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Lately I’ve glommed onto the John Carter Theory of Caffeine Equilibrium: The substance is best activated by radical changes in temperature in the body.  Achieving this requires a hot caffeine beverage and a cold caffeine beverage and I’ve taken to a can of diet Mountain Dew tempered with the mediocre our coffee machines accept.  Mind you, I’m not a chronic tea liker, given the choice, I’d take just about any store brand diet cola above $600 a pound Spanish oolong grown in Moslem Andalusia through the ashes of Tartars killed during the Battle of Tours (which I think is impossible), but our facilities folks seemed to have forgotten that people freeze at temperatures above water and its still better than the emitic free coffee.

I approached the machine, pulled out a tea single-serving packet and dropped it into the pouch slot stunning the man next to me microwaving a tea bag.

Him: That makes tea too?  Does it taste ok?
Me: It tastes like tea.
Him: How can you have the same device do both?
Me: It’s just a hot water dispenser with a packet cutting device.
Him: That’s genius, I always wondered where the packets went for my coffee.  I thought you reused them.
Me: Nah, that pull out bin holds the empty ones and has to be emptied once in a while.
Him: How wonderful!  You’ve saved me so much time, you’re probably one of those guys in engineering.
Me: Yeah.  It can even make hot water.

I’m not sure how he was unaware of this feature set as “Coffee”, “Tea” and “Hot Water” are three of the labeled buttons on the device.  I hope he goes back and tells all his marketing chums about his amazing discovery, although I’m not sure if they’re equally dim as they may herald him as a genius more than a twit.  I hope I run into him in a similar situation and then I’ll make hot chocolate with the machine and BLOW HIS MIND!

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A coworker is looking into buying a Hummer H3 with the money he made cashing out before the recent stock downturn. I called him an idiot and told him that he’d probably get more enjoyment putting his money in a ditch. As an alternative I recommended he simply get a nice sedan for his family and he said a Hummer and a V6 Caddy get about the same mileage and then a new wind blew. Coworker 2, a man of origin about the Caucasus came descended like the Russian Winter.

Coworker 2: I have had enough of lies! A V6 Cadillac will get 18 city and 25 highway. You say lies with your 20 MPG Hummer.
Coworker 1: But look at it. It rules the road.
Coworker 2: It rules with iron fist. The Cadillac rules with grace like assassin. You have room for family in car and enemy in trunk. V8 Cadillac will drag your Hummer into ditch without receiving mud.
Me: Well, maybe he wants to pick of some hotties with his fat rims.
Coworker 2: Hummer is a hoopdie (yes, he said hoopdie) compared to Cadillac. Learn your car.

It appears both me and coworker 1 were taken to “teh skool”.

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There was a safety training and safety training means food, usually.  I skipped lunch in anticipation of pizza, brownies and the obligatory salad.  The meeting was moved from the normal meeting room to the executive conference room (which should have raised a flag).  I arrived, and there was no food.  We stared daggers at the meeting coordinator who waved her arms to the recessed overhead lights, the hi-definition projectors, the hardwood tables and the high-back leather chairs.

You can’t eat a leather chair.

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The conference room was packed today.  Jammed full of at least 40 people.  Why? Ladder training.  Well, that was the title of the lunch seminar, the power of free pizza such that everyone for one hour is mystefied by the mist-shrouded deathtrap that is the standard ladder.  When I walked by the slide was something like “Never let someone borrow your ladder” as if they were loaded weapons or someone one should horde for the coming apocalypse.  When I passed again, someone was passionately asking a question.  Like they had a ladder question their entire life and now, finally, the confusion could end.  But again, the pull of pizza was strong as everyone was glued to the screen as ladder mishaps were played and common ladder safety statistics that had been painstakingly assembled were shown.  I think we should see how far people will go for free pizza.

December: Shredder Safety Training
January: Stapler Safety Training
February: Glue Stick Safety Training
March: Chair Safety Training

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Normally I prepare enough icing for my carrot cakes such that I can make one cut, ice two layers and have enough that my dad, brother, dog, cat, and brother’s girlfriend can each take a massive fingerful of the whipped cream cheese icing.

I prepared a cake tonight for work as I’d never bake a proper “congradulations, you shot out a baby” cake for coworker’s now six-month old (I was busy) but at 2 AM there’s few beaterlickers about.  There’s a ridiculous amount of icing on the cake.  I could have easily iced a 3rd layer or possibly another cake.  There’s a spot where it’s an inch deep.  It’s more like someone made an icing cake and dumped a carrot cake on it.  I did some work to try and make it less obvious so there’s a slight shelf where the icing extends beyond the cake forming either an icing overhang or an icing hat, depending on your vantage.  I left the cake out, homing my cat would go to town on it, no dice.  With a pound of cream cheese, 2/3 pound of sugar and a fresh stick of butter I may be responsible for either killing, or inducing diabetes in several of my coworkers.

