Audio Book First Chapter Plus
Several people mentioned they prefer audiobooks. Here is a feel for what it will be like. However, this is my ‘first draft’. If it goes anything like the regular book, I’ll completely redo the whole thing and finish in four years.
Don’t ask a true believer: how do you know someone does CrossFit? don’t worry, they’ll tell you. For certain people, in my opinion, there is value in listening to the audiobook while getting ready in the morning and also having the physical book as a reference. If you’re not sure, by 16 copies of each.
Regular Book First Chapter Plus
This website has a different font and alignment than the book. Shocking. The preview should give an explanation (Chapter 1) and a feel for the book (a couple crumbs in Chapter 2).
Chapter 1: The Beginning
1.1 Intro
1.1.1 Begin
This is a trick, a lie, an introduction labeled Chapter 1. The beginning begins in Chapter 2 because some people skip intros, prefaces, and forwards from Nicaraguan philosophy professors. But, this preface actually explains the book. It explains any that seems weird (it is), that makes no sense (it doesn’t), and that only applies when the villain has five fingers on his right hand (so almost always). Please stick around.
1.1.2 Book Contents
This book covers the big picture: how electricity gets to your house. Ultimately, one form of energy somehow converts into electricity, and that electricity somehow arrives in a home. These somehows happen in generation (creating electricity), transmission (moving electricity), and operations (continually creating and moving electricity). However, the first somehow provides a baseline knowledge to help make sense of everything that comes after. All together the book has four sections:
- Section 1: Basic Electricity
- Section 2: Generation
- Section 3: Transmission
- Section 4: Operations
1.1.3 About Me, But Not How Great I Am
A bit of a hater, my least favorite part of any ceremony, other than the ceremony itself, comes when someone gives a self serving speech. Please skip thanking the hotdog vendor that was paid to show up and made money selling hotdogs. Just give us the trophy and let us get outta here. At one such event I told my wife, “Just because you have a microphone, doesn’t mean you have to use it.”
All that to say, people should probably not read some random electricity book written by some random guy who knows nothing about electricity. For my bona fides, my knowledge came from joining the US Navy and working as an electrician in a nuclear power plant. From there, I worked in control rooms doing some transmission and distribution operations before moving to several positions looking at the bigger picture, stuff in the last few chapters.
1.1.4 Reason For Writing
As a nerd listening to economics podcasts, I once thought to myself, “I wish I had a more thorough understanding of money creation in banking.” While sad, it would still be cool if a banker wrote a book about day to day operations such as booking each transaction, total loan portfolio determination, and accessing cash in the repo market.
While lamenting my inability to find such a book – what a geek – an idea suddenly popped in my head, “Perhaps some other nerd out there would like to understand the electrical industry; I could write that!”
1.1.5 Not for Nerds
Nerds like to read nerd stuff, but other people NEED to learn about electricity, an accountant getting a utility job or a lineman trying to pass a test. Some of those people might not like to read nonfiction. They might not even like to read at all – some control room operators work in the control room because going to college sounded awful. This book keeps in mind the spite reader, someone who holds out a silver cross when passing a bookstore. The whole structure revolves around a person who reads a sentence like, “…an inexorable and precipitous truncation…,” and thinks, “Dear God.” The book presents science for the unscientific. It’s also for nerds.
1.2 Book Formatting and Choices
1.2.1 Keeping It Real: Layout
Nobody wants to kind of be done reading for right now and find their next stopping point 92 pages away. Non-nerds who hate reading need even more stopping points, allowing them to ingest the tiniest morsel they can stomach. Therefore, each section breaks into chapters, chapters break into chunks, and chunks break into crumbs.
Each crumb flows with before and what comes after. However, they also stand alone and change style. One has a joke. One doesn’t. One explains things. One tells a story. Anyone can stop anywhere.
Each crumb also allows for easily pinpointing a topic. The book intends to start a new genre of ‘idiotic reference books’. To that effect, the numbering system indicates chapter, chunk, and crumb for easy flippability. Also, the back contains a glossary, list of equations, and an index.
1.2.2 Keeping it Real: Word Choice
Keeping it real for non-nerds, words and phrases exclude anything left unspoken since before the English language, like sanguine, effulgence, or simulacrum1. In the other direction, normal gobbledygook that people put on a powerpoint but never say at home stays at work. “I went running,” avoids workivizing to “I went through the runnization process.” All that just adds confusion.
Everything in this book appears on the world wide web. The advantage here comes from curated selections in a conversational style. This creates a solid foundation for readers to build upon when they look up all that boring crap on the internet.
1 I tried. There may be a couple, but they aren’t that weird, and the context should make sense of it.
1.2.3 Keeping it Real: Don’t be Boring
No one should stand on a bridge, holding this book, and think, “Why me,” while dialing the suicide hotline. As difficult as it may seem, this book comes with a mandate: don’t be boring. To do this, every page has nonsense. Some jokes hopefully make people laugh, but not every joke written intended to be a knee slapper. I’m not sitting here giggling at every little wisecrack, thinking how clever I am.
