new  thread

................

 so?  about  12:30.. we had a hunde4rstorm, and a couple the last  few nights...anyway..Big bang and all of Mine 40 went black.

 I have  Comsact as  my  internet, Cable and Land line.. and verizon for my cell... i had to use  the cel to calll Penelec..they said   3:30  power  would be back on... 3:38 , it came back on...sheesh.

................

 Justin? Not sure   of all the PCs  who might not go to the ball...but  there is still shoreleave.. and the After party, i have to see if  anything pops  up.. The  Next day is  free time. except  for those  who wish to go to the 'Playground" for the weapons showcase. the last day will be  The beach party

I guess My Human and His mate will probably go to the ball. It's likely that I'll get a good brushing and be taken along as well.

well? larry has  to have his escort. Uless  Mila  wants one of the Female  largs to try and Usurpe her!

In reply to Admiral Hack (msg # 1):

Last week, when we were hanging lights, it was just barely warm enough to NOT snow, but it rained almost all week.

Today, it was pushing 60.  Day after tomorrow?  Supposed to be pushing 70.

And then the weather goes to hell again for the weekend.

I saw a meme someone shared that compared Winter/Spring this year to someone losing an argument, storming out of the room, and then coming back in a few seconds later, declaring, "And another thing!!!"  Very apropos...

yeah.. so..yesterday the  thunder storm and power outage that lasted until 3:30...

today,  i get a message from Penelec that  they be having a 'planned outage  for  4  hours , to u date  equiptment"..they coudn['t do that when they fixed it?

  anyway, it rained like hell, so they didn't work, supposed to happen tomorrow morning now.

 Grandaughters  away track meet got  cancell because of  heavy rains..but they had  practice    here., thunderstorm  for the 4th night in a row,, didn't last long..BUT.. rain tomorrow, and might turn to snow,

 the old saying here, is ," if you don't like the weather in western PA, wait 15 minutes."

Ah, a place where you get all four seasons... in the same afternoon!

sometimes the same hours.. 3  Sundays  ago, we started to play football..its  was  14 degrees  + wing.. ...then it started  to rain..halfway through , the clouds  went  away and the sun was out..it went up to the 30's !..but, at the end of the game, big wet snow  came down and covered  the field and out  cars!

I remember seeing a meme about Finland which something along the lines of “False spring” “second winter” “mud” “spring” “summer” “Winter”

saw somehting like that.. It showed  three  frames  wth some one loking out the window.

1st Frame  " October to   March..snow"...2nd frame.  April 1st to April 2nd   summer!  3rd   frame  " April 3rd  to september 30  winter!" don't know where it was from.

we have the seasons here too, just a bit different.

ice age      winter
break up     spring
mosquito     summer (also called fishing season)
wet          fall (also called hunting/harvest time)

There was a meme that started making the rounds with some of my friends...Pippin asking Merry if Aragorn knew about Second Winter (after we'd FINALLY had some significant snowfall that closed down golf courses for a few weeks, and then it warmed up enough for them to be clear and open...and then it snowed again and closed them down for, like three more weeks...)

It's midnight here, and 54deg out, and should probably break 70 tomorrow...and then we're supposed to have up to an inch of snow on Saturday...and then be back in the mid-50s by Tuesday.

high of  42  today, with snowy -rainy weather. Oldest Granddaughter has   track meet at home( if its not called)... i assume the  weather  will be in the mid 30s  and dropping by the  start

...and? there it is, Remind App says, no meet today, pushed off to next week.

30F and friggin' snowing here.

so..track meet called off  early this morning..I had to go to Lowes to get a new  fridge..it was leaking water al over the kitchen.. as i left , there was a bit of  sun...when i got up  where we  play football. snow and  sleet , are enough    to collect on the  car  making  'tick tack' sounds.., leave the store  after  ordering. I get home..sun is  bright ... just about   all 4  seasons in about   90 minute

its  37..Middle Granddaughter  says   it supposed to snow again.

It keeps threatening snow in the UK though whenever I look into where it’s always in places like the Scottish Highlands and the Cairngorns, which is kind of like saying the Sahara is hot!

Even in the shaded oases
This message was last edited by the player at 23:06, Thu 04 Apr.

 for the dress thing..you ladies   can keep the banter up, I will Add, NPCs  now and then..Its neat to see some of the pics  you guys come up with

we play out songs when we  attack....look at this!

............................

Six Russian warplanes obliterated in huge blow to Putin’s air force
©Provided by Metro
As they approached the military base, some of the Ukrainian drones started playing a German drinking song from the 1970’s, about staying drunk for seven days. Around 20 Russian personnel were killed or wounded in the attack, RBC Ukraine reports, and another eight aircraft suffered damage

Frontline bombers – Su-24, Su-24M, and Su-34 – are known to be routinely based at the airfield. They have been used to strike at Ukraine during the war. As of 4 April, some 26 Su-34 fighters and three Su-35 warplanes were stationed at the airbase, according to OSINT reports (Picture: Social media/east2west news)

Note to self, add MP3 player to drone design…

everyone on East coast okay?  just read of a decent size quake in New York.  They said it was felt in Jersey.

 I felt ot about 10:30 this morning we where in class, the classroom shook books fell, it was pretty powerful here. It was very intense for sure but no one was hurt around here. New York got hit pretty hard they did shut everything down to check it before they started to rerun subways, busses, ect.

we had  my littlest granddaughter   singing thing at the Elementary school ..My son said at hiswork they were talkign about it..he  does somekind of Goverment stuff., but we couldn;'t tell here in  western PA

just making sure your'e all okay.  I know quakes there are rarer than here especially 4.0 and higher.

 Yeah that was the biggest one around here in over 20 years \o/

 Yes I am safe and my family and friends are safe ty Nikki \o/

 I guess I was the closest to it of our group?

 I guess..I am western PA on your side of Pittsburgh

.............

 for that  You Tube think i put up..some of the  parts in there, remind me of  Roy given Aliens  a history lesson..the speaker   could be Sanri or Occui

 Yeah I can drive to the epi center in 3 hours I would say I alot closer than you hehehehe. It was pretty scary though but it didt last long but it felt like forever hard to explain.

years ago, one hit  around  DC.. it shook my house, I just thought it was one of the Bih  coal trucks that was  taking rocks up the alley  to dump  for clean fill.

well, a 4.0 and 4.8 are mid-sized to me and I'm use to them.  Now I am NOT used to big thunderstorms.  I can count on one hand how many we've had in Anchorage. so when one does happen I sort of freak out on those.  Since they are fairly common in the lower 48 I am sure you just nevermind them unless they strike in your lawn or directly on your houses.  So it's all relative.

We had a decent quake hit Salt Lake City back in 2020 (just under four years ago, now).  I was at the park...they were installing a new ride and I got picked to be part of the install crew for the facade (it's a kids' ride, so it wasn't a HUGE project...not like the one I was helping finish up last year...)

I heard the rumble and thought someone was driving some heavy equipment past the building I was in...sounded like a front-end loader or something like that.  Stepped outside and nothing was there...poked my head back inside and noticed the brooms and rakes that were hanging on the wall were all swaying back and forth, and then I looked outside and the plants were all swaying, even though there was no wind...

All my friends that live in Salt Lake, proper, were freaking out about it...but if I hadn't had to be at the park early for that install project (it hit just after 7am), I would have slept right through it, very likely.

And thunderstorms are fairly common here, but the worst ones I've ever been through were in the Midwest, or down on the Navajo Reservation.  I'd rank the Midwest higher, because the storms on the reservation, while VERY intense, were also usually fairly short.  The one my friends and I drove through when we went back to Minnesota?  That was hours of driving through some of the heaviest rain I've ever experienced, with lightning flashing from somewhere around us every few seconds.  I told my friends at one point that if it started hailing, we had to pull over and look for a ditch, because it was so dark that we could have been driving straight into a tornado and wouldn't be able to see it...when the lightning provided enough light, the windows were so rain-soaked that you couldn't really make out much.  My friend was basically just following the stripes in the middle of the road because he couldn't see far enough ahead to follow the road, itself.

After that, thunderstorms in this part of the country seem comparatively mild.

The first quake I experienced was in 1984 here in Cheshire early in the morning. I seemed to dream of an earthquake and woke with the thought "But we don't get them here" only there was one. Dearly beloved was hanging out the window counting... he thought someone had dropped a nuclear device on Manchester and was watching for a flash! We are about 40 miles from Manchester. Fortunately we did not become part of a radioactive cloud!

Since then I've been in quite a few, both here and in Greece. One there - on the island of Zakynthos - happened when I was in the bath and I sat watching the bathwater slosh around and decided to stay there until all was calm again. That was about a 5.

One time dearly beloved had gone to visit a client who was having network problems. They had a split site and used a radio link across a road. He was baffled, everything seemed to be working. He called home to say he didn't know how long he'd be, and I told him to check the orientation of the antennae as there had been an earthquake the night before. He muttered about them being omnidirectional, but checked anyway and... well, that was the problem!

I remember the one that happened in the UK about a decade ago (1984 is well before my time) I just thought it was a truck something equally heavy driving past until I saw an ornament vibrating round in circles on the shelf

 Yep  Izzy...that's what that was like here..at the  time we had   Big Coal trucks that were carring Rocks   and  dirt passed  my house   to the end  where it was a drop off to a field  near the creek.

 the  House  shook ,( old  company-mine house )..the   wodd  creaks , noise upstairs  light  people ran through the house. and I was bymyself then... aabout 5 minutes later, I'm getting texted  and Checked  FB because people around here   didn't know, or just found out about the  quake. I can only imagine being in a 'real ' one

In Alaska we get a crap ton of them.  Big and small.  I was a babe in 1964 here when we had a 9.2 that shook for 5 minutes.  According to my mom... I slept through it. years later sitting on the floor I watched (yep watched) a seismic wave gently rolling into the house across the floor and under me then out the other side of the house like a gentle pond ripple (it was weird), about 4 to 6 inches high and a foot wide.  that was back in 1974-75, or so.  In 2016 we had 2 big shakers, like 7.0+ each.  about 4-6 months apart. tossed my house like a bomb went off.  One happened at night too.  then that shaker in 2018 really shook even worse.  I know I wrote about it here in an earlier OOC.  My sister freaked.  She still has PTSD from 1964.  For me I don't mind the shaking or the noise, I freak out when it goes dark. the 2018 one happened at 830 in the morning in late Nov. at that time it's still night out.  So when transformers blew it got real dark.  No flashlight right off hand so had to use the one on my phone.  kept thinking I was gonna step on my cat or glass and such.  had weird thoughts of finding a broken floor and falling in it.
still... I'm alive.

