Monday.
Neat OP, Haze, glad you can at least email TG.
{{{{{SCL}}}}}
Hi Mork!
gt, is the recycling out yet?
Whoaaaaaa…SCL and Mork all in one day? Sorry about those sad events, SCL. Hope things start to look up.
Sounds like an interesting contrast, Haze. Reminds me of how I feel about Mexico City. Cool place. Can’t live there.
What recycling? In real life, every speck of recycling that I’ve been able to located is out on the curb. I’ve gone outside to add bits, even.
Dishes are being washed. I’m waiting for roofers. And would like to take a nap.
GT
This weekend, I had the distinct pleasure <snort> of burning down a house. Even better, I took a camera with me, so I can do a rare illustrated tall tale.
It’s common in Cottonfield County for landowners to offer a derelict house to a fire department for burning as a training exercise. It gives us several training options, and it saves the owner about 80% of the cost of demolishing the structure.
We’ve had the house in our possession since roughly New Year’s Day. There’s all kinds of bureaucratic crap to go through, with demolition permits, air quality permits, finding live burn instructors, and several burn bans because of harsh drought conditions.
For us, things started coming together in April to do the burn. It was originally scheduled for late May, but was postponed because a large part of the department are farmers, and they were planting. We still did some training inside in May, breaching walls, forcible entry, and the like.
Here is our guest of honor:
The house is about 130 years old, in rough shape, and absolutely trashed. It’s a stereotypical southern farmhouse with the kitchen built separately and connected to the main part by a breezeway. This shot is looking into the kitchen wing from the back door, and you can get a glimmer of the trash left by the last occupants.
This shot shows where we breached the wall in a very sadistic escape drill. The hole on the right is about 18" square, and I crawled through that with full gear and an airpack.
We brought 4 trucks to the party. The first is our newest, the vacuum tanker. It’s a very slick vehicle, and can suck 3000 gallons of water out of a pond in a minute and a half. The short guy in the shot is Dennis, the chief, and the in the white cap is Ed, Pixley’s chief. They also brought a tanker.
This is our ladder truck. It’s the only one in our county or any to the immediate south or west. The closest one like it in NC is in Betsytown, although Suffolk VA has a couple, too. I didn’t take shots of either pumper we brought.
It was a lot of work setting up to burn. We had to sweep the property for vagrants, because that house was a known hangout. The room where we breached the wall smelled of recent tobacco smoke, so one was there the night before. Several holes were cut in the roof, trash piled to kindle the fire, hoses pulled and equipment set up.
This is Nathan, the department lieutenant and my neighbor down the road, lighting the first fire in the kitchen. He’s already lit one behind that panel, but all you could see when he did that was his butt.
There’s a break in the photos while we burned the kitchen wing twice, and put it out. I was kinda busy at the time. The house was very old and all wood, and it went up fast. The hole in the roof made a draft, and drew flame into the attic, which is a nightmare to put out when you have a metal roof.
When we had enough fun with the kitchen burning, everything was put out, and the whole house lit and let go. This shot shows what we refer to as ‘rock and roll’.
The heat was phenomenal. See the bushes to the right in the picture above? There was a plastic 5 gallon bucket and a guy wire for the electric service pole in there, and this is what they looked like after the house came down. When the house was fully involved, we had a big problem with firebrands setting the yard on fire, and the ladder truck was roasting 60 feet away from the kitchen. Dennis had me take an inch and a half back there to set up a defensive spray to shield the truck. Standing 40’ from the house, I could feel the heat through my boots, and I thought I didn’t have to shave because my 2 day beard was being scorched off.
Soon the house looked like this. It took less than an hour to go to the foundation.
One of the tasks was to knock down the chimneys because unsupported, they were a danger. Here’s the ladder truck doing it with their 2 and a half bucket nozzle.
We had to make sure the smoldering remains would not flare up, so a lot of water was dumped from the air and the ground. When we left, this was what the house looked like.
