[Bldg-sim] 20th Anniversary Attempt at Humor

[John Aulbach]

 I would like to remember the LBL staff in the good old days, which i believe Joe was a member. My personal patient mentor was Bruce Birdsall. I had the pleasure of having dinner with him several times and staying at his apartment when visiting LBL. His apartment was one of the first victims of the oakland Hills fire (198 ??).
Also remember taking my first class in DOE-2 (1982) from Fred Buhl and Jeff Hirsch. I must confess that after the two days, I still had no idea how to perform models in DOE-2. Fortunately, Bruce patiently saved the day.
And not to forget Fred Winkleman either.
    On Friday, March 8, 2019, 5:12:54 PM PST, Joe Huang via Bldg-sim <bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org> wrote:  
 
 Me, again, just got done with a personal chore.

Now that we're attempting to make energy simulations funny, I thought 
I'd share what I remember from my almost 40 years (:-o) experience that 
struck me as amusing.  These are true stories, not "fake news" :-) ;-)

1. We were sitting around the room at LBNL talking about converting a 
Fortran program from VAX to Unix. The fellow sitting next to me asked, 
"isn't that just changing the extension from *.for to *.f ??

2. A new hire at LBL told me that he went to a party where someone asked 
him what work did he do?  So, my colleague said, "I simulate buildings 
on a computer".  The other person replied, "oh, that's easy. Buildings 
don't move!".

3. I was working with the late Art Rosenfeld in the early 80's writing a 
paper on building energy efficiency for Art to present at the first 
international energy conference in China in 1982. Art was writing what I 
thought was a naive' comment that building energy efficiency will pay 
for itself by the savings in coal.  I explained to Art the intricacies 
of China's fuel pricing system. Art thought for a moment and then 
changed the sentence from "We believe that..." to "We are confident 
that...".  Art then  nudged me and said, "frequently wrong, but always 
confident!".  (I've collected lots of Art Rosenfeld anecdotes over the 
years).

4.  I learned DOE-2 for the first time in a class at UC Berkeley in 
1980, and had the assignment of modeling a small cabin picked from 
Progressive Architecture, using an input file from a previous student as 
an example. It all made sense, but I wondered why the file had double 
periods at the end each sentence, which I thought was redundant.  So, I 
wrote my file with single dots!  The computer then spat out that the 
file had 109 errors!  I would never make that mistake again.

5. I was at ASHRAE in the early 80's listening to Ed Sowell make his 
presentation about ASHRAE Weighting Factors, with the title something 
like, "32,000 weighting factors for different room configurations".  An 
acquaintance standing next to me whispered to me, "now that's a really 
big building"!

6. (last one).   I was involved in a DOE project in the late 80s to turn 
DOE-2 simulation results into a simplified tool for estimating 
residential energy use (PEAR), working with an A/E firm Steven Winter in 
New York.  One time I was talking to Steven Winter staff about some 
technical minutae just when the Loma Prieta Earthquake struck (1989).  
It felt good in a way to hang on them saying, "I can't talk now. There's 
an earthquake"!  Standing outside in the parking lot watching plumes of 
smoke arise in San Francisco across the Bay felt like being in a movie.

Joe

On 3/8/2019 4:25 PM, Joe Huang wrote:
> Now, now, Jason.
>
> Some people are quite sensitive about simulation run times. Several 
> years ago when EnergyPlus got converted to C and somebody, clearly not 
> that knowledgeable, wrote that now you can go get a cup of coffee and 
> the run will be done.  I questioned that converting Fortran to C would 
> have any effect on runtime, and found out later that comment had 
> pissed off someone for months.
>
> The biggest laugh I've had with BLDG-SIM postings were the ones like, 
> "I want to learn XXX.  Please help me !!".
>
> Joe
>
> On 3/8/2019 1:16 PM, Jason Glazer via Bldg-sim wrote:
>> Continuing the story....
>>
>> Right after they finish ordering their coffees, the EnergyPlus user 
>> starts walking to the exit.
>>
>> The eQUEST user asks: "where are you going?"
>>
>> The EnergyPlus user says: "I think mine should be ready in an hour or 
>> two."
>>
>>
>> On 3/8/2019 3:03 PM, Michael J Witte via Bldg-sim wrote:
>>> An EnergyPlus user, an eQUEST user, and an IESVE user walk into a 
>>> coffee shop.
>>>
>>> One orders a tall dark roast with room.
>>>
>>> The next one orders a venti medium roast with a shot of Irish 
>>> whiskey, or make that two shots.
>>>
>>> The next one orders a grande creme brulee latte, with two extra 
>>> shots, half-blonde, half-decaf, long ristretto shots, semi-dry, 
>>> nonfat milk, no whip, extra sprinkles, in a mug for here.
>>>
>>> The other two just roll their eyes and shake their heads.
>>>
>>> <wait for it>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "What? I like lots of options. That's why I use EnergyPlus!"
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>
>
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