You'll probably be saddened to learn that I was taught how to weld...as a theatre major. I have a Bachelor's of Fine Art in Theatre Production. That is essentially the equivalent of a vocational training in theatre (whereas as straight BA with a theatre major would have more general education and therefore fewer actual theatre credits). I attended the second largest university in the state and was the only graduate with a theatre degree that year. I live now in a city with one of the largest universities in the country in my backyard and they only graduate a handful. For most, and especially for technical/production types there is plenty of work. As to hard skills I had classes that all or in part covered art history, extensive amount of studies in greek history and literature, architecture, engineering, electrical engineering, decor, art theory, drafting, sociology, CAD, furniture design, sculpture, costume history and a lot more theory and history that might relate to a specific production. Additionally there was actual hands-on training, so after a morning of classes learning how to safely design a set that could support the weight on 20 tap dancers but still come apart in mere second in complete darkness, we would then spend all afternoon building it. Interpreting drawings, all manner or carpentry, electrical, welding, painting techniques, etc. And of course in the evening for rehearsals we would actually operate the sets or equipment we had designed and built. I can think of no other college major where an undergraduate would do so much direct application of the skills taught in the classroom. Although I no longer work in theatre my ability to think creatively and practically, and the broad knowledge in so many different subjects have served me very ably.
True, but on the other hand, there is at least some small segment of the upper class that realizes that if they suppress the working class too much or leech a way too much wealth, they and their peers may finds themselves with a nose to the floorboards view of a guillotine. It seems like our current cohort of elites may have forgotten this lesson, though their are certainly a few like Gates, Soros and Buffet who recognize the warning signs. I am not, by the way recommending this option. Though in turns of income I'm probably working class or low middle class, by virtue of being white, male and educated the prospect of a serious worker uprising in this country wouldn't work out too well for me or my family.
It all depends on the department. I studied theatre design, and so spent most of my time in a "lab" that included just about every shop tool under the sun, welding equipment, various paints and glues, not to mention heavy equipment like gantry cranes and several huge hydraulic lifts. Our shop was clean, well-lit and the tools were maintained. The was because the professors and other faculty made us keep it that way. I have seen certain freshmen forced to sweep the same floor four and five times over until they finally got it done right.
By senior year I had some spare time, so I took a few sculpture classes. Basically all the same tools, but most broken and dull. Dirt and dust was everywhere, and students where let loose on all types of equipment, even table saws with no training. Of course being arts students there was a lot of long hair and dangling jewelry, no fire extinguishers, no first aid kit, no faculty presence and a facility that was unsecured 24-7.
Needless to say i did all my work in the theatre shop and only went to the sculpture labs for classes.
I find your post hilariously ironic. As a so-called "gifted" student, like an earlier poster I was prevented from taking any shop classes in high-school. But, I could sign up for theatre classes, and in those (since I had no desire to act) I learned how to use all the basic shop tools, as well as basic electrical work, lighting, and sound.
I went on to get a BFA in theatre design, the only college curriculum that combined architecture, design, and engineering with actually producing the stuff you imagined. I learned to weld, to paint, make perfect dovetail joints, repair most tools, even how to sew....all as part of my coursework! I now work for Habitat for Humanity, where the best part of my job is teaching new volunteers how to use tools and build houses.
I've always said I would make a great shop teacher, but as far as I've ever heard, those jobs are long gone, plus no one can tell me where to even begin to get the training I would need.
Nothing is more hilarious than watching my three-year old son kiss his matchbox cars goodnight and carefully tuck them in under a kleenex. And he is no girly boy. He is already showing signs that he will be better at competitive sports than I am, and can correctly identify two dozen different types of dozers, loaders, backhoes and other heavy equipment.
You've got it, and any highly refined field of study that requires a lot of dedication and specific knowledge is going to have that weed-out course. Take it from me, I've got a BFA in theatre. There were 99! majors in my freshman class. Two of us graduated, and I was the only one to actually accomplish it in 8 semesters. A few in my cohort drop in and out still taking classes (10 years later), most switched majors.
