Friday. A friend and I were walking near Central Park in NYC, having just seen a movie, and en route to pizza. My friend informs me he has set a goal - to run in the NYC marathon and run 3:15 by 45. 3:15. EXCUSE ME??? You never ran track in your life. You are 41, 5’9" and you are DOWN TO 277 pounds. You were over 300. The caloric energy required to move your fat butt 26 miles could melt the Antarctic ice caps. You sweat profusely BOWLING. (seriously!) Your diastolic bp is OVER 100! Yes, you are wearing dress shoes, and I am in sneakers, but you’re not even keeping pace walking with me on the street. I can’t run ONE 7 1/2 minute mile, you expect to run 26 CONSECUTIVE ones?
Yeah, you’re gonna diet and exercise, then run 3:15. Then I’ll get my exercise being your pallbearer. GET REAL!
I hope I’m wrong. You’ve been a good friend. I hope you do lose 75 pounds or so, and get in good shape. (He’s been dieting off and on the 18 years I’ve known him). Maybe even complete a marathon somewhere, in slower time. You just have a tendency to overdo, obscess, and hurt yourself trying too hard sometimes. Don’t do it here. Your mom died of a heart attack. Don’t join her.
Today. I have our Continuance of Operations Plan from work here. I work at (but not for) JFK Airport in NYC. The first line after the Purpose: paragraph:
> The threat scenario is as follows:
A bio/chemical/nuclear agent has been detected in the building
A) REAL sensitive. Make it a terrorist threat. You know, I wonder how many people here knew someone lost in the Towers. Uh, being as you could SEE them from here, I’d guess … MOST??? Why didn’t you make it a fire, or even a plane crashing into the building? We’re right by a taxiway. Problem with the airport power grid, maybe? Accidents could happen. They’d close the building too. Heck, don’t propose the cause. No, make it terrorism.
B) What 2 alternative sites do you recommend? Another office we have IN MIDTOWN MANHATTAN or Jersey. Did you see this area last year? GET REAL!! If they’re gonna shut down any places, they’re DC and Manhattan. Manhattan was closed tighter than Pat Buchanan’s anal sphincter at a Gay Pride rally. Mass transit closed, bridges closed to traffic. How do we GET there in a terrorist attack? Make it a fire, the bridges and tunnels will be open, the subways, commuter rail. Jersey is on the other side of the city. We’d have to cross Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island at minimum. If their bridges are open. If you think terrorism, look EAST. Better Manhasset than Manhattan, Greenvale than Greenwich Village. We might be able to get there. (note - towns used are in Nassau suburbs, and a lot closer)
Great. We do need a contingency plan, and we get a Tom Clancy fan to write it. GET REAL!
Yo, lurker. Number 2 is you reading into the contingency plan ulterior motives most likely not there. I was involved in creating a contingency plan for the department I managed on Diego Garcia and that was before the terrorist attacks last September. The very line you quoted was part of the “points to be considered” in creating the plan.
I guess this would be a good thread to introduce you all to a guy I once knew who I like to call Crazy Joe. He’s so messed up he probably deserves an entire thread devoted to him, but here’s a taste of Crazy Joe’s failure to grasp reality…
Crazy Joe is a guy I used to know. I met him my Sophomore year in high school, but then in Junior year he moved to Utah, to be with all the other crazy people.
In the short time I knew him during high school, he:
seriously believed that he could make a compression algorithm that could compress any file down to a size of 1 byte…even after we proved to him that it was logically impossible, because if it were true, there would only be 256 possible files that could exist.
seriously believed that he was going to make the world’s greatest operating system. He was going to make it using Macromedia Flash.
seriously believed that he was going to find a cure for AIDS. Somehow, he was going to solve it mathematically.
seriously believed that he could attain immortality by immersing himself in a 3D computer-world (presumably made with Flash ;)) and letting his body die. Or…something.
seriously believed, on 9-12-2001, that he knew exactly “where the terrorists were going to strike next.”
seriously believed the AIDS Needles In Theater Seats urban legend, and tried for 5 minutes to convince me that it was really happening. In Guatemala. His evidence? “I’ve BEEN to Guatemala! So I know!” :rolleyes: Oh, I get t. I’ve been to the US, so therefore I know about everything that happens in this entire country.
