I don’t get it.
Noobie computer technician sent to the ship’s filter shop for “RFI filter soap”.
If I recall, if a noobie knew what the gag was, he would say something along the lines of “knowing all about that one”. No one got punished in my experience for deflating a gag that way.
My SO got me with the VW trick once. There was a serious cold snap coming in one night shortly after we moved in together, so I went out to add anti-freeze to my radiator.
“Oh, that’s a great idea, can you do my car while you’re at it?”
After 5 minutes or so of poking around on the Beetle engine (in the dark, with a flashlight) trying to find the radiator, I looked up to see the SO watching from the window and laughing. Light dawned.
I did at least know that the engine was in back.
Geese are not nice creatures. Not at all. Also, they probably shit everywhere.
Not entirely true. Well, about the shit, yes. Geese are a flock based critter, they are intensely loyal to their flock. That doctor probably bought adult geese, who have no flock loyalty to the doctor. Geese have a beak punch that can break skin and leave bone bruises.
Our flock follows their mommy [my roomie] around like puppies. They act like slightly misbehaving kindergardeners. When they try to sneak into the front yard, all I do is lean out the nearest window or door and yell “busted” and they bitch a little and waddle back down the hill into their field.
Seconding the geese shit. It’s not little white blobs like regular birds. They leave big piles of shit, almost like piles of dog shit. There was a flock of Canada geese that took up residence at my daughter’s school (there was a pond), and using the soccer field for its intended purpose was impossible till the goose poop was cleaned up.
I used to know someone who worked on the reactor on the USS Carl Vinson. One day a young sailor (I don’t know ranks) came by looking for a bucket of red steam that a superior had sent him to obtain. They sent him back with a bucket of water filled with dry ice and red glow sticks.
Red steam, as I understand it, comes from the label “Red Steam” on pipes in the ship, which denote reduced pressure steam.
Haha, nice!!
When I was tootling around the Aleutions on crab processors, my second ship decided to scoot across the international date line. It supposedly wasn’t strictly allowed, or somewhat; we kept quiet past Adak and just kept going until the captain said ‘Ok, we’re there…turning around now’. I assume we got there.
It was too damn cold to throw seawater all over us <middle of winter, ice on the deck, etc.> but I was wrestled to the deck, tied up with duct tape and hung from a swinging hook for about 20 minutes in lieu of the traditional initiation, whatever that might be. 
(Let it be known that I always got along GREAT with the engineers, who did this, and it was all in great fun. I ripped two shirts and broke a watch, none of them my own, while they tried to get me tied up, lol. )
[assorted ceremonies]
mrAru got his Magellan and Bluenose the same trip, they went around the world under the icepack. The US Navy doesn’t pander to wimps, they got lined up and hosed down irregardless of the weather :eek: April, under the icepack in a classified location with arctic ocean water. Don’t ask about the Baby :eek:
I ran across some of his certificates a few years ago, we were considering having them framed and putting his I Love Me wall in the bathroom.
Curiously, I just found my equator crossing certificate. It’s a bit mildewy, but that just adds to the awesomeness.
I’ll post pics if you want.
Fresh out of high school and starting my first job as a (2nd period) apprentice ‘union’ carpenter. (There were 6 periods or levels of apprenticeship.) The company was an acoustical ceiling and drywall contractor, the job was the 3M building in Houston, Tx.
The building had approx. 25 floors and the ceiling crew I was working with were on the 18th or 19th floor. The foreman thought he would have a little fun with the rookie (me). The work crew (about 8 or 10 guys and most of them were ‘journeymen’) were all standing around bullshitting, about to start back to work after break time. The foreman tells me to “go down to the 4th floor and get the ‘grid stretcher’”, from the crew on that floor. Well, everybody on the job knows that the lifts (temporary work elevators on the outside of the building) are reserved for moving/stocking materials between break time (10am) and lunch time (noon). Anybody needing to move between floors had to use the stairs.
The foreman was unaware that I had been doing carpenter work since I was about 14 yrs old, and that I had already had my ‘cherry busted’, long before I got to that job. (Worked with my Dad during summer breaks and in the evenings, before I graduated from high school.)
So I just kept a straight face and said “Yes sir”, and headed for the stairs. I could hear a a couple of the guys snickering as I walked away. It’s a good thing they couldn’t see my face though, cause I already knew who was going to look like a fool.