My local Habitat for Humanity has a ReStore that sells used building materials. It seems that over a few months they can stock up quite a few toilets and marble sinks that for one reason or another don't sell. Most have slight chips or cracks or whatever. They'll run an announcement and have toilet bowling. For $10 you can swing an old bowling ball as hard as you can down the parking lots towards a field of toilet "pins." Its really excellent to see someone score a direct hit.
Be careful with those low end Sharps (and Casios, and Royals). To my knowledge the only Sharp cash registers that have the usb link or the sd slot are their low end small business registers. They work well, but you tend to get what you pay for in terms of a short lifespan, sticking keys, lack of advanced features, etc. I really recommend stepping up to sharp's commercial series (the er-a410 comes to mind). The starting prices are not much more expensive than the low end stuff. Unfortunately, most of these registers still communicate on the serial port, and Sharp's polling software in around $800 per user. I've been trying for a while to find a more economical solution, and even when I did find a quality USB-serial converter and a dealer that would sell me a copy of the programming software I still couldn't get the things to talk to each other. And I'm old enough to remember the good old days of IRQ conflicts and COM port settings and all the necessary voodoo to make a serial device play nice.
Actually, today is a pretty appropriate day to talk about crop failures. I seem to remember a certain society that was plagued by repeated wheat crop failures and so switched to potatoes as a source of starch. I don't think that worked out too well for them either, however.
That article didn't give a whole lot of details, and certainly not nearly as much confidence as you suggested. Though no expert, from what I've read two big problems with this so called Southern Strategy is that a) we haven't yet identified resistant varieties to plant in the South b) Winters just aren't what they used to be, a fungi are fairly cold hardy. In fact, although a week ago I had a foot of snow on the ground, I was walking in short sleeves yesterday and actually swatted a mosquito. I'd say the wheat producing regions of Canada and the far northern US should be safe, but I wouldn't make any bets. As for the comments mentioning alternative grains like amaranth and quinoa, certainly these grains are productive, efficient, maybe even healthier than most traditional wheat varieties, but infrastructure is the hard part. Sort of the same problem we are having with oil. I've grown small patches of amaranth, but man is harvesting and winnowing the stuff difficult. And the grain is tiny, 50% smaller than the head of a pin.
The basic premise behind the usefulness of any sort of advanced education in the humanities isn't that the student of Shakespeare knows a lot about a 17th century English playwright, but that the student has learned how to analyze Shakespeare, and learned how to examine a work for structure and concept. Physics, maths, and science also teach you these skills, but the hard sciences tend to require very linear thinking whereas studying the humanities can require non-linear thinking. Both skills are complimentary and Shakespeare befits the scientist just as much as maths are useful to a historian. The Greeks had this notion that a complete man balanced both physical and mental prowess, but this could be expanded. A student who can't think both linear and nonlinear means is as well formed as a weight lifter who only did bench presses but forgot about leg squats. Now, whether a liberal arts student at today's universities actually learns these skills is really debatable.
I to post hear all the reasons why everyone should know and admire a true American Here like Woody Guthrie, a guy who worked as a migrant farmer when the Depression and Dust Bowl drove him from Oklahoma at age 16, served in the Merchant Marine, got his head bashed in more than a few times fighting for the unions and against corrupt politicians....but I thought I could just let some of his own words say it for him:
""I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you."
"I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that."
"Yes, as through this world I've wandered I've seen lots of funny men; Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen"
"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin' it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."
From what little we have to go on in the article, it looks like there was a problem with syncing to time code. It's been a few years since I last did time as a tech at a major theme park, but our fireworks shows looked a little like this: There was a dedicated computer running the pyro controls, one running sound playback, one controlling the lasers, one controlling lights and fog, and one controlling some miscellany such as a 70mm film projector and the large water pumps that produced a screen the movie was rear-projected onto. All of these computers could be a little buggy given that this was in the days of windows 98 and getting device drivers to play nice was always a problem. But this stuff was worked out long before showtime. The biggest problem that could show up at the last minute would be the SMPTE time code that keeps it all synced up. One intermittent cabling problem somewhere in the system could cause a computer to get bad or no time code signal at all, causing at least that one element to not playback correctly. The best way to solve this problem was to notice it ASAP, usually in the few seconds of preroll before the show starts so that you can manually sync everything at a predetermined point. But there really is no ability to pause just one element or speed up others. Once you're off time code, you're going to have to go manual, and at least with pyro with all of the different fuse delays involved, manual just isn't going to be quite right. The only other last minute problem I could think of would be a corrupted file, or more than likely a revision that wasn't saved correctly or an outdated file being loaded automatically by the show control software and no one verifying that it was the proper version. These holiday shows are a one off, of course, so there is no dress rehearsel. You can run all the simulations you want, but you only get to fire off the pyro once.
Stupid credit card machine in the office actually has an "Alpha" key, in addition the the usual alphanumeric keys. On the occasion I'm called to fix are reprogram it for some bizarre reason, I need to use the password, which is kept on a card in the safe. I always have to enter it twice, because the password is "Alpha Alpha 35 something or other..." and the first time I go to enter it I always type "A A 35....."
Wow, I had a shockingly similar experience about 10 (oh god, TEN!) years ago. Complete with the lightning like reflexes. I was working a a backpack and canoe guide in the Adirondack mountains, but had been asked to ride with group going on a three day mountain bike trek because they were down one staff member and I had the necessary first aid skills. On the last morning of the ride one of the kids bikes broke. I don't remember what, I think something with the rear sprocket. Rather than stop and make repairs, we just traded the bike I was on for the bad one. I rode on the bad bike with little problem, though I remember not being able to change gears. Anyways, as the ride went on, I pretty much forgot about being on a hobbled bike. We were less than a mile from being back when the trail made a sharp sidling cut down a really steep hill (actually the side of a sandy esker). I got about half way down when the chain came totally off the bike. The soil here was so loose and sandy that braking was useless. Here's where time stopped. Over maybe fifteen feet of distance at breakneck speed I analyzed my options. I couldn't shift my weight enough to ditch into the hill, I was gradually cutting sideways of the trail despite my effort, and if I ditched to my right I was going straight down an almost vertical run into the lake. Out of option I realized I was headed straight at a monster Canadian Hemlock. A beast of a tree, probably a 36 inches across. I don't know exactly what happened next, but the bike smacked into the tree, the next thing I knew I was going over the handle bars. I remember pushing off, flipping once in the air, hitting the ground tucked, somersaulting twice. In the second roll I distinctly remember thinking I needed to stop before I went much further. So, I sprang up out of the roll, jumped a little in the air to break the backward momentum and landed with a perfect plant, two feet square on the ground and my handy over my head in the air. I didn't have a scratch on me.
When we all recovered enough to take a look, the front reflector bracket of the bike had driven into the tree like a nail, the front wheel egg shaped, the forks bent back 6 inches and the rear wheel in the air up off the ground. It took two of us to rip the bike reflector out of the tree it was in so deep. I had that fork for a few years, and still have the chain. I wore in like a necklace long before it was cool. We used to joke that it was the same way if I had wrestled a bear or wolf I would have worn the teeth or claws. I never did figure out how I managed to go over, around or through that hemlock, but that will have to be a question for more advanced temporal physicists. I should have taken it full in the face, and can't figure out from my roll and trajectory how I could have gone to either side of it. And if you don't believe me, I took my wife there hiking several years later and there was still bits of plastic reflector stuck in the tree.
