On Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:19:00 -0700, Richard Clark
wrote:

At one point in my career, I found myself
with a dead weight tester, calibrating a pressure gauge to 10,000 PSI
when the coupling line spit sending a fine spray of pressurized oil
past my face. Took me half an hour to shake off the thought of it
hitting me square.

Ouch. At that pressure, the first few drops of oil will give you an
instant tattoo. An acquaintance recently had that happen to him. He's
now recovering from the skin grafts and laser ablative cleanup.

The closest I came to that was getting a hydraulic fluid shower while
riding as an operator inside a Rose Float (in about 1968). The floats
animation was run by a pony engine and hydraulic pumps. The coupling
directly over me started to leak. After 2 hours in the float
lumbering through Pasadena, I arrived thoroughly soaked.
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/pics/jeffl/slides/RoseFloat01.html
That's me testing the chair position (which was arc welded in place so
it had to be perfect). My feet are resting on top of the electrical
animation switching panel.

For a summer of my youth (when dinosaurs ruled
the earth) I would plunge down a manhole with a tethered ball. I'd
plug it into the downhill side, clamber out, and fill the manhole with
water. Then go to the next manhole, clamber down and dig out all the
muck that had been plunged ahead of the tether ball. Repeat for
weeks.

Well, I missed such fun when I was younger. I worked for the same
monopoly. While you were playing in the muck, I was "re-enforcing"
100 pair bundles and working in the battery room.

Substituting one central phrase of "Apocalypse Now":
"The aroma of it all! The AROMA of it all!"

These days, the installers doing FTTS (Fiber Through the Sewers) have
all the fun. Instead of summer interns, the dirty work is done by a
robot which installs a SAM (sewer access module):
http://www.kate-pmo.ch/pages/en/fast.html
Despite the robotics and improved handling, the packets delivered
still seem to smell of effluvia.

... as this was the first time in our political history
when we had two candidates BOTH running against the administration AND
the Republican Party. We laughed at that logic.

Chuckle. Very true. Worse, the "real" agendas of both parties are
almost identical. I noticed that both parties are also against the
status quo (which is generally considered awful). That makes me
wonder just what they are in favor of actually doing. I would prefer
they do absolutely nothing and let the economy fix itself, but that's
too much to hope for. Let the lesser evil win in Nov and never mind
trying to decode their logic.

I should feel guilty for encouraging this off topic discussion,
complete with topic drift, but I don't.



--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558