"I am so saddened that this is where things have gone:" From the horse's mouth

Stolen from a FaceBook chat about the "new" Unity. All names removed.

Question:

"Has anyone gone through the online GIS program and/or the grad school who would be willing to chat to a potential student?"

Answers:

"The level dog work from the online students was about the same as high school freshmen. I was absolutely appalled by the work being submitted by most of the people in the online program. The real unity professors literally would not have even accepted the work these people turned in."

"Like bad as in bullet lists of raw data in a final capstone paper. Or only 2 pages written with zero formatting."

"....the teachers were doing no more than assigning reading and assignments. No face to face time or video lectures. You were basically paying to teach yourself everything with little to no viable feedback. Of course, there were a few exceptions, but the majority of the online classes taken were awful and not worth the money whatsoever."

"....my class spent all 5 weeks writing one paper. And it was insane how bad some papers were with 5 weeks to work on it."

"I took a gis class online and would not recommend it the software doesn’t work unless you have perfect internet and a computer that can handle it."

"I can contest to what xxxxxx said. I took a GIS online and ended up almost failing it because halfway through the program just stopped working with my computer. The only help the professor could provide was turning my computer on and off again. Online Unity is a joke!"

"So I recently did the graduate course in another study and quite frankly- I don’t think I would recommend it. I do not feel at all prepared for the field I chose and I felt the courses were basically self taught."

"....the few online classes I took through unity with adjunct professors were horrible… just like how xxxxx is describing. Not a single zoom session, absolutely minimal feedback, and just ‘click through’ assignments. BUT my final online class with unity was with xxxxxx and it was a completely different experience. We had interactive zoom conferences, xxxxx was SO involved and available, and I got so much out of the course. We built off of our assignments each week and it was fantastic. I think the professor really can make a difference in these online courses. It’s so sad that Unity let so many of our amazing tenor professors go when covid hit. THEY were what made Unity so special."

"....the whole point of going the online route, for Melik, is about cutting costs. The way you accomplish this is by paying someone to design standardized courses and then paying pennies to adjuncts, some of whom are marginally qualified, others are quite qualified, but have other jobs and are only going to put in what they are getting paid to put in, to be "instructors". (They are often more like proctors than actual instructors.) Colleges that do online courses well often have their regular faculty teach online and they are paid like the actual professionals they are, so they invest their time and effort into supporting the students. But, this means that the online course isn't cheap to deliver, which defeats the purpose for Melik. So, for the time being, the few courses still being taught by the few remaining regular faculty will likely continue to be good experiences. But, I have no doubt the fact that they are too expensive will be their doom."

"This thread hurt my brain. I have nothing but high praise for all my classes I enjoyed there. It makes my gut sick to think that unity isn’t the same institution I had the pleasure of attending between 2011-2015. Formative years of my personal and professional life and no new student will experience what I did."

"....agreed, 2000-2003. Unity was empowering, well thought of, prepared me as not only a environmental professional, but also as a good human and citizen."

"I am so saddened that this is where things have gone"

This is the most useful and hopeful article I've read this year. The author, al-Gharbi, is a social scientist and shows from research that most Americans who spread election disinformation and even advocate for civil war are doing so "rhetorically." In other words, they really don't believe the election was stolen. They just know that saying so "owns the libs" and shows strong support for their identity group. "Cheerleading", in the author's words. In nearly all cases they actually oppose violence and want the laws against political violence to be enforced. Similar conclusions probably apply to Covid misinformation. 

This explains why, of seventy million Trump voters, only a few thousand crazies stormed the Capitol (and some significant proportion of those could be seen in full TV Technicolor by anyone with eyes to see to be fully insane, or at least intellectually chaotic, not playing with a full deck). Those who did were the real MAGA "losers" and as I said at the time, many would finish up in jail. They didn't understand that most of their support, including that from the orange guy himself, was "rhetorical" too. (Oops.) This finding corresponds with the Yale "Cultural Cognition" studies that explain why people don't believe scientific facts about guns, climate change, abortion, and so on. It's not the facts that they oppose. It's where the facts lead. And so they deny the facts, which are facts and cannot consistently be denied by anyone who claims to be a rational individual. 

So no civil war. Just a lot of very silly "cheerleading." A total waste of time when you consider our real problems.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/27/no-america-is-not-on-the-cusp-of-a-civil-war

How to thaw out a farm tractor with water in the transmission oil

I keep writing up maintenance issues on what used to be my academic blog, but that seems fine to me. There are lots of different kinds of intellectual adventures, and the ones I have these days tend to be mechanical. 

I write about what I'm thinking about. If anyone actually wants to read it, they're welcome, but I don't care either way.

The transmission on our old Kubota B6000 sub-compact tractor had frozen again this winter. This has happened a lot. This is because we don't have enough shelter for farm equipment. The rain gets in through the bellows on the gear shift when the tractor is parked outside all summer. Other moisture no doubt arrives courtesy of Maine's sky-high summer humidity.

I had developed the routine of changing the transmission oil before winter sets in, but this did not do the trick this year. I made the mistake of flushing the gear box with some stale gasoline I had. Gasoline doesn't dissolve water, and so some water was left in. It wasn't very much water that got left in. Most was removed with the old oil. But it was enough to freeze one side of the rear axle case solid.

I had to do something. We need this tractor to move snow in awkward spots that the plow truck can't do and to pile up snow when it gets too deep for the plow. 

