Got another raise today, hoo-rah.
For some reason I went off about when the new guy mentioned that the engineers at Cessna don't have a union. I mean I really gave the institution of organized labor both barrels; comparing them to a sorority and everything. Not really sure why I flew off the handle, but it felt a little awkward to me afterwards.
Also, 6 to 5 and pick 'em the new guy putts from the rough. Just an observation.
Quoting the great scientific source of Yahoo Finance:
As strange as that sounds--push the "Up" button, climb in, and soar off into weightless bliss--don't be surprised if it happens. The space elevator is where the PC was in the 1960s: The theory is solid, the materials exist, and people in garages are starting to tinker with the next step.
The space elevator is NOT where the PC was in the 1960’s. It’s where the PC was in the 1860’s. And no, the materials DON’T exist. The longest carbon nano-tube ever produced was 4 cm long and the strongest nano-tube ever demonstrated had a tensile strength of 63 GPa. And those were made in absolute ideal conditions.
Right now the nano-tubes have to be grown in the lab and it’s expensive. The world-wide production right now is in the neighborhood of 100 pounds per day. At this rate it would take 109-years to make enough to complete the tether. At current costs, it would also cost around 217 trillion dollars for the material. But none of that even matters.
What nobody seems to have the answer for is the damage that meteorites, micrometeorites, solar flares, and radiation belts will absolutely cause. Your god-sent material turns into a pile of pencil lead when even one single atom of the structure gets dislodge. Radiated particles from sun playing demolition derby with your beautifully efficient carbon-carbon bonds and rocks the size of pin heads traveling at thousands of miles-per-hour does not a pleasant environment make.
It’s a novel idea and I think it will eventually happen, hopefully in my lifetime, but we need a few more breakthroughs. Comparing the development of a multi-trillion dollar structure thousands of times larger and more ambitious than anything on the planet to a box of melted sand is just ignorant.
Today I took the new guy out for some rounds on the shop floor and aside from having never trained anyone at anything before it seemed to go alright. Except for one small problem: the guy is probably 5 years older than me.
Want to know how awkward it is to train someone older than you are to do your job? It's just slightly more awkward than the word "awkward" looks.
Well we're movin on up,
To the east side.
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.
Movin on up
To the east side.
We finally got a piece of the pie.
Fish don't fry in the kitchen;
Beans don't burn on the grill.
Took a whole lotta tryin'
Just to get up that hill.
Now we're up in the big leagues
Gettin' our turn at bat.
As long as we live, it's you and me baby
There ain't nothin wrong with that.
Well we're movin on up,
To the east side.
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.
Movin on up
To the east side.
We finally got a piece of the pie.
-The Jefferson's Theme Song
I spent a good portion of the day moving from one office to another at work. We get a new guy on 2nd shift on Wednesday and thus needed a bigger office. The engineers were forced to move our own things because of ineptitude of others. Grievances will probably be filed with the union.
Me: Who the hell is knocking on my door at 8:30 pm on a Saturday?
*opens door*
Random Door-to-Door Salesman: Hi, I'm with EZ Choice meats. Do you enjoy good beef and pork steaks?
Me: No
Salesmen: Oh, so you prefer Poultry or fresh Seafood?
Me: The wife and I are actually level 6 Vegans.
Salesmen: So you're vegetarians?
Me: Meat is Murder.
Salesmen: okay, thank you for your time.
Me *while closing door*: ...sweet, delicious, and beautifully tasty murder.
If you insist on referencing serious mathematical constructs in your lyrics. Please surround them with something less crappy than:
Uh oh, here we go
turn off the radio
come on everybody
to the nth degree.
It sounds like it was written by a two-years old boy.
After messing around with alternate blogging software, I've decided to make the change to WordPress. I have however run into a small snag.
I've dealt with the scourge of comment spam ever since moving to movable type. That's why commenting gets disabled 1 month from the post date. Its was a pain to set up, but I've got a workable solution. What I didn't have a workable solution for was Trackback Ping spam. I never really cared up till now, because I don't use or display the pings anywhere.
Now, it's a giant pain in the ass. nearly all the entries have 200-400 track back pings tied to them, which is making my webserver crap itself when I try to export the entries over to the new system. It'll take a little while to figure it out, but a new look is coming.
Watching World Baseball Classic games between Japan and Korea and listening to the very American ESPNannoucers attempt to pronounce the players names.
Highest of the High Unintentional Comedy
How come anytime you go to the doctor’s office, everyone EXCEPT the doctor is wearing scrubs? It’s exactly the same at the optometrist, all the aides are in scrubs and the doctors play business casual dress up. The dentist however, seems to be the exception, everybody is sporting the clean and sterile look there.
I can’t be the first to notice this and surely there is a reason.
Always the sucker for witty monologues and quick banter, it’s come time to for me make a confession:
I record and watch reruns of the Gilmore Girls…everyday.
There, it’s out, I’ve said it. I don’t have to live a lie anymore. My true nature has been exposed to the world. I’ve exposed the softer side of TOG and it feels good. If you’ve seen the show, you can probably understand this unnatural attraction of mine; because it’s nothing, if not well written.
It was slow day at work, so I spent much of my time doing shear and moment diagrams of a Citation Jet in a fictitious -3g loop in a vane attempt to construct a situation in which an external stringer on the very bottom of the aircraft could possibly see a tension load.
…for fun.
Having yet to take a vacation day since starting in June, I’ve got a bit of a stash built up. Traveling alone takes the fun out of vacations, and my lack of appreciable social skills leads me to piggy-back on others holiday excursions. It’s not that I’m incapable of planning my own free time; it’s just that when you first see the Grand Canyon and exclaim “Holy Crap!” you don’t want to be the creepy guy who came on the bus by himself. It’s just all around better if you’ve got someone to share the experience with, not to mention the economics of scale.
I bring these thoughts up because I’m faced with a decision of international flavor. The rest of my immediate family is likely headed for Europe for 3 weeks this summer. I’ll only have 2 weeks of stored vacation by then, so I’d be taking a full week with out pay if I go.
Trips to Europe are expensive, and I’m a frugal bastard. On the other hand, It will never be cheaper to go than right now, since we will be staying with friends of the family for at least half the time.* Still, the plane tickets will easily be 1,200 dollars and Europe is crazy expensive in American dollars.
I’m not sure I’m willing to drop 3 grand, lose half a paycheck, and totally deplete my vacation days, especially since I was looking at buying a car in the fall. But still, I’m not ever going to Europe unless somebody else drags me along, so wouldn’t I be crazy to pass this up?
It’s not like this sentiment is normal for me, up until now, the most adventurous vacation my family has ever had was the 8 days we spent driving around Alberta, Canada. I’m not sure I could handle full-fledged international experience. The socialism might make me implode.
*I have family friends in Europe, kill me now.