Here is my baker’s dozen of simple pleasures I have been craving for the past ten years, in no particular order:
Events 2 Comments It feels good to be back in the Motor City after being gone for a decade.
Finally working with genuine die guys again!
Events, Rants, Web Technologies No Comments My apologies, but the contact form code is down right now … a recent WordPress upgrade with a contact form code upgrade is proving to be incompatible.
The tech support guys are working on a fix.
My apologies for the inconvenience … best way to contact me is to leave a comment until I get this issue resolved.
Engineering Decisions, Web Technologies 3 Comments A big thank you to everyone that posted comments and emailed me about my website naming question.
The “vote” results were pretty much split down the middle:
Fellow die guy Eric Kam mentioned something this week that helped pull it all together conceptually in my mind. Essentially, he said “diejedi.com is for the thinking die engineer … and every components companies would want to be listed on a website called diestandards.com.
I had alot of downtime due to my travel schedule this week. Thinking this through with your comments and Eric’s statement, I came up with the following plan:
Have the main site that describes the idea and markets or positions the “product” be diejedi.com. It is short, simple, and easy to remember like everyone that liked it said.
For technical reasons, I need to have subdomains. The perfect subdomain for everyday best practices is “my.diestandards.com.”
If a company with proprietary standards, like GM or Ford, want to have online die standards, it only makes sense to have subdomains like “gm.diestandards.com” and “ford.diestandards.com,” respectively.
The supplier links only show up on the diestandards.com subdomain … exactly where they are needed: right along side the die standards themselves.
This is my best of both worlds solution to the question at hand.
The argument for the “does what it says” approach makes sense. Then I got to thinking. When you go do an online search, what name comes to mind?
Google.
You never think “search.com”. And, yes, there really is a search engine called search.com.
Google “sticks”. Search.com does not.
Google (it was supposed to be Googol but they mis-spelled the name when registering the domain) rationalized their name based on the googolplex, which is a huge number (of search results).
How do I rationalize Die Jedi? The two words rhyme.
Yes, that is how simple my brain works. If it rhymes, it is easy for me to remember.
For those that are deeper thinkers than me, I would rationalize the use of Jedi quite simply (stands to reason) in terms of the Star Wars movies that folks associate the term with.
In the movies, there was much talk about “The Force” that unified all things in the universe.
With the online die standards I am proposing, the technology unifies all the scattered pieces of information needed to engineer a die. This is accomplished by replacing the paper book form with search technology.
A blog-style die standards “publication” not only unifies, it simplifies.
Larry mentioned Yoda in his comment. In the movie, Yoda wisely boiled everything down to its simplest Jedi terms. One quote that comes to mind is “Do or do not. There is no try.”
I think the name works … and by using the best of both, the site will be easy to find in search engine results.
Thanks for indulging me on this topic … would be glad to hear any comments / feedback.
This die standards thing is a hobby for me right now as I have a bit of free time on my hands. If there is interest, I can blog my progress here.