Whatever

When The Cat’s…

…away, the mice will play.

For the past couple of days, some of our company’s key folks, my department leadership and our Industrial Engineer have been away at a seminar/work session about a piece of our business software. They finished up this morning with the afternoon being earmarked for a round of golf as a fun wrap up of the event. So, a little before lunch, one of our our fabrication engineers received a text from the IE (the tall guy on the left) with the following photo attached:
Golfers

While those in the photo would tell you that the picture was meant as an indicator that their work was done and their smiles signified that much was accomplished. Those of us stuck at work covering for them, thought it more than likely that it was meant as a neener-neener. The Fab Engineer, myself and the CNC Programer (Hi Mark!) decided that this deserved some return fire. Our first plan involved standing outside on the back lawn of the plant in similar poses, but couldn’t come up with a work related substitute for the golf club. Our second idea was to get the cleaning person to open our boss’s (the guy in the middle above) office and we could all put our feet up on his desk. Or playing cards. Then the ideas started flowing. We could use the Engineering Conference Room. Put something up on the TV like we were watching ESPN. Hey put their photo on the screen. Here is what we came up with:
Sports Center

The playing cards came from Google. I grabbed large sized images of ace-high straight flushes in three different suits off the net, printed them out and then trimmed them down for us to hold. I didn’t think to print out the back of a five card hand, so in the large original photo you can see that I’m holding my cards so everyone can see my hand. In this low resolution image it looks like the back of a deck of cards because the clubs printed out in a blue-ish tint. The money on the table is real.

New Gutter

New Gutter

When we got home from work today our storm damaged gutter had been replaced. One of the nice workman even left us a nice bonus…

Fun With Reply All

This morning the woman who has held the job since the begining here at the Valve Store(TM), from back when it was called the Plant Manager’s Secretary, sent out a little email missive to the plant’s distribution list:

It’s been great working with all of you. This is my last week here at ASCO. My last day will be Friday, March 28. My replacements name is Hannah B. Please make her feel welcomed.

You can now send Hannah everything that you have been sending to me. She will also be booking the conference rooms.

I’m going to miss all of you!!

Kathy D
Operations Administrative Assistant

Not long after, the typical well wisher hit the reply all button:

Kathy, we will miss you as well, thank you for all the support you have given me over the years

Larry

Then we got this one:

Good morning everyone! I found a pack of gum on my way out this morning. If you lost it I have it. Thx skh

Next came one from someone who was going to miss her very, very much, but didn’t know how to spell her name.

Cathy I will miss you so much
Doris b stockroom

Then the writer of the pack of gum email tries to recall it (which never, ever works.) I can’t tell whether that person thought they were replying to a different email, batcrap crazy or brilliant, because if they were offering themselves up as an example of the foibles of hitting Reply All, it worked, as no further emails came to the distribution list.

The Week That Was

As a run up for Season 2 of Orphan Black the folks at BBC America released 8 sneak peeks and because I’m such a nice guy I collected all of them and made a handy YouTube playlist so you can watch them back to back to back…and when I say peeks they are just that at 15 seconds a piece. To add a little meat to the list I tacked on a trailer for Season 2 at the end.

What does Walt Whitman‘s “Song of Myself” have to do with the Clone Club? I have no idea, but it must mean something as a sharp-eyed Clone Ranger, Valerie Anne of the website AfterEllen, noticed that at the end of each of the sneak peek is a bit of binary code that converts into a line from that poem.

On Sunday John Travolta mangled the name of the singer for Frozen’s Oscar nominated song “Let It Go,” Idina Menzel calling her Adele Dazeem . Now if you’d like, thanks to Slate.com, you can find out how John would has mispronounced your name had you been her. Brian Bogardus would have been Benn Bozowens…

Now if I had known about this around Christmas time last year I would not have wasted my money on that quadcopter that lasted a week. Instead I would have commissioned my very own likeness as a rubber stamp.

I think I have said here before that my ideal Miata would be my first one reincarnated with about 20 to 30 thousand miles on it. Well here is one that is almost exactly fits the bill – Hemmings Find of the Day. It is not Smurf Blue, but I almost bought one in white when the wait for a blue one got past 100 days.

Wall Street Journal

I’m not sure if it is a local franchise owner thing or corporate wide, but the two Dunkin Donuts in town have a Wall Street Journal delivered to the store for the customers to read. Donna and I take advantage of this and enjoy reading it on the mornings we eat in the store. On the week days we are usually the ones to unwrap it as we are there by 6:15, but on Saturdays we are often much later and sometimes it has been read, is being read or completely gone.

After several Saturdays in a row of it not being there we asked what happened to the WSJ and one of the employees said somebody comes in and takes it. No further explanation was forthcoming, so we speculated; it was the franchise owner and it was really “his” paper or they were just afraid to say something or they just didn’t care. After a couple more Saturdays of it being there, the next visit there was somebody already there reading it. The nerve of him. Not only that, this fellow was sitting in our usual spot.

We sat down at a table on the other side of the store and made light conversation all the while thinking evil thoughts about the interloper. Part way through our breakfast that fellow got up, tucked the WSJ under his arm and walked out the door like it was the most natural thing. We mentioned it to an employee and she said, “Oh, he pays us for it. After all most mornings it never even gets taken out of the wrapper.” This didn’t sound right to us, but we figured if we wanted to read the Saturday Wall Street Journal we would just have to get to the store earlier.

A couple of Saturdays ago when I made a DD run and had to go back inside to get my coffee, I noticed the Saturday Journal sitting there at the condiment station right by the door. On my way back out I should have picked it up and taken it with me, no one would have been the wiser, but my warped sense of right and wrong wouldn’t let me.

Sixty Percent Water

According to wikipedia the human body is 60% water by weight, I had always thought it was 70%, but whatever. I do know that given the right set of circumstances, like say a stomach flu, you can come to believe that nearly all of that water has been expelled from your body under extreme pressure (from a couple different openings) in a little under an hour…

That was Thursday morning and I am just now returning to normal.

Big Plans?

Yesterday after breakfast we were off to visit with a friend for awhile, get some lunch and do that grocery shopping thing. Donna suggested getting some cash from the ATM to pay for lunch seeing as we were driving right by our bank on the way out of town.

Insert card, type in my PIN and when the screen comes up with my choices for services I tap the screen for $20 Fast Cash. Nothing happens. I hit the touch screen again with the same results. I try again, nothing. I pull back my hand and look at my fingertip like it could possible be the cause of failure here. I try tapping on Other Services, but, you guessed it, no response. While I contemplate the location my next futile screen press, the ATM beeps and the screen changes to a question, “Do You Need More Time?”

I think to myself, “Do I really need more time to unsuccessfully poke at the screen?” I answer myself, “Nope.” So with out thinking further, I press the screen where it says NO. Doh! As you would expect, nothing happened. Fortunately there is an physical Cancel button on the PIN number keypad.

So I go inside and walk up to the one of the two tellers and say, “The ATM touch screen isn’t working.” The other teller says, “We know, a technician is on his way.” My teller asks how much do you want, to which I say, “Just twenty bucks.” While my teller is filling out a withdrawal slip, the other teller asks, “Got big plans for the weekend?” I look at her, smile and say, “What do you think? I only asked for $20 bucks.”