# I'm a product of CB, am I ready?



## ProgrammerInTraining (Dec 3, 2011)

I've been in the business for a short amount of time (compared to others on here). started from scratch asking questions, thru here I've learned electrical, how lights are controlled and from reading around the basics on what goes on on show site. So far I've been on a good about of shows, from very small budget gigs to big productions. but I'm still not sure if I'm ready to be considered a true set electric/stage lighting tech. its like when I think I finally know it all something else comes up that I don't understand and makes me feel unready to go big time. can you guys quiz me? ask me questions true industry professional would be able to answer. just so I can know where I'm at..


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## shiben (Dec 3, 2011)

*Re: im a CB product, am i ready?*


ProgrammerInTraining said:


> I've been in the business for a short amount of time (compared to others on here). started from scratch asking questions, thru here I've learned electrical, how lights are controlled and from reading around the basics on what goes on on show site. So far I've been on a good about of shows, from very small budget gigs to big productions. but I'm still not sure if I'm ready to be considered a true set electric/stage lighting tech. its like when I think I finally know it all something else comes up that I don't understand and makes me feel unready to go big time. can you guys quiz me? ask me questions true industry professional would be able to answer. just so I can know where I'm at..


 
What bars are near your most common venues? Where are the smoking areas at your local venues? 

The way I would view it, if there is ever a gig you dont find out SOMETHING new on, you might be Derek. What do you mean big time? From what you have posted, it seems like you work in "the big time" already. I have been told numerous times that if you want to get your skills down solid, go on tour a few times, but thats just what my people say. There was a thread on this subject a while back but Im honestly too tired to search for it... Something about "what makes you a professional?"


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## derekleffew (Dec 3, 2011)

*Re: im a CB product, am i ready?*

Remember, YOU asked for it! Just for starters...

1) Where's craft services?
2) What time is break?
3) I forgot mine. Can I borrow your C-wrench?
4) How come HE gets to work overtime and I don't?
5) But why can't I be a rigger and get high pay?
6) Why did the steward hand out all the cake gigs while I was in the bathroom?
7) Do you mean your stage left or my stage left?
8) What's a DMX and where do we have one?
9) My back hurts. Do I have to do feeder?
10) Instead of unloading those seven trucks, can I go cut gel instead?


ship said:


> 21) On a 3" Fresnel or "Inkie" they origionally used single contact bayonet lug lamp bases (BA-15s) but now use dual contact bayonet (BA-15d) bases. Why would a old single contact bayonet lamp in a new double contact lamp base explode, but a double contact lamp in an old single contact base not do anything?
> 46) What two reasons make it necessary to ground a transformer?
> 53) What is the difference between a generator/alternator, and dynamo?
> 55) What is the only equipment which can be installed before the service disconnecting means?
> ...



See also
http://www.controlbooth.com/forums/question-day/3039-so-you-call-yourself-me-part-2-a.html
http://www.controlbooth.com/forums/question-day/3040-so-you-call-yourself-me-part-3-more-easy.html


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## shiben (Dec 3, 2011)

*Re: im a CB product, am i ready?*


derekleffew said:


> Remember, YOU asked for it! Just for starters...
> 
> 1) Where's craft services?
> 2) What time is break?
> ...


 
Thats not fair, bringing out Ship's standards. Can you even meet those, Derek?


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## derekleffew (Dec 3, 2011)

*Re: im a CB product, am i ready?*


shiben said:


> Thats not fair,


All is fair in love and war and theatre.


shiben said:


> bringing out Ship's standards. Can you even meet those, Derek?


After thirty-some years, I would hope to be able to answer _most_ of them (some are lousy questions). Also I passed a little test that supposedly proves I'm qualified, allegedly.

Some days I have my doubts, like recently when I swapped the hot and ground wires while wiring a plug.


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## avkid (Dec 3, 2011)

*Re: im a CB product, am i ready?*


derekleffew said:


> 1) Where's craft services?


 
This isn't the movies, it's catering.


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## avkid (Dec 3, 2011)

*Re: im a CB product, am i ready?*

Oh, the larger answer is you stop learning when you're dead.
(my coffin will be lowered into the ground with chain motors)


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## Sayen (Dec 3, 2011)

Can you supply a rider for you own funeral?


