The Dungeons and Dragons role playing game has just turned 30 years old. I was a major nerd and a big fan of the game. I have recently thought about getting back into it since I haven't really played since high-school. The last memory I have of the game is, "No Fred, you can't have a 17th level 8-foot Chaotic-Evil vampire fighter/barbarian with all 18-00 stats and a -10 AC."
The game was set forth primarily by (Ernest) Gary Gygax in 1974. He approached Avalon Hill with the game and they passed so he created his own company to produce the game, TSR. I've always heard about the TSR/Gygax split and never understood why someone would leave a growing industry when their name is synonymous with the game itself. There are many rumors about why. Most start out with TSR being split evenly 3 ways. When one guy (Kaye) died in 1976, Gygax bought his shares and soon realized he was overextended and had to sell half his holdings to the third guy (Blume). The company ran up debt and Blume was ousted and sold out to Lorraine Williams. This is where the rumors split. One story I read says he was using cocaine and ended up in a divorce. He had borrowed the money to start TSR from his in-laws and never paid it back so they owned the company when he got divorced. Interesting but probably false. Another leaves out the drugs and in-laws and just says that the wife acquired half his shares in the divorce and sold him out to the new owner, Williams. Yet another, and probably the most true, is that he just sold his shares because he thought Williams would run the company into the ground and just jumped ship before any more damage could be done. It looks like he was right.
An interesting side note, Williams did run the company into the ground and eventually sold to Wizards of the Coast. WotC has since been bought out by Hasbro who also owns Avalon Hill.
An interesting enough story to those of us that form the D&D sub-culture and understand terms like, "THAC0", "Alignment Check" and "Dice Fight!"
Wednesday, 1-26-5 Collective nouns for animal groups.
Last night I was helping Becca with her homework and learned that a group of Penguins is called a Colony. I got to thinking about some of the other names like a murder of crows and a pod of dolphins. I remembered that last week I had seen a group of tigers called something cool but I couldn't remember what it was so I looked it up. Did you know that we have a different collective name for almost every animal? I was amazed at some of them, so, now I share some of the cooler ones with you. I'm leaving out a lot of them because there are so many. I'm also leaving out some of the standards like school of fish or flock of birds. A group of Ants can be called a Nest, Army, Swarm, Colony or Bike. I'm leaving out nest, army swarm and colony because we already know them. I didn't know what a bike of ants was. BTW, a group of tigers is called an ambush (or streak). Pretty cool huh?
Apes : Shrewdness Bears : Sloth or Sleuth Bats : Cloud Boars : Singular (Isn't that defeating the purpose?) Bobolinks : Chain Buzzards : Wake Cobras : Quiver Cockroaches : Intrusion Cows : Kine (Yeah, I thought 'Herd' too) Crocodiles : Float Eagles : Convocation Elephants : Memory Ferrets : Business Flamingos : Stand Foxes : Skulk Frogs : Knot Giraffes : Tower Gnus : Implausibility Grasshoppers : Cluster Goats : Trip Housecats : Nuisance (I swear! I read this in several places.) Jellyfish : Smack Lice : Flock Owls : Parliament or Stare Peacocks : Ostentation Pheasants (when in flight) : Bouquet Ponies : String (A string of poloponies) Raccoons : Gaze Rattlesnakes : Rhumba Ravens : Unkindness Rhinoceros : Crash Sharks : Shiver Wild Cats : Destruction Wombats : Wisdom Woodpeckers : Descent
I saw a lot of other cool names but I only saw them listed in one place so I didn't want to believe them. Everything listed above was found in at least three different places including one [.gov website] so I'll believe them but... a stand of flamingos? a memory of elephants? Who makes these things up?
Monday, 1-24-5 With the snow they are getting in the Northeast I got to thinking about our old family dog when I lived in Connecticut. Josie was a St. Bernard, the classic rescue dog pictured with a cask of brandy under his neck in cartoons. So I looked it up. The St. Bernard breed was really used as rescue dogs in the Alps. St Bernard de Menthon set up 2 hospices in the alps at 8000' and 7000' above sea level. The dogs would go out in teams with the monks. When they found some one, one would lie down next to him and lick his face to warm him up and the other would go back to get the monk. Cool, but I couldn't find any reference to them actually carrying barrels of brandy under their necks. They say the mountain dogs were actually the short hair breed because the long hair breed's coat formed icicles.
