I enjoy my day job. For the past 23+ years the Navy has kept my life busy and interesting. Accidentally along the way, however, I have managed to complicate my life in unanticipated ways. The Electrical Designer's Reference is one of those ways.
The Way Back story on the EDR goes back to 1997 when I lived in Carlisle, PA and was attending the US Army War College. I had some time available then since I was single, Carlisle was not the most exciting place to spend the winter, and wanted to expand my computer repertoire.
I chose to teach myself C++.
That in and of itself was nuts, but I did so anyway. I went to the Microsoft website for some examples, found a small java applet elsewhere that calculated the electrical voltage drop in a wire, and proceeded to create a small voltage drop calculator. Amazingly it worked, and was featured on a website as a free download. The website's owner even paid me a modest sum to cover some of my beer bill at the time. I thought it was neat to get money for programming. It took years for that thing to disappear from the web, but I think it is now gone. At least the old email address that was buried in there is gone.
That little calculator was my only foray into the world of C++. That was enough for me. I went back to VB (VB5 at the time) with a happier heart. The calculator attracted the attention of someone who was starting up a group of professional electrical engineers to solve real-world problems using a computer program that would grow over time. The Electrical Designer's Reference was the result.
It has been eight years now, and the EDR is still up and running. I did all the shell programming (less a few of the elements such as registration) and the processes for motor protection (1- and 3-phase, low and medium voltage), fuse coordination, fuse curve plotting, and the just-finished transformers (now being tested). I did another quick calculator to determine the amount of capacitance required for power factor correction. I am now working on a conduit fill calculator.
I see it as the ultimate hobbyist programmer project - no strict deadlines, a day job provides the real money for the family, I am responsible to make it work accurately by any method I see fit. The program also pays a little money from time to time. At least it helps to keep the kids in diapers.