Strange, I must be one of those exceptions that prove the rule. I am a definitely a contingency planner, in things as small as what route I take to work each morning to having a packed a ready Go bag that has everything myself and my family would need to survive in case of, well just about anything survivable; food, maps, hand tools, cash, etc. But I'm not a pessimist. When I analyze a situation I also think about probabilities, and lets face it, the really bad stuff that can happen is pretty uncommon. My reputation at work is always staying cool *and cheerful* under crisis. I often joke with some of my junior coworkers that when they've been around as long as I have, they'll have seen enough really really bad shit happen that the bar will be set to high to get worked up about your more garden variety chaos.
Umm...I don't have the exact numbers, but from what I remember, only 2% of NPR's funding is directly from the federal government. Roughly 30% of their funding is from state or local government grants (my local university houses the studios for our NPR station, for instance). But speaking of the local stations, mine recieves about 70% of its funding from listeners. As they say, "its the purest form of capitalism, we give you something and you pay what you think its worth." Hardly liberal bias, except as Steve Colbert has noted "reality has a proven history of liberal bias."
Question for the RF geeks out there: Do you even need the copper mesh? My house has old metal lath in some of the walls. If you have never seen it, it serves the purpose of wood lathe, but was faster because you simply tacked this rolled screen material onto the walls and plastered over that. The holes of sort of oblong/diamond shaped, approximately 1/4 inch wide at their midpoint and each is about 3/4 inch long. The thickness of the metal (ie, the distance between holes) is about 3/16" .
Could this stuff be used to block RF? Do they all need to be grounded together? What else would you need to do when installing this stuff to make an efficient Faraday cage?
While I agree that replacing those one inch screws on your latch with something a bit sturdier is a great idea, you can buy a cheap cordless sawzall for less than $50. If it is quiet enough around for someone to kick a door in, its probably quiet enough to use a cordless sawzall. Heck, pull up in van and dress like a contractor and the neighbors will think you're just having some repairs done while you are at work. Most new houses these days are nothing more than vinyl siding with a few studs, some drywall and insulation in between. Maybe some plywood at the corners, but more likely just some OSB. I could cut my own door in less than five minute. Even quicker, pop off the outside door trim and just cut through the screws holding the door frame in. I'll bet with this technique you could easily enter a few dozen unoccupied houses without even needing to recharge the battery. And don't think your brick veneer provides that much more security, you can often rip that stuff off with your bare hands.
Now I know that my local NPR station is skewing towards a younger market. Heck, they dropped the classical years ago and play a decent mix of non-mainstream, non-corporate, though I wouldn't go so far as to say indie rock during the day. But when I started reading on slashdot regularly ten ( 10!) years ago I would have never expected the relatively common recurrence of NPR articles making the front page. Are we all getting that old, or am I just getting old enough to notice it?
No offense to some of the bright high school students and undergrads who comment here...you're appreciated, sometimes for you're youthful naivety, but appreciated nonetheless.
For the record, my wife and I don't eat that much fast food, but this weekend we were traveling and decided to stop for a quick bite at Hardee's. I'd like to say that I really enjoyed the patty melt burger. Also, according to the nutrition information a serving of that burger contained just about 300 calories. Not too bad, I thought, until my wife pointed out that a serving was just 1/4 of a burger.
Do you know anyone who goes to a fast food restaurant, or at any other meal, for that matter who eats just 1/4 of a burger?
I've been in your place before, though for us it was a $40 blender that bit it in just a few months of smoothies. Blendtec blenders really are all they're cracked up to be, vitamix's are almost as good but equally expensive. But my best blender is a harvest gold hamilton beach blender I bought at a thrift store for three dollars. it took a while to find one with the seals still in good shape, but I swear that thing would blend concrete. It put up with a ton of abuse and lasted three years or so. Before I got my kitchen aid mixer (not the cheap one you usually see in the stores, but a somewhat more expensive prosumer model) I had an early 50s mixer that also rocked. Nothing like good solid american made steel motors. But speaking of that Kitchen aid, I did once (foolishly) get a wooden spoon stuck in the paddle, and "Yes, it blends....er.. mixes" It was in about ten pieces by the time i could reach the switch, at lowish speed.
