Seems weird...

...but these are the types of games we all used to spend time playing:

Now to play well, you have to take lessons and practice, practice, practice... My friend's friend made a killing teaching people how to play Halo. (If there's any offending language, I apologize... I didn't take the time to watch the whole thing because I figured none of you would... but now that I said that, you all will, right? MEH!)

SEE?

H2+O and/or O3 is between the LEL and the UEL!

Guess what?

The LEL of H2 is 4%.
The UEL of H2 is 75%.

May Day is coming.

Funday Munday

Monday Funday

After Mom made a comment, "If the King James Version was good enough for the apostle Paul, it's good enough for me!", a picture started floating around:
Accidentally leaving her ‘King Jimmy’ at home as a consequence of a bizarre and unexpected confluence of circumstances, a young Susan Travers finds herself visiting a prototype mega church and succumbs to the money-changing temptations of a Contemporary-English Bible dispensing machine in the lobby.

And, of course this one's been around for a while, but it still cracks me up:


And... well...

How you know you're shopping in Texas

Thanks to Obama, this is pretty much true anywhere now :-) He's got to be the best gun/ammo salesman ever!

New Approach!

I've come up with a new method for organizing my socks.

Ok, ok... It's not quite that boring...

I have these three drawers under my desk that contain a myriad of pencils, pens, paper, junk, stuffed animals, etc. (The stuffed animals aren't my fault.)

I finally realized what I need to do is go through them and remove everything but what I actually use... meaning that my top drawer will have two pens, one mechanical pencil, a couple permanent markers, a stapler, scissors, and a paper cutter.

Wow! What a novel idea. Put everything I don't actually need or use in a box... I'll deal with the box later. I figure if I clean one small item out a month, I'll... er... run out of things to do in a few years.

I sound pretty bored? Well... er... I rarley get any email at home, there's very little blog activity, I have to go downstairs to check my email since my computer fried, etc. I never realized how much time I wasted with the ol' computer. Now I can waste time wandering around the house and bugging people instead!

Oh, I brought my brothers 4-wheeling, Monday. The soundtrack was rather funny.

WASH YOUR HANDS WITH SOAP!

I had to work Friday this week. *gasp*

I learned that hepatitis C is at an all time high because people aren't washing their hands after using public restrooms. Oh, I also learned not to hold a nitroglycerin pill in your hand or you'll get a horrid headache.

You see, I have to get CPR training every year and the training rolled around on Friday. I'm now CPR/AED/First Aid certified by the American Red Cross... for another year :-)

Ho, ho... What's funny is they haven't changed the test. I STILL didn't get 100%. You'd think after three times of missing "Heat related Emergency" because I read it as "Heart related Emergency," I'd remember? Nah!

Anyway, I decided to take Monday off instead. I've gotten kind of burnt out these last two weeks of work, so I'm going to take a break. I've been researching equipment, writing requisitions, writing a report, and making circuit boards, so work has been kind of tedious. I do get to head down to Elephant Butte sometime in the next few weeks, so that ought to be nice besides the fact that I'll be in charge... My first field trip where I'm the guy in charge... means I get to write the travel report :-) Hopefully I don't mess anything up.

Creepy Crawly Things

Google had a bug, so my pictures are gone... You can view them here, though:

Roozer's World

Trip

Here's the pictures from the trip I went on today. We visited a comm site on top of a mountain near Green Mountain Reservoir. (Take I-70 to Highway 9 (Dillon area), drive to a dirt country road, drive up that for 45 minutes and arrive at destination at top of mountain.)

They're using a fuel cell for backup power, so we had to go test it to make sure it worked.

Here's the site:
Here's the view:
That white cabinet is the fuel cell enclosure. It contains 6 welding bottles of hydrogen and the fuel cell:
Here's the actual fuel cell unit:

Why do I still have a blog?

Must be an addiction or an escape. I'm not sure which.


"The sea is green, just like a river," replied Bleck as he selected a card from his hand and flung it carelessly on the smooth surface of Capter's hood. Capter readjusted his boot on the chrome bumper and shifted his weight towards the card. "I might be a-likin' your shiny cards, but they shure don't play raght with the sunlaght," Capter observed as he flung his hand on the hood. "That's two for me and none for you," commented Bleck, collecting the cards from the hood.

Californee

Bad cell phone picture from my last trip out to Californee!

Pump:


Pumps:


Nothing... nowhere... all alone...

