Trivial (or not so trivial) stuff that makes you happy.

[swampyankee]

Be careful standing on folding chairs. If you put too much of your weight too close to the back of the chair, it can fold up with you on it.

Do you speak from personal experience or from witnessing somebody else's personal experience?

[SeanF]

Do you speak from personal experience or from witnessing somebody else's personal experience?

Personal experience, although I realized what was happening and was able to shift my weight before it collapsed completely.

[Swift]

I've watched many safety videos on ladder safety (and many videos of people not following them) and I will strongly agree - don't stand on chairs, or even more make-shift arrangements. You are asking to be injured. Get something like the step stool shown below.



Industrial Safety & Hygiene News

According the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, every year 500,000 people are treated for ladder-related injuries and approximately 300 of these incidents prove to be fatal. In 2007 alone, more than 400 people died as a result of falls on or from ladders or scaffolding. -Liberty Mutual - Research Institute for Safety

[grant hutchison]

I looked after a guy once who was nearly drowned by a ladder.
Working alone on the guttering of a building right beside the docks. His foreman had told him to tie the ladder to something for safety. So he tied it to himself. Climbed the ladder, bottom of the ladder slid on the wet dock, ladder went into the water, pulled him after it. Rescued by three passers-by who were smart enough to dive down, lift the ladder off the bottom and prop it vertically so they could get his head above the water. Lucky lad.

Grant Hutchison

[DonM435]

My company had this "safety" newsletter. Each month they had a photograph of some insane structure wherein someone put a ladder atop a scaffold or another ladder, just to get a little more height. Or an extension cord with several levels of socket splitters branching off, that kind of thing. These really were unsettling.

[Trebuchet]

I've watched many safety videos on ladder safety (and many videos of people not following them) and I will strongly agree - don't stand on chairs, or even more make-shift arrangements. You are asking to be injured. Get something like the step stool shown below.



Industrial Safety & Hygiene News

We've got one of those now. We'd like one with an additional step. But my wife wants a red one to match the decor.

[Solfe]

A few years ago, my in-laws neighbor hired a roofing company. I was impressed when I saw the incredible amount of safety lines. Until one of the workers climbed down 3 ladders to ground level while wearing his safety harness and roped in. When he climbed back up, he carried the slack rope up with him. Every few feet, he carefully wound the rope so he could climb some more. Such good care of the rope... but what was he attached to? Nothing good.

[Swift]

We've got one of those now. We'd like one with an additional step. But my wife wants a red one to match the decor.

Best I could quickly google

Or this one

[Trebuchet]

Yup, my wife's been looking at those. We'll probably have to order on line, they aren't in stores.

[Gillianren]

We've got one of those, too; yesterday, Simon discovered another principle of physics when putting all of his weight one way slid the thing back the other.

[grant hutchison]

Christmas gifts bought, wrapped, and in most cases on their way to the recipients.
The small number of remaining physical Christmas cards written, addressed and stamped, and stacked in a place where I'll almost certainly remember to post them.

Two weeks later than my usual schedule, but I can now begin my festive hibernation and avoid venturing into the town centre again until late January.

Grant Hutchison

[profloater]

Returning to a nostalgic mood at Christmas I can remember receiving a Meccano clockwork motor and gears kit, I already had ordinary meccano, I guess I was ten. The year before there was a wood and paper drum set which I discovered early and which disappeared mysteriously later that day. But the clockwork motor was powerful and adaptable to many tasks. I imagine it does not exist today because you could easily put your fingers into the gears. I guess I found a junk wind up gramophone about that time too. For many years I did my shopping on Christmas Eve as many did. That was the day the excitement started. Now I also avoid town from about now onwards.

[Torsten]

Completed the Christmas shopping for two of the children before the end of November!

Confirmed that the same two will make it home this year, though I'll be making a ~200 km return trip several times between here and the airport / neighbouring city.

[Trebuchet]

Christmas gifts bought, wrapped, and in most cases on their way to the recipients.
The small number of remaining physical Christmas cards written, addressed and stamped, and stacked in a place where I'll almost certainly remember to post them.

Two weeks later than my usual schedule, but I can now begin my festive hibernation and avoid venturing into the town centre again until late January.

Grant Hutchison

I hate you.

Completed the Christmas shopping for two of the children before the end of November!

Confirmed that the same two will make it home this year, though I'll be making a ~200 km return trip several times between here and the airport / neighbouring city.

You too.

Ok, it's not that bad. We don't shop for each other any more, except to get something for both of us. This year, it's a fancy espresso machine. And I've ordered all the usual calendars from Amazon, and my wife has Avon products for some folks.

I'm looking forward to not venturing into the "town centre" (somehow I want that to be "towne centere") to visit Starbucks after we get the espresso maker. I expect it will pay for itself in a few months.