If you think the coal fired plants are ugly, you should see how they get the coal these days. A big hint, it's not highly paid union miners with pick axes anymore. Mountain top removal mining.
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You'll probably be saddened to learn that I was taught how to weld...as a theatre major. I have a Bachelor's of Fine Art in Theatre Production. That is essentially the equivalent of a vocational training in theatre (whereas as straight BA with a theatre major would have more general education and therefore fewer actual theatre credits). I attended the second largest university in the state and was the only graduate with a theatre degree that year. I live now in a city with one of the largest universities in the country in my backyard and they only graduate a handful. For most, and especially for technical/production types there is plenty of work.
As to hard skills I had classes that all or in part covered art history, extensive amount of studies in greek history and literature, architecture, engineering, electrical engineering, decor, art theory, drafting, sociology, CAD, furniture design, sculpture, costume history and a lot more theory and history that might relate to a specific production. Additionally there was actual hands-on training, so after a morning of classes learning how to safely design a set that could support the weight on 20 tap dancers but still come apart in mere second in complete darkness, we would then spend all afternoon building it. Interpreting drawings, all manner or carpentry, electrical, welding, painting techniques, etc. And of course in the evening for rehearsals we would actually operate the sets or equipment we had designed and built. I can think of no other college major where an undergraduate would do so much direct application of the skills taught in the classroom. Although I no longer work in theatre my ability to think creatively and practically, and the broad knowledge in so many different subjects have served me very ably.
True, but on the other hand, there is at least some small segment of the upper class that realizes that if they suppress the working class too much or leech a way too much wealth, they and their peers may finds themselves with a nose to the floorboards view of a guillotine. It seems like our current cohort of elites may have forgotten this lesson, though their are certainly a few like Gates, Soros and Buffet who recognize the warning signs. I am not, by the way recommending this option. Though in turns of income I'm probably working class or low middle class, by virtue of being white, male and educated the prospect of a serious worker uprising in this country wouldn't work out too well for me or my family.
the best spinach i ever ate turned out be be fennel...
It all depends on the department. I studied theatre design, and so spent most of my time in a "lab" that included just about every shop tool under the sun, welding equipment, various paints and glues, not to mention heavy equipment like gantry cranes and several huge hydraulic lifts. Our shop was clean, well-lit and the tools were maintained. The was because the professors and other faculty made us keep it that way. I have seen certain freshmen forced to sweep the same floor four and five times over until they finally got it done right.
By senior year I had some spare time, so I took a few sculpture classes. Basically all the same tools, but most broken and dull. Dirt and dust was everywhere, and students where let loose on all types of equipment, even table saws with no training. Of course being arts students there was a lot of long hair and dangling jewelry, no fire extinguishers, no first aid kit, no faculty presence and a facility that was unsecured 24-7.
Needless to say i did all my work in the theatre shop and only went to the sculpture labs for classes.
I find your post hilariously ironic. As a so-called "gifted" student, like an earlier poster I was prevented from taking any shop classes in high-school. But, I could sign up for theatre classes, and in those (since I had no desire to act) I learned how to use all the basic shop tools, as well as basic electrical work, lighting, and sound.
I went on to get a BFA in theatre design, the only college curriculum that combined architecture, design, and engineering with actually producing the stuff you imagined. I learned to weld, to paint, make perfect dovetail joints, repair most tools, even how to sew....all as part of my coursework! I now work for Habitat for Humanity, where the best part of my job is teaching new volunteers how to use tools and build houses.
I've always said I would make a great shop teacher, but as far as I've ever heard, those jobs are long gone, plus no one can tell me where to even begin to get the training I would need.