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## shiben (Dec 3, 2011)

Sayen said:


> Can you supply a rider for you own funeral?


 
You can indeed.


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## soundman (Dec 3, 2011)

ProgrammerInTraining said:


> can you guys quiz me? ask me questions true industry professional would be able to answer. just so I can know where I'm at..


 
Lets say you just finished setting the upstage floor lights for the headliner, you radio to the dimmer tech to flip energize the circuits. The console is up and running but the LD has stepped away for a bit. Before leaving the deck to grab lunch what should you do?


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## shiben (Dec 3, 2011)

soundman said:


> Lets say you just finished setting the upstage floor lights for the headliner, you radio to the dimmer tech to flip energize the circuits. The console is up and running but the LD has stepped away for a bit. Before leaving the deck to grab lunch what should you do?


 
You should clarify. Are you Union or not?


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## avkid (Dec 3, 2011)

Was I told to complete this task before lunch?


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## shiben (Dec 3, 2011)

avkid said:


> Was I told to complete this task before lunch?


 
How many cigarettes are available?


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## gafftaper (Dec 4, 2011)

The beautiful thing about this industry is for the most part it's self regulating. As long as you are honest about your qualifications and experience, it's rare for you to get a gig you truly aren't ready for. For the most part, people won't hire you for a gig you can't handle. You get small gigs, you prove you are worthy, then you get a bigger gig. It's that simple. You are always learning, always growing, always expanding your skills. You simply aren't going to get a gig as the ME for U2 fresh out of college. For the most part, you will work your way up to things you are more and more qualified to handle. So relax and don't worry about it, take the work you are given learn from the old pros around you. Keep moving forward.


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## ship (Dec 5, 2011)

gafftaper said:


> The beautiful thing about this industry is for the most part it's self regulating. As long as you are honest about your qualifications and experience, it's rare for you to get a gig you truly aren't ready for. For the most part, people won't hire you for a gig you can't handle. You get small gigs, you prove you are worthy, then you get a bigger gig. It's that simple. You are always learning, always growing, always expanding your skills. You simply aren't going to get a gig as the ME for U2 fresh out of college. For the most part, you will work your way up to things you are more and more qualified to handle. So relax and don't worry about it, take the work you are given learn from the old pros around you. Keep moving forward.



Wow! Derek you have an awesome pull up memory in even I can’t pass that test given I was reading the “American Electricians’s Handbook” and “NEC Handbook” while thinking about that “Candy Question” post.

Overall goal is to be nice in me often in the past scaring away members of the forum by way of response - personal comments about type of work they do say working at a bar in assumption might be a thing to not do in the future. Didn’t we all start somewhere and somehow fall rear backwards into that position where we became some sort of expert? Caution about too soon is fine but personal stuff perhaps in the future not as good to inspire than offend.

This is a fellow tech brother in thinking top of his world for advancement given he has done well and perhaps doesn’t realize the scope of the grade yet he wants to inspire to. Or if not sufficient in training, to expand his career into going for experience as books and even classes won’t cover it all. Obviously we learn new stuff every day and I have also mostly forgotten the answers to most of my candy questions above. Not vibrant to what I do - nor many of them important to what any of us do. Good to know but often not a question one runs across.

Good readings - anything say on PLSN books and lots more on stage lighting or electricity. Beyond that, the “NEC Handbook” and above “American Electricians’ Handbook.” Neither a cheap book or a small book to study.

Best advice in these modern times. Work towards your USITT Master Electrician’s Certification. I don’t have one and would need some training and study to qualify. I also work with a licenced electrician - I’m not one either. yet he at times comes to me for advise as I to him. Those certifications with actual experience, just a time in grade type of thing before you advance.

Good work so far, keep it going and don’t stop the studying. Keep your goal as a strive for learning and advancing. Too many in the industry are only there for a job. Too few want to get to the top and do real work to get there. Takes time am I there yet? Perhaps but once there one never knows or it don't matter once in the area of that concept.


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## ship (Dec 5, 2011)

By the way and another part to becoming an expert is the hands on stuff. 