No disturbing images, I'm sorry

Then again, I guess that's debatable :-)

I finally got around to posting my lovely cell phone picture from the battery testing a couple weeks ago... You know, when I fell in love with whatever that city is called up there in the mountains... close to Grand Junction? (Does that show you the depth of my attachment or what? )

Anyway, battery testing can get pretty boring. Basically what we're trying to do is run a power plant backup battery down to make sure it lasts as long as it's supposed to. So, we do a bunch of preliminary tests on the battery to make sure it's "healthy," hook up or test equipment, and run the battery down for a long... long... time. By the end of a week of testing, I was about ready to go insane.

Midweek, the water bottle got the sack:

Fortunately, I had a backup and jerky to gnaw on:

This is a view I've seen way too often:

Ok, so battery testing isn't as bad as all of that :-) I did get to see a cool power plant! To get to it, you had to go down this tunnel:

And through this door:

All this to enter an underground power plant with Lakeside tile!

It even had rock walls!

Then it was time for Crystal dam. Well, as it turns out, the Hamvas's were on a family vacation and actually visited this dam... er... stood outside the gate at the same time that I was completely bored, staring at the wall of a battery room. Alas, I didn't know they were there or I would have given them a tour! Not only could they have seen inside a fairly interesting dam/power plant, they could have seen the "miracle cleaner" those guys try to sell door-to-door. Turns out it's some kind of cleaner for poultry farms :-) (Well, I don't know if it's really the stuff or not, but it sure looks the same in more ways than one!)

And best of all, the Hamvas family could have seen a green stool made out of plywood! (I take it this was from the days when you had to write a requisition to buy anything!)

The car was clean at the beginning of our trip...

Although the tests were short, I didn't really enjoy visiting the Malinas... Little generators out in metal sheds are noisy. Plus, those birds that build their nests in the eves of roofs were everywhere:

Oh, I guess deer have started grazing in the neighborhood:

*Cough* *Cough*

After the last post, I may not have any readers left. But for you few who are still there, I was looking at some equipment for work. The manufacturer's website had a section on why to buy from this Japanese company:



The main factor is Craftsman spirit, derives from Japanese mind, developed in a long history. Examine Japanese History distributed mainly two periods.
One is Japanese Spirit which has been refined under the one government (Government of Edo) for 260 years from about 400 years ago.This government was long run of unequaled anywhere in the world. In this period, many institutions (Small private schools) were founded by the sophisticates and they educated the children. We say by now, they became the base of the School. These institutions educated Public habit, Moderation, Diligence, Obligation(Justice) & Sentiment (Human feeling) and Pursuit of the beauty for a long time on the straight.It becomes sublimate as steady Japanese Spirit. Seven mini
However, outside of Japan as closed society, Science and Technology in the world advanced explosively through the Industrial Revolution. Japan lagged behind other county for this aspect.
FP-21T Second is the road how to get over this delay. Japan was requested by another country who has leaded Technology to open the closed society.Japan opened a country in 1868. The culture from overseas has entered to Japan at a stretch. Many society usually became a colony of the another country. But Japan has received the own way based by his intelligence developed in the previous generation: Japanese has not answered the culture in the negative, and received it. Japanese has level upped it with the mind to learn thoroughly.It goes without saying, we have the spirit refined in the previous generation on the base. Japanese could do such thing.

Safety Notification

The next time you're on top of an electric train, don't touch the overhead wires :-)

Redneck Firealarm

Nachos

Yeah... I'm enjoying a plate of nachos right now.

I feel like I've been living in a secluded world, cut off from all realms of communication as one who had been caged by Arimus, so I'm going to talk. (Up with drama!)

Yadda, yadda. Yadda, yadda. Yadda, yadda? Oh, ho, ho, ho, YADDA! YADDA! There... I told you a joke in Yiddish :-) (You're supposed to laugh here.)

Anyway, as I was getting my nachos tonight, I remembered what I used to do when I was little... Being little is a time of learning. For me, it mainly consisted of trying to find new ways to get away with things. Sometimes, I'd chew on my pillow in an attempt to get it as wet as possible. When Dad would come tell me goodnight, he'd ask me why my pillow was all wet to which I'd dramatically reply that I was so hungry I tried to eat my pillow. I don't think he ever believed me :-)

Anyway... life! Yeah... I guess I'm alive.
I get up. I go to work. I work, I come home, I eat dinner, I fool around, putting time in until bed, and then I go to bed. BTW, I still don't get to bed on time :-)

So... work is my life right now. Let's see here... I went to an electrical safety class last week. I mainly covered the 2009 OSHA safe work practices for electrical-related work. By the way, these safe work practices are federal law now and you can actually be convicted if something happens and it's proved you willfully ignored providing your employees with a safe work environment.

