Best retort of the day

My Boss: I forgot to tell you what orientation we need the output to be.
DaGoof: Ugh, really?
MB: Let's look at the model.
*Opening files*
 (after much discussion)
MB: Damn, it's V not H. Does that make you hate me?
DaGoof: It's a good thing Christmas is a long way off, you've got a lot of reparations to make if you want to get a card from me.

Sim City meets plumbers nightmare - and it needs to change, again.

g

Don't Mess....Part 2

In response to Don't Mess with OUR 'Hood I found this in the town paper:

10:25 p.m. – Police received a call
about mailbox vandalism on F____ St.
Through an investigation, police learned
four youths were horsing around near
the box, causing it to collapse. The damage
to the box was unintentional. The
youth who caused the box to fall
obtained a new mailbox for the resident
and no charges were filed.

A couple of things bother me about this; 1.) that mail box had been up all winter long. On this street a "snow deflector" is required or you have to pick your mailbox up after every storm (think large highway plows on rural streets @ 40mph) and a little nudge knocked it off?. 2.) "Horsing around", "unintentional" ...and left the mailbox in the middle of the road? Not cool. 3.) "No charges were filed"..... I hope they got the stuff scared out of them because we are far to lenient on our kids. Sure, no one wants to see "their" kid in shackles but if there are not proper consequences for actions what is to keep them from vandalizing again and again?
g

Don't Mess with OUR 'Hood

In my neighborhood, we all have a fair amount land and the houses are rather spaced apart but I know most, if not all, of my surrounding neighbors and many heading up to the end of the street. And if I don't know them, I'm 99% positive they know who I am (walking a dog twice a day, every day for 8 years has that effect).

I had just finished watching a movie on Saturday night and I hear my neighbor (S1) yelling. Usually if he goes on a bender it's an all night affair but he had been quiet until then (10pm). I get up and watch to see what he's doing from the side door. He's walking back to his truck from the end of the driveway. WTF??? He walks back up the driveway and shines a light down the side walk. ??? I walk to the other side of the house and look out another window and see someone laying down in my other neighbors (S&L's) yard. S1's light hits him and he runs up S&L's driveway heading for the woods.

I throw my shoes on, grab a light, and head out the door. I can hear him crashing through the brush but it's too dark to see him or which way he went. I scan the area for a bit until I hear S1 talking to someone. I head over the other side of the yard and discover him talking with another neighbor (of the same name), S2. S2 is a state trooper. S2 says his wife saw four kids heading up the road with bats and bash a mailbox near their house.

I stick around long enough to get the story and that S1 was just getting home when he saw these characters hiding in the lawns. As I am heading back down the sidewalk in front of my house I see someone walking  towards me. It's K, from 3 doors down. She and her husband were just getting home when they saw someone lingering around their yard. K's husband stopped the kid and started questioning him, while K was trying to figure out if something was going on in the neighborhood.

By the time we were heading back to the house the police show up and start looking around and head off to the side street that runs behind us.

I don't know if they caught the little buggers but the knuckleheads were some stupid:

• Our street sees a lot of speeders so it's patrolled regularly by the police. 
• The college at the end of the street just finished their multimillion dollar boat house and public safety goes by at least twice an hour to check on it. 
• Plus these bozos were doing this at 10:00, let me guess, they had to get in their malice before their 11:00 curfew? If that's the case then they missed it. "Junior, where in the hell were you?" "umm, hiding from the police and a lynch mob in the woods...."

I can't believe just how stupid the youth are in my town. You'd like to think that they just might put 2 and 2 together and figure out that they are under a microscope given the national media they have received for the last 4 months. But alas, apparently our schools don't teach consequences well enough.

Don't mess our 'hood!
g

Tolerance for Ignorance - Dwindling

Once upon a time I had no tolerance for ignorance. Over the last several years I've learned to change and have some compassion toward those who can't be bothered to pay attention to anything.

That compassion is dwindling rapidly.

Today, Tech 1 at work is frantically trying to find some cables and I overhear this. I ask him what project it's for and he gives me the answer I expected. I then ask him if he checked the boxes under the cart the project is sitting on....."uh, no".

Two weeks ago after I finished the rough assembly (I assemble all of the components onto the framework because these "people" can't be bothered to read a print and would call me over anyway), I went over the basics with the Tech 2 and made a point of telling him that when I ordered X, I ordered all the cables he wanted to operate X and they are in the boxes on the bottom cart the system was sitting on.