[Gillianren]

We've got a few stocking stuffers left for the kids--I'm not buying Simon's chocolate this far ahead of Yule--and I'm making them a puppet theatre that I haven't bought fabric for yet. I'm also probably going to buy a couple of books for Simon today, since I have money early. (Because the first is a Saturday next month.) Then, the kids'll be done. I'm paying a friend to try to speed up Graham's computer for him, since that's what he wants, and his stocking stuffers are traditional. (Mini bottles of booze that amuse me; an unusual sort of cheese; chocolate with stuff in it that I won't eat.) He ordered my Christmas/birthday presents in the Criterion 50% off sale at Barnes and Noble, so they're both here already, though he's promised me a surprise chocolate bar or something for my actual birthday and of course he has to fill my stocking. But our shopping for the household is mostly done. I'm making presents for my mother and older sister, and his older brother who hosts Christmas is big on Just Presents For The Kids, though we usually pick them up some entertaining food items and so on anyway.

This morning, Simon actually got up and dressed quickly enough so that we didn't have to rush to his bus. While we waited, we had a nice little nature lesson sparked by the fact that it was a beautiful morning. We saw a sea gull, and he said he didn't know that you could get them not at the beach, so we talked about animals and habitats and things until his bus arrived.

[The Backroad Astronomer]

First of Gillianren here are some animal prints in the snow I took this afternoon I think one is bobcat fox then there rabbit and deer. There other nature type pictures if Simon might enjoy.
https://twitter.com/NBAstroFarm/stat...98063692959745

Second got some Christmas shopping done mostly thru the auction. Last week found a couple things my sister and her husband might enjoy a rug with a lighthouse on it and a small dolphin statue. The only gifts that I have to travel for are some books, don't have a credit card so have to go to a real bookstore and that trip probably won't be until after the next auction next Saturday.

[Gillianren]

He thinks those tracks are very interesting.

[The Backroad Astronomer]

He thinks those tracks are very interesting.

Glad he enjoyed them.

[Solfe]

In a supply closet at work, I found a tube of meter sticks. It was labeled: "Lightsabres".

[The Backroad Astronomer]

We have a new expression for happiness, as happy as Solfe finding a tube of lightsabers.

[DonM435]

Earlier generations didn't have it so good. William M. Gaines, later famous as the publisher of Mad, said that he used to engage in slide-rule swordfights while a student at Brooklyn Polytech.

[Solfe]

We have a new expression for happiness, as happy as Solfe finding a tube of lightsabers.

I wish I had thought of it myself. But it was a chance discovery.

[profloater]

Earlier generations didn't have it so good. William M. Gaines, later famous as the publisher of Mad, said that he used to engage in slide-rule swordfights while a student at Brooklyn Polytech.

with some sliderules you can flick the body so that the inner slide is ejected as a projectile. Liberal use of talc is helpful for that and the small six inch type work best as duelling weapons in long corridors although lightly toasted stale sliced bread is even better with a wrist flick. Or so I heard.

[Gillianren]

My annual joint birthday party with my Ren faire boss was last night. (Mine's the sixth and his is the fifth, so it makes more sense to have a single party together, since we have all the same friends.) It was, as usual, small but pleasant. My kids got to meet Flake the Archaeology Kitten, a cat Simon's godmother found at work one day. Simon learned how to deal with her pretty quickly; Irene was too excited by one of her first-ever real-life cat encounters to settle down about it and spent the whole time she was there pursuing the cat around the room.

[DonM435]

with some sliderules you can flick the body so that the inner slide is ejected as a projectile. Liberal use of talc is helpful for that and the small six inch type work best as duelling weapons in long corridors although lightly toasted stale sliced bread is even better with a wrist flick. Or so I heard.

I hear that you should set the C-scale index to pi to get the best balance plus extension. (The slide has sharp corners they wouldn't allow on the rule's body.)

After several duels, you'd best check that your math isn't off by a few decimals.

[The Backroad Astronomer]

Clementine oranges.

[profloater]

I hear that you should set the C-scale index to pi to get the best balance plus extension. (The slide has sharp corners they wouldn't allow on the rule's body.)

After several duels, you'd best check that your math isn't off by a few decimals.

the accuracy of the six inch is no better than doing the sum in your head, which we always did to get the decimal point in the right place. So it was better for other uses, the full 12 inch was the accurate enough for engineers tool. I still find today the rounding and cancelling mental arithmetic is fine for engineering uses but it's a skill being lost as is the wrist flick, which is different from the frisbee flick.

[profloater]

as a post script I still remember air density as 23.8 x 10^-4 slugs per cubic foot. The rest of the parameters would be written as one place with a factorial for easy calculation but since it was always ro.v^2 calculations, the air density cancelled out better that way. The flick is past the ear and close enough to catch sometimes with a twist that adds velocity. Some people's ear lobes were knocked about quite a bit. The standard duelling range was one cable, the length of a cricket pitch obviously. So I am told.

[grant hutchison]

That's a lo-o-ong cricket pitch. A cable is one tenth of a nautical mile.
I think you mean one chain, which was 22 yards, which is the length of a cricket pitch.

Grant Hutchison

[Solfe]

I sent my son and wife off to see Hamilton. They loved it. My wife is playing the soundtrack on repeat now.