It was a lot of work, hot, sweaty, and dangerous at times, but I would not have turned down the experience for many other things.
Bob those images are intense! I can’t imagine how hot that was. So you guys knock the chimneys down with a spray of water? That’s kinda cool.
Today is sleepy and I had dreams that I was in an episode of LOST, so now I’m just confused.
I remember blabbing about Others and being part of some mystery. Weird.
This week I start my new promotion, but so far I just have a couple transition/training meetings scattered throughout my usual duties. I go full time with the promotion next week, so hopefully I can get trained up by next Monday. Hopefully the editors don’t mind that I’m completely clueless at this point. But the raise kicks in as of today! Woo!
Whoa!!! That’s some story and those are some pictures, Bobbio!
It’s disconcerting to be in the house while they’re ripping the roof off. It sounds like they’re tearing the house apart. Which they kind of are, but still.
GT
Good morning! It’s good to see some of you “strays” wandering back in here! 
It’s back to work for me. Blech. Everybody keeps asking why am I back so soon. Hmm - I shoulda taken a few more days off, it seems. It hurts a little, but I haven’t taken any pain pills - yet. [TMI] For those of you wondering, (I’m sure you have! :p) I seem to be back to normal in the bathroom department.[/TMI]
I brought some pecan pie bars in to my co-workers just to say thanks. They like them!
I better go get busy. I’d rather have a nap.
Herro, all! yawn Nice OP, Haze, I know what you mean about Seoul, I used to have the same reaction to Tokyo when we lived in Japan–Asian cities are mindbendingly crowded and busy to American sensibilities. Even NYC or LA have not even a patch on Tokyo, that place is crazy! Sorry you’re missing TG, that’s tough–but December’s not THAT far away, right? {{{Haze}}}
Hi to Mork, SCL & kai! Sorry about your troubles, SCL, that’s rough–good luck on the titsqueeze situation.
We can haz moar pix of fuzzballs before dey go to new home plz, kai?
So, after a 36 hour booty call w/Himself I’m now all ambivalent about the situation. I like the appreciation but there’s been no discussion of topic A. Discussion must be had but I’m feeling apprehensive regarding it. Damn my hormones, anyway! They get me in trouble. Will keep y’all posted…
Bobbio, those were some amazing pictures, thanks for sharing! I watched a controlled house burn once and you’re right–the heat is astonishing. My skin felt uncomfortably tight and toasted just watching from the road 150 feet away when it was fully engaged. Scary stuff, that… Would you believe my mom has a firetruck? The company she owns installs fire alarm and sprinkler systems among other things and since they have to do pressure tests and system flushes and suchlike it was just easier to buy a firetruck to do it. It’s an 800 gallon pumper she bought from the Fresno FD and they get to keep the lights on it–apparently because the city considers the company to be authorized responders to their own alarms. So the guys sometimes get to run with lights and sirens even though they aren’t actually firefighters–I think she uses this as an inducement to hiring! They also have fun during company picnics, they bring the truck along and shoot the water all over the place and ride around the parking lot playing fireman… My mom is teh kewl!
Gee, sure hope everybody got the recycling out! :rolleyes:
Wow, bobbio, those pics are incredible!
{{{SCL}}} I was thinking of you recently and wondering where you were, but of course, by the time I get here to post, I’ve forgotten everything. Why is it that a blinking cursor wipes out one’s memory?
{{{kai}}}
Hi Minddude!
Yay on the raise, Ely!
Good weekend here. I had a massage Friday afternoon which was great. That makes such a nice start to the weekend! Saturday morning we went to the zoo again, but this week it was CROWDED! Fun, but just insanely packed with people and strollers. Sunday we cleaned the office because I flipped out when I couldn’t find anything. Hopefully we can keep it at least somewhat cleaned and organized for a while.
