Pregled posta

Marketing

I hate the smell of moron in the morning
Originally written August 14th. 2006


Typically I consider myself a rather mild tempered, fare minded bipedal. I imagine it comes with the territory. There are however certain events that have a habit of transpiring within my daily routine that can quite easily dislodge my docile temperament, and unleash an inert not so savvy side of me, that despite what I’d regard as a voluminous effort of reserve, seems incapable of rational communication what so ever, once awoken. It’s like Debi always says. "You can’t fix stupid."

For example. I do not particularly appreciate some one smoking in one of my bays when my crew is in the middle of washing a tanker loaded heavy with 35,000lbs. of highly volatile gasoline. This rather asinine disregard for life and limb has the repeated result of me not so politely asking he or she to douse said ignited tobacco product in a rapid if not just slightly vigorous manner, taking care to utilize as many intensive verbs as possible, while explaining my reasoning. Like wise I do not find the world around me to be as kosher as it normally is when unauthorized persons decide they are suddenly qualified enough to operate one of my machines, and derail it. A situation like this again is proceeded by many expletive metaphors and monosyllable adverbs that better accent my disdain, while I drag a lift jack, and steel piped, soon to be man powered, levers into the bay. These sorts of things often leave me paraphrasing my latest self thought up proverb. W.W.R.D. "What would Russ do?" Unfortunately I do not have a tazer, nor the persuasion to talk my boss into buying me a cattle prod.

The point is, these sorts of things have a habit of getting under my skin. Not so much in that they happen, because yes, sooner or later they are going to happen. It’s as in evitable as Uwezz suddenly deciding to rip a pair of antenna’s off a rig, or Thelma’s new tick of allowing the top brush to jump a link first thing every morning. It’s not that these things happen, but rather the frequency in which they happen. Regardless, by days end I can usually take these events and stuff them away into the back of my mind, before the drive home has concluded. Usually.

Today, it seemed that I.Q. for some inexplicable reason plummeted. I’m not entirely sure what might have caused it, but it seems as though sometime in the night, some unnatural force crept into the world, and stole a few points from everyone’s I.Q.’s, some more then others. It should equally be noted that in no small part was I an exception to this rather paradoxical I.Q. point thieving phenomenon.

This morning, and the second truck in. The driver barely speaks a lick of English, and it takes more then a small amount of effort on my part just to figure out what the hell it is he wants. When I’d finally gone to work on his rig, I still was not entirely sure if what I was doing was in fact what he wanted done. It should be noted that this is after all an English speaking country, and the rules regarding ones ability to speak and understand the English language in order to obtain a class A drivers licence and operate large equipment is pretty clear. You must. For some reason I continually find myself scratching my head at the realization that the driver I am trying to communicate with can’t seem to understand a single word coming out of my mouth...This can not always be attributed to the language barrier. Some folk just don’t understand common sense. However that was not the case with this particular driver. He didn’t speak English and I don’t speak Russian. The situation ended up with me very strategically relying on his body language to decipher if I was indeed doing what he wanted done. Like wise. Once I had decided that what I was doing was in fact what he wanted done, I had to then try and explain to him that I would be needing the engine of his rig shut off, and as it’s a Volvo, I would also be needing his assistance in popping open the hood, from inside the cab. He seems to understand and returns to the cab of his rig. The hood pops open, and he climbs back out and steps aside...With the engin still running.

Alright. A little annoying, but I figure I can just deal with it. There’s work to be done, and I’m the one needing to do it. We’ll hustle through the truck, get it out, and I can move on with the day. Great plan. That is until the driver walks up, and closes the hood he had just opened....

Can someone tell me what the hell just happened?

Moving right along through the day to the fine gentlemen that turned the last hour of my work day into a fine small ripe slice of hell. He was driving a small box van with a little trailer behind it. Honestly when I saw the combination pull in, the thought of it being a problem had not for a moment crossed my mind. That is until I open the back door, and began re-cataloging every event that had happened through out this fine sunny day. He had p

Taken for the theme "metal" at our work photo club. I took this because of the variety of different ways the metal is used in the bike drive-train: wire in tension for the spokes, cold-forged metal for the hub and CNC machined sprockets that make up the cassette. And metal is pretty much essential for all these tasks if you want an efficient, lightweight means of transport.
There are also several different metals here: steel in the spokes, aluminium alloy in the hub and nickel-plating on the sprockets. (And for those really interested, the cassette is a Campag Chorus 10 speed.)
As for taking the shot, I had to have the bike upside down to be able to spin the wheel without it wobbling (the photo was then turned over in software) and two Canon flashguns were used in strobe mode to capture the motion.