The most noteworthy thing, to me, about the one here four years ago was that, as a kid and growing into my teens, I remember at least two or three significant (for our area) quakes...like, looking up from the living room floor to see hanging lamps swaying kinds of quakes.  And then, for decades, there was pretty much nothing (except increasing talk from seismologists about how the lack of quakes could actually be cause for alarm, because the longer we went without one, the more likely it was to be severe when we finally had one, from all the tension built up between the tectonic plates that was accumulating as each year went by without even minor tremors.

So it was weird, after having them happen often enough as a kid that I was pretty unfazed by the quake (literally, as soon as I realized it was a quake, my brain was like, "Well...nothing to be done about it.  Don't stand inside, stuff might break loose and fall, but don't go too far away from the building, because stuff might tumble off from overhead.  Right here in the exterior doorway is about as safe a place as you're gonna find..."), having one that was significant, but not exactly a real property-damaging shaker (a few buildings got cracks in facades, and a few streets got cracks in the pavement...but nothing had to be reconstructed or even have serious repair work done), and having most of the people I know on FB in the area freaking out about being in an earthquake, waking up to stuff falling off shelves (light stuff, at that), feeling their car kind of shimmy as they were driving, etc.  Part of me was like, "Really?  It wasn't THAT bad.  Unusual, sure, but have you people looked at news reports about BAD earthquakes?  This was nothing..."  And part of me was understanding...they have no frame of reference.  Most of them are young enough that they either weren't yet born or were too young to remember Utah's last cycle of seismic activity, so they couldn't even compare this one to others in the past.

And part of me was like, "People...come on.  We live ON A FAULT LINE.  Quakes are gonna happen.  Be glad this one just scared your aquarium fish.  They've been telling us for years an earthquake was coming, and this was WAY less than what they had predicted."  Sometimes being a pragmatist can cause some oddly conflicting emotional responses to situations...

one of my kids   asked  me 'where is the safest place to live.."  i said 'There isn;t"

 " Textas? "... I sai.. droughts , hurriances  and too many texans.


"Rhode island"... I said... flooded  and  'tail end Hurricanes"

 Connecticut .. snow, hurricanes

 Daughter  is  in NC.. Hurricanes..Oldest  Boy.. FLA   , same thing, Plus too many Florida folks

 a woman who was on of mu best friends   in online gaming. Mississippi.. floods, hurricanes  and..where she lives, they get snow  some time, about 19 years agout her pipes  froze..they don't have  basements where she lives ..the crawel spaces  become deep freezes.

we heard  about Garret and the oregon fires,,,Kansas was  so many tornados  they  made a movie  about  a girl and her  dog....pick a state.. it has something bad.

I was in Sweden when the big quakes hit California in the summer of '89...made the new reports over there, even, with collapsed overpasses and buildings partly destroyed.  I remember one of the people I knew over there was absolutely beside herself about it...she asked me how it could happen and I pointed out that big quakes in California were not uncommon (if memory serves, this one was in the San Francisco area, but there had been other quakes down near LA a few years before, and I think another fairly serious quake hit the LA area a few years later...), and they tried to prepare for them, but there's really only so much you can prepare when the ground you're building on starts to move around relative to other parts of the same building...

"So why in the world would anyone decide to live there?"

I just kind of shrugged, and pointed out the same kind of thing you did, Don...people there ask why anyone would live in Sweden when there are parts of the country that don't even see daylight for several weeks out of the year.  Japan, Taiwan, Macau...popular tourist destinations for Swedes...all have a monsoon season and get hit with storms that would level some of the buildings in Sweden.  Iceland is literally an active volcano, it's just that the island has gotten large enough that there's some distance from the vents of the volcano.  "Pick a place, anywhere on the planet, and there's an argument to be made for why it's not a safe place to live.  They know the risks and are willing to live with them."

Whhooo-Hooo! got blue skies and sunshine today.  43 on my porch.  gorgeous!!

yesterday was on again/ off again snow-rain mix, overcast. the high was maybe 31.  like today better.

Reads like a bit of Frolicking is to be enjoyed.

oh yes.  even damaged as I.  I'm readying my flower pots and such. next month is planting season, not that I have land to plant anything. lol.  but I do like my flowers, so starting my seeds now for my sweetpeas. talking my sis in to taking me to my favorite plant nursery for pansies and maybe a rose bush.  She does not know I ordered one from Jackson & Perkins, already paid for and is due for delivery mid May.  My therapists and doctor recommend I garden.  Her idea to get plants is home depot.  problem is up here they get at end of April they get them and have outside to match lower 48.  It could be 20 degrees and half dead they put them out.  they look like crap and only a limited selection, usually ones I don't like. who wants ugly mismatched flowers that are half dead? I like where I used to go and get my flowers, even outside Anchorage.  Everyone loved my deck. got to whip it into shape!

Have you considered 3-4 bonsai's

I like outdoor plants... indoor ones don't do well for me.  wish they did.

Ah, I'm back in one of my less-favorite positions at the park...the voice of pragmatism.

One of the tasks on our to-do list for this year is to repaint the stage.  Sounds simple enough, right?

Well, last time they had the stage painted, they also had a clear-coat put over it, theoretically to improve the longevity of the paint (it worked fairly well, but they've been talking about repainting the stage every year since they had that done because, while it looks lovely when it's brand new, that high-gloss finish shows every scuff mark, ding, scrape, peeled-up tape mark, and any one of the dozen or so other ways you can ruin a stage floor finish to EXTREME degrees.  There's a reason most theaters don't use gloss paint for their stage floors (it also throws weird light reflections, but that apparently isn't an issue with our lighting designer, although he's the only one I've worked with who's never complained about a shiny stage floor).

Last time, they put up plastic around the stage for the winter, the HVAC guys set up some big forced-air propane furnaces to heat it, and the painters took their time getting it done.  The clear-coat was the big problem...it is supposed to be applied and remain at temperatures over 60F so that it can cure properly.  There are only three days in the forecast for the next two weeks where the temperature is supposed to get above 60, much less stay there for the length of time the coat needs to cure (at least twelve hours before a recoat, and 24 hours before using the floor, if I recall the directions correctly).  So, I have concerns about that, because we don't really have the option of putting up the plastic and heating it the same way...we have lights hanging where they attached the plastic last time.  So, we may have to forego the clear-coat (or maybe find a less-durable alternative that's not so fussy about its application conditions...)

The clear-coat, itself, is a problem for more than just that reason, though...since we put a clear-coat over the last layer of paint, that's a different formula from the paint, I'm not sure if the new paint will stick to it without some kind of floor prep...scuff-sanding the floor.  And nobody's said anything about that so far (I just sent an email to the entire production team to ask about it and express my concerns...), so we may be stuck with the 'slap it on and pray it sticks' approach.  That's how most theaters handle their stage floors...but they also don't generally use a non-acrylic-based 'armor coat' over the paint...they just repaint the floor with a new layer of paint, and the acrylic bonds to the acrylic that was there before.

And on top of that, we're having some renovation work done to the theater, and changing the shape of the upstage wall (it currently angles out toward the audience as you get off-stage and into the wings...the stage was originally just a band-stand, and that was desirable to direct the sound of the band toward the audience, but our producer/director wants to use some magic illusions that won't fit through that off-stage opening, so they need to make it wider, and those walls aren't actually structural, so it's a relatively easy fix...)  Except the park's carpenters came down and took all the wood off the stage side of the wall, discovered there was some electrical stuff in there, and put the whole project on hold until the electricians came and removed the wiring so the walls could be demolished.  And that meant that, rather than just saying, 'Okay, go work on this other stuff until this is a viable option again," they basically rotated us to the bottom of the priority list.  The electricians have been done for most of a week, and the carpenters haven't even come to take a look at what their next step is.

And since this project is going to result in more stage floor, we can't paint until they're done, at least with the on-stage stuff (they could do all that and then work on the rest backstage while we paint, but I'm not holding my breath...)

Now, our deadline to finish the stage floor painting?  A week from now.  So my email was, basically, "So, are we actually doing any sort of prep work on the floor?  And that deadline isn't happening, because the carpenters are nowhere close to done and Mother Nature has decided to have seasonal weather in April this year for a change.  So how do you want to proceed?"  Theoretically, this was all going to be done by next week, so that the illusions that we were theoretically going to move down to the stage by now could be used on stage for early rehearsals.  The illusions are still up in the Opera House (which we use as a combination rehearsal area and workshop space) because we don't want to risk them getting damaged or filled with sawdust when the carpenters are rebuilding the new wall sections.  We don't have a stage curtain up yet because we don't want to fill it up with sawdust (or have the carpenters snag it with lumber they're taking out or bringing in).  And once they decide they're going to start rehearsing down there, painting the stage isn't going to happen, no matter the temperature (at least, not with the clear-coat they bought.)

So, yeah.  I'm just a little stressed about it.  I mean, if it doesn't get painted, I'm fine with that.  They actually bought all the paint for it last year, thinking they would get the painters to do it then, and it just never worked in the schedule.  So I'm okay with sticking the paint back in a corner for another year and taking a more practical approach to it (like heating the space so we can paint it in the middle of winter, when NOBODY is using the stage for anything...)  Or maybe getting an acrylic-based clear-coat that doesn't require days to apply and cure (I've used Polycrylic on stage floors before, quite successfully).  I mean, not every project requires that you buy one of the most expensive products available to do the job (I'm still trying to figure out who decided we needed that particular clear-coat...)

But, hey...I've made my reservations known.  We'll see how they decide to address them.  The stage isn't THAT bad, it would be fine waiting another year.  The paint, by itself, is pretty durable...I used the leftover paint from last time to paint the halls going into our Seance show, it had hundreds of people walk in and out of there last fall and it held up great, so JUST paint should be viable (especially if they're going to turn this into a yearly/every-other-year kind of thing).  There are viable ways to proceed.  Just need to have them decide which way they want to go (or not go, as the case may be.)

Anyhow...yeah.  Life is good.  Nothing to worry about.  Right?  *grin*

why would  an rubberized  covering, nit  be goof? it would be  good  footing. it  wouldn't shine. it might even be easier on the performers?  I dunno...its out of my wheel house.. but  i think rolling a  new  floor on line that  every few years m would be better then the paint?