[Slight TMI] I’ve had an ingrown hair growing on my chin (eeeew) for MONTHS and it’s been bugging me, but I haven’t been able to see it well enough to get it out. But finally yesterday it was right near the surface so I had KeithT go at it with a needle and we got that sucker! It was 3/4" long! No wonder it didn’t feel so good! I was way more excited than one should be about something as unattractive as a chin hair. And I had to share, but well, frankly, I didn’t want to tell anyone I know IRL! So you all get to hear about it. Doesn’t that make you feel special? [/TMI]
Pfaugh, NYC and LA look empty to a Spaniard - empty, I tell you! Philly’s Market Street looks like the set for a Romero movie, after 5pm. In NYC at least you see people around, but nothing compared with Las Ramblas.
Tokio looks “like Barcelona on rush hour even at times that aren’t rush hour,” I’m told. The whole concept of “residential” vs “industrial” vs “comercial” neighborhoods is also alien to Spaniards; most of us encountered that concept for the first time playing SimCity. We’re used to everything except some industrial areas being “mixed use.”
No pus? And no pictures? :dubious:
I have internet again! Yay!
Morning, all. Our recycling goes out tonight for pickup tomorrow, for those who were wondering. 
Welcome back, Mork! I hope you’re going to visit us more often – I mean, we have newer now-regular MUMPers who’ve never met you, which shows clearly you’ve been gone too long!
{{{SCL}}} I’m sorry about all the folks you’ve lost recently. I hope things look up for you now, you deserve it.
Great pictures, Bobbio! And I’m glad it was you near that controlled burn and not me – that’s really instructive on how fast a house can go up, isn’t it? Sounds like you guys had all kinds of (extremely serious) fun!
That is definitely way kewl that your mom has her own firetruck, Smarty. There’s a little girl or boy in all of us just screaming to get out, isn’t there? And when confronted by the opportunity to play with a serious grownup toy,** who can resist?
Take it easy, Rebo – you did just have surgery, you’re allowed to slack off a bit. Or just stay home and veg.
Looks like we’re going to have more thunderboomers today. Oh, joy. Last night while I was in the middle of hooking the new 'puter up, which is more than a bit awkward because the compartment for it in my desk is a bit tight, I heard a lot of cursing from the living room. Turns out Papa Tigs was trying to put Rusty into his Anxiety Wrap™, and he definitely doesn’t have the experience with clothing an uncooperative toddler that I do. Poor Rusty, he gets so scared he just goes limp and utterly unhelpful. Clearly, the skill learned from wrestling with a wriggly Young Tiger lo these many years ago hasn’t been lost yet. (snowbunny was a much more cooperative child, physically, at least!)
Anyway, mountains of work away me, so I am of to it. Have a good day, everybody! And say the seven words in honor of George Carlin. 
**I accidentally typed “goy” initially, and then spent a minute contemplating which goy I’d like to play with most.
Who can keep up with youse guys?
All I know about “bears” is that I have no desire to be Goldilocks–in any manifestation…
Where to start? Ok–Haze: we miss you, too. Is Dec when TG is coming out to visit?
Kai-yay on the poms, sorry about your FIL. And yay that your offspring is gainfully employed, boo on the move of Tea. You’re kind of a roller coaster at the moment, no?
GT-is it raining yet? I do hope you put the recycle out. < d & r’s >
Mindy came back! Salutations.
Yay for Tigs’ files. I didn’t know anyone else used WordPerfect (we have it on our old computer).
Vunders–that was a lovely old farm house. It’s such a shame. Those kind of houses aren’t even built these days (I’m not a fan of what passes for contemporary housing “architecture”). Awesome pics, though. I got my flamethrower–I’m going out soon to see just how well it killed off the weeds. The instructions say that upon occasion a second “helping” of heat is needed. Heh.
George Carlin died? I hate pledge drive week on NPR–I get so behind on the news.
