I ran a session today on how to avoid bullets during a firefight based on a wikihow.org article largely to positive response. I’d like to expand this to a merit badge-like program at camp along with other activities like how to barricade a door, kill a zombie and jump off of a building into a garbage truck. Ideas?
Month: January 2008
Love the training, hate the kids
Troop 380 had Troop Leadership Training and the Scoutmaster Josh Reass didn’t show surprising no one. The kids were a bit slow at first so I busted out the big guns: The Bugaloo song. Nothing, these kids were dead. Skip Davenport and Mike Shavel gave me a bit of an odd look as I screamed “would you like to scratch your balls!” The kids became a bit less death-enwrapped during the afternoon when we did training training. The kids quickly picked up the elements of avoiding gunfire but ran into trouble rolling over tables without exposing their head and confirming their positive outlook by yelling “I will survive” before starting to serpentine across an open field. They were getting a bit tired and I had to stop after teaching them to duck-and-dash to avoid sniper fire in case of a public shooting.  Training was downhill from here as they got restless so by the end of the day I trusted the kids neither in the troop room nor in a firefight. Completely worthless.
Love the training, hate the kids
Troop 380 had Troop Leadership Training and the Scoutmaster Josh Reass didn’t show surprising no one. The kids were a bit slow at first so I busted out the big guns: The Bugaloo song. Nothing, these kids were dead. Skip Davenport and Mike Shavel gave me a bit of an odd look as I screamed “would you like to scratch your balls!” The kids became a bit less death-enwrapped during the afternoon when we did training training. The kids quickly picked up the elements of avoiding gunfire but ran into trouble rolling over tables without exposing their head and confirming their positive outlook by yelling “I will survive” before starting to serpentine across an open field. They were getting a bit tired and I had to stop after teaching them to duck-and-dash to avoid sniper fire in case of a public shooting.  Training was downhill from here as they got restless so by the end of the day I trusted the kids neither in the troop room nor in a firefight. Completely worthless.
Don't quite your day job, which you don't have
Jason Shavel played Anthony Celona in Jeopardy. I started blurting out answers but Jason turned out to be far faster at dinging in so I started shifting up my tactic to even the playing field. I interspersed false answers with faulty logic and convinced the two of the following
- I Love Lucy debutted in the 1920s, almost 20 years before the television was invented
- Ronald Reagan had both George W and George HW Bush as vice presidents
- Ronald Reagan ran as vice president to the Bull-Moose progressive Teddy Roosavelt
- The main product of cows used by farmers is semen
- A one lens pair of glasses is called a unicle while a one wheeled bike is a monocycle
- Scotch is a alcohol that begins with the letter ‘M’
Don't quite your day job, which you don't have
Jason Shavel played Anthony Celona in Jeopardy. I started blurting out answers but Jason turned out to be far faster at dinging in so I started shifting up my tactic to even the playing field. I interspersed false answers with faulty logic and convinced the two of the following
- I Love Lucy debutted in the 1920s, almost 20 years before the television was invented
- Ronald Reagan had both George W and George HW Bush as vice presidents
- Ronald Reagan ran as vice president to the Bull-Moose progressive Teddy Roosavelt
- The main product of cows used by farmers is semen
- A one lens pair of glasses is called a unicle while a one wheeled bike is a monocycle
- Scotch is a alcohol that begins with the letter ‘M’
You know music, alright
The distance of my hands would indicate the forte of my silence.
-Coworker
You know music, alright
The distance of my hands would indicate the forte of my silence.
-Coworker
It's not so bad
I started the actual job I was trying to avoid and found it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought. It consisted of taking acetate and vellum engineering drawings, putting them through a giant scanner, organizing the files, and then boxing the drawings for storage at Iron Mountain for eternity. I was able to convince my boss to let me have a single earphone in and I went through the day jollily listening to a family of TWiT podcasts. The real fun part was the response I got from the CAD group that creates the 3D designs for new products. I was in a different world:
-A drawing was rejected for not including the warning ‘remove all sharp edges and burrs’. Â The drawing was for a circular piece of foam cushion that had both no edges and could not physically have burrs.
-There was a constant whoosh from an air vent that sounded like you were in a wind tunnel. I wasn’t much affected as I had headphones on. One CAD guy said it sounded like it was playing a tune a throughout the day whistled arguably the world’s least connected set of tunes, none of which had any sound bearing close to the air whoosh.
-One of the CAD guys was planning a rebellion for not being allowed to have a radio claiming that the place sounded “like a fucking church”. Case and point: He rebooted his computer and the Windows boot music was shushed by his coworkers.
-Some of the drawings were pretty old. In fact, I think I saw a CAD drawing for a horseless carriage and the wheel.
It's not so bad
I started the actual job I was trying to avoid and found it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought. It consisted of taking acetate and vellum engineering drawings, putting them through a giant scanner, organizing the files, and then boxing the drawings for storage at Iron Mountain for eternity. I was able to convince my boss to let me have a single earphone in and I went through the day jollily listening to a family of TWiT podcasts. The real fun part was the response I got from the CAD group that creates the 3D designs for new products. I was in a different world:
-A drawing was rejected for not including the warning ‘remove all sharp edges and burrs’. Â The drawing was for a circular piece of foam cushion that had both no edges and could not physically have burrs.
-There was a constant whoosh from an air vent that sounded like you were in a wind tunnel. I wasn’t much affected as I had headphones on. One CAD guy said it sounded like it was playing a tune a throughout the day whistled arguably the world’s least connected set of tunes, none of which had any sound bearing close to the air whoosh.
-One of the CAD guys was planning a rebellion for not being allowed to have a radio claiming that the place sounded “like a fucking church”. Case and point: He rebooted his computer and the Windows boot music was shushed by his coworkers.
-Some of the drawings were pretty old. In fact, I think I saw a CAD drawing for a horseless carriage and the wheel.
Just a little bit longer…
7:00 AM – no one in, edit wikipedia entries for improper use of the word ‘momentarily’
8:00 AM – 1 person in, edit wikipedia when she’s not in the office
9:00 AM – everyone in, stare at inbox
10:00 AM – Told tech support would come to fix computer, fear struck into heart.
11:00 AM – While waiting for tech support, eat 1/4 of a birthday cake left in hallway
12:00 PM – Bacon!!!
1:00 PM – while waiting at PC for tech support, I realize that my drink is next to a very expensive computer and that I should move it before I accidentally knock it open.
1:23 PM (I checked) – Awake suddenly from nap because I realized I was falling asleep and didn’t move drink. In process of waking, flail wildly searching for drink to move causing drink to spray over desk. And god do I mean spray… Run to bathroom to get paper towels, realize paper towels only come off one at a time, rip paper towel dispenser off the wall and run past housekeeping holding paper towel dispenser.
Wow, I made a mess, things I had to remove Diet Cherry Coke from:
Phone
Phone cord
Phone receiver (there was a little pool in there)
Right speaker
Speaker Power supply
Keyboard (I actually drained it out)
Between buttons of wireless mouse
CAD navigation device
Around desklamp
Interestingly, after the soda largely soaked into the carpet it started seeping under the clear plastic floor mat. The soda started to evaporate making little coke-colored clouds and rain drops. Amazingly, I was able to clean all of this with only the housekeeper seeing. He was glad I cleaned my own workstation but wanted the paper towel dispenser back.
On the plus side, I was quite awake after that micronap.