::chuckles:; some times  i thing the  bosses are just  playigna game.." who can stump Roy! "

Meanwhile, at the university, everything is ramping up to the year-end grading frenzy. Just setting up the final year project assessments - 2 assessors per student - which means sending some 290-odd personalised emails out telling the little darlings what to do.

Better get back to it...

I hear you guys  and think about  me career as a Lettercarrier... I only had to put up with  weather, some  jerk customers...but mostly Mindless management who got  were they were  because  A...They couldn't handle being a  Carrier...B..they woke up one morning  as a clerk, and said, "hey? I think I'll be a supervisor.. C.. they  had a very good  set of knee pads.!

Power is out while the  replace stuff , should be back around noon, my time, post as you will, I will try to catch up

In reply to Admiral Hack (msg # 44):

The problem with a rubberized floor covering is that it often has too much friction for some of the dance moves they want to put in the show.  A gloss coat makes for a hard, slick floor...which some dancers love and others don't, but you can always add rubber to the soles of the shoes of those who need more traction.

Another problem is that some of the illusions that we use are REALLY heavy (like, we made a helicopter appear on stage last year...it took four people to move that illusion around!) and the casters would chew up any sort of rubber coating you put down on the floor.

A lot of stages will use 'marley', which is a specialized rubber sheeting that they roll out for dance competitions and certain events, but it's REALLY temperamental stuff and they have a whole list of dos and don'ts you have to follow when the marley is down on the floor.  It's good for a lot of dance events, though, because a lot of modern and jazz dancers perform barefoot, and it's a lot more forgiving than a hard stage floor (but they still often have to put some kind of powder on their feet so they can do some of their spins without catching on the marley.)

And I don't think they're consciously intending to stump me...it's just that they have their wish list of things to get done but they don't really think about the actual conditions on the ground when they make that list.  Compared to some people, I'm getting off easy (I'm in a props-makers' group on FB and some of the props that come up in discussion when people are trying to figure out how to comply with the directors' requests are just mind-boggling...like, one from just a few days ago needed a jar full of butterflies that would fly away when the jar was opened...too many theatre directors have watched way too many movies...)

But the good news is, last night's letter got some response.  The Production Manager agrees that we need to paint the stage, but might not need the clear-coat, and our department head got ahold of the carpenters and when I got there today, one of the two walls had been stripped all the way down to the studs, inside and out, and they were getting ready to start taking the wall apart.  It's more progress than I've seen in a week and a half...

  ::shakes head::.. that's nuts... i can see  all what you said, because i'm a Layman..floors  like that  take a pounding?  Just at  Idlewilde .. they have  the  dance number   and some  stuff..I thnk two differant shows   run on the same stage...then they have smaller, 'one person' shows.. i can image  the  wear and  tear on the Main hall, the others  ones  don't suffer that much

Yep and the next thing they'll hay you doing is padding the surfaces and adding rubber bars to the windows.

{sigh} yesterday: Sunny and nearly 50 on my deck... today heavy wet snow going sideways and 36!  friggin' spring.

Hello everyone I’m sorry I’ve been out lots of stress was going on but I’m going to try and catch up and plan on posting at latest on Friday

we're good.  RL takes priority and things happen.

I know I posted yesterday about rhe crappy weather.  Sunday and Monday were very nice.  Tuesday snowing, slushy, and just a bleck day.  Today..It's nice out.  few clouds, but lots of blue. climbed up over 45 so not as warm, but not bone chilling either.

 Hey we all have take some time for RL issues, just glad your back, now Sam can boss, opps I mean help you around and to get you kicking ass on coms \o/

Questons on Uniforms..

 working /duty will be  old WWII..

https://www.bing.com/images/se...ist=0&ajaxserp=0

Khaki  for  NCO's  and Up.

https://www.bing.com/images/se...ist=0&ajaxserp=0

as long as there are no johdfors


my thighs are just as I like them.

lol sam

just trying to figure where in the timeline we are exactly

you were working in SEC just as I started my shift.  I got off shift just a bit ago.  does that help?

In reply to Nicole Rutledge (msg # 56):

For all that Roy quotes Patton a lot, he's not gonna start dressing like him (partly because of the style, and partly because Patton was Army and Roy's a Marine, and while they're both groundpounders, no Marine is gonna let anyone get away with calling him Army...)

As far as the timeline, Jason, the Hermes is on approach to dock with Fuji, for a brief shoreleave while the brass take care of some Fleet upkeep duties.  The first event on the agenda is a formal Ball that's kind of standard practice any time Hermes puts in at a major stop (stations or planets) held by friendly (or 'friendly') forces.  So, everyone's gearing up to either go to the Ball or go spend some time enjoying the resources available at Fuji which aren't available on the Hermes.  (Most of SEC is going to the Ball, either because they're expected to or because they want to be there if/when the inevitable clash of personalities at these things turns into a combative confrontation.  That said, they are not expected to be there unless they actually have either the rank or position to be a notable face, or they are escorting someone else who is going...in other words, your attendance is entirely up to you.)

okay Ser.Maj.:  just for you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neuqN6MgsyI

Sorry for being quiet. Work is mental at the moment. Had just finished what I wanted to accomplish yesterday at 7pm, then a student called and wanted some support... and there are still about 3 things that the people asking for them were insistend had to be done by close-of-play yesterday. One person, who only made the request yesterday morning, was told "No chance", the others have just been ignored. Looking after students comes first, administrivia a long way behind!

In reply to Nicole Rutledge (msg # 61):

Hum. sounds like an overview of the requirements AH uses to select Hermes Crew...

Yep.... Those  students , whether they are  lazy, or  gung-ho, need those answers. I have less favor on those who 'put off', then i do  for the eager beavers. but. they all are cruising to the same place.

In reply to Jug (Pronounced 'Joog') (msg # 59):

Thanks

In reply to Nicole Rutledge (msg # 61):

That was pretty awesome.  Thank you.  I'd heard the name before, but never the story behind why it got mentioned as often as it did.

After I watched that one, there was another one suggested about Chesty Puller, who was the most decorated US Marine on record (and still is, to the best of my knowledge.)  The Medal of Honor was one of the few awards he didn't get (probably due in part to backlash about Daly getting two and nominated for a third), but he did get FIVE Navy Crosses and a Bronze Star (and several Purple Hearts).  Initially enlisted as a private...retired as a three-star general.  He was also documented openly arguing with a firearms instructor at the Army Infantry School about the importance of accuracy vs volume of fire, pointing out numerous battles during the American Revolution where American forces won against vastly superior numbers because of the accuracy of their gun fire.  "You can't hurt 'em if you can't hit 'em," was the final point he made.  (He was also, coincidentally, George Patton's cousin...)  Led the American Marine forces at Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War, guiding them through an incredibly grueling fighting withdrawal that resulted in 1700 dead Americans, vs 25000 dead North Korean and Chinese (the numbers got even more lopsided when you included wounded...)

Been an interesting night of history lessons...*grin*

One of the armies I’ve collected for a war game I play are the Winter War Finns which led me to read up about Lauri Torne and Simo Hiya (and yes I’ve probably misspelt both of those)  both of whom have very impressive records. Simo had highest number of confirmed sniper kills using only iron sights and Lauri is probably the only person I know of to have served in three separate armies (Finland for the winter war, the wermacht/ SS during WW2 and the US army during Vietnam)

I lived in Sweden for a while, and one of the people I got to know was Finnish, on extended leave from their special forces.  He was INTENSELY proud of the record of the Finnish army (and also wasn't afraid to admit to people things like, "Yes, I actually could kill you with that matchstick...")

The more I learn about snipers from history and around the world, the more I develop an intense admiration for Simo Hayha (which isn't actually how his name is spelled, but my keyboard doesn't do the A with umlauts over it).  Probably the most deadly sniper in history, and most of his kills were with rifles with standard iron sights and no scope.  He seemed to thrive in an environment that made most people want to curl up and die from the cold.  The man was made of something else...

  for those who like  backround stuff... The  Figure sets  have been up[ dated

Roy, to type ä, hold down the ALT key and type 0228 on the keypad.

Now try doing that with dog paws!

My player human wants me to tell Mila"Always knew huskies were smart"

btw, spring is almost here.  my porch is reading 54F right now.  officially at the airport it's 40F.  nice sunny and clear blue skies. water is just flowing off the rooves (roofs?...get confused spelling that one, lol).

rooves , roofs ..must both be ok, since the spell check didn't  light them up..but?  Spell check has a rough time  with me!

I suspect Mila uses roooof.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:01, Tue 16 Apr.

yeah? other wise  it  might be... ruff

I think my Universal translator needs to be updated.

In reply to Mila (msg # 70):

I use the character so rarely that by the time it comes up again, I will very likely have forgotten that (I'll remember that someone told me how to do it, but not the actual instructions).

In the event that I don't forget, though...two other characters that I don't know how to make and wish I did because they're commonly used in Swedish...O with an umlaut, and A with a little 'o' above it...got a 'cheat code' for those?  It'd be nice to write something to my Swedish friend and actually be able to write it in proper Swedish (if I can still remember any of it...it's been 25 years since I spoke much Swedish at all, and close to 30 years since I actually had to carry on conversations with Swedes or non-Swedish Scandinavians who spoke Swedish...(one of those was an interesting challenge...a professor from Iceland who spoke Swedish with a heavy Icelandic accent...)

Roy what device are you using?

(( i put this in the wrong game!! ))


..saw this.. In Memeory of  Bo..who  got killed   tryign to  save Sahdow on th green Moon...his aircraft was  called  'Black Betty'

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9P4lRmc-Ac

Depends on the day...and sometimes even the time of day.  I have a desktop at the movie theater (taking the place of the laptop I had that I got increasingly frustrated with because it kept forgetting it had wi-fi, and I would have to put it to sleep and wake it up again to restore the connection, and sometimes even have to restart it completely...)  I have another laptop that I sometimes have at the theater and sometimes at home, and occasionally some other places, depending on what needs doing.  And I have my phone...Samsung Galaxy S21 FE.  I tend to rarely post from my phone, though, because I hate editing posts on a screen that small and my finger agility is such that I tend to require a fair bit of editing when I type on a phone screen.

The laptop is running Windows 10, the desktop Windows 11, using Chrome as a browser on both.

In reply to Roy Spencer (msg # 79):

When using your mobile does it have a letter change capability or press and hold a letter key, several variants of the letter appear with alternate diacritics; eg à,á,â,ã,ä,å
This message was last edited by the player at 05:34, Tue 16 Apr.