I have been having extremely vivid dreams lately–about dead people. One night this weekend, I dreamed I was at my (dead) sister’s wedding and she was in a wheelchair. She was never in a wheelchair and she never was married (?). And last night, I dreamt* of my good friend’s mother whose memorial service we just went to. I dreamt she was called “Silver Moonlight” as a nickname as a child. Paging Dr Freud! WTH?
*I like this version. No idea if it’s acceptable. Don’t care. I pronounce it dremt, not dreemt. Go piss up a rope if you don’t like it. 
::steps out from behind the ficus::
Hey! Wow, hey, didn’t see y’all there. I was just admiring the foliage. Nice bush. Uh, plant. Ficus.
So, yeah. I’ve been pretty heavily involved with the blog of late, especially leading up to Apple’s worldwide developer’s conference on the 9th, which involved me and the other guy writing up on all the news surrounding the iPhone 3G and related bits, which was quite a lot. Now that the hype is over I’m mostly covering general iPhone/Touch news and tracking the iPhone in Canada situation, mostly waiting to hear some official news on what Rogers’ rate plans will be for the JesusPhone, which they’ll hopefully announce before the July 11th release. And then on the 11th I’ll have to do some massive video coverage of the event, probably from the downtown Toronto Apple Store location, which will probably be where the most insane crowds will be. And I have to scrape together the money to buy two of them. (One for the wife.) We’re up for contract renewal so it’s good time for us to do it.
That’s what’s been consuming a lot of my time. However, much of that was because we had both made far too much work for outselves. WE two had set out to try and cover every scrap of news it was possible to cover, and in so doing piled our plates far too high. In the end I scrapped the news pool I had created for the blog where we’d stick every relevant link we came across and have just decided to wing it instead – write about it as we come across it and don’t sweat the little things that aren’t significant enough to cover. That way we’ve bought ourselves a lot more time to relax a bit and just run the blog without having it consume every free moment of our time. I like it better that way. We may not be as jam-packed with every stitch of information we can find, but we’re not killing ourselves trying to keep up either.
Plus, while more news = more readers, ad revenue doesn’t scale accordingly. To whit, we make pretty much the same even with half the readership. Go figure.
Not that we’re in it for the money (well, sure, that’s a nice part of it, even if it is only pocket change), it’s just an interesting observation.
Thanks for the welcome backs, Taxi, SmartAleq, GT, Doggio, Swampy, Bobbio, Rosie, Herbs, BooFae, Nooner, Heff, Rigs & Tigs and the rest of all y’all. It’s good to be back. I really needed to return to the land of sanity, intelligence, and proper grammar. (Whatever you may think of this place at times, just take some time off and spend it on some other general boards. You’ll well and truly understand why this place is a bastion of wisdom and maturity in an oily sea of despairing tears for the future of humanity. Okay, I’m over-dramatizing – but only just.)
Bobbio - That was some gallery. I’ve witnessed a couple of house fires, and have felt the intense heat given off by them even when you’re far enough away that you wouldn’t think you’d feel it like that, but you do. The skin tightens and prickles and you feel like you’re turning into a leather bag. It’s remarkable and a little scary at the same time. Really cool to see one set deliberately for a training exercise though. You can just kinda step back (once the training is done) and admire and photograph it. Those shots really show how aggressive fire can and how quickly it can consume an entire structure.
Oh, and if’n you wanted gross chin-based TMI, I should tell you about the boil I had a couple of months back…
TowerDweller - We haven’t been in the same MMP? I thought I’d seen you here before – but then it’s been so long… 
Hi, and welcome!
Hank - Wow, you’re back in Seoul already. I knew you were headed there but I didn’t know when. It sounds like a very different place – which I guess it is of course. Very different cultural mores. The subway thing seems pretty common in Asian cutures – seeing what it’s like in Japan’s underground system, everyone jostling everyone else, packing themselves into the subway cars wherever there’s two square inches of floor space, squeezing in between people who are already squeezed together with enough force to crack pistachios. Won’t be long before Toronto’s subways and buses get to that point if gas keeps going the way it is. How long you staying there for?