Ran across someone that works shows that couldn’t even use a ruler properly so as to tell me what length his un-known size metric or standard bolt was. What’s the world coming to?

For your own experience, collect up a bucket of screws, bolts and nuts plus other gear - this even if for your off work time. Sort them. Once done with identifying that bucket, go for another and a lot more still.

Experience is also the nuts and bolts concept of on site being able to tell metric from standard and 6-32 thru 10-24 in size and all dimensions there of by sight. Seeing a 1.1/4" drywall screw instantly for it’s length, and beyond that with experience being able to say if coarse or fine, #6 or #8 in size. Don’t have to memorize the GE and McMaster Carr catalogue to define a part you need, but once you can sufficiently so as to ask for a part as per a professional, it does help. Most Pro’s I deal with sorted bolts and or ask and describe stuff as per a pro. Saves time in asking further questions in what the heck you asking for?

Beyond knowing what gauge of wire to use for a 1Kw or 280K load, as important, one should be able to look at a screw or bolt and estimate within reason what it is - metric or standard, and what size and type it’s described as. Were I attaching a wire to such a 280K load, what size and type bolt would commonly be used anyway - this beyond the wire? Don’t have to be an electrical engineer to figure that out though more school often helps.

That’s the brass tacks anyway in even sorting the brass tacks one might find in type of brass tack for re-use. Study the fasteners, what they are and get to the ability that after endless say #8-32 screws sorted, you can not only tell on site it’s length and type, but also when faced with a say 8-16 sheet metal screw, you can tell that it’s a #8 on viewing of it.

Sort enough bolts and fasteners as with study n the books, experience on the job and it don’t matter any longer how to advance. Keep to the books, work hard in even not too good to sort bolts and get the certifications and be my boss some day. That’s the concept and keep that vibrancy going in that goal you have. When I got out of college, I wanted to either become a world famous designer or the grumpy old man of the theater as it’s TD. Fell rear backwards into where I got and still advancing from that in being an antique lighting guy for lights I thought crap while in school or was afraid of due to sparks in the night. 

Last concept, what your primary goal is now, might not be your end career. Study a broad spectrum of fields in that it won’t hurt and one will never know if studying set design, one might end up doing lighting engineering.

Tray full of misc. screws, what about them do you note in defining them in easy to stock in the proper place? Need one after endless amounts of bolts sorted is than easy to find or order in defining. That manual part of sorting nuts and bolts... takes time but is education also to master if you want to do so for your field. Highly recommend nuts, bolts, drywall screws etc. get collected up for all basic stagecraft classes. Not one container per class, but as a constant thing to sort with stuff added in. Few things help tech people more than having studied the GE/Philips/Osram catalogues for idea onto the concepts of a lamp than even more useful being able to define what screw, nut or fastener they need. That much less ability to read a ruler I cannot believe.


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## ship (Dec 5, 2011)

Email to me:

Subject: Video wall data racks

They should allways be setup to run 110v or 208v. Most likely they will allways end up on a truss where there is 208v only.

If we need to make a few L6-15 Rackmount power strips that's ok. I want the connectors to be correct and not have any of adaptors. Or 5-15 plugs with 208v on them. We are asking for problems when we do that. Oh and its against code. 

Also (removed name for person prepping the system) you need to ask how many headers are part of the wall. For this we had 24 headers and a 24 port switch with a fiber module thus only 23 copper ports. We should never daisy chain switches if we can avoid it as hops add latency. Its minute but someone might notice someday.


Example of where you get to at some point in a problem with a show some of even going above your head in having stopped learning. Those that work for me will know what this crew chief is talking about in all ways as with per fiber optic repair they are trained with. I manage them mostly these days. 

Initial thoughts on some new gear needed to be built, but also in holding to my stock policy of no 120 to 208v or 208 to 120v adaptors - causes problems in concept with it simpiler a few years ago in rule.

Indeed at some point I need a modern educated boss that's able to keep up with the old, code and modern changes. Study hard in I'm busy these days in my own interests for antique lights and not keeping myself as vibrant as I used to in code. That's a problem on my part but a telling sign also that if you specilize, you perhaps master but perhaps don't focus broadly sufficiently also.


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