It does...so that answers the question of how to do it on my least-preferred device for typing...*grin*

Too bad they can't figure out how to make a regular computer keyboard do that...

Type the bulk using one of the preferred then edit when needed with the mobile; as minor proof reading.

Ok...  we'll be  moving on to the  Limos  and stuff  coming

Zob? if you're out there.. hop in!

Did JK join Kray in the lift?

you can post him   slipping in.

In reply to Admiral Hack (msg # 83):

Sorry been a bit busy ill have a post up in the morning of heading down to the hanger dec!

Also im trying to remember how to properly roleplay my character its been quite a while!
This message was last edited by the player at 06:27, Wed 17 Apr.

you're a big badass with a soft spot for kids Zob.  very glad you are feeling better.

"Yip, yip" Mila runs in wagging her tail.

Roy, go to https://www.howtotype.net/ - it will show you how to type all manner of weird diacritical marks. Worth bookmarking.

I’ve been watching the Fallout series on Prime and I’ve got to say the BoS power armour is pretty cool

hey!.. I loved Fall cout  4...fall out 76 sorta  sucks, buy i have been playign it for, like  5 years..i don't play it like  you're suposed to.
..

 anyway.. The  Gulper was a bit 'differant", but they  have everything , spot on, the  Power  armor is  great..stim packs  don't seem like the work the way they do in the show, but  they do  work..as far as people getting on their  feet.

Its  great.. My youngest granddaughter  is 11  she plays fallout 4... i'll be here on the computer  and watch, sometimes  giving her 'general  tips"  (..hey?  don't  rush through there. remember you are scavaging)

 but  we were watchign an episode  a night.. she got  scared when Feral Ghouls attacked.. its  great!

My olde briother called me  up 3  times this week to ask me about the Lore..my 2nd oldst grandson , who still plays football with me,  has be  tecting  me about lore  and stuff.. neither of the play the games.

 My son who is upstairs  , streams  games ...'Hunt  showdown' ect (  Tiredeyebags... hit him up on you tube  and   give him some likes!)..anyway. he enever played  fall out,  he was doign Baulders Gate   and a buch of others, he streams  with his daughters playign Fortenight..but he  just  got in to the  game 20.00 for Fallout  76... I think you can get in for free this week to try it.... anyway, he was impressed with the  Show..AFTER..watching then show ...THEN playing

Yeah there’s a couple of differences but nothing major, and more than a few nods to the games including a broken water chip from out of the first Fallout game. I’ve got three more episodes and then the long wait for season two

<sigh> today has been goofy.  FB went sideways followed by my pogo site and then just about everything else.  could not even get into my wallet for back ups and suck. probably would have thrown my whole desk top out my porch if my neighbor had not come over.  she got her husband to look at it and after nearly 5 hours on his part and another 2-3 hours downloading things we got it working again (I owe them a buttermilk/coconut pie now).  he also found me a backdoor to my old e-mail (spent time clearing and sorting about 5,000 e-mails.... now just have 25).  finally can come over and play.

wow? that   a hassle and a half. Good you know folks who can help!

leaving  for football in a few....around 4:00  the two youngest have their  running thing, that lasts for 5  weeks... so i should be back  by 6:00..post as you can, I'll check the boards  when i come home from fotball.

ill have a post up in the morning

 Awesome Zob glad you are feeling better \o/

spring is almost here. Porch got up to 60 today.  Not for too long but got there.
still have about a foot of snow on rooves (roofs), but roads are clear and dry.  a few green shoots of grass but mostly brown.
plus the Tanana river has not gone out yet.

https://www.nenanaakiceclassic.com/

Okay, as a general heads up...

I have NO idea what my schedule is going to end up being like for the next five or six weeks.  Started dress rehearsals for a show I'm working on for the next two weeks, after that I have a week or so of REALLY intense preparation for rehearsals, and then we're in dress rehearsals at the park until the end of May.  So, I may be going quiet for a while, but not right away.  The show is pretty short...under two hours, including intermission, so I'll be getting away from the stage at the high school by 9:30 or so every night unless something really drastic happens.  After that...it's anybody's guess how things are gonna go.

well?  we  went through this  since the game starts!. Post when you can, when its  comfortable for you. Its good to get the heads up so everyone knows.

.....................

One side bar?  I am worried  about   Henry/Mila... I send a PM in my football game and did not get an answer.. i am pretty sure this is a big testing time  for  the students at  the Player's University.

 what concerns  me  is  The P)layer's spouse had  be  sick before. I'm afraid that maybe things  are going well?

 we will drag Henry along, and hope its just the   college stuff.

ok..good news  for us..maybe not so for  Henry/mila.

 the player  said  there are like 300 projects  to go through, so being swamped is a 'nice word"...sooner or later they will come out the other side...hopefully  they get to enjoy the ball

Mila runs in wagging.

290-odd project students to manage.

Immense flurry of emails - submission deadline was 23:59 last night and a LOT were burning the midnight oil and submitting at the last minute. So they are a bit punchy and upload the wrong file, forget stuff, and generally need sorting out.

The next morning that is, I was fast asleep whilst they were fretting.

Alex is doing a lot better, though, thank you for your concern.

Runs off, still wagging.

Pets Mila

ive been thinking how best to get back into the flow of things, so ive decided to take this opportunity to express growth in the character instead.

hey, Zob? grow  your  character  as you will. no matter how things  turn out, its good RP.

I will get a post up as soon as I can Zob and Sam thinks your amazing

It is gorgeous out today. it's 60+ out, nothing but blue sky and sunshine!!! I'm seeing that pinkish gold on the trees so they are going to bud here soon, and a few are a touch green so are budding.  Snow on the carport is just melting in storm.

bubs  have  come up for the last  month..on FB i have some Pics  of my Late  wife's  magnolia tree. its the last thing she ever planted, its  Massive now..frost killed  the pick flowers, but she'll have another  3..maybe  even for  Blooms  before  october..took me from 11:00 until 5:30 ro cut the grass, it was  high..and i had to keep charging the batteries.


Naturally, since i cut the grass today, its gonna  rain tomorrow  so it  grows  fast  again.. I think i saw  some Largs  in my  yard while i was  tryign to cut.

antlered largs or the low bush variety? (deer or rabbits) lol vorpal bunnies?

I stopped by my apartment after work, before heading to the school for the show, because I needed to grab a few things.  Walked back out to my car...and one of my neighbors was jogging down the block, getting his daily run in.  Stopped by my car and we talked for a couple of minutes, then he said he needed to head out because he was on his way to a lacrosse match (that's apparently become a big spring-time sport in high schools in this area...)  As he started jogging away, he called out, "Hope you enjoy this weather!"

I didn't have the heart to tell him I was going to spend the evening in a darkened theater, before going to ANOTHER theater to finish the night...

And tomorrow ought to be interesting.  Gotta cut some unistrut so they can mount new speakers in the theater, gotta do a group phone-call about some of the items on our to-do list, the company bowling party is supposed to start at noon...it's gonna be a chaotic day (but, then again, they are all chaotic this time of year...)

All that said...I'm glad I've got my chaos to deal with, Mila, and not yours!

Woo-Hoo sunny and 64 again today!  plus found out in the park across the street there is a pair of bald eagles that have an aerie in there.  Yesterday they were soaring. gorgeous to see.

not bad it rained..its is the low  50's now.. I had a talk with a guy  yesterday,  there are Dandelions  scatered about  my yard..he asked why i don't spray them.

  I said..well? first off  , I have grandkids that play in the yard, secondly, my neighbors  cats   come in, and hut  around by the shed   and my p[orch  for Moles  and suach... I also don't want to get rid of the  dandelions ,becaus they are a source  of  food for the honeybees...

he said, ;don't you hate the  way it looks?"

 I said...by the middle of Mat there won't be hardly any, and in August when the ehat is up and the rain is scarce. my yard  will be green...

Then I added, ..Green is   my Favorit color..Yellow was my late wifes  fav color..so..I kinda like it.

the blossom and stem are not edible but the leaves are.  they are part of those bags of mixed greens salad mixes. sooo... tell him your growing your own food.

Well, all things considered, it was an interesting day...

I was under the impression that the phone call was going to be about how we're going to rig the kabuki drape that the director wants to use.  The last time we used it was ten years ago, and the pipe that we hung it from (which was specially hung JUST for that) has now become a lighting position, so the director can't hang it there unless he wants to argue with the lighting designer about where all those lights are going to go...but he had something else come up, so it ended up being a rehash of where we all stand on our to-do lists and what needs to be highest priority...

While this was going on, I was trying to fit the metal-cutting saw blade I bought yesterday onto a saw.  I was going to use it on my chop saw...but the blade is only 7" and the saw is built for a 10" blade, so it couldn't swing low enough to cut all the way through anything.  So then I thought I'd try it on my cordless Dewalt circular saw...and discovered THAT was a 6" blade, so the new blade wouldn't fit inside the safety guard...

And I have a circular saw with a 7" blade on it, but I could not, for the life of me, get the blade loose (I mean, it's been sitting for years, so there's been plenty of time for the bolt to start rusting in place...)  I finally ended up using an angle grinder with a cut-off wheel, which was what I'd originally set aside and then thought it might go faster with one of the other saws...

But I got all the strut sections cut, and still managed to make it to the bowling party before things got too involved (they start off with a catered pizza dinner, and I got there as the last of the people at the bowling party where going through the serving line the first time, so I slipped right in.)  In the past they've always assigned people to a foursome as a team to have them bowl...this was hypothetically to encourage people to get to know people from other departments, have them spend some time with people they otherwise don't work with--and that actually does work, there are a handful of guys from the games and foods departments that I had seen around a lot but had never gotten to know, until either bowling or playing golf with them.  I say hypothetically, however, because it seems like the maintenance guys always end up on teams with each other, the office people always end up on teams with each other, and senior management is always their own team...

Today, however, they gave up any pretense and just said, "Here's a game card, it gets you two games plus shoe rental.  You can pick whoever you want to bowl with, but we encourage you to mix it up a little bit and get to know people you aren't always working with..."  Well, being the only one from my department there, that wasn't a difficult suggestion to follow...I ended up bowling with three security people and the lady in charge of the animals department.  And, ironically, I had one of the worst games of my life, followed by one of the best.  The first game, I didn't get a single strike or spare, and managed a measly 63.  The second game, I only had two open frames...eight pins down in both of them...and everything else was a strike or a spare.  Considering this is the first time I've even opened my bag since the company bowling party last year, I was expecting more of the first game and less of the second...but I have no complaints!