I briefly had another breed of snow-dog living with me but she didn't get along with our other dogs. I didn't feel right about keeping her in Florida and only having a small yard. Teresa didn't like her because she had one green eye, one blue eye and had wicked cool masking lines. She looked tough but she was a wimp.
WARNING, the following is religious in nature and I have been known to think "off-center" when it comes to this subject.
I've come across this particular passage before but it returned to me in an unusual way this week so I started reading about it again. Matthew 19:20-24 is where Jesus is confronted by a guy who wants to buy his way into Heaven. He responds with the bit about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Apparently, this still puts people off. Does he mean that the wealthy can never get to Heaven? You have to be poor to get into Heaven? Does this mean all poor people get into Heaven? Does Jesus hate rich people? Is being rich a sin?
To get around this, people have "discovered" that in the city wall surrounding Jerusalem, there was a night-time gate called the "needle's eye". After the main gate was closed for the night, you had to pass through a small, narrow passage to get in. If you had a camel with you, you had to unload it all the way down and have it crawl on its knees. So Jesus was actually referring to that passageway and the rich CAN get into Heaven, they just have to do so on their knees (praying?) and unload their earthly goods. Of course I've never been to Jerusalem and I'm not a few thousand years old so I can't say for sure but after checking a few books and reading a few dozen web-pages on the subject, I would say that the narrow gate in the city wall was not called the needle's eye or any such thing if it even ever existed. May have, but most sources I can find say it was never documented as such until the 9th century, well AFTER the controversy started.
Another way the churches are passing over this one is saying the translation was incorrect. The Greek for camel, 'kamelos' is close to the word for cable or rope, 'kamilos'. Jesus actually meant that it is possible but the rich have to concentrate and work harder at it. Again, every source I can find argues against it. No manuscript before 400AD has the kamilos translation. A vary basic rule in ancient text translations is to suspend Ockham's Razor. If there is a discrepancy, the more difficult is probably correct. The reasoning behind this is that we often hear what we want to hear. By substituting an easier word for one that doesn't seem right introduces errors into the text because it will be read over smoothly whereas an unusual word will stick out and be scrutinized. It's too easy to re-write things in our own vernacular but we have to remember that as words and meanings change over time and through cultures (especially metaphors), so too will people be reading our words far into the future and our corrupt translations will only be magnified until the original meaning is lost, if that hasn't happened already.
In both the Talmud and the Koran there are a few stories that contain the same parable. All of them are obvious references to a physical camel or elephant, a physical sewing needle and a physical impossibility. I researched the web and delved into my own books and I found the answer in the very book all this has sprung up from, the Christian Bible. Read one verse further (Matthew 19:25) and you see the disciples are pretty bummed out about this and ask who can get into Heaven. Jesus tells them that it is impossible without God. I don't think there's a better explanation than that for arguing that Jesus meant an actual camel and an actual needle. All these people trying to find an easy way out really should read their own book a little closer.
I say there's an easier way around this. If you really want to make a loop-hole I've got a way. I can't guarantee any afterlife in Heaven and I can't guarantee that you won't be sent straight to Hell for trying to find a way around his words. Does Jesus reward or punish creativity? If you really want to solve this camel/needle problem, buy a Cuisinart, a hypodermic and a large tapestry needle with a large eye. Use the puree setting to make liquid camel. You might need to add something to help it along, water, milk or ice (camel-flavored margarita anyone?) Suck it up into the hypodermic and squirt it through the eye of the tapestry needle. I know the hypodermic is technically a needle and squirting the camel through the hypo gets a camel through a needle but we want to be thorough here. This is your everlasting soul we're talking about here, don't scrimp on a simple needle, we want to be sure. Besides, you can afford it, you're rich, or you wouldn't be doing this in the first place.
Thursday, 1-13-5 Air Most of us who are still alive breathe air throughout most of the day. Most people think of it as Oxygen. Actually, eliminating anomalies like breathing by a chlorinated pool, a port-o-potty or Los Angeles, "fresh air" breaks down into the following: 78.084% Nitrogen 20.984% Oxygen 00.934% Argon 00.031% Carbon Dioxide 00.003% Other The "Other" gases include: Neon, Helium, Krypton, Xenon, Hydrogen, Ozone, Nitrous Oxide and Methane.
Our lungs only use about 5% of the gas we breathe in. Our exhaled breath is still 16% Oxygen.
