Timely Advice

As mentioned earlier, The Boy is a good communicator with a great vocabulary. As such, I fully expected him to become a lawyer or some such. I was surprised, then, when he told me that he decided to join the Air Force. Family tradition and all, but it still surprised me.

After graduation from university, he was assigned to train to be a missile officer… yes, the fruit of MY loins—with half of my chromosomes running rampant, controlling his thought processes—was going to be one of the guys with his finger on the key of our nuclear arsenal. Scared yet? Well I am. Now are you scared? *

On arrival at his training, they (you know [mysterious music plays]…”THEY”) gave him a stack of technical manuals big enough to fill a small suitcase. No, he didn’t have to memorize them. But he did have to become familiar enough with them to be able to find any section quickly. And, being a focused student, dove into that task and started reading.

Early into his training, The Boy sent me an e-mail with an important safety tip we all should read and heed:

Per the Manual: “Do NOT use nuclear weapons to troubleshoot equipment faults”.

The Boy writes further: “In case you were considering it, you should know that it is officially forbidden. You can tell they are serious because they capitalized ‘NOT.'”

I thanked The Boy profusely for this advice and told him it was quite timely as I was *just* about to troubleshoot a broken water heater with a spare nuclear warhead I have laying about in my basement. [Whew!] That was close.

So, I pass along this information in hopes that you take that safety tip to heart the next time your toaster acts up.

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*Okay, that was typed for the giggle effect. Yeah, I’m his Father, very biased in his favor, and proud of him. But, besides that, I feel very secure that he is the right guy—attitude, brains, and, especially, ethics—for this job.

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New Technology

Did anyone else know about this?  Why wasn’t I informed?  Am I always the last to know? 

 

 

Sheesh…there are engineers amongst you, i know!

 

…and I thought you were my friends…  [pout]  …the last to know…

 

The Morning After

How do you get rid of a One Night Stand?  And before anyone asks – – no, this is not me.

I’m sure I should give appropriate credit for the source of this beaut. However, I got it third or fourth hand via an e-mail.  Being totally amused and wanting to share with you, I had to track it down on YouTube to post here. So, to whoever put this together in the first place, my apologies for not crediting you and hearty congratulations on some great marketing.

Notice this lovely device, obviously of some medicinal/health usage…is, per the web site listed at the end of the video, from Australia. Is our delectable NurseMyra at the Gimcrack Hospital to thank?

And again, this is not a video of my morning after… However, I am personally disturbed by the realization that if he/she looked like that, I’m not sure I’d mind. Whoa.

Spell Checker

In our society of computer based living, we have come to rely on the honestly impressive breadth and scope of tools and capabilities of those computers. One such tool is the Spell Checker.

Included in most every application involving input of words—from e-mail to word processing—it serves as a virtual 3^rd grade teacher, perched over your shoulder as you laboriously scrape your #2 pencil across cheap paper with wood chunks still embedded in the fiber, urging you to correctly spell the words.

It keeps us honest.

It keeps us from making a fool of ourselves.

It is illusion.

Many of you already know this, having experienced…and often suffered from…that illusion. For those who have, take comfort in the misery that company shares. For those lucky few who have not, view this as a cautionary tale. For all, I hope you find the humor in this story and can add a smile to your day.

The backdrop – – – I am an amateur thespian…yes, I love women! Oh…wait…ummm, I’m an actor. My theater group recently moved to a new home, via an expensive reconstruction of an old supermarket. Obviously, a community theater does not have money. So, there were numerous money raising endeavors to garner the needed cash.

Aside from the continuing thanks of this community theater, there was a more permanent reminder of that support in the form of a plaque prominently placed in the foyer of the new theater. To specially thank those who contributed a bit more, there were separate categories to recognize the extent of those donations. Staying in the theater theme, the categories were named with theater nomenclature. So we had categories for – – –

Ensemble Cast

Supporting Cast

Staring Role

Director

Producer

As I input the words on this list, my word processing spell checker happily reviewed my typing and declared it correct. Just as it likely did for whoever sent the request to the plaque maker. The plaque maker, eager to meet customer needs, then built the plaque exactly as the request was typed.

So, for those patrons who contributed enough to qualify for that category, I have no clue if they will forever be known as such. I was not so generous to qualify for that level. But, honestly, I don’t want to be remembered as having a “Staring Role”.

Sew, ewe mite still knead two use Spell Checker. Butt, watt dew ewe half too loose? Yule bee glad ewe due.