Took the next couple of hours to run errands and get stuff ready for dress rehearsal tonight...made it to the school, got stuff cleaned up and straightened out...there's still an airbrush that's got some kind of feed issue that I need to get cleaned up, but otherwise, everything was working smoothly.  Our zombie looked much better tonight (which made me laugh a little bit because people last night were talking about how good he looked, and the night before that, when someone else did his makeup on their own, he still looked 'good enough'...it's kind of traditional, when doing this show (Zombie Prom), to do the zombie as kind of cartoonish, "This is very obviously just green makeup that we slathered on in a hurry" type stuff, and I think the girl (one of the students in the show) kind of had that look in mind with what she was doing.  While I've done the show before, I never looked at what anybody had done with past productions of it, so I've come into it both times with a pretty distinct look that's more akin to Walking Dead (without prosthetics) than Scooby Doo.  So everyone's been really excited to see this very different take from what they'd been expecting.  And for me, it's a nice change of pace to tackle a more elaborate makeup like this with a skilled and eager helper.  She did his makeup Monday night.  I came in last night, set up some stuff, and ended up doing most of his makeup, and then after rehearsal last night, we talked about what changes should be made and who was doing what, so tonight, while I was doing one thing, she was doing another, and we got a LOT more detailed and still finished up in good time to get him out to the stage well before he needed to be there.

And then texted my boss at the movie theater and said, 'Hey, I'm going to be done with the show early enough to go ahead and close for Abby tonight, so you don't need to,' which immediately won blessings upon my head...*laugh*

So, it was a full day.  And a good day, in a lot of ways.  Tomorrow, we hang subwoofers, and I'll be running the lift for that for at least a few hours...and then it's back to the theater again (but I need to swing by the hardware store and grab a couple of magnetic door latches and maybe some neodymium magnets to go with them.  And I should probably take my screw gun...I know the school has some, but if I take mine, I know it works and I'm not concerned about whether or not they have a decent bit driver...)

For all that these last couple of weeks before the park launches into full-on rehearsal mode get ridiculously crowded and busy, I still so much enjoy working with these kids.  One of the kids in this show was in the junior-high production of Fiddler on the Roof I worked on last year...she was laughing about how I had to turn her into a little old woman (she was Yenta) and people would give her grief because she never got all the makeup washed out of her hair before she went back to school the next day, so teachers and kids were teasing her about going gray...

And the fact that she's in this show...as a sophomore...with a significant role...really is kinda heartwarming for me, because last year, she was stressing out about auditioning to get into the Productions class at the high school, and her mom was even worse...and I kept saying, "Look...trust me, you're gonna be fine and you are MORE than ready to audition for that class."  One of the reasons I do this (because none of the schools can afford to pay me anything close to market rate for a makeup artist, much less a designer who also acts as backstage crew and even occasionally does props and wardrobe work) is because working with these kids reminds me of how I felt when I finally found my way into theater and stopped feeling like I just didn't quite fit in where I was at.  I love theater, and a lot of these kids do, as well, and I hope that my efforts and example boost that love for it even higher.  I take a lot of pleasure in seeing that some of the kids that I've worked with through the years are still, a decade or more after they graduated, still doing theater work.  It's not for everyone, and I don't begrudge anyone who decides that it's not lucrative enough or is too demanding or time-intensive...but I want to make sure that nobody I work with decides they don't want to do theater because they didn't enjoy it.

 That's all pretty neat!. The fun working with the  kids. You know , some where down the line, they'll be telling spouses, friends, of  castmates  about 'The Guy i knew , who helped  our school company"

The Bowling things is fun,  We had a Gold league  i ran at Navco, for  2 years, but  it died  when  guys ( me)  kept getting laid off.  I beat the  Big Boss in our head to head match, everyone said i should have lost on purpose..but it  did  serve  the purpose of getting to know  folks...people i didn't like i  disliked more... people i liked went the either way.. Bosses  , gained respect for me, because i handled  all the numbers and standings.

 My  Late  wife  didn't like to go to stuff  the Union had  or the post office  had,, i think she didn't like lot of the people. But the Union Pic nics  were fun..kids won prizes, i got to show off, and  My wife  got to talk to some  people  she ended up ,liking to talk to.

so..yeah?  do that stuff, even  if its   just to 'drop in and say hi", then leave. its good  for folks to know you , outside of things.

I tend to skip most of the employee parties these days.  They're geared to be entertaining for 14-18 year-olds, and I was long past that when I started at the park.  This is one of the few things they do that I actually look forward to.

I'm sure, had I said anything about "I'm going to the bowling party", there would have been some concerned words about priorities...but when push comes to shove and the chips are down, I'm there for the long haul.  Anyone who wants to complain about me leaving early, now, to go to an employee party, needs to come talk to me after lighting focus, when it's one AM and there's me, Security, and the grounds clean-up guys on the park, and that's it.  Since they're all home in bed whenever we're doing that, I don't feel bad about giving up an afternoon when we're still a couple of weeks out from starting rehearsals, especially when all of the major projects on my list are things that I can't do until electricians and carpenters are done putting our space back together.  Or today, when I was the one in the basket lift, almost twenty feet above the stage, balancing on the bars on the side of the basket (which we're not supposed to do...don't tell anyone...) because there's already so much crap hanging above the stage that I can't get the basket close enough to where I need to be to mount the anchor points for yet more stuff that's going to be hung (and could potentially make it impossible for us to get down a couple of our lights...that will be fun...)

I took advantage of the time that I was up there to strip out some of the old rigging (some of it, I had to, because it was in the way of what I was putting up), even though the last time we used it (five or six years ago), when I asked if I should take it down because we were unlikely to use it again and if we did, there would probably be better places to rig it, the director said, "No...we should leave it there.  Just in case..."  You get up to the grid over the stage (where we're hanging all the lights), and there's an absolutely revolting amount of, "No, leave it there...just in case..."  Half of it, we can't even use now, because so much other stuff has been hung underneath it that we can't even get to it anymore.  I understand the whole "we went to a lot of trouble to get that installed, and we could end up using it again, so keep it there" (I mean, I'm the king of "Don't throw that away, that could be really useful under the right circumstances!")  But when you have to move it around EVERY YEAR to get it out of the way of what you ARE using, and you haven't used it in almost a decade, and it could be EASILY rigged to be reinstalled if you decided to use it...WHY IS IT STILL THERE?!!!

Yeah, I was a little frustrated today.  It got even better when they wanted to use the basket lift to raise the subwoofers (the 'more crap' that I was rigging hanging points for) up into position, and I had to explain that I could barely get MYSELF in there.  Throw a 4x3x3 ft box up on the edge of the basket so I can't see where I'm going and there's even LESS room to maneuver, and I seriously doubt I can do that.  If the other speakers weren't already in the way...if I didn't have to dodge the antique-ish sconce lights (with legitimately antique glassware in them)...if they would get me trained on the other lift that fits in the theater--the one with an articulated arm on the end of the boom so I could get closer to the ceiling without worrying about crushing part of the main support beam around the outside of the theater...

If they would stop layering band-aid fixes on top of band-aid fixes...

But, the rigging work is almost all done.  We have one in position to be hoisted up, we have pulleys and ropes rigged, we have a maintenance crew that's supposed to show up to help us hoist it tomorrow morning (we tried it tonight, and there just weren't enough of us to make it work)...so, hopefully, by noon tomorrow, it will all be done.

That was part one of the good news.  Part two is, the kids did so well at rehearsal last night that the director/theatre teacher decided they didn't need to rehearse tonight, which would send them into opening night tomorrow all rested up (hopefully!  We ARE talking about high school kids, after all, and that's an age group that isn't well known for wise decision making.)  But I didn't end up sitting in a darkened theater tonight and almost falling asleep (again).  Didn't really get rest, but I did get to run a few errands for the things I was going to fix tonight and can now fix tomorrow night instead.

But I did have to deal with the group that rented our large screen for the late (9pm) time-slot tonight.  A realty group, sponsored by a realtor who specializes in buying flipped houses and then reselling them, and a bunch of the people who either flip the houses or provide services for those flipping the houses.  They were WAY more interested in talking to each other than watching a movie, and a handful of them only lasted maybe five minutes inside the theater and then came out and spent the rest of the night talking in the lobby.  I didn't realize how much I enjoy the solitude of a quiet lobby until they left...

Weaves through Zob's legs and nearly trips him up.

Thank you everyone.

Much as I enjoy special effects work, theatre in general, whilst fun is not where my heart is. I'm happier with students. I beat the email to a standstill last night, and there was an unpredidented number of grateful ones from students I've dealt with, some in this recent madness, and others I've worked with over the year. Even a formal Islamic blessing from one young gentleman. Back to marking on Monday, but for now curling up with my medals website - with inpeccable timing, I've been being deluged with images for the section I'm working on just when I don't have the time to work on them...

ok. Palindrome  week!.. from 4-25-24 to  4-29-24

now?  5 points is way too much to give up  for  number.

 BUT.....  evey one  take  2 points..anywhere, mix or match

Put at the bottom   PD424

PM  me changes.

Thank you Don.

Hey…power is out until 7:30 .I’ll catch up when restored.. tablet won’t work hang phone now

Penal says 9:30 now….thiey still
Don’t  know what happened…..I post whenever we have power.ot is amzonh how black the house is without all the gadgets lights

i got caught up in some real life stuff catching up now

still at the Ball..it  just started.

three weeks to go...

Okay...time to sound off before my annoyances eat me into an ulcer or something...

We've known for a few months, now, that the director wants us to install some 'cool neon' (LED rope light that looks like neon light tubing, but far less fragile, less hot, and uses WAY less power)...we finally got it yesterday and it's going to be a HUGE process.  He wants to run it around the front edge of several of the illusions (despite the fact that the instructional materials for it specifically say "avoid bending in sharp curves" and some of the places he wants it are just NOT friendly to electronic materials of that type.  Like, the instructions use a 90deg bend as their example of DON'T...one of the places on one illusion that he wants to use it is more like...140deg...WAY tighter than a right angle bend...)