Monday, 1-10-5 The Guinness Book Of World Records has a website that lets you look up individual records and submit your own records. BTW, they do not consider being able to lick your elbow a record. That's just an urban myth. While it may be rare, many people CAN do it. So, lets assume the WR for being able to balance a slice of bologna on its side while playing the tuba is 2 hours. After years of practice, you can do it for 2 hours and five minutes. You go to their website, look up the bologna/tuba record page and click on the link "Break this record".
OK, that was a long way to go for this but here's a picture of their page for the most people killed in a single terrorist attack;
Yes, that is a "Break this record" link in the middle of the page. It has since been removed. I guess they decided it was a bad idea to encourage the terrorists to "one-up" eachother. You've got to wonder if they caught this internally or if someone had to point it out to them. It would be funny except as low as network TV has been getting recently I soon expect to see them start the "terrorist olympics". Just mix "Fear Factor, with Jackass and add a little Jerry Springer".
Friday, 1-7-5 Fractal Branching Robots The first house robots will not look like Rosie from the Jetsons. They may look like an ugly bush with no leaves. A stick that splits into three more sticks a bunch of times. It works like the old Breck? shampoo commercial. "I'll tell two friends, and they'll tell two friends and they'll tell two friends..." except they branch by threes. It will be able to grab and hold things while still moving other limbs. So it could hold onto the broom while moving the joints behind it to sweep. Kind of like how we can grip with our hands and still move our arms. The researchers are planning on making it move by using shape memory alloy muscles. This is just a fancy way of saying "wire that stretches when you cool it and returns to normal when heated". It will move each individual arm by heating and cooling Nitinol wires that connect the "limbs" to the joints. Sounds pretty primitive considering all the powerful servos and motors we have available but servos and motors eat up a lot of room and power, the Nitinol wires will take very little space and little energy to cool. With a 9th level bush (branching out 9 times) you'd have 29523 individual limbs. You'd never be able to make one functional with servos. Very cool stuff but they are still years away from making this work. They'd still have to hook it into a brain computer and optical sensors in order to do intelligent things without human control. Remote control robots are still just RC, they need artificial intelligence to become Rosie the Robot. A simple command like "sweep the floor" or "open the door" and off it goes. If I have to sit there and use a remote to make it sweep, I might as well go low tech and pick up the broom myself. I'll never see an AI "servant-bot" of any type but maybe they're not too far in the future.
Thursday, 1-6-5 While again searching for more music, I came across Graham Parker. I'd never heard of him before. I checked out a lot of sites and they mostly credit him with laying down a path for punk rock. I don't hear it in the music I heard but oh well, they say Metallica used to be speed metal too so I guess times change... They also compare him to Elvis Costello. Not really my style.
Anyway, this Graham Parker guy has a song called "I'll Never Play Jacksonville Again" and that's what made me check him out. I guess the guy got booked at the old "Milk Bar" back in 1997 and didn't get promoted to the right people. No one hung around for the show. Poor guy. I pity anybody that got booked in that hole. Earlier that same day as he drove up to Jax from St. Pete, 2 girls got sucked into 2 different storm drains in Tampa and he vaguely mentions it in this song. One died, the other made it through. I read
this article
about the girls and the reporter (Mike Wilson) talks to the parents. The parents of the girl that died sued the city and settled for $200,000. They are upset that no warning signs have been posted or fences put up at the drains. He would put up signs himself but it would cost $700. The incident happened in 1997 and the article was written in 2002. So for 5 years he's thought about it? With almost a quarter million dollar settlement he's had to spend 5 years debating on whether or not to shell out the $700 that he thinks is needed to keep kids safe? I honestly don't mean to make light of this guy's horrible tragedy but come on... And does he really think a sign will keep the kids safe? You'd have to post a sign at every drain pipe in the city. In the Country. In the WORLD! And a sign doesn't do much for you as you are swept past it in a flash flood. Instead, why not have parents tell their kids not to play in the sewers during a storm. Ah, you can't prep kids for every tragedy that may greet them on the long road of growing up but you can give them some common sense and hope that they use it. Most won't. I know I didn't most of the time. In fact, there's a storm drain going under Lone Star Rd. that a buddy of mine and I hung out in all the time. Maybe under different circumstances, tragedy may have befallen me and someone might have mentioned me in a song. A terrible thing happened to this guy's daughter and I hope it never happens to anyone again but this story only proves the old line about how "it's a wonder any of us survived our childhood".
Wednesday, 1-5-5 There are more variations of noise than you would imagine. The static you hear between radio stations or when the TV goes off the air... Hold on... I guess you'd have to be pretty old to remember when they did that.