You don't have to watch an "R" rated movie to see gore. I saw more gore at that safety training than I've seen in my life... the worst part is it was real. The worst "torture" you've heard of ain't nothin compared to what happens to people who've experienced arc flash.

Arc flash is caused by shorting out something in an electrical panel. Copper expands 67,000 times it's own size when vaporized... and all you have to do to vaporize it is cause a short inside an electrical panel... Basically, a standard 208V lighting panel can be equivalent to standing on the surface of the sun for a few milliseconds while three sticks of dynamite blow up in your hand, and if you're lucky, you're not electrocuted... I saw a picture of something really weird... The remains of a vaporized electrician... There was like nothing left... I guess the human body really is 98% water.

Oh, and forget macho. The human body, no matter how macho you are, is very fragile. Did you know that your skin cells start to break down after six hours of exposure to 110 degree temperatures? Yeah... you got me. Go work outside in Arizona and you'll suffer skin damage. Oh, and do you know what else? Big guys die from electricution... from less power than it takes to power an LED flashlight.

Even though it was rather gory, it was quite effective and informative. Plus, we did learn how to make an RPG or roadside bomb, so that's always a plus. :-)

Let's see... This week... Oh, there's a new Ben in the office now... and us three Bens all sit next to each other.

I talked my boss into buying me $25,000 of "toys," so that was fun... except for the fact that I now get to learn how to write requisitions :-) (We call our tools, "toys.") Circuit board making stuff, surface mount soldering station, software, etc.

I went to confined space training this week, too... BTW, if someone ever goes unconscious in a confined space, (tank, pit, vault, etc.) DO NOT attempt to rescue them. 60-75% of confined space fatalities are CAUSED BY someone trying to rescue a fallen coworker. If you attempt a rescue, at the very best, you'll be trying to drag a 100lb sack of Jello out of a pit while holding your breath -- you can't do it, and by attempting, you'll most likely kill both you and your coworker... Even if you make it out alive, you'd effectively kill them by not getting help right away, and would you look foward to knocking on the door of your co-worker's family to inform them that they won't be coming home because you weren't doing your job?

Six minutes, that's about all you've got. After that, it's body retrieval, not a rescue. You don't have time to find you can't rescue them and then decide to go for help.

Personally, I'd probably go for help first and then bring a couple SCBAs down with me. If I were fairly certain I wouldn't add to the problem, I'd probably attempt a rescue. I think I'd have a pretty hard time watching someone die and not do anything about it. Then again, if you go unconscious down there, you'll probably be the first one rescued as you'd be on top of the victim... which means you've just killed your coworker... but you'd probably be ok with an SCBA, even if you don't know how to use it. MEH! I hope that's a decision I'm never faced with! Let's hear it for AIR QUALITY METERS! (or a canary :-)

Anyway, I also got hoisted in "fall protection" in the parking lot. Cool. (I got to be a dummy)

Anyway, I'm done grossing you out. I've just seen a whole lot of scary things recently, but I enjoy learning OSHA rules and safe work practices, so it was fun. Most people, myself included, think OSHA is a really dumb thing and a huge impediment to revenue. Turns out, though, that every OSHA rule is the bear minimum after enough fatalities occur. OSHA has some serious teeth, and I think that's probably a good thing. If someone dies because your company ignored safety, your company, unless it's huge, is gone. Seems a little extreme, but no amount of money is going to buy that person back nor comfort the grieving family... It should be employer's priority to keep their employees safe, but as proven in the thousands of work-related deaths per year, it comes down to money. Businesses used to consider deaths just "part of doing business." Back when a fatality would only cost the company $25,000 it was cheaper to willfully put employees into unsafe conditions. Now that a fatality caused by a company's willful neglect of federal OSHA law puts them out of business, people are starting to listen, and safety is becoming the norm rather than the exception. Who knows if it's the right solution to the problem, but at least it's causing businesses to make ethical decisions.

I'm thinking I might volunteer for the upcoming safety officer position in our group. I'll probably regret it as you have to do all your normal work plus ensure everyone's being safe, but I think it would be kind of fun :-) True, everyone will hate you when you tell them things like they have to be in a Category 3 suit (looks like an astronaut suit) to inspect an electrical panel, but most people don't like me anyway, so it wouldn't matter. Ok, ok... I guess everyone at work likes me ok right now... gotta fix that! SAFETY, HERE I COME! :-)