Nava - Don’t mess with the Ficus. He’s better than you.
LiLi - Where’d your internet go? Did it bring pie?
Tigs - Yes, I’ve been gone far too long. I seem to have missed out on all sorts of news. So I’ll just have to muddle through as best I can. 
Right, then. More work, then lunch.
No rain yet. Roofers appear to still be tearing stuff off, but hammering and sawing (or something saw-like) has occurred. Roofers have tolerable taste in music (i.e. it’s not acid rock and not rap/hip-hop, etc. and also it’s not terribly loud).
Recycling hasn’t been picked up yet, so I was able to run yet more out to the curb. Yay!
Really donwanna go in to work, but I really need to at least pick up some proposals that I need to read for a meeting tomorrow. So I guess I’ll hop through the shower and go in for a while. I don’t really care for the idea of people working on my house while I’m not home.
You know we are always here to take in any TMI offered, taxi. Aren’t ingrown hairs weird?
Yay for internet, LiLi!
Guess I should really act like I’m going to work today.
GT
It was the kind of house I fantasize about restoring and turning into a showplace, but with the trash inside and the tongue and groove walls, I wouldn’t touch it with a 10’ pole, or even an 11’ Hungarian.
VWife wants me to put up tongue and groove walls in our bedroom to replace the paneling we painted over. After watching that tinderbox go up Saturday, no way in Hell <snerk> will I do that. Sheetrock has some amazing fire insulation capabilities that I’d rather have instead. It may be boring as a wall treatment, but the life I save may well be my own.
It brought no pie. It mysteriously died some time on Thursday night, and we just got a tech in this morning.Some weird wiring problem.
Ten years ago I didn’t have this addiction, you know. Now being without internet is like missing my leg. Partly because Mr. Lissar was gone all weekend 
and didn’t get home until after ten last night. On the plus side, his grading went well, and the head of the organization got promoted in rank to 10th dan (highest level black belt), which was very exciting. By the foremost student of the snesei who brought the style to North America. I think. We didn’t have much time to talk.
I’ve just eaten two bacon sandwiches. I think I’ll have some cake.
Wow! Where’d the morning go? Glad to see kai, mork, and scl back in the fold. We missed you.
haze, I am sure you will adjust after a time. Be sure to include some “fun” pics to TG when you e-mail him. 
Well, you do want him to remember what he’s missing.
bobbio, that was some fahr!! Did anyone salvage wood or fixtures or whatnots out of that house? I know down here it’s big business to sell salvaged materials.
Nice weekend at the Anachi ranch. Much lounging in the cement pond.
RIP George. He was only 71, too.
li-li, Mmmmmmmmm, its BACON!
Tupug
Ok, I feel really foolish here, but I want to say that I play Scrabulous with a friend–well, not really a friend-friend; he’s my older kids’ ex-band teacher, but he’s really nice and fun etc.
But that isn’t what makes me feel foolish. I play him almost all the time in Scrabulous and here’s the thing: except for one game, I always lose. This is starting to bother me untowardly.
So, :rolleyes: at myself for not being able to not do this: :mad: about a silly game that matters not one whit.
And now back to the thread…
'Morning all. Thanks for the hi’s and the support, yes rigs, it’s been even more than the normal roller coaster here recently.
I just got skiffman out the door, he feels much better, and is off to catch a plane and head out to Old Harbor to catch up with the boat, yay.
Yes smartie, there will be more puppy pics before they go to their new homes. I don’t let my puppies go before they are 10 -12 weeks old, so we have them until August. Right now they are in the kitchen, curled up in a crate after their morning of breakfast and romping, so cute.
Hey, I see a break in the clouds and a bit of actual sunlight, yay. I need oj and something to eat. I’ll be back sooner than I have been of late. I have really missed you guys.