That’s just some of the stuff Crazy Joe has done. And I swear, I’m not making any of this up. This man has no grasp of reality whatsoever. He still thinks that he owns a computer company that is going to make him a million dollars. (That’s a whole other story right there…)
I know someone that’s a lot like Crazy Joe - a brother or cousin, maybe? He says he gets in moods to where he can understand any language in the world sometimes. I’m tempted to test his theory, but I’m sure he’d say ‘he’s not in the mood’ or something like that. Typical of him, and more than just a bit irritating - if you’re gonna make claims, back them up for God’s sake. He also says that because he’s half-Canadian, he can fluently speak French. Puh-leeze. If you’re supposedly fluent in French, then why on Earth have you signed up for French? Why did you ask me to help you learn French? By that logic, my being one-third Polish should give me the ability to chat up Lech Walesa like a native.
This pretended omniglottalism is only one of his many unfounded claims - he wants to go to sniper school, too. I’m sorry, but I don’t think the military, any branch of the military, wants an immature nutcase behind a rifle. He definitely abandoned reality a long time ago. His friends are similarly divorced of reality - one says he created a computer virus that can completely destroy a computer’s contents, ‘because it lacks a stop command’ :rolleyes:.
This, of course, proves my theory that Florida is second only to Utah in nutcase density.
Monty/IJ,
That was a quote C&P from yesterday’s email, THE FIRST LINE, written well after 9/11. Had it been written prior to that, your question would be valid. It was a new plan. We wouldn’t have nuclear agents in our building. We’re not a research lab or the like. Writing it like that after the WTC attack was insensitive.
KJ,
You went to school with my brother-in-law??? :eek:
You’re sensitivity meter is high. Given the amount of cargo moving through JFK, it’s possible that b/c/n agents could be found there, and you should be trained. I don’t know your specific role, but I do know that b/c/n threats are handled differently from fires and crashes. Perhaps now, people will take the training more serious.
As to the backup sites, I agree. A crash or fire, perhaps you could make it. An attack, you are going nowhere.
As for #1, I’d advise that your friend set a more realistic goal. One of my big problems exercising was setting goals that were impossible to attain, getting disappointed that I wasn’t making significant progress, and gave up. When I started setting goals I could reach, I stayed interested in regularly working out, and made much more progress in the end.
Maybe being able to run 1 or 2K by the end of this year, and work up to finishing a 10K in under 90 minutes by the time he’s 45?
Nope, not insensitive. You’re still reading ulterior motives into something that’s pretty well straightforward.
It’s kind of like telling me that I’m insensitive for telling me that I’m not going to move my vehicle until all the passengers are buckled up and it just so happens that one of the passengers had someone killed in car wreck not so long ago and the deceased did have their seatbelt buckled.
This is IMHO, of course, but I see knee-jerk reacting in the OP.
D_odds,
I work out at the airport, but not working for them. I’m a tech support guy. If I was a cargo handler, it would make more sense. I don’t handle cargo, mail, anything. They’re talking about building evacs and how to pick up working from another site, not what to do I see something. Spills/fires/etc the Port Authority have Hazmat teams for, I assume.
Sublight,
That’;s what I meant about getting real. He needs little steps. Even if he said “complete” the marathon, taking 5 or 6 hours. I’d say maybe. I’ll support him if he is even vaguely realistic. Then maybe he won’t quit.
Stoid,
I try to be supportive, but as Sub said, he needs realistic goals. EVen finishing a marathon in 4 years, maybe. Not in 3:15.
Actually, I’m pretty sure reality is lacking the proper equipment for a hand-job, being female. So I’m not quite sure what you’re holding there, buddy.