Everybody is antsy about the fact that the stage hasn't been painted yet...this, despite the fact that we haven't painted the stage in, like, three years, now, and the last time it was painted, they basically built a tent around the interior of the theater and set up forced-air heating to keep the stage warm enough for the paint, and did it in February.  And every year, when they've scheduled it to be painted as part of the run-up to rehearsals, they've either got some renovation work, or the weather's too cold, or there are other projects that were higher priority...Yeah, we haven't painted the stage in a while, because we keep trying to paint it this time of year and it NEVER WORKS.  So why are we still scheduling it?

The lighting designer finally got me a list of the lighting gels he wants to use (which we may or may not have in stock...he tends to use the same colors every year, but he never tells us until the last minute, so we've used up most of his default colors and I don't know if we'll have everything he wants to use this time.  On top of that, he's decided that, now that we have all of the lights hung up in the ceiling of the theater, he wants to replace the gobos (design templates) in most of the moving-head lighting fixtures.  Could we not have done this back in January, February, March?  BEFORE we put all the lights up?  When they were easily accessible and in a workshop-type space where digging into them and swapping out internals would have been a super-simple process?

So we've got two of us tackling most of these major projects...the other guy is trying to get as much of the neon work done as possible (I just facilitated it immensely due to the fact that I bought metal-cutting blades for my miter saw, so he can make clean, consistent cuts without fighting the torque and kickback of the disc grinder he started out with...)  The carpenters are ALMOST done with the renovations, so I can start painting...if I can get them to stop throwing other projects in the way.

And I'm trying to work on another show while all of this is winding up (that one's fun...Zombie Prom...), so most days I have to leave by 4pm so I can get home, get food, and get to the school to get stuff ready for the show that night.  I'm only doing makeup on one person (the guy who becomes the zombie), so there should be no rush for me to prep...except that the makeup is happening in the womens' dressing room so I have to get there, make sure the airbrushes are all clean and the makeup is all shaken up and ready to go, and then get out so they can get into costume for the show.  And I'm having a whole lot more fun at the show than at work...but Saturday is closing, and after that, I'm up to my eyeballs until the cows come home or the last dog is dead or whatever morbid expression for 'the long haul' you want to use...

I hope this isn't the year that I finally hit the wall and just burn out on the whole process.  It's been good, thus far...but suddenly getting all this extra information about the neon and how we're supposed to install it despite the fact that the director is asking for something directly contradictory to that, and having the director say something this afternoon in production meeting about "I feel like this is the tenth year that we've planned to paint the stage and run into challenges" when the challenges have all been due to scheduling the painting at the second or third least convenient time of the year...yeah.  My frustration spiked tonight.

all that sounds nuts!

  as far as the install goes. Is there  a manufacturing  rule  of how they go up? If  you don't do it that way, does it negate  insurance?

  How do they paint the stage.. rollers?  spray?..spray would dry faster..right?  I dunno..i never  did anything  that was as  big as a stage!

 As far as  'hitting the wall'..i can only look at my  Lettercarrier  career... started out great. then  Postmasters  and  POOMs  they hire ( i can only assume , the lowest IQ gets hired there)..the shine started  coming off   real fast. Personal stuff missed out on, workign sick and injured  and  dumbass  Ideas from a VP who was someone's brother -in-law came up with...it wears  on you.

 you know what is needed, you know what you can do to make it better, or at least work.. butt some  dumbass holding a  cup of  coffee  with a dress shirt and tie says " no, you have to do it this way"

sadly,, in those years  where a Wall popped up... sometimes the wall has to fall on them, before they say... like the  Dog from old  Bugs Bunny cartoons.."...you know sumpin' ?  He's  right?"

 This could  be a wall year for you.. just hang in there... Knute  Rockne  was asked one time..how he  Picked his Back field , when he was at Norte Dame...he said " I got  brick wall at the field.. those who go through it..are Fullbacks,  those  who  go over it  are halfbacks...and those who go around it, are Quarterbacks! "

MAY DAY...MAY DAY!!!!..yep its  May day!

MAY I say...about dang time!

We use rollers for most of the stage.  There's too much potential for overspray making a mess of everything around it (plus, while it's covered, it's an outdoor stage...if the wind is blowing, the spray is going somewhere besides where you pointed the sprayer).

The neon install gets better...they were trying to get us to nail down specific numbers of what kinds of cables we needed to do the installation earlier today.  I started looking at what they were getting ready to order, and then looking at the controller unit they want to use for the stuff on the proscenium...and they don't match.  I was like, "Ummm...NONE of these will do us any good for the stage.  Their input doesn't match the output from the controller, so these are all useless for that particular project.  Now, maybe for the illusions..."

We did get the mounting track for the biggest section of the neon installed today.  The controller has two output channels, so we can hook up one other section.  I laughed a little when I looked at the diagram of where the director wants neon (under ideal conditions), because there's one piece that he says he wants that there's just no good way to get control to (he wants it all under DMX control...the section in question is at the base of one side, to get a matching signal to the base on the other side we need about 40' of cable and the longest cables the manufacturer makes are 10'...)  I was talking with the other guy and mentioned that I thought it was kinda ridiculous that they told us, back in January, that we would be doing this...but they didn't give us ANY kind of information about what we were working with or how it was supposed to be installed until just a couple of days ago.  I mean, yeah, I get not sending all of it out then, because it was freakin' cold and I would have been really eager to find just about anything else to work on instead, especially with a deadline at the start of May.  But my mind would have been mulling this over and figuring out the important questions to get answered BEFORE we even started, so we wouldn't be where we're at now, with a bunch of empty track, a bunch of LED neon, a DMX controller, and absolutely no way to get the controller hooked up to the neon.  I also have to figure out where to put the controller so that we can get power and DMX to it, preferably somewhere vaguely accessible so we can program it with the right settings...

We were already pretty much maxed out on available power circuits at that part of the stage (something I've told them for the past two years)...and now we need power for two subwoofers AND the controller, AND a bunch of additional outlets for at least one of the illusions (because it uses two hydraulic motors that are currently drawing more than enough power to trip the circuit breaker, although the electricians think there's something wrong with the motors because they shouldn't be drawing that much amperage but they don't do hydraulics work so they aren't sure what the problem is...AND THEN it also needs power for a fog machine and a bunch of lights.)  So I don't know how we're going to solve that...the outlets that are accessible for where they need to run power from will be running two TVs, plus the main hall lights backstage...there's only a handful of additional places we can pull power from at this point (we would have two more 20amp circuits, but when they installed the elevated stage floor about a decade ago, nobody paid any attention when I suggested that they do something to make the outlets in the old stage floor, against the upstage wall, accessible.  So, they're just sitting there...power's run to them, the outlets are live, and they're in a place where we could REALLY use more power because the director and the lighting designer keep stacking more shit upstage that needs constant power, without taking the time to ask, "Hey, do we have power available for this?"  And then we get the electricians annoyed with us because they get called in to slap together SOMETHING that will work for us, and then a couple of years later we're complaining about how their job looked even though they did three days' work in about six hours to get it done for us...  *sigh*)

Man? all this stuff! When do you guys open?  around here   the parks will be open  either Memorial day weekend, or the  week before. I keep getting   text as and emails from Hersey to get a 'membership" ( that's  funny..i think we went there like 2 times in my life , Cross country goes   there  during the  States weekend they are out there. )

Kennywood and  Idlewild normal open  for  memorial  day  weekend..that's only a couple weeks?

@justin I just realized that things moved forward quicker than I though after I posted lol

Yesterday was not even able to get on to check the rpol so sorry for the latest posts

In reply to Jason graves (msg # 130):

No problems. Your chatting with Corporal Gools.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:32, Fri 03 May.

had a very good day today.. tired as hell, but it was a very good therapy today.
well sister dumped me off for my therapy (PT and OT). I started at this place almost a year ago and go 1-2 times a week. when I started I could barely do 100 ft in 6 minutes with my cane and nearly nothing without it.  It was not a progress test day or anything, just a regular sessions. well we did a 3 minute walk without my cane and did 257 feet. no falling, or stumbling, though did some weaving which is normal. also had to practice 'climbing'. go from standing next to an elevated mat and get up on it with my knees (using a pillow because I have crappy knees - no cartiledge), I did it but was rather slowly to stay comfortable. I told my PT therapist 'I am 'Slothwoman' to which got us laughing. made it fun. then had to sling these 5lb. yellow beanbags into a basket with my bad arm. well there went my 'bananas'.  lol. In OT I got to play plumber. plus we checked my hand grip again. On my good off hand I have a grip at about 40 ppsi, pretty normal. Back when I started my stroke side dominant hand was barely 10-12 ppsi, very weak. well 2 weeks ago the strongest it was was just over 14, still week and had not shown a lot of improvement since December. today out of no where I hit 17, 17.2, and then 19.4 ppsi.  I was amazed considering it was diagnosed with arthritis as well. it may not be big in the long run, but for me it was as amazing as when my hand started opening and closing over night last year.

Great!...any  forward movement is  good  Movement!

In reply to Admiral Hack (msg # 129):


Well, the park is open on weekends, right now.  We open one show Memorial Day weekend, and another show the weekend after that.  Right now is the annual insane push to get all the massive projects done before rehearsals start (we never get them ALL done...)

I pulled the rip cord this morning.  Got there and Macyn (the other tech guy I'm working with...I should start calling him my partner in crime or something) told me that after yesterday's phone calls where he talked with the director about needing different jumpers for the LED neon, to hook it up to the controller they had, the director suggested just cutting the default controller box off the set we had and wiring it directly to the DMX controller.  And at that point, I was like, "Ummmm...we were already in the deep end of the pool, and you just tossed me into the ocean on this one.  There are four wires...which may or may not match colors.  If they do, it's simple...if they don't, I'm going by dead-reckoning as to which colors should be spliced together, and I am NOT comfortable with that.  I don't know if hooking the wires up wrong is going to fry the whole thing, or screw up one color so we only get 66% usefulness out of it..."  So they called the park electricians to come look at what needed to be done, and since Macyn's been in communication with the director for a few weeks about it now, they had him take over as point man for the neon, which freed me up to paint the off-stage walls that have also been on the overdue list for a month, now.

