Johnny Come Lately Name

What? And do his job? Nooooo.

There are big white ones - trillium grandiflorum - painted ones -trillium undulatum - and the purple ones - trillium erectum. I have also seen faded pinkish ones, but I think those are just a variation of the t. erectum species. They are among the first flowers in spring and it's always a treat to find them. I like finding Columbine, too. I also like to go "hunting" for Jack-In-The-Pulpit. They're kind of weird and can be hard to find because they're green and blend in with the rest of the shrubbery. Last year, when I was looking for those, I found this, instead:

How to get a 14'6" box into an 11' freight elevator. Early this morning, I get a phone call that rudely interrupts my web surfing. There's a truck here to make a delivery of a piece of equipment for one of the new labs. I get the call because I'm the only one here. I go up to meet the driver at the "Loading Dock" - which is just a ground level overhead door near the freight elevator. I go up and meet the driver and he tells me it's a 14' long box and weighs 800 lbs. Hmmm, this could be problematic. The grad student who works in the lab that this is going in shows up. The office guy who called me shows up. There is much consternation as to not only how the hell we're going to get this thing into the sub basement where it's going, but how we're even going to get it off the truck. Office Guy tells me he emailed and called Shiftless Jay -the building facilities guy who is supposed to handle this kind of crap - several times yesterday, but got no answer. The prof in charge of the lab shows up. There is much consternation and head scratching and the conclusion is reached that the truck driver is going to have to deliver the box to Facilities because they have a forklift and a real loading dock. No one's really sure what they're going to do after that, but at least it will get it off the truck. Then the prof mentions that what's in the box is a clean room. "So what if we take the cover off the box and unload the stuff by hand - at least enough to lighten the box to the point where we can lift it?" I receive dumbfounded looks, all around. I thought these guys were like, geniuses and shit? I go back downstairs, grab a screw gun and start taking the lid off. FNG shows up (he doesn't start til 9) grabs a second screw gun and we take the lid off. We unload all the small parts onto a cart and that goes in the freight elevator, along with the shorter pieces of aluminum extrusion. The 14' extrusions - easily carried by two people have to go down two flights of stairs but they manage. FNG and I grab a couple of saws and implements of destruction and make short work of the wooden box. THEN Shiftless Jay shows up.

Any fermentation worth a damn involves alcohol.

I thought for sure an invigilator was some sort of sex toy.

I made what were purported to be Bangers once. They were pretty good.

You bet. We were up in Ontario for a day trip and I walked up to an RCMP officer to ask directions. He started the conversation with "Good day, eh?" I walked away going "goddamn....they DO talk like the MacKenzie Brothers!"

At FTS, there was a sort of engineering group who had a plotter. There was another group who was in charge of the " corporate initiative du jour" and using the plotter to print "rah rah go team" type bullshit. I had access to the plotter for CAD stuff and for some reason, my PC seized on it as the default printer and any time I printed something I had to manually tell it I wanted the one in the "my"office. One day, I printed a meme of Dale Earnhardt and a Crash Test Dummy saying "Always Wear Your Safety Belt". It went to the wrong printer. I went to retrieve it, but as I walked up, I could see there was a bunch of people in the room - some of them upper echelon folks - so I just walked on by. Later my buddy - who was in the meeting - said the two groups were having a pissing match over who was using all the plotter ink and as they were standing there, guess what came scrolling out?????

MMS?

Yeah, but that was at least useful. I'm waiting until I can say "Alexa mow my lawn" or "Hey Google, wash my truck" before I get on board.

We got this printer shortly after COVID. We've been through many rolls of filament. Some of it was even work related.

Yup! All I know is it's for LIGO, -the gravitational wave folks- and it's one iteration of a thing where they're testing resonant frequency of some sort of wires. Or some shit.

Leaving a CNC running overnight is even more "fun". You can have some REAL carnage with those if shit goes sideways.

Why? So I could sit at home going - "Yup....it's fucking up...."? Kind of like putting my smoker on wi-fi, so I monitor it with the phone app. All that does is let me know the brisket went up in flames and I need to get takeout on the way home.

I made a casual, offhand remark about getting one for the shop. Next thing I know, there's a whole committee set up to discuss the purchase. The Chair was in on the first meeting, and it was decided we were going to get an inexpensive one at first, then a spendy one. Next meeting, she's not there and that was the first thing that went out the window. The cheap one got tossed aside and they went right for the $13K one.

My son's Jeep was on it's last legs and he finally decided at 34 y/o to take a loan and buy a new car. I get a text from him asking how you sleep at night with a loan hanging over your head. I told him if he was asking that question, he'd be fine. It's the ones who don't, who get in trouble. I basically had to talk him into taking a loan out! Heh. His mom has always been good about that. When he was little, we were going on vacation and she gave him some money. She told him it was his money to spend as he saw fit, but once it was gone, that was it. No more. It was really funny to watch how much of a discriminating shopper he became!

Nooo Like this:

I had a former supervisor who was from Poland. He said he’d been in the US for so long that when he went back to Poland, they told him he spoke Polish with an accent!

- the ones where, as I come in, I get to wonder whether the 3D printer job I left running when I left last night either printed successfully or ate itself. I was especially daring last night because I set up to print two parts. As I walk down the hallway, I hear no beeping - that’s a good sign. Unlock the door, turn on the light… ”Well there’s the one part….where’s the other? Did it not print it???” ”Oh, there it is….stuck to the nozzle….”

Yup. They’re out around here. I noticed a cluster of purple ones the other day. I had to use “portrait” mode on the phone to blur out the background, because Luna took a big dump, right behind them. 😑

If it was an AMF-era Harley I would have assumed they were factory.

chopped liver?

Hah! Joke’s on you! (Don’t know if they served onion, though).

During my lunch today there were hundreds of students on the quad today, changing classes. One girl ahead of me was talking fairly animatedly, waving her arms around a bit. She accidentally whacked another student walking by. ”SORE-ee”.

No, you’d lose an electron, so the mass would stay the same.