I ask Tech 1 "Did you look in the boxes on the cart below the system?"

Tech 1 - blank stare

I explain "I ordered everything Tech 2 wanted that was used in the 'previous' system".

Tech 1 scurries off.

I follow a few minutes later just to confirm my expectations.

They had it all along, not 5 feet from them, and managed to get themselves, a software person, and a network tech all worked up and searching for a red herring over nothing.

Like I said, my tolerance in dwindling.

g

ER Visits

I am tired of hospitals.

Since January 2008 we (the 4 of us) have been customers at hospitals a total of 8 times!

The Rundown for posterity:
Jan 08 - DaMom is pregnant with the flu, she gets dehydrated and requires 3 bags of fluid.
Jun 08 - DaBoy is Born.
Jul 08 - DaMom has an emergency appendectomy.
Aug 08 - DaGirl tries to climb up the side of the highchair and it falls on her splitting her head open.
Sep 08 - DaBoy has a high fever and the pediatrician sends us to the ER.
Oct 08 - DaGoof cuts his fingers on the table saw.
Mar 09 - DaMom cuts her finger with the razor knife.
Apr 09 - DaBoy goes to the ER for a high fever.

This list does not take into account regular or emergency visits taken care of by the pediatrician's office. There were plenty more of these.

Astute readers will notice the void in emergency visits between October 08 and Mar 09. I believe this was because my father's long term stay in the hospital was acting as kryptonite against the forces that draw us into the ER.

The April 09 visit was last night and has us quite PO'd with our pediatrician. Late Sunday, DaBoy started with a fever of 103°F. Motrin knocked it down (100°F min) for a while but it spiked back up to 104°F by Monday afternoon. He was not a happy camper and wasn't comfortable in his own skin.

With a fever that high in a 9 month old no one is going to mess around so we call the pediatrician and get an appointment for 7:30pm. They check him out and can't find anything wrong. They give him more Motrin since he was due for his next dose anyway and send us to the ER claiming they can't do any lab work at this time of night.

Off we go to the only pediatric unit around which happens to be at the busiest ER in the area. We wait and wait and wait and wait and then finally see the triage nurse. By this time (2 hours) he's due for his next dose so they give it to him. We then go and wait some more. In a relatively short time we get called into the pediatric unit and wait some more. Finally we see the doctor who isn't willing to take blood for labs but will only take a urine sample. How do get pee on demand from a 9 month old? One word that makes men cringe that I shall not repeat here.

They rule out a UTI and send us home......WTF!!!
4 Hours in the ER, another hour at the pediatrician's office, $65 in co-pays and what did we get in return? One very pricey sippy cup and a popsicle he didn't eat!!!!

We got home at 12:30 this morning. DaBoy and DaGirl were both up at 3:00 looking for diapers and cuddles. I didn't get back to bed until 4:30.

g

Oh New England

March 25, 1998.
The date I picked up my brandy new Exploder from the dealership.

March 20, 2009.
The date I tapped the rocker panel with my foot and most of it flaked to the ground.

It looks even worse underneath

Last year I had to take the running boards off because they were starting to wobble. That's when I first saw the cancer. I figured I could stretch a few more years out of it but the inevitable is approaching rapidly. My truck is dying.

So now I'd like to offer my special thanks to:

• The plastic covers that both caused and hid the rust (it has gotten so far out of hand it can't be fixed).
• The New England states and towns that find it necessary to dump caustic, rust inducing chemicals on the road at the slightest sign of ice because people are to stupid to slow down in inclement weather.
• Stupid people who insist aforementioned product be spread on the ground so they may continue speeding.
  

Eleven years and done.

And after 5 years of owning it, guess who's finally coming out for summer chores?
g

Boxes...

Why do people feel the need to open other peoples boxes?

I handle 90% of the parts that go out to be machined, fabricated, plated or painted. The other 10% are handled by our "middle eastern division" (they're in an eastern cell of the converted strip mall we're in, and the name just fits) When an item is for plating or painting I box the items, make up the parts lists, call for pick up, deal with any QC issues the vendor has and perform the incoming inspection. It is generally understood that if the white truck from the other side of the river is here, it's here for me.

So then why did a particular busy body see the need to open a box that came back from plating this afternoon?

I saw the truck pull in. I put the box on the bench in front of my cube. I knew what it was and I knew it could stay boxed up for the day. We have enough stuff spread around here and keeping the contents of that box together and wrapped up would be fine until we got to Boston to do the final install. As long as the parts were in the box they could be all scratched and hot pink and I could care less, their function would still be performed.