Well kids, back about 157 years ago, in 1984, someone invented infomercials and the TV network studios saw a chance to make more money and compete with cable TV by offering the latest inventions by Ron Popeil, Richard Simmons exercise videos and Ginsu knives around the clock.
Up until then, around 1am every night, the television stations would go off the air. The volume would go up to max and the National Anthem would play while a soothing voice told you that they've "reached the end of our programming day and the station was signing off for the night". The video was always a flag superimposed on a flying eagle or an aerial view of the city you were in. This was followed by a piercing squeal and color bars. If you hadn't turned it off by then, you got static. A snowy screen and that sound we all identify as "white noise". (A lot of it is actually caused by terrestrial and interstellar microwaves being picked up by the antenna.) If you can't remember a time when TVs didn't babble at you 24/7 then you probably don't remember the beginning of the movie "Poltergeist". Go rent it.
Well today I found out that there are variations in what we call static and they are all identified by color. White noise, Blue noise, Violet, Pink and Brown noise. It reads like a Dr. Seuss book huh? This is a list of some of them and what they are reportedly used for.
White: A standard/constant to test acoustics. Same power at all frequencies. Pink: Simulates phase shift in communications equipment. Green: Simulates voice for testing communication channels. Commonly called Earth Noise. Brown: Takes it's name from an algorithm of Brownian Motion Red: Simulates noise from great distances. Oceanic noise. Blue: Used for dithering. Don't ask. Inverse of Pink. Purple: Differentiated white noise. Inverse of Brown. Orange: All sounds left after all musical notes are eliminated. Grey: Time/bit-length specific noise. Creates a grainy, rumbling noise. Black: I found two different definitions for this one; - a. Generic term for any noise that cancels out another. - b. Ultrasonic white noise, you can't hear it, you feel it.
Tuesday, 1-4-5 Reading further from yesterday I found a little more info about air traffic control. I work in the ARTCC for the Jacksonville airspace (ZJX). This is where all the controllers are that handle all air traffic after/before the individual airport towers control landing/takeoff. They all sit 1 floor above me and I have no idea what's going on up there. I can actually get more info from the web about what I do than I can at work! Not the technical stuff but what happens after the circuit leaves my domain. At work it is deemed "not out concern". I want to know!
There is a very clear line of distinction between us "techies" and the controllers. They consider us to be beneath them. Every once in a while I have to go up there for some reason and I get to see the room full of screens and scopes but I don't get to look around much. Paul (the guy I work with) says that the controllers never talk to us and are all kind of stuck-up. Not too long after I started working here (May/June) I was leaving to go home and a guy stopped me. He said he had noticed the "Gibraltar" sticker on my truck and asked if I played drums. (Gibraltar is a brand of hardware for drums) We talked for a good 20 minutes. He told me that they had a rock band here at the ARTCC and that the drummer was retiring soon and did I want to come play. They do a few charity shows a year and pick up regular gigs in a local club the rest of the year. They were worried that they wouldn't find a replacement for the guy that's leaving. He was really excited about finding me until he asked where I was from. I told him Connecticut but that I had been in Jacksonville for a number of years. He asked if I had transferred from Jax Approach. I told him I wasn't a controller, I was COMM. The conversation quickly ended and he said he knew where to find me and he'll talk to me soon. I haven't heard form him since. I guess they do have their own little world.
Monday, 1-3-5 Doing a bit of reading on airplanes today. It started when I came across a discussion that was about a flaw in a movie. Someone had pointed out that in the movie someone says the airplane "has 2000 pounds of thrust" but it was a single prop plane. Piston (propeller) engines are measured in Horsepower and jet engines are measured in Pounds of Thrust.
I also learned something else. A 747 has a maximum takeoff weight between 734,000-875,000 pounds and a maximum landing weight between 564,000-630,000 pounds depending on which model 747 it is. I always thought the movies showed the pilots dumping fuel for an emergency landing to reduce the risk of a fire. It's actually because the plane will rip itself apart if it lands too hard/too heavy. It sounds like a lot of room for error but they weigh between 379,500-410,000 pounds empty and they carry a lot of non-passenger cargo. They can carry between 47,205-57,161 gallons of fuel. Jet fuel is calculated at 6.8 pounds per gallon so that's 388,695 pounds of fuel. The paint job alone weighs a little over 1000 pounds! Do they weigh passenger baggage? I know they don't weigh carry-on.