Nothing is more hilarious than watching my three-year old son kiss his matchbox cars goodnight and carefully tuck them in under a kleenex. And he is no girly boy. He is already showing signs that he will be better at competitive sports than I am, and can correctly identify two dozen different types of dozers, loaders, backhoes and other heavy equipment.
You've got it, and any highly refined field of study that requires a lot of dedication and specific knowledge is going to have that weed-out course. Take it from me, I've got a BFA in theatre. There were 99! majors in my freshman class. Two of us graduated, and I was the only one to actually accomplish it in 8 semesters. A few in my cohort drop in and out still taking classes (10 years later), most switched majors.
My local Habitat for Humanity has a ReStore that sells used building materials. It seems that over a few months they can stock up quite a few toilets and marble sinks that for one reason or another don't sell. Most have slight chips or cracks or whatever. They'll run an announcement and have toilet bowling. For $10 you can swing an old bowling ball as hard as you can down the parking lots towards a field of toilet "pins." Its really excellent to see someone score a direct hit.
Be careful with those low end Sharps (and Casios, and Royals). To my knowledge the only Sharp cash registers that have the usb link or the sd slot are their low end small business registers. They work well, but you tend to get what you pay for in terms of a short lifespan, sticking keys, lack of advanced features, etc. I really recommend stepping up to sharp's commercial series (the er-a410 comes to mind). The starting prices are not much more expensive than the low end stuff. Unfortunately, most of these registers still communicate on the serial port, and Sharp's polling software in around $800 per user. I've been trying for a while to find a more economical solution, and even when I did find a quality USB-serial converter and a dealer that would sell me a copy of the programming software I still couldn't get the things to talk to each other. And I'm old enough to remember the good old days of IRQ conflicts and COM port settings and all the necessary voodoo to make a serial device play nice.
Actually, today is a pretty appropriate day to talk about crop failures. I seem to remember a certain society that was plagued by repeated wheat crop failures and so switched to potatoes as a source of starch. I don't think that worked out too well for them either, however.
That article didn't give a whole lot of details, and certainly not nearly as much confidence as you suggested. Though no expert, from what I've read two big problems with this so called Southern Strategy is that a) we haven't yet identified resistant varieties to plant in the South b) Winters just aren't what they used to be, a fungi are fairly cold hardy. In fact, although a week ago I had a foot of snow on the ground, I was walking in short sleeves yesterday and actually swatted a mosquito. I'd say the wheat producing regions of Canada and the far northern US should be safe, but I wouldn't make any bets. As for the comments mentioning alternative grains like amaranth and quinoa, certainly these grains are productive, efficient, maybe even healthier than most traditional wheat varieties, but infrastructure is the hard part. Sort of the same problem we are having with oil. I've grown small patches of amaranth, but man is harvesting and winnowing the stuff difficult. And the grain is tiny, 50% smaller than the head of a pin.
The basic premise behind the usefulness of any sort of advanced education in the humanities isn't that the student of Shakespeare knows a lot about a 17th century English playwright, but that the student has learned how to analyze Shakespeare, and learned how to examine a work for structure and concept. Physics, maths, and science also teach you these skills, but the hard sciences tend to require very linear thinking whereas studying the humanities can require non-linear thinking. Both skills are complimentary and Shakespeare befits the scientist just as much as maths are useful to a historian. The Greeks had this notion that a complete man balanced both physical and mental prowess, but this could be expanded. A student who can't think both linear and nonlinear means is as well formed as a weight lifter who only did bench presses but forgot about leg squats. Now, whether a liberal arts student at today's universities actually learns these skills is really debatable.
""I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you."
"I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that."
"Yes, as through this world I've wandered I've seen lots of funny men; Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen"
"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin' it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."
