Friday, May 27, 2005

Foglights

This evening, I got hit with that killer sushi craving. I haven't had sushi since I went back to California to get my car almost 2 months ago, which for a sushi lover, that's a long damn time. Luckily, Alberton's has those Okami prepackaged California Rolls, which I would never eat back when I could just run down the road to Sushi Expo or Sushi Kazoo, but when the nearest sushi house is several hundred miles away, you gotta take what you can get!

I hop in the Bimmer and start to head back down the hill to the house to enjoy my tasty little rolls of rice and immitation crab meat, when what do I see coming in my direction? Someone driving with their foglights on. Foglights? Where is the fog? Rain? Snow? Anything to disrupt their visibility? No, of course not, just another idiot driving a Pontiac Grand Prix trying to act like they are cool or something. Ever notice that? The people who drive around with their fogs on are usually driving a Pontiac. I wonder why that is? Maybe it's because they just traded in that POS OldsmoBuick that they inherited from Grandma and now they have more buttons to play with. Or maybe they just don't know better. Maybe some of them will read this and get the point.

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

More Idiots!!

This morning, there was a power outage that affected nearly half of Cody. Of course, no power means that traffic lights will be out. What do people do? First off, they don't know what to do! Thankfully, there are many tourists and out of staters around who are from metropolitan ares who understand that when a light is out, it must be treated as if it were a 4 way stop! 4 way stop? That's another problem all together as I have previously talked about, so coupling that with the confusion of what to do at dark intersection, is a recipe for Cody Chaos! I saw a guy in a haul truck go barreling though an intersection completely oblivous to those around him. Good thing others around him were paying attention!

Monday, May 23, 2005

Idiots!

Idiots. They’re everywhere. It’s not that I think that I am so smart, it’s just that some people are SO dumb. Take for instance, 4 way stop signs. The other day I sat at one of the 4 way stops here in Cody for almost a minute before someone decided to make a move. Unfortunately, I was behind someone already. I don’t understand what is so hard about yielding to the right of way, and or letting the person who got there first go. Grrr!

Another thing. Seatbelts. Why do I see so many people driving around in Cody who don’t fasten their seatbelts? Do they somehow think that they are not ever going to get in a wreck with that old lady who couldn’t get past the 4 way stop? I can think of a lot better and honorable ways of buying the farm than to get it because I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt! Isn’t it a law here in Wyoming that you are supposed to be wearing your seatbelt? That would be a really stupid thing to get pulled over for don’t you think?

Speaking of idiots, how about that guy who flew into the restricted airspace over the nation’s capital last week? I just read today that the Feds busted him on violating 7 FAR’s! That’s right 7! The one that blows me away is that he violated FAR 91.131(a)(1). Operated an aircraft within Class B airspace without receiving an ATC clearance or establishing and maintaining two-way radio communication with the ATC facility controlling that airspace. Did he not have a chart with him? Was he not paying attention to where he was at all? IDIOT!! Gee, why is there a BLACKHAWK flying next to me?? What’s that Citation doing that’s following the Blackhawk so close? Where did those two F-16’s come from and why are they dropping flairs? IDIOT!! John Q. Public is already scared enough of small airplanes, and you just gave them more reason to think that they are dangerous!!

It’s Monday, and I had to rant a little…

Sunday, May 22, 2005

It's finally spring time! In fact, it's almost hot here this afternoon... A week ago I was still having to dust snow off of my car in the morning, and as you can probably imagine, that was making a guy who recently relocated from Coastal California pretty perturbed.

Friday, May 20, 2005

The Beginning

Yesterday, a good friend of mine sent me a link to her recently created weblog. Sure, I had seen them before, and there is one that I check out now and again that is done by a friend of a friend, but I had never thought about doing one of my own... What the hell, maybe this will give me a chance to get some of that stuff that is always rattling around in my head out and into space.

So where did a572mike come from? I use this as my email address, and have for several years now. Many of my friends have asked me where it came from. My first job out of college found me working for a steel erection and heavy industrial contractor in a god-for-saken place known as Indiana. Being a field engineer for this company wasn't easy, it helped to be an active hands on type of guy, not afraid to be out in the middle of things, not to be afraid of not being challenged, not scared of... of high places... I was scared of heights, didn't like them one bit... One day, there was a problem with some mis-fitting steel in this tower that we were setting some stainless steel tanks in, and it just happened to be up about 140 feet above the ground... The other engineer, who usually took care of problems with this type of thing, somehow conveniently was on the other side of the project. So, I put on my harness, grabbed a tape measure, and I was off... At first I was scared to death, but my 100% fall protection kinda put me at ease, and after a moment, I discovered what kind of a rush it was to be up there. From that day forward, I went up into the high iron (as the ironworkers call it) when ever I could, it added some zest and excitement to otherwise mundane existence. One of the other engineers that I worked with started calling me Iron Mike, and it soon caught on with just about everyone else we worked with, the ironworkers, the foreman, hell, even several of the owner's representatives called me Iron Mike. Naturally, Iron Mike is a very, very popular username, and it's not easy to get your hands on. I came up with a creative engineer's type solution for this. Structural Steel, as ironworkers call it, is not iron of course, but a steel alloy, and the most common grade used in modern steel structures is ASTM A572 Grade 50 50ksi steel. So, you guessed it, I took the A572 and put it ahead of my name. Problem solved. And, now you know...