Now the box is gone and the parts are who knows where. I'm not even sure he signed the packing slip.

So then back to the question, why?

Is it the fear of not knowing what's inside an unopened box?

Is it the joy that comes from opening a sealed box?

Is it need to be in everyone's business?

Yeah, that's it.

g

The Dentist

Do I need to say more?

Yes, It's my Blog.

So I was supposed to go to the dentist on Tuesday for a cleaning. That didn't happen. My body had been rejecting all food substances since 1:30 Tuesday morning and I spent 19 of the next 24 hours in bed. A trip to DMD's House Of Pain wasn't in the cards.

But they wanted me in there anyway at 8 on Wednesday. yippie.

The following is a mostly factual account of the conversations that occurred at the dentists office.

Jen (hygienist): How are you today?
g: Better than yesterday.
J: Yeah there seems to be something going around.
g: (duh)
J: Do you have any teeth that are bothering you today?
g: No.
J:We'll fix that. Open wide.
g: (huh?)
J: Oh, I found two superficial cavities.
J: Do you grind your teeth?
g: I have young kids, I grit my teeth a lot.
J: Ha ha, well these look like they might be caused by grinding at night wearing the enamel......blah blah blah
g: (Great my subconscious is trying to wreck my teeth) nah
J: Well let me get the doctor and we should be able get these taken care of right now without novacain.
g: NUH? (remember, her instruments of pain are trying to find new portals of discomfort, my side of the conversation is pretty limited.)

Sure enough he comes in and says the same thing. I feel like they rehearse this stuff for me.

DMD: This won't take long.
g: snarf
DMD: BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
g: eek
DMD: BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
g: (Ok there's the smoke Bill Cosby used to talk about, you can stop now!)
DMD: BUZZZZZBUZZZZZZbuzzBUZZZZ
g:(Is there something I can stab him with, no wait you now have holes in your teeth, they need to fill them first)

That's how they get you see. They'll wear you out with the drilling and by the time you are ready to commit a felony, you just want out.

DMD: His teeth are pretty sensitive (DUH, I'm the guy who can feel everything and need super hightest novacain.) I recommend a Bite Analysis.
g: grunt (another thing to sell me, I must have bought him a car by now)

Malicious Destruction of Property

When I was growing up girls were held to a higher standard. I don't remember any girl intentionally setting out to mess up, damage, or otherwise harm someone's property. That was left to the adolescent boys. Sure, the girls were conniving, scheming, defaming and probably planning the destruction, but they didn't actively participate. They would tell their boy slave to carry out the misdeed and it would be done. Almost godfatherlike. Only a lot younger, with a training bra.

I never went out and vandalized something for the hell of it. Sure, I enjoyed breaking up construction debris or other junk discarded in the woods and maybe i moved something just freak someone out, but I never damaged someones usable stuff. I didn't see the joy in it and didn't understand why other people did.

Last night was our weekly Water Babies class at our local YMCA. Our kids are close enough in age that both are in the same class. Really it's an excuse to splash around in a pool for a half hour. My kids are fish. They love the place.

Our YMCA has two pools, one is large and used for swim team practices and the other is smaller and heated. The small pool is still very big, two classes can be held in it at one time and there is still plenty of open space in the middle. There are youth and adult changing rooms conveniently located and outside of the pool area there are two "Family Changing Rooms". I emphasize this because for the last two weeks we've had to wait in the cold hallway while girls from the swim team use these changing rooms. Cold and wet 7 and 28 month old kids are not fun to be around.

Last night was stupidity at it's finest.

All of our street clothes were in the lockers in the bigger of the two rooms and a gaggle of girls were holding the room hostage while they were showering and slowly changing into their clothes. When the other room finally cleared I took the kids to into it and started getting them changed since all of their diapers and sleep stuff was in the bag we took into the pool area. My wife proceeded to beat down the door until they let her into get our stuff when she was greeted by water all over the floor and on our stuff in the lockers! They had also shot some spray soap through the grates of the locker and into my socks and underwear.

WTF!!!!

I have no idea who these children are and they don't know me. Why mess with any of our stuff? We did grab one of the swim coaches and complained at the front desk so hopefully these little $4!t$ get booted out.

Last night was far to cold and snowy to be outside, commando, in damp jeans with no socks on.

How's that for imagery?