You have to wonder if they'll think of all this if someone ever charters a plane to fly the "Fat-Blacksmiths Guild" to a weight loss convention. Double/triple the weight of regular passengers in the (relatively) same space, they're all carrying on anvils. You're going to need more fuel to carry a heavier weight... Too many calculations done by the same industry that can't decide if I need to take my shoes off or not to get through security to get on the plane in the first place. I don't know, maybe I'll slim down a little. I wouldn't want to be the reason we crashed on landing.
Thursday, 12-23-4 I just read that a friend of ours was bitten by a brown recluse spider, (Loxosceles recluse). He's got all the bad symptoms, big hole, blackened skin legion, surgeries. However, another friend pointed out that it is almost NEVER an actual brown recluse. So, I did a little reading....
In the year 2000, there were 300 reports in the Tampa area/central Florida and none were ever confirmed. Most of them turn out to be "I didn't see what bit me" and they are blamed on the BR after the symptoms start to get ugly. Another doctor says that out of 1000 actual BR bites (nationwide), only about 12 turn into the big nasty infections we think of with a BR bite (hemolysis).
There has been no US deaths attributed to the Brown Recluse and in all of Florida, there has only been one confirmed BR bite and 2 other BR captures (without bite). All three were brought in from other territory. The BR does not live here in Florida.
Most bites are actually misdiagnosed and usually turn out to be: "Tick-induced, Viral, Bacterial, Fungal, Blood Disorders, Underlying Disease States, Cancer, Reaction to Drugs/toxins, Topical, Miscellaneous/ Multiple Causative or Unknown Causative Agents."
They say that a misdiagnosis can be a major problem because is causes unnecessary scaring and in some cases can case death because the actual cause is not being treated. I hope they get this one right and I hope Tom (LBNG) gets better soon...
Wednesday, 12-15-4 I was just downloading (legally from iTunes) some Cab Calloway music and I looked him up on the web. I found out his famous cartoon with Betty Boop is one of the pre-Hays Act cartoons and never would have been allowed just 3 years later because of the drug references.
2 bits of trivia I stumbled upon: Cocaine's molecular make-up is [C17H21NO4] and was first made in 1859 by Albert Neimann Betty Boop's Father's name is "Otto". Her Mother's name is never mentioned.
Due to the depression, the only movies that would make money had lots of sex, drugs and violence. Same as today I guess. The Hay's act was the film industry's way of self-governing to avoid government censorship. It lasted into the 60's and was replaced by the MPAA rating system we all know today. Of course some additions/subtractions have been made since the 60's; M, GP, PG-13, NC-17 etc.
Tuesday, 12-14-4 Do you know where the phrase "Dog days of summer" comes from? I was doing a little etymology research and wandered into "phraseology" (Uh-huh, there is such a word. Mayor Shinn told me so...) and found it quite by accident.
"The ancient Romans noticed that the hottest days of the year, i.e. in late July and early August, co-incided with the Dog Star (aka Sirius, aka The Great Dog) being in the same part of the sky as the Sun. They thought the star contributed to the heat of the day."
12-8-4 Frequencies: Most of the places I checked contradicted each other but here are some "facts" about the audible range. Human hearing range is close to 64Hz and 20,000Hz. They say that babies can hear up to 22,000Hz but we lose that spectrum of hearing after infancy. Everyone thinks of dogs and the silent whistle but cats have better hearing than dogs. Cats can hear between 45Hz-64,000Hz while dogs can only hear between 67Hz-45,000 so a whistle that blows at say 52,000Hz would piss off the cat while keeping your dog happy. I've got to get one of them. If you could hear the electrical hum in your house (assuming you are in America) it is at 60Hz and is a 'B Flat' musically speaking. Elephants and ferrets can hear as low as 16 Hz. What are they saying to each other that we don't know about? Mark my words, one day the elephant/ferret conspiracy will be unveiled and by then.... It will be too late.
12-6-4 OK, I'm learning some cool stuff but none of it that I want to post as it may be questionable material. Haha! Some of the other things I learned I can't post because I used that information to purchase a Christmas gift for a friend. Basically, I've been in a deep funk. Who'd ever have thought that learning can be so tough?
11-17-4 San Quentin Prison. They are planning to do another repair/expansion on the 80 year-old facility. San Marin County wants them to re-locate it instead of repairing it. Right now it sits on 432 acres of waterfront property across from San Francisco. City officials claim the property is desperately needed to build "affordable housing" or possibly a ferry port to alleviate traffic congestion.
It's a standard news story but there were a couple of things I thought were interesting.