In the same phone call where the director offered to have Macyn head up the neon, he asked if there was anything he could do better to help facilitate things, and I mentioned that it would have been nice to have had ANY sort of information about the neon (beyond the fact that we were installing something he was calling 'neon' but wasn't really) back in January or February, because I could have studied up on it a little bit and gotten myself mentally prepared for everything we had to do, instead of getting one day's notice and a couple of PDFs (they call them 'tear sheets'...basically, the kind of information pamphlet you'd hand out at a lighting designers' convention, with practically no useful information with regards to how to install it, what kind of power allocations have to be made for it, etc...so, a couple of short steps above completely useless for what I need to do...although I didn't go into all that detail about it).  He apologized...it was still in the "we'll do this if the park says yes to it" phase, but he agreed that he could have sent information about "this is something we're looking at using" instead of just leaving it hanging in Limbo.  So, we'll see.

But, hey, the offstage walls are painted (except for around one doorway...I was using a paint sprayer, the doors to the backstage area are being replaced, so those doorways were wide open.  I stapled plastic up around one, but I couldn't do the other without basically sealing off backstage and I'm not sadistic enough to do that).  Ten minutes with a paint roller tomorrow, and it's done.  We're theoretically painting the stage floor tomorrow, as well, because this weekend is the last time that there will be nobody on the stage for a couple of days until November.  If it doesn't happen now, it's not happening this year... (the floors offstage need to be painted, regardless...we had some renovations done and there are sections of the floor that are just bare plywood, at the moment, so SOME painting is gonna have to happen.)

Also found out that one of the illusions that they're planning to use this year might need a major overhaul...it uses hydraulics to elevate part of the illusion, and the hydraulic motors are running really erratically (until they blow their fuses, that is...usually when the part of the illusion is going up and about a foot to 18 inches higher than its default setting...and then it's stuck there until we replace the fuses...)  The electricians came and checked out the controller box for it and couldn't find anything, but they found out that the motors are drawing WAY more power than they should be.  Had some of the maintenance guys who work on hydraulics come down...and they're not positive just yet, but they think there's a very good chance that the motors are failing and that's what's causing the overloads and the erratic operation.  The director just bought this illusion a few months ago (the magician who owned it before passed away), so he doesn't really know the service history of it, how well it was maintained, how well it was stored, etc (considering Macyn spent a couple of days scrubbing crystallized cat pee out of the inside of another illusion from the same magician, storage and maintenance were not high priorities...)

So, yeah...it's gonna be an interesting spring...

reminds me of an old  WWII  movie   with an old, beat up warship going into battle. Most of the crew  are new.

 The captain calls  down for the  engine room to go ahead 1/3, and  the  offciers   don't  quite understand  the limits of the vessel and Crew. But  below dec the   Grizzled  Master chief  is  shouting orders  and  Jury  ringing Pipes  and sealing off  leaks , to make  everything  sail smoothly!

 Roy Just  got the call..." Flank  Please, Mr  Curtis, if you wiil"

Tarja has also come over to say hi

Maybe not quite as mad here, but it feels that way...

Finally got the selection process for next year's Final Year Projects started, only a couple of months after I wanted to. In January, Digital Services - who put security far before usability - moved the server the selection system lives on out of a publically-accessable part of the network, so it can only be accessed if you are on campus or using a VPN. As I have students doing their placement year as far away as Australia and Korea that's not real useful! When we asked why they said, "Security Issues" without bothering to define what those were and have been very unhelpful about sorting them out. Still haven't, so I've launched the process where it is and sent instructions on how to access it along with the regular instructions on how the system works.

All over the VPN of course, as I work from home on a permanent basis for disability reasons.

And it's peak grading season, with students rocking up to do their project presentations then expecting their reports to be marked.

Anyway, I sit at the beginning of a long weekend. I need it!

 enjoy it Mila!

In reply to Admiral Hack (msg # 135):

Oh, we're not calling for Flank Speed yet.  That happens about the middle of next week, when lighting focus is done, the stage is painted (started on that, at least, and what I've done so far DOES look good), they no longer have to keep illusions out in the middle of the stage so the maintenance guys can access them, and we've started rehearsals.  That's when the crunch REALLY hits.

But, yeah...the scenario you described does have a very familiar feel...

On the good news front--the park electricians are genuises (well, a couple of them are, at least!)  They came and took a look at what we had for the LED neon and DMX controller, we talked with them about what we needed, they took a few things back out to the shop (working kind of under the table, because their manager had them assigned to another project but they know we're under the gun...)  Rather than rigging some kind of adapter from the output from the DMX controller to the neon, they took some leftover cables (the park was going to do something similar with our wooden roller coaster, several years ago...and then, after they bought all the materials for it, realized their plan wasn't going to work and couldn't get their money back, so this stuff has been sitting in storage for most of a decade, now) and wired THOSE to the controller, so now the controller's output has cable ends on it that we can actually do something with, wired up the other end to the connector on the LED neon, and brought it all back to the stage.  Now, instead of having to mount the controller somewhere within a few feet of where the neon run starts (at the top of the proscenium!), we can mount it basically anywhere that's convenient, and there are enough cables to get us anywhere we need to be from there (they brought, like, seven of those cables, which are 2m each, so three cables would reach from the floor to the very top of the proscenium...and then they said, "If you need more, just let us know, we've got a ton of 'em that we can use for anything else...")

THAT project just became so much less of a headache!

 very neat..Nice to have a 'damage control' team  come to the rescue!

 so.. was talking about  a friend of my who just shut down her D&D game for , like..the  5th time..she deleted another game a few months  ago..however she  is  thriving on the other sight, where i only pay  the one game i have been in for years, and it got stuck on that site.

   My  DM over there asks  about my games here  and just  for the heck of it.. i 'browsed  games by Posts'

  My Space game is  #2  over  all

  football game  is  # 9 over all

  and  my fantasy game, the slowest moving of my games, is  16th

not  bad, i should think!
This message was last edited by the player at 01:22, Sun 05 May.

I made a big  update post..  for some i didn't add in, was because i was wait8ing for posts from PCs.

Closed the show last night...I've mentioned it before, but post-show letdown is serious.  Zombie Prom is a short show...we started just after 7, finished the show just before 9.  They decided they weren't going to strike the set or anything that night...they still have three weeks of classes, so they've got plenty of time to do it in class, so show strike was really simple...for me, it was just emptying the siphon bottles for my airbrushes, cleaning (kind of) the brushes, and packing everything up.  I was loaded up and we were leaving by 9:30 or so.  I had my car unloaded by 10...

Keep in mind, I don't normally get to sleep before 1 or even 2am, so when I say I went straight to bed after unloading my car...that's WAY out of character for me.  Started a YouTube video playing, fell asleep almost immediately (wasn't intending to...I had pillows propped up behind me so I was sitting up...), woke up almost two hours later, took care of the night-time necessaries and repositioned the pillows and went back to sleep.

Woke up today just before noon.

I did get almost all of the stage painted yesterday before I had to go to the show...the backstage area on the Stage Right side still needs the floor painted, but we had two illusions in that space, so it wasn't happening yesterday.  But it was also a little over 70deg yesterday, and most the stage floor was visibly dry by the time I finished off the sections I COULD paint, so we should be able to hit that on the next warm day and be good to go.

The other fun thing ('fun' being used in an ironic sense, here...)?  After it being 70+deg yesterday, it's SNOWING today.  Not thrilled with that, hope it warms back up a bit, because we're doing lighting focus tomorrow night and it sucks being up in the basket lift when it's cold out (it sucks more being stuck down on the stage, because at least when I'm in the lift, I'm up against the ceiling where it's relatively warm.)

snow..that sounds about  right. we had  track meets where  My kids  ran through a  sudden blizzard, that last  15 minus and the sun came back out. A few years  ago, my fr4iends' brother  died of Covid and some  other things...he  stayed over my houe and we threw i football around..he..um..isn't in as good  as shape as me, as far as being able to run, , I tossed hi a  hard liner upp the road, where there was snowand it  lifted him off the ground   enough for him to crasdh and burn... all i said was " See?  should have done this in the yard!"

but that was  like  Mat 11?.. it has  snowed on my B-day many times  in my life..track meets..and  the first Preom i took my wife to..so? yeah..Snow in may sounds about  right.

One of my neighbors posted something on FB about it snowing, and someone else commented, "Winter isn't REALLY over in northern Utah until it's snowed at least once during the first week of May..."

It's a little bit of an overstatement, but not by much.

I was talking on the phone with the assistant lighting designer, about prepping stuff for tomorrow night, and he kind of laughed and said, "Glad I looked at the FULL weather forecast before I packed to come out here..."  If he'd dressed for yesterday's weather, he'd be absolutely miserable tomorrow night.  Tomorrow's supposed to top out in the low 50s, Tuesday is supposed to be in the mid-40s...by Saturday, we're supposed to be pushing 70 again.  Spring in northern Utah...

And sometime in the last four hours, it stopped snowing and has warmed up to almost 40deg...

been wavering from the mid 40's to 60's here today.

Oldest Grand daughter has   Confrance  championships  to day...right now there is thick  fog and  supposed to rain today..they have to go over the  mountian, it  like a differant world there.. so maybe  they'll be dry..or? it5 could be worse!

 high 50's  right now. It was in High  50's when we played football yesterday and rain on us.... the two younger girls ran in the rain for their Little  kids  Running

63 degrees here (she says, counting on her paws - don't think in Farenheit) and set to get warmer over the week.

Time to consider shedding my winter coat. White fur everywhere!!!

Haley runs about: "Snowing!!  It's Snowi.. ack ack <spits a bit> dog hair?"

And then it turned around and snowed another inch after I left last night...

I think (I hope!) we're done with it.  Spent seven hours focusing lights and rewiring speakers at the stage, in not-quite-freezing temperatures...

Had the boom-lift get stuck on me in the fully-extended position, inside the theater (outdoor theater with a roof over it...) and it took us ten minutes of fiddling with it and trying this and that before we finally got it to start retracting the boom again.  Asked my boss to have the park mechanics come take a look at it tomorrow because I REALLY don't want to have that happen again.

But, hey...we've got almost all of the lighting focused...there are, like, four things that need to be checked and/or fixed, overhead, and all the lights that we disconnected on the deck so we could paint need to be moved back into place (now that the carpenters are done spraying sawdust all over everything!)  Need to get a curtain hung, rig a pipe for a kabuki drop, and hopefully I get a chance to paint the last section of floor backstage before the end of the week (we start rehearsals on Friday!)  We made good headway!

  I can see a movie  scene. Montage with  a song playing  with a heavy drum beat of determination as a clock in the lower   corner of the  screen counts down!

I'm sorry if I miss any posts if anyone is waiting on a specific response please feel free to DM me, but I'm gonna be working on catching up tonight on posts life has just been busy as usual.

most  its   just 'encounters' at the ball and RP.