I took the stairs down a couple of floors and proceeded to goof off and shoot the shit with the various tradesmen working on that floor. After about an hour and 45 minutes (right before everybody broke for lunch :D) I headed back upstairs.
I ambled up to the foreman and said (loud enough that most everybody could hear) “Man, I looked all over the place for that ‘grid stretcher’, and I couldn’t find one anywhere.”, then looked at my watch and exclaimed with a big grin, “Hey, whataya know, it’s lunch time!” as I took off my tool belt. I could hear some of the crew starting to laugh as they realized who got played for a ‘sucker’! The foreman already knew there wasn’t anything he could do about it, either.
He just glared at me and muttered, “Asshole.” 
I quietly responded, “Not quite as ‘cherry’ as you thought. Am I, boss?” 
Diesel sparkplugs.
Works every time.
In basic training for USAF in 1986 we were warned not to fall for tricks and that we didn’t have to. And that there would be no retribution and could not be. Maybe I just had the coolest TI (and yes she was). She also got us a lecture with the first woman chief master sgt who gave us some good advice on standing up for ourselves.
What the others said.
If you raise a goose, it’s cool. But if you’re not part of its flock, a goose is one of the damned meanest critters on God’s green earth. Now, imagine a minimum of ten of these things hissing at you like an angry snake, flapping its wings, and putting the bite on something tender with its beak.
Not only that, but they are noisy. If you like the noises they make, that’s great. If you’re not prepared for the honking and the squawking and the constant “cocktail party” chatter, it will make you insane.
And they are messy. Oh, my Og, they are messy. It’s not just fluffy white feathers being shed everywhere, it’s the shit.
First, there’s a lot of it. Second, it’s thick, runny, and smells horrible. Third, because it’s bird poop, it’s really high in nitrogen, so it kills off any grass it lands on.
My understanding is that the said doctor waged battle against the geese for nearly half a year before he finally gave up and called a farmer or an exterminator or someone to take them away. A large chunk of his expensively landscaped property looked like a missile testing site, and the pond was never the same.
On that one, I’m told, the chief of surgeons actually had a little talk with the nurses and suggested that if they hated a doctor’s guts that much, it was time to file a formal complaint, and because that was usually considered career suicide, he promised them he would take it seriously and there would be no repercussions.
There were three complaints filed against the offending doctor by the end of the day.
For me, it was the approach gate key. I knew about snipe hunting, but wasn’t ready for it, and it sounded like a reasonable request at the time. Hell, we were in the field – literally, some farmer’s field in Germany – and we’d passed through a gate to get that. I thought that that key was what I was meant to fetch.
If you really want to let the air out of the metric crescent wrench joke, bring back a crescent wrench with metric marks along the gap. Awkwardness all around, I tell you.
One of these days, I need to start a business selling cleaning solution for propeller blades.
I have a friend who is a maintainer on the KC-135s. Picture an airliner with all the seats removed and the luggage bay filled with fuel tanks, with a big refueling tube sticking out the back end, and you’ll have the basic idea (fun trivia: The KC-135 is based on the prototype for the Boeing 707, the Dash 80).
Anyhow, I’m told a popular prank is to have some airman go perform a Poppet Check. On the KC-135, the Poppet is found in the very end of the refueling boom, looks like a little flat piece in the opening that the fuel comes out through. You check it by applying pressure on it with both thumbs to make sure it moves freely.
It is worth noting that a Poppet is in fact a type of valve, in this case, one that is held shut by internal pressure, and opened by the pressure of being pressed against the refueling receptacle of the receiving jet. Or, possibly, by some poor Airman’s thumbs.
Did I mention that, in this case, the internal pressure is provided by as much as 200,000 pounds of jet fuel, stored in the fuel tanks.
He tells me that the last time someone did that, the instigator got in trouble because it turns out that pouring jet fuel all over the ground is pretty danged messy and requires someone to clean it up. Plus, it causes an environmental hazard that gets all sorts of people involved. Not to mention what it does to a uniform.
I have also heard of a former engineering troop being sent to get so many yards of flight line, and coming back with a truck full of asphalt or aluminum matting (I forget the details).
Surgeons and nurses are colleagues. Surgeons have no authority over nurses. Sure, they can complain about a nurse, but, so can another nurse. There is often banter in the OR between them.
No RN would fall for the fallopian tube ruse. We take anatomy and physiology in college.
I’d hope that no one would fall for that. I took health class in 10th grade, and that was just a refresher then. Didn’t everyone take some basic courses like that in intermediate and high school?