So, please don’t write a one star review – that’s cool, we’re all good playa – that says, “He uses stupid examples because he thinks he’s so funny, but it’s just dumb. Talking about gnomes eating blueberry pies and stuff.” Saying gnomes eating blueberry pies was never supposed to make anyone fall out of their chair. It just seemed more fun to describe a graph with something silly instead of mundane. Some people prefer the serious and to speak like Richard Nixon. Those people should return the book. Actually, the best thing to do would be write down the curated list of topics in order, then return it (silliness caveat over).
It may be sanguine, but my hope is this will be the dumbest book anyone has ever learned from. In that effort, sentences may use alliteration, she sells sea shells, or the same word as many times as possible, or they may contradict a previous statement like denouncing sanguine only to use it a few paragraphs later (that joke ends in Chapter 16). If something sticks out, it either comes from sheer dimwittedness and an amazing lack of skill, or, quite possibly, it is a joke.
1.3 Bits and Pieces
1.3.1 Forrest From the Trees
(This crumb also has a bit of a caveat that intends to get the book in the right hands. It serves another purpose as well, but to explain the caveats: sometimes a book seems made for a specific audience. Then I buy the book and end up irritated because it was a total head fake; nerds get it. Back to the book.)
Not everyone sees the forest from the trees. Once, someone asked a coworker a general high level question about a complex topic. He received a 45 minute lecture on each individual difference. The world needs those people, but not here. Not everything in this book applies 100% of the time 100% accurately.
This book covers concepts from kind of an operations perspective, not a PhD class. Operations can ignore certain technicalities because the world works one way for them and works another way for us. An MIT professor using mathematical weather models back in 1961 tried to recreate a weather pattern using numbers rounded to .001 instead of .000001. The models were wildly different. Professor Lorenz then came up with chaos theory which means any guess that missed the mark by .00001 can cause problems. In operations, nobody gives a squirrel’s nut about that.
So back off. No one will ever write a 1 million page book explaining literally everything ever. Whatever works 95% or 99% or 99.999999% of the time gets in the book. When someone pushes up their glasses and says, “Actually, when you consider these 17 factors…” That guy could very well be right. Assume caveats and layers abound and anything left out served a purpose. Let it go.
1.3.2 Acronyms
This industry has roughly 32k acronyms, and a lot get said out loud. At first, many names and acronyms came with pronunciation guides. However, that got a bit boring. Some of the main ones do have a pronunciation, but this thumb rule explains a lot. Acronyms that look like words get pronounced like the word, ACE sounds like a card and OASIS sounds like a cool drink of water. Acronyms that seem like nonsense probably state the individual letters. AGC would be A-G-C.
1.3.3 Pictures and Books
Pictures and books go well together in picture books. The rest, not so much. These pages do have a few pictures and formulas, but, according to The Medium is the Massage by McLuhan and Fiore, they’d be better off somewhere else. The book’s website thisbookisntboring.com has images and equations and whatever else seems useful or fun, even some stuff not in the book.
1.3.4 Self Published
Self publishing means I used my own eyes as editors and Strunk and White as a style guide. Any spelling comes from Merriam-Webster (reenergize and de-energize? Whatever). The good news: any mistakes can be updated by me. See something, say something.
1.3.5 Moving On
The layout, word choices, and entertainment attempt to make heavy reading light. Only one way to know.
Onward!
[skip a small bit]
2.2 Atoms
2.2.1 Life’s a Holiday
A holiday from hell – not a scary holiday movie where a masked creep stabbed the ever living crap out of some girl who decided to hide in the closet. This story tells of a nice, fun, regular holiday turned rancid.
Just as the Morgan family sat down for roasted turkey, a loud baseline kicked in and the Beastie Boys faintly permeated the room. A growing sense of horror and panic set in.
“Oh no,” Sam thought, looking over at his cousin. Emilia’s head drooped in defeat, and he knew she was thinking the same thing. That’s Uncle Ed.
“Who invited Ed,” Sam asked no one in general.
Mother Morgan frowned at Sam and shook her head. Everyone knew Grandma asked the whole family for Thanksgiving. Usually Crazy Uncle Ed stayed glued to the penny slots.
Seconds passed but felt like minutes. Two people exiting a vehicle finally broke the agonizing silence as Wanda’s muffled voice barely made it through the door, “Don’t make a fool of us this time, Babe.”
“Me? Really, Wanda? You’re the one who stole the candy dish last year.”
“Look, don’t start a fight. And, put out your cig.”
Ed didn’t knock. He just flicked his cigarette into the rose bushes and walked right in.
2.2.2 Large Sandwich + Wee + Pieces = Subatomic Particles
Atoms consist of protons (positive charge), neutrons (neutral charge), and electrons (negative charge). Since protons and electrons have positive and negative charges, atoms tend to have the same number of each. This maintains an atom’s neutral charge. Grandma and Mother Morgan were neutral. Sam and Emilia were positive Ed and Wanda should take their negative energy elsewhere.
The example also shows a closely bound group weakly connected to a peripheral group. Ma, Grandma, Sam and Emilia have a great relationship with the blacksheep Ed and Wanda kind of part of the group but also kind of not. In an atom, protons and neutrons make a nucleus. Electrons jump around the nucleus in an electron cloud.