So I had just gone through the TSA check point and am
sitting down putting my shoes and sparklies back on when I notice a beautiful
woman going through the check point wearing absolutely killer heels. They were
about four inches tall and tan with red accents. Given the fact that she was
exceptionally attractive, well dressed, and wearing awesome shoes, she was
getting quite a bit of attention and I could hear one of the female TSA agents
telling her how much she liked the shoes and then they had a short conversation
about them. As soon as the woman moved off, the guy that was in line behind her
started talking to the same TSA agent.
“Those were some
serious shoes weren’t they? I wish I
could wear shoes like that!” he said with a laugh and a theatrical
exaggeration. Considering that I was putting my own high heels on as they were
laughing at his joke, I almost choked. If I had been close enough that I
wouldn’t have had to yell, I’m pretty sure that I would have gone ahead and
told him that he could have worn
shoes like that if he really wanted
to . . .
A mother and her little girl (about four or five years old I
would guess) came and sat down next to me to put their things away. The little
girl was cute as a doll and I couldn’t help but grin as I noticed the large and
elaborately jeweled Tierra that she was wearing.
“You know, I KNEW
I was forgetting something this morning! I left my Tierra at home!” I told the two of them with a smile and a wink.
“I KNOW! And they go with everything!” the mother replied
with a brilliant smile.
So as I was sitting on the plane to Albany, I was surprised
when the young woman in the seat in front of me turns around to speak to me.
“Hey, I know you! You were on my last flight to Albany too!”
she said with a grin.
“I thought you
looked familiar!” I replied with a laugh. “You work in the medical field right?”
“Yes, and you are an engineer right?”
“You got it! So we both lucked out when it comes to upgrades
to first class on this flight huh? Once you get used to flying first class,
flying sardine class really sucks!”
“Yes. In fact if I remember right, you and I were both
upgraded on that last flight and that was what we talking about.” She replied.
“You know I just don’t get it. I’m platinum on Delta and
Gold with US Airways, and yet there are people that fly more often than I do?!
What in the heck can they possibly do
that has them on planes more often than I am?” I asked her.
“I know right?!” she answered.
I was working in Fishkill New York installing one of our
Ozone generators. I guess most people don’t know about it, but sometimes they
use high concentrations of Ozone in the fabrication process of semiconductors
(computer chips). I am really starting to get kind of frustrated when
installing these things because I keep having the same issue – customers
insisting that they are ready to go and that they need us there ASAP to do the
install, and then I arrive to find out that they were nowhere near ready. We
send them checklists and everything in advance, telling them that they must do
this and that before we arrive, they tell us that they have done it all, and
then we arrive to find out that they lied and are not ready. In this case, Bret,
one of my colleagues from New Hampshire, and I arrived to find out that they
didn’t even have electricity to our system yet! Still, we did all that we could
without power before reaching the point where there was nothing left that could
be accomplished. At that point, we headed off for a nice long lunch, then did a
little shopping for some minor expendables we knew we were going to need, and
then we sat there looking at each other.
“Well, we could go see a movie, but sure as hell, just as
soon as we paid for the tickets and sat down, we would get the call that the
power was now on and we would have to bail out.” I told him.
“Yeah, I’m not all that big on movies anyway.” He replied,
and then his face lit up. “Hey, have you ever watched that show ‘Orange County
Choppers’ on the Discovery channel?”
“Sure. I love the bikes they make” I replied.
“Well their shop is only about twenty minutes from here. Ya
wanna go check it out?”
“Hell yeah!”
And off we went . . .
As far as I can tell, it is pretty much a huge tourist trap.
This immense store, and it is filled with T-shirts, caps, mugs, etc, etc and
relatively speaking, very few bikes. Still, it was pretty cool to look at the
bikes they had on display and to read the stories behind them. Oh, and I did
get my wife and father in law T-shirts and a coffee mug.
Somewhere in the next day or so, they did at last get power
to our system, and we started testing all of its safety interlocks and then
trying to operate it. I wont bore you with too many details, but the system
basically works by running Oxygen through these special gas cells where a LOT
of power is applied to cause electrical discharges – more or less creating lightning
inside our system, which then converts some of the Oxygen into Ozone. That’s
the plan anyway. The bad news is, that if your customer does something really silly,
like, oh I don’t know, connecting the Oxygen line to your tool to an entirely
different gas, very bad things can and will happen. In this case, they
apparently filled the oxygen plumbing with Argon while they were working on it
for safeties sake. Pure Oxygen is a very dangerous thing around welding or
sparks and so I understand why they would do this. The thing is, when the work
on the Oxygen line is complete, one would expect them to remove it from the
Argon supply and actually connect it to Oxygen, but they hadn’t. . .