The average house in all of San Marin County costs $875,000! Do you really think they'll build the cheaper houses on bayfront property overlooking the Golden Gate bridge? No, I'll bet the houses built there will go into the millions.
The other thing is the piling up of death row inmates. San Quentin was originally built to hold 68 inmates. It has expanded and currently holds 629. The new planned expansion would house 1024. On the other hand, California has only executed 10 people since reinstating the death penalty (1977) and gives out 20-35 death sentences a year. Simple math tells us that we need to kill more of the bad guys. (Or at least ask them to stop doing bad things...)
11-16-4 Highway numbering systems. I read today that there is a group in Indiana that is offended by Interstate-69 and they are trying to get it changed to a "more moral sounding number". Some other people are upset in Troy, Michigan because I-75 Exit #69 is "Big Beaver Rd." I guess I could understand their objection if I-69 ran through Intercourse, Pennsylvania...
It turned out to be a satirical story but I fell for it until someone pointed out the disclaimer to me. It's not too far fetched though, people are out there just looking to get offended nowadays.
Here's a picture I took of a road sign for Route666 somewhere off of I-77 or I-79? I don't remember which state I saw it in but we were driving from Georgia to Pennsylvania. (1992?)
My Brother-In-Law and I stopped for gas and just happened to see this sign. I jumped out of the car to take the picture. He thinks I'm insane. (or at least just evil) Maybe I should have gotten closer to the sign?
11-15-4 I stumbled across a graveyard for older computer systems. I just went back and looked at the original Apple stats. 8Kb in only 16 chips! Read or write 4Kb in only 20 seconds! Processor speed of 1550 bits per second!
I remember having fun on the older systems, typing endless lines of code just to get a ball to bounce across the screen. We had a TI-99-4A with the tape drive, eventually giving way to the Commodore 64/128. I wish I still had them now. It would be pretty cool to set them up and play around. Last year Thom and I were going to buy 2 TRS-80s and connect them through the old 100baud modems just to have some fun. In the end it was more trouble than it was worth. I think that it's pretty cool that my cell-phone has more processing power than the Apollo Lunar Module.
When I left the telecom industry 2 years ago, we were just starting to build network backbones with fiber lines at the desk. We were planning ahead of the loop and fully expected to be obsolete in 10 years. Speed is where it's at. Sacrifice all else in the name of Moore's Law. Although it is commonly misinterpreted, Moore's Law is the computer industry's driving force behind our need for cyber-speed.
Today I learned that Gordon Moore himself sees his golden rule as good as dead within 10 years (or less) unless a drastic revolution takes place in how we manufacture chips. Manufacturing plants have also followed his rule, doubling in cost to build. Intel now has 2 plants at $1.3 billion each. He says the next generation will probably be in the $10 billion range, $5 billion if they can refurbish/reuse some of the older machines. Aside from cost, I learned about 2 other factors that threaten the race for speed; Thermal noise and the insulating dielectric on the transistors themselves. Thermal noise is background interference that increases when they miniaturize the chips. Also, the silicon-dioxide dielectric is getting too thin as they miniaturize them causing leakage. The leakage is what is causing constant drains on our laptop, PDA, etc. batteries. But good news abounds, last year they think they found a solution to the dielectric membrane problem. The new teragig chip should be in use by 2007, just in time to prolong Moore's law.
Self righteousness be damned, I want in on the high speed action too!
11-12-4 Today I was given the weekly safety lecture at work. My lead tech was at home so he actually did "phone this one in".
Earthquake Safety
Remain inside the building.
Seek immediate shelter under a heavy desk or table - or brace yourself inside a door frame or against an inside wall.
Stay put. If shaking causes the desk or table to move, be sure to move with it.
Resist the urge to panic. Organize your thoughts.
Stay clear of windows--at least 15' away.
Don't be surprised if the electricity goes out, fire or elevator alarms begin ringing or the sprinkler system is activated.
OK, I humored him. He gets to pick the safety lecture from a list of over 1000 items, he picked this one? When we built this site, we laughed about all the extra seismic strengthening the engineering plans called for. We are in an earthquake region 0. I'm in an FAA basement. Built as a bomb shelter, no windows.
So, now I've called him at home on his vacation 3 times now on the hour to let him know that we haven't had an earthquake yet. I then called him to verify whether on not we were to create the earthquake survival kit as suggested in the safety brochure. Maybe next time he'll pick something more relevant... like what to do if Castro launches his missiles (duck and cover!)