From what little we have to go on in the article, it looks like there was a problem with syncing to time code. It's been a few years since I last did time as a tech at a major theme park, but our fireworks shows looked a little like this: There was a dedicated computer running the pyro controls, one running sound playback, one controlling the lasers, one controlling lights and fog, and one controlling some miscellany such as a 70mm film projector and the large water pumps that produced a screen the movie was rear-projected onto. All of these computers could be a little buggy given that this was in the days of windows 98 and getting device drivers to play nice was always a problem. But this stuff was worked out long before showtime. The biggest problem that could show up at the last minute would be the SMPTE time code that keeps it all synced up. One intermittent cabling problem somewhere in the system could cause a computer to get bad or no time code signal at all, causing at least that one element to not playback correctly. The best way to solve this problem was to notice it ASAP, usually in the few seconds of preroll before the show starts so that you can manually sync everything at a predetermined point. But there really is no ability to pause just one element or speed up others. Once you're off time code, you're going to have to go manual, and at least with pyro with all of the different fuse delays involved, manual just isn't going to be quite right. The only other last minute problem I could think of would be a corrupted file, or more than likely a revision that wasn't saved correctly or an outdated file being loaded automatically by the show control software and no one verifying that it was the proper version. These holiday shows are a one off, of course, so there is no dress rehearsel. You can run all the simulations you want, but you only get to fire off the pyro once.
Stupid credit card machine in the office actually has an "Alpha" key, in addition the the usual alphanumeric keys. On the occasion I'm called to fix are reprogram it for some bizarre reason, I need to use the password, which is kept on a card in the safe. I always have to enter it twice, because the password is "Alpha Alpha 35 something or other..." and the first time I go to enter it I always type "A A 35 ....."
Wow, I had a shockingly similar experience about 10 (oh god, TEN!) years ago. Complete with the lightning like reflexes. I was working a a backpack and canoe guide in the Adirondack mountains, but had been asked to ride with group going on a three day mountain bike trek because they were down one staff member and I had the necessary first aid skills. On the last morning of the ride one of the kids bikes broke. I don't remember what, I think something with the rear sprocket. Rather than stop and make repairs, we just traded the bike I was on for the bad one. I rode on the bad bike with little problem, though I remember not being able to change gears. Anyways, as the ride went on, I pretty much forgot about being on a hobbled bike. We were less than a mile from being back when the trail made a sharp sidling cut down a really steep hill (actually the side of a sandy esker). I got about half way down when the chain came totally off the bike. The soil here was so loose and sandy that braking was useless. Here's where time stopped. Over maybe fifteen feet of distance at breakneck speed I analyzed my options. I couldn't shift my weight enough to ditch into the hill, I was gradually cutting sideways of the trail despite my effort, and if I ditched to my right I was going straight down an almost vertical run into the lake. Out of option I realized I was headed straight at a monster Canadian Hemlock. A beast of a tree, probably a 36 inches across. I don't know exactly what happened next, but the bike smacked into the tree, the next thing I knew I was going over the handle bars. I remember pushing off, flipping once in the air, hitting the ground tucked, somersaulting twice. In the second roll I distinctly remember thinking I needed to stop before I went much further. So, I sprang up out of the roll, jumped a little in the air to break the backward momentum and landed with a perfect plant, two feet square on the ground and my handy over my head in the air. I didn't have a scratch on me.
When we all recovered enough to take a look, the front reflector bracket of the bike had driven into the tree like a nail, the front wheel egg shaped, the forks bent back 6 inches and the rear wheel in the air up off the ground. It took two of us to rip the bike reflector out of the tree it was in so deep. I had that fork for a few years, and still have the chain. I wore in like a necklace long before it was cool. We used to joke that it was the same way if I had wrestled a bear or wolf I would have worn the teeth or claws. I never did figure out how I managed to go over, around or through that hemlock, but that will have to be a question for more advanced temporal physicists. I should have taken it full in the face, and can't figure out from my roll and trajectory how I could have gone to either side of it. And if you don't believe me, I took my wife there hiking several years later and there was still bits of plastic reflector stuck in the tree.