It probably doesn’t sound like too big a deal, but it was.
With the generator filled with Argon instead of Oxygen, this means that we were
not creating lightning and ozone inside it, but were creating a plasma instead.
As far as the power supplies and other electrical components in our system are
concerned, a plasma is pretty much a direct short, and very bad things happen
when you short out high voltage power supplies. Suffice it to say that they
destroyed one of the two brand new Ozone generators and so I had the pleasure
of spending the weekend so that I could wait for my colleague to hand carry the
destroyed generator back to the factory to have it repaired and then bring it
back the next week.
That night I went to the sports bar in the hotel for dinner
and even though I was in boy mode, I bought a “girlie” drink called a “she-she”
- and no, I swear that I didn’t make that up. So when the drink arrived I
couldn’t help thinking “Damn but that thing is pretty – let’s take a photo of
it!” As I was taking out my phone to snap a pic, I noticed a table with about
half a dozen people sitting at it, and they are all looking at me! As I found
my phone and start lining up the shot, a middle aged guy from their table gets
up to make his way to me, and he starts to roar with laughter as he sees the
camera. He stopped mid-way and turned back to his table.
“Look it that! That drink is so pretty he’s taking a picture
of it!” The whole table busted out laughing and the man continued on his way to
me as I snapped the photo.
“What IS that drink?” he asked, still laughing. So we went
back and forth with my laughing with him and telling him all of the stuff that
is in the drink. Here I thought that they were making fun of me, but this guy
and one other from the table were just irritated that they had already ordered
something else. Shortly after he returned to his table, a waiter came walking
by me and winked while nodding his head toward the other table.
“Those folks sure
are enjoying your drink!”
I pretty much had a movie marathon that weekend. I saw them
as Kimberly but not a thing really happened that was amusing or interesting and
so I guess I’ll just tell ya what I thought of the movies.
Red Tails
– This is a movie about the Tuskegee Airmen in WWII. The special effects
and cinematography were absolutely incredible. It’s hard to believe that the
footage wasn’t real – it was THAT realistic. The bad news though is that some
of the dialogue and acting was a bit lacking. It was almost as if the primary
goal of the movie was to educate people and not to entertain them, and that’s
OK, just be prepared for it. Like at one point, the Red Tails had just saved
the lives of dozens of bomber crews, and one of the bomber pilots says something
lame like “Gee, those red tails just saved our butts. I sure hope that we get
them next time!” It wouldn’t have been so bad if the guy hadn’t said it in a
monotone as if reading from a cue card. In my opinion, the movie was worth
seeing, I just wish they had devoted a little more effort to the story instead
of expending it all on the effects.
"Chronicle"
- Not a bad show. This movie was about some teenagers who end up with super
hero type powers and the chaos that follows. I thought it was OK, but three
guys walking down the ramp behind me were loudly stating that it was "the
worst F'n movie they had ever seen". Yeah, it wasn’t the best movie I’d
ever seen, but also wasn’t the worst.
"
Safe House" -
pretty good action flick and the time passed quickly. It’s about a veteran secret
agent that goes rogue, and the efforts of a new agent to try and capture him.
Cant say much more without giving away things, so I’ll just leave it at that
and say that I enjoyed it and the time passed quickly.
"
Ghost
Rider" - I love Cage, but this movie sucked - I wouldn't even spend
the money to rent the DVD if I were you. I liked the first show, but this
sequel was pretty much lacking in every way. Major disappointment . . .
When it came time to fly home, I would
have had to get up at 2AM to fly pretty, and even I’m not THAT crazy, so I flew
home the boring old fashioned way. At the Austin airport while I was waiting
for my bags, I was chatting with the woman standing next to me. She grabbed a
bag that came around, then laughed that it wasn’t hers and put it back. When my
rather large and over packed bag rolled around and I struggle to lift it off of
the belt, I saw her giving me an amused look.
“Yeah, I know – I don’t exactly travel
light!” I told her with a laugh.
“I see this! I’m guessing there is a
woman involved in this trip?” she asked with a sparkle in her eyes.
“Yes, ma’am, you could say that!” I replied as I extended my bags handle and headed
for the door while grinning like an idiot.