Sam and Zob are dancing

almost any angel woman at the ball...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nGmvovr7VI

Imagining some 6' blonde Texas gal getting on stage singing these (any one of them)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULXnAKefJ8o

any version of 'you light up my life' (they are all bad)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMUz2TNMvL0

::chuckles::  I didn't even listen to Rosanne!

nothing worse than nasal singers

she' more like an anal singer!

Working on catching up...been dealing with an injured pet that requires me to break my sleep...

utting this  in my games.

 Hey Folks. When i was a letterCarrier ( and  our  Union ..the NALC..shop steward),  I had our office  join in with  others across the Nation ( America) for the NALC food Drive.

This Saturday is the  day of the largest , one day, food drive in the world. Those in the United states   should have received  some form of notice in the mail. You put   Canned goods  and Non-perishables out  for the lettercarriers to pick Up . Helpers will also be  helping pick goods  up for the Food banks in their area.

If you are unsure, call you Post office  and  ask if they are taking part, and if they aren't ..ask them why!...

 before i made it to the Postoffice, i had a couple really bad years for the family  with Layoffs, thanks  to 'trickle down' crap. we had to use our food bank a couple times. It made me feel bad, But? I remembered where i came from..there were times  we lacked Volunteered, and My  late wife, Myself and my kids  would gather the  goods from porches  and from the letter carriers  trucks .

 Its a great way to help those in need, in your area.....now? back to our  regular scheduled  RP!

Okay...we've made it through light focus (in slightly-above-freezing weather...I think the wind-chill Tuesday was hovering around 35deg).  Got our extra stuff rigged and in the air (so far, at least...they're still talking about hanging four or five things but we don't have definite answers on what or where, yet), all the lights we had to remove so I could paint the stage are put back down and wired up again, and we're starting in on fixing up illusions (found out that two of them belonged to a magician who died under questionable circumstances and was found partially eaten by his pet tiger...made by a guy who used to make illusions for David Copperfield, and then when he started making variations of those illusions for other people, was sued by Copperfield and decided to just retire at that point...so two of the illusions that we have are the ONLY versions of those particular illusions that exist...some people have made knock-offs of the design (once you understand how they do these illusions, it's actually not too difficult to design your own version of them...a guy that used to perform for us at the park actually made his own version of one of them in his mom's garage...using wood instead of aluminum for the frame, so it was significantly heavier.  And it didn't have all the hydraulics and extra lighting bits and pieces.  But it was the same basic illusion...)

  I never  saw  a good Illusion in Real life...  i just wave off the stuff on TV ( a Tank vanishes  , while surrounded by  people  ect ect)

 and  never been to a place  where they had them.. Kennywood  had some kid of show, but my  late wife and I never bother to see it ,because  kids wante dto  do rides and games.

 Idlewild is smaller, and thier shows  are  singing  , dancing  with some jokes , so it would be neat to see something like that  in Real life.

Happy Birthday Don!!! from all the monkeys in your jungle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8XRtNltvT8

Thank You Nikki... it  figures  it would be a red head!

Well...were it any other night of the week...or almost any other week this year...I'd already be home.  We had a rental for one of our screens in the late slot, a no-show for another, and the third ended about 40 minutes ago, so I could have closed up shop and gone home.  I've closed up shop...

But I still have a movie to finish copying from the hard drive, and then to the other screens (I think I'll just leave the servers powered up tonight and shut off all the lamps on the projectors, rather than stay until 3 am...) and another movie (Dune 2, so, a LONG movie which means a large movie file) that's copying to all the other screens.  Were it another week of the year, I would have already done all of this...or I would have been able to take the time, earlier, to come in and start everything copying so it would be done by now.

But we're having an interesting time at work.  Spent the day trying to troubleshoot yet another illusion that the director got from the magician who died.  We were in the middle of working on it when his all-purpose-mechanic-type guy started griping about no documentation, no video, no information on what was supposed to work and how, and said the director should call the guy up and demand some answers.  And Macyn and I both kinda grimaced, and said, "Well...he's dead."

"The magician's dead?"

"Yeah.  And the guy who built the illusion for him retired, like, twenty-five years ago and doesn't do this stuff anymore."

"There's no one who knows this thing?"

"Well...Tim (one of the contractors that the director works with on refurbishing a lot of his illusions) was the magician's tech assistant for a while...but that was a LONG time ago.  He's told us almost everything he remembers about it..."

Sometimes, when I stop and think about it, my job really does create some absolutely ridiculous scenarios...

 That sounds like a situation comedy  or even a cartoon..."  the  Guys dead"   " the other guys retired  1.4 of a centry ago"

 You need to write all this  down, and write a book,  Titled  "So you want to work at an amusment park.."

putting this in all my games

Happy Mothers day  to all  the mothers out there, as well as the single Dads  , who must be mothers!. Take time to recognize them on this special day!

Ah the time year where I madly panic that I’ve forgotten to get my mum anything before remembering that we had Mothers day back in March

Well, today was an exercise in frustration...

One of the illusions we're using this year was a recent purchase, and when the director bought it, he paid someone to refurbish it.  It looks great...but it has some mechanical issues.  One of them is a little latch on the inside...it's supposed to hold two doors closed.  When we got the illusion, the latch was positioned in such a way that NEITHER door could close, much less be held shut by it.  One of the first tasks I got when we kicked into high gear on show prep was repositioning that latch...

When the director called the guy who did the refurb, and asked why he got something that so obviously did NOT work, the refurb guy basically said, "Hey, I just made it look pretty, I didn't fix anything..."  So, I moved the latch...but overcompensated, and while it wouldn't stop the doors from closing, it wouldn't hold them.  So, we moved it again, to where we thought it needed to be...and it kept interfering with one of the doors.

So, today, they asked me to replace it with a barrel-bolt latch.  Simple mechanism, should have been a very brief, simple job...emphasis on "should have been..."

I spent all afternoon and a good chunk of the evening working on that damn thing.  Got the bolt section mounted on one door, went to attach the receiver to the other door, and found out the gap between the doors was big enough that the bolt wouldn't fully engage.  Thought I could get away with building a backing plate that would extend into the gap and let me mount the receiver right next to the bolt.  Spent WAY too much time on fabricating that, got it done, but the whole latch assembly in place (I put pop rivets through the holes to hold it in place until I knew...otherwise, I would have wasted even MORE time).  Found out that, with nothing solid to hold onto, the barrel bolt latch was useless...you hold the doors closed, slide the bolt, let go of the doors, and they both swing open together and the bolt slides right out of the receiver....

So, I had to reconfigure and reposition AGAIN the original latch mechanism.  I wasn't working on it non-stop...but I feel like I spent five or six hours on what should have been a ten-minute fix, and the final solution was just a position and minor hardware adjustment of what it started out with.  Beating my head against the proverbial wall...

 That'[s the Most  scary words to ever  say.

 "this shouldn't take  long"....or.." just a few minutes"

I always thought 'Oops...Uuhhh-uuummmm?!' was the scariest personally.

Uh-oh is up there

"WTF!"......"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!"..."NO! NOT THTA ONE!"

there are a few.

Oh fuck is another one

:;chuckles:: I used  to  mutter , under  my breath... 'ffffffuuuccckkk." when something i didn't like, or  stupid  happened.

 the first time me and my late  wife  saw the Movie 'Major league"... Ricky Vaugn  got  Glasses and everyone  was looking at him ... Coach was was smiling... the  achololic  older pitcher  said he has a pair just like that.. the catcher   smiled and said..'seeing's the most important thing"

 Westly Snipes shook his head  and  said " its not that important!"

 The  Ricky   looks in the mirror  and says.... ' Fffffuuuucckk" real softly.

 My wife  says ..'he's you!"

few years ago was having day surgery on my hand.  I was awake but there was a cloth so I couldn't see anything. about 1/3 of the way through heard my doctor go "shit! slippery little git!" everyone looked at him. he apologized to me. we all laughed. he had the cyst that was in my hand and was tugging it out gently and it slipped out of the tweezers. he got it out a moment later. went home in my 'baby seal clubbing bandage' as I called it. it got better.

I try to be selective about when I use certain profanity, so there were a lot of times yesterday that I caught myself at "motherf..." as I was trying to figure the stupid thing out.

And, just to prove that you can never predict what I'm going to be doing on any given day...as I was getting ready to leave for work, the production manager texted me, to inform me that the Sign Shop had requested my help, and that what they were doing was a higher priority than anything they had on the list for me...so I was being loaned out for the day.

Turned out, I was still working on the show...they're making a big sign with the show name, and my job was to assemble clear acrylic letters (about 15-18 inches tall) in the way they wanted them displayed (there were two of each letter in the title...connected with clear acrylic spacers about 4" long...this is all CNC-cut 1/2" thick clear polycarbonate...)  Spent eight hours doing that...finished, thanks to the guy from the tool crib downstairs coming up at what would normally be the end of his shift and doing one part of the process so I could focus on the other part.  And then I spent another two hours helping clean up the theater because the park is open during the day tomorrow for school groups.  I don't know if it's tendonitis or arthritis, but both thumbs hurt, and I found out that CNC-cut polycarbonate can give you very nasty paper-cut-style injuries.

But they're done, and that puts the sign shop ahead of schedule on that particular project...

 so, Roy?  the other guy had to help you after his shift was ended?...did you work past your shift as well?

Never saw  letters like that close up or handled them But  I imagine, if they are newer, they would have  Sharp edges from the molds?

I feel fir you - once in the distant past I made a shop sign for a friend, backlit acrylic letters...

Never again. That sort of craft is NOT my thing!

finally got some plants for my new deck and therapy
so been singing this all day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVkMoXTlrrI

In reply to Admiral Hack (msg # 180):

Well, my shift was scheduled to be until 10:30 pm with the option to stay later if production meeting ran long, so, no, I didn't stay after my shift.

His shift also started 4 hours earlier than mine did...

And it's been a LONG time since anyone would have tried making letters like that with molds.  CNC machines have been around for decades, and before that, they probably would have used a band saw or something similar to cut clean edges on multiple layers at the same time (limited somewhat by the weight of the material you're cutting, but there are ways to minimize those problems, too...)  I was cutting some ABS pipe with a bandsaw tonight (had to install some plumbing for the output of a fog machine on one of the illusions) and ABS can get a pretty crisp edge from cutting, as well...but a bandsaw is nowhere near the precision of CNC and laser cutters.