[Bldg-sim] 20th Anniversary Attempt at Humor

Fri Mar 8 21:06:13 PST 2019

 Thank you, Joe, for more underlying drama from the Lab. I never claimed to be an expert, but certainly hung with those who WERE expert. You being one. And God save DrawBdl !! Never knew my models came out so WEIRD !!
I think the California Energy Commission, the City of New York, and the Green Building movement have asked WAY too much of simulation !! It is a F...ing estimate, not an exact science !!
Hope you can actually retire someday, Joe. Modeling to me has become more of a chore.
    On Friday, March 8, 2019, 8:27:19 PM PST, Joe Huang <yjhuang at whiteboxtechnologies.com> wrote:  

I was at LBNL for 27 years! The Lab always gave me just enough inducements to keep me from leaving, but never enough to feel really secure.  I'm sure other former or current LBL employees know the feeling.

I notice John  still uses the old acronym  LBL, as is still  found in Lab's e-mail address @lbl.gov - some things are sacred.  I liked Bruce very much. He came from an industrial rather than a scientific background, having worked at Carrier for many years.  I remember one time he decided to give a 3-day lecture series (1 hour lectures for 3 days, not a 3 day  filibuster :-) ) about the history of air-conditioning starting from the 1930's.  I think Bruce got offended when Art Rosenfeld commented, "oh, that's just engineering!"  (Art came from a nuclear physics background).  Bruce's nuts-and-bolts no-nonsense approach can be unnerving.  I remember doing research on the Urban Heat Island Effect and asked Bruce for some prototypical building models.  Bruce brushed off the UHI as something that's inevitable nobody can do anything about, and then asked me for an account number to charge his time :-)  which I thought was fair.

I feel said when I visit the Lab these days, because all the seminal people who developed DOE-2 are now gone, including all those mentioned by John below.  The original team was really quite skillful -  Zulfi Cumali (who was always a consultant, not staff at LBNL) for coming up with the overall program structure, Ender Erdem for doebdl,  the two Freds (Winkelmann and Buhl) for loads,  Jeff Hirsch for system, and me (:-)) for pestering them when things didn't work! 

A classic Ender answer was when I found that my function stopped working with a new DOE-2 version.  I asked Ender whether the Zone pointers have been changed  and Ender said no!   A few moments later he came to my room, said, "oh, there is 'some' change!" and wrote the new pointer location on a slip of paper.  Classic understatement,  equivalent to being somewhat pregnant.

Joe

 Joe Huang
White Box Technologies, Inc.
346 Rheem Blvd., Suite 205A
Moraga CA 94556
yjhuang at whiteboxtechnologies.com
http://weather.whiteboxtechnologies.com for simulation-ready weather data
(o) (925)388-0265
(c) (510)928-2683
"building energy simulations at your fingertips"
 On 3/8/2019 7:00 PM, John Aulbach wrote:

    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!"
 >>>
 >>> _______________________________________________
 >>> Bldg-sim mailing list
 >>> http://lists.onebuilding.org/listinfo.cgi/bldg-sim-onebuilding.org
 >>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list send  a blank message to 
 >>> BLDG-SIM-UNSUBSCRIBE at ONEBUILDING.ORG
 >>
 >
 >
 _______________________________________________
 Bldg-sim mailing list
 http://lists.onebuilding.org/listinfo.cgi/bldg-sim-onebuilding.org
 To unsubscribe from this mailing list send  a blank message to BLDG-SIM-UNSUBSCRIBE at ONEBUILDING.ORG

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.onebuilding.org/pipermail/bldg-sim-onebuilding.org/attachments/20190309/82b2ee9a/attachment-0002.html>