Bonus Story:  My cake recipe involves about 200 grams of whole vanilla yogurt which I thought I had.  Well, having what is vanilla yogurt and having what was vanilla yogurt and is now an affront to both a just and loving God and baking soda is another.  I went to Wawa to get some yogurt and they had no whole or low fat vanilla yogurt, just non-fat which uses artificial sweeteners that taste like burning tires post-baking.  I grabbed a 230 g container of peach fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt and proceded to checkout, where the checkout agent put it in a bag.  I was so dumbfounded that my single serving of yogurt received a bag, I didn’t object like I normally do.

I go home, and start spooning out the yogurt and hit the peach part with only 180 grams of usable yogurt.  I’m not going back to Wawa to purchase another single serving of yogurt so I look around for a yogurt substitute.  I wondering if any of my coworkers will identify the 20 grams of mayonnaise in the carrot cake.

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It’s 4:00 PM and my coworker just did a little jig because his supervisor left slightly early.  My coworker leaves at 5:00 PM normally and his supervisor at 5:30 PM.  But he did a literal dance.  I asked him why, “because it’s Friday and the boss is gone”.  I checked in periodically if he was whittling away at the time left in his day by reading the newspaper, online articles, or even an excessively long coffee break.  Nope, his nose was to the grindstone solidly until 5:00 PM.  On the way out, he did a little shuffle, too.

Did I miss something?

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In an attempt to save material cost, a coworker was tasked with determining the actual surface area used of a material on one of our products.  Watching him measure a curved surface with a ruler was almost painful so I proposed he cut the film of interest away from the product, mass it, and compare it to the mass of a reference sample.  I was told this was “too inexact” compared to trying to measure a curved, inflated, stretchy surface with a ruler.

He then moved to using CAD to view the device in 3D and started using the ruler functions to again measure the surface and tried cutting the space into smaller geometric figures as the surface of consideration wasn’t quite spherical.  I proposed he use the equation for the surface curve and that he calculate the volume as an a surface of revolution.  Once again, I was rebuffed for it not being exact enough.

Calculus, not exact enough.  The only method for perfectly determining the area under a curve after literally millenia of estimates using stupid rectangular prisms and trapezoids is not exact enough.  A mathematic accurate enough to shoot the Voyager 2 probe within 70 km of Neptune at a distance of nearly 4.5 billion km.  Your right, calculus, not exact enough.  You got me.

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Note of Clarification: In a previous post on voting, I give the impression that I was saddened by the results of the recent election.  This is far from the case, my anger arose at new voters who haven’t yet learned that voting is usually a far more pedestrian affair and that proof of democracy is voting when you probably won’t change a thing.  Mykie Noble compared my feelings to church folk who get angry at people that appear only at Christmas.  Democracy is a dirty, messy matter where years of work culminate in a single vote that can be thwarted by misinformation, polemics, or weather.

I split my votes across 3 parties and 1 independent and I look forward to having the High Priest of Democracy that believes in the power of government.  As Rachael Maddow said on the Colbert Report “Having a small government conservative as the president is like having a vegan butcher”.  I look forward to having a velociraptor in power (normally, I’d have to send a metaphor abroad to have it tortured that much).

Actual Post: In talking with my largely conservative coworkers in the wake (some say aftermath) of the recent presidential election I’ve received a lot of curious questions ranging from the composition of the Supreme Court to powers normally wielded by the president.  I think most people are willing to give our new president the benefit of the doubt and all the McCain-Palin bumper stickers and yard signs will be replaced with ones that simply say “We’ll see”.

Not a very funny post so I’ll steal a line from Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.  Palin was panned for not being informed on world events, history and US policy.  To prepare for 2012 she’ll be moving the Governor’s Mansion so she can see a library from her house.

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For one of the few times in my professional career I received a thank you gift in the form of 16 oz handled, non-microwavable, recessed lid, slider cup.    I was thrilled that I got recognition for my years of dodging work and long hours of fabricating data.

NOTE: For the purposes of complying with 49 CPR 1028 the above statement is false and is meant for humorous effect to preserve a comic idiom.  All data was properly and rigorously generated and recorded in compliance with ISO and FDA documentation standards as well as to the moral standards of the Engineer Code of Ethics.

But the lid’s steel.  Steel.  Who makes a cup with a steel lid.  “I want some coffee.  Mmmm… That’s good steel-flavored coffee.  I’m glad I’ll be tasting that metallic tinge with all food I eat for the rest of the day.”  Every other part of the cup is rubberized except for the one part that comes in contact with you tongue.  GHA….

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I spent most of the morning today mocking a blacksmith in work who had made his own forged belt buckle.  References to the LLBean Christmas 08 anvil catalog, the My First Anvil playset and the web 2.0 compliant e-Anvil and its corresponding Facebook group flew furiously.

Later that day, my belt buckle broke and I replaced it with the new Boy Scout web belt.  It’s a fine belt with a quality latching mechanism and less “a small child threw up on my belt after eating peas” green.  I was worried that people at work would catch onto the fact that I was wearing a Boy Scout belt until I had to lift my dunlop to show a fellow campmaster the new belt.  What the dunlop giveth, the dunlop taketh awayeth.