There was a day in the weather forecast predicted for a high of 34 F. I seized the opportunity and put a heat lamp on the tractor gear case 24 hours earlier. Then I drained the old 80 weight out. First a tiny bit of water trickled out. Then the oil. It was green and emulsified. Then I put my heat gun nozzle right on the oil filler with the drain plug out, and ran it for a couple of hours, pumping hot air through the tranny. More water slowly trickled out. Finally, with the tractor still warm, I threw in a couple of gallons of preheated denatured alcohol. I had left it next to the wood stove for a while, still in unopened gallon cans straight from the store, so it was probably at 90 to 100 F or so. 

If you try this trick, obviously you have to be careful preheating the solvent. It's highly flammable.

I ran the transmission (by running the rear PTO) with the alcohol in to for a minute or two, just enough to circulate the solvent, but not enough to cause any real wear. Then I drained it out and thriftily put it back in the cans. It was cloudy with suspended oil and what I hoped was dissolved water. I'm sure it will eventually fall clear (like the home-made wine we make) and still be usable for most purposes.

I'm now waiting for the sun to get high enough to make the job of filling the tractor's transmission with replacement SAE 80 more comfortable. It was minus five last night. 

The gear oil is next to the wood stove too. It's way too cold for it to flow at the outside temperature. The couple hours needed to get the gear oil up to temp was just enough for me to do some surfing, and then make this blog post.

Then it's back out into the cold to do the job.

Update: The transmission did thaw and the tractor works again, but not without the additional help of a couple hours of heat lamp on the frozen axle. I'm hoping that whatever remnant water was still in there is dissolved now by alcohol and stays in suspension.

How to change a bad left front axle flange on an 05 Nissan Titan in the snow.

Our Nissan Titan plow-and-construction-and-farm truck has been popping out of 4WD. It doesn't move snow at all in 2WD, so this is a difficulty. Both the last snow storms have ending in me getting a tow from various neighbors. In each case it popped out after I had moved most of the snow, but still. It needed to be fixed. 

But, like most such things, it took a long while to diagnose the problem. It didn't help that in late fall, right about when the popping-out occurred for the first time, a friend had borrowed and accidentally driven the truck a long way in 4WD low, burning up the transmission fluid and blocking an internal solenoid temporarily. A "spill-and-fill" oil exchange procedure cured that problem, but it still popped out. (The buddy didn't know the transmission had to be in neutral to get from 4WD low to high.) 

Eventually, by studying up on all the online Nissan Titan maintenance forums, I discovered a likely candidate in the front left CV joint to front differential flange. Apparently a weak C clip, a design flaw, causes the flange to pop out, which causes the diff to quit turning. In some cases the tip of the shaft breaks off. But the 4WD warning graphic on the dash remains lit as if it were in 4WD. 

Here's a shufty of someone else's shaft showing the C clip (there's only one in the real item) and the tip broken off.

That little light was the eventual giveaway, although it took two days of study to figure it out. 

I just switched out the driver side front axle flange today. It would have been an easy job if my lift wasn't covered in snow and all iced up. As it is I'm well knackered. Winter is different in Maine, and my car lift is outside. 

Some dudes from warmer states on the Nissan Titan FaceBook group insisted it was just as easy to do the diff as it was to do the axle flange! Not likely, given how much snow and ice moving and thawing out of machinery I needed to do just to get this one little job done. I could just see myself slipping on the ice trying to carry the diff into my shop to strip it down. And where would I work? The shop is full with the tractor and the snow thrower. 

I also couldn't imagine finding enough time between snowstorms to switch out or rebuild the front diff. I need to move snow most weeks. 

But the C clip on the old axle flange was obviously worn out, so I'm glad I ignored the guys on the Nissan Titan forums and FaceBook groups that were telling me I had to switch out or rebuild the diff instead. 

Here's the part I bought from the parts house (their picture), showing the much beefier C-clip.

The FB dudes said that the spider gears would be worn, and they may well be, but that clip was the more proximate and obvious cause, and while the splines on the old flange were worn, they weren't worn badly. I expect the spider gears are in much the same shape. 

Anyway, here's the videos of the procedure. The first two are just of the difficulties. The last is of the actual spannering. My truck should be fine for the winter now. 

If I need to, I can still switch out or rebuild the diff in the warmer seasons.

 

Here's the procedure written out:

1. Remove left front wheel
2. With the wheel hub locked (screwdriver in the brake disc cooling holes, or put the right wheel on the ground), undo the big outer CV joint nut
3. Undo the ABS sensor. Have a bit of wire handy to hold the wheel hub so it doesn't pull on the brake flex hose
4. Remove upper ball joint and tie rod end split (cotter) pins and nuts
5. Tap the joints with a hammer or use a "pickle fork" ball joint separator to get them free
6. Undo the six 14mm head nuts that hold the CV joint/drive shaft to the flange. Move the CV joint out of the way
7. Pry the flange out of the differential carefully
8. Replace the seal. The old seal will pry out with a screwdriver. The new one can be tapped back in gently with a rubber mallet
9. Tap the new flange in with a hammer and a long bar or pipe. I had to pinch the c-clip a little bit tighter. It wouldn't go in at first
10. Everything else goes back on the way it came off. Be sure to torque the CV bolts to 54 pounds feet, to get the ball joint and tie rod nuts tight before backing them off to find the split pin hole hole, and to torque up the big CV nut to 100 pounds feet.

Enjoy!