Strange, I must be one of those exceptions that prove the rule. I am a definitely a contingency planner, in things as small as what route I take to work each morning to having a packed a ready Go bag that has everything myself and my family would need to survive in case of, well just about anything survivable; food, maps, hand tools, cash, etc. But I'm not a pessimist. When I analyze a situation I also think about probabilities, and lets face it, the really bad stuff that can happen is pretty uncommon. My reputation at work is always staying cool *and cheerful* under crisis. I often joke with some of my junior coworkers that when they've been around as long as I have, they'll have seen enough really really bad shit happen that the bar will be set to high to get worked up about your more garden variety chaos.
Umm...I don't have the exact numbers, but from what I remember, only 2% of NPR's funding is directly from the federal government. Roughly 30% of their funding is from state or local government grants (my local university houses the studios for our NPR station, for instance). But speaking of the local stations, mine recieves about 70% of its funding from listeners. As they say, "its the purest form of capitalism, we give you something and you pay what you think its worth." Hardly liberal bias, except as Steve Colbert has noted "reality has a proven history of liberal bias."
Question for the RF geeks out there: Do you even need the copper mesh? My house has old metal lath in some of the walls. If you have never seen it, it serves the purpose of wood lathe, but was faster because you simply tacked this rolled screen material onto the walls and plastered over that. The holes of sort of oblong/diamond shaped, approximately 1/4 inch wide at their midpoint and each is about 3/4 inch long. The thickness of the metal (ie, the distance between holes) is about 3/16" .
Could this stuff be used to block RF? Do they all need to be grounded together? What else would you need to do when installing this stuff to make an efficient Faraday cage?
While I agree that replacing those one inch screws on your latch with something a bit sturdier is a great idea, you can buy a cheap cordless sawzall for less than $50. If it is quiet enough around for someone to kick a door in, its probably quiet enough to use a cordless sawzall. Heck, pull up in van and dress like a contractor and the neighbors will think you're just having some repairs done while you are at work. Most new houses these days are nothing more than vinyl siding with a few studs, some drywall and insulation in between. Maybe some plywood at the corners, but more likely just some OSB. I could cut my own door in less than five minute. Even quicker, pop off the outside door trim and just cut through the screws holding the door frame in. I'll bet with this technique you could easily enter a few dozen unoccupied houses without even needing to recharge the battery. And don't think your brick veneer provides that much more security, you can often rip that stuff off with your bare hands.
D'oh
No offense to some of the bright high school students and undergrads who comment here...you're appreciated, sometimes for you're youthful naivety, but appreciated nonetheless.
For the record, my wife and I don't eat that much fast food, but this weekend we were traveling and decided to stop for a quick bite at Hardee's. I'd like to say that I really enjoyed the patty melt burger. Also, according to the nutrition information a serving of that burger contained just about 300 calories. Not too bad, I thought, until my wife pointed out that a serving was just 1/4 of a burger.
Do you know anyone who goes to a fast food restaurant, or at any other meal, for that matter who eats just 1/4 of a burger?
I've been in your place before, though for us it was a $40 blender that bit it in just a few months of smoothies. Blendtec blenders really are all they're cracked up to be, vitamix's are almost as good but equally expensive. But my best blender is a harvest gold hamilton beach blender I bought at a thrift store for three dollars. it took a while to find one with the seals still in good shape, but I swear that thing would blend concrete. It put up with a ton of abuse and lasted three years or so. Before I got my kitchen aid mixer (not the cheap one you usually see in the stores, but a somewhat more expensive prosumer model) I had an early 50s mixer that also rocked. Nothing like good solid american made steel motors. But speaking of that Kitchen aid, I did once (foolishly) get a wooden spoon stuck in the paddle, and "Yes, it blends....er.. mixes" It was in about ten pieces by the time i could reach the switch, at lowish speed.
If you think the coal fired plants are ugly, you should see how they get the coal these days. A big hint, it's not highly paid union miners with pick axes anymore. Mountain top removal mining .