Hey Dr. Coffee!

MikeV wrote:

Dr. Coffee wrote:  smeagol the vile wrote: may we ask what your doctorate is in? Sonars, mapping under the sea, that sort of thing. Nothing interesting. DoC Sounds interesting to me. Is that a geological doctorate?

The applications might be geological, but it could be anything you would use binoculars, flashlight or radar for above water. Under water sound is the only way of doing what is known as 'remote sensing' over any distance.

The problem is that there is a lot of myth and superstition around, so it is next to impossible to do any actually useful work. Where radar and lasers have totally transformed the world we live in over the past half-century, the sonars that work today are more or less the same systems that worked in 1945. The technology used to build the devices have changed quite a bit, but the way the stuff works has not.

With one exception. Rumour has it that operationally functional (as opposed to experimental) Synthetic Aperture Sonars are starting to emerge. If true, that's the only new sonar system to have emerged since WWII. It took a full 30 years to develop, though, as all the theory and principles needed were available around 1975. The problem is that the sea is a ridiculously difficult place to work - everything moves and changes all the time - so coming up with a working system for even the simplest task is at best very difficult; usually impossible. 

So sonar technology is not a field for somebody like me, who likes to see actual results from their efforts.

DoC

Dr. Coffee wrote:

smeagol the vile wrote: may we ask what your doctorate is in? Sonars, mapping under the sea, that sort of thing. Nothing interesting. DoC

Sounds interesting to me. Is that a geological doctorate? 

smeagol the vile wrote:

may we ask what your doctorate is in?

Sonars, mapping under the sea, that sort of thing. Nothing interesting.

DoC

Thanks. The reason I asked is because my wife has been involved in the roasting and green coffee operations for about 14 years or so now. 

Long story.

First the Dr. part: I am an academic who stayed in university for far too long - ended up with a PhD defree instead of a rewarding job. I've literally spent years in my day job working on one book or a handful of articles that eventually were of no use to any one; not even myself. Job satisfaction in terms of tangible results is all but non-existant. With models one see actual results in a short time, and also see improvment form attempt to attempt - both totally lacking form my day job.

Second - coffee: I've always had the taste for caffeine. At times I've consumed more than a liter of strong coffee per day. Somebody noticed, and made a pun of my PhD and coffee consumtion by calling me the equivalent of "Dr. Coffee" in my native language. This had a double pun, as the term in my native language also can mean 'coffee spiked with alcohol.'

Anyway, the nickname stuck and I've continued to use it ever since.

DoC