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ITEM: Spent the night of the BCS Championship having to work across from a female Alabama fan. After it got to 28-0, I finally told the girl, "Being an Oklahoma fan, it doesn't hurt me to say...
ITEM: As we went to bed last night, Scrappy spotted two deer coming from between the apartments into the back yard. As they wandered towards the chokecherries, another popped out to watch. Unlike the locals, who know that Scrappy is a bark with no bite, these guys heard his whining and yipping and paused. The third one then ran off towards the street, and after a second, one of the others followed. Then a heretofore unseen fourth deer shot from where they started and joined the first three. The last one, who had just started to munch on cherries, finally sighed and ran across the yard to join them. Oh the lovely times we have at 2:30 AM!
ITEM: This hasn't been a good New Year for Russians in the news. First, January 1 brought the elevation of beer from a food/drink that anyone could buy to an alcoholic beverage that is regulated. Opinion was split between those who are trying to pull Russia kicking and screaming from being a nation of drunks (Russians consume roughly 4.75 gallons of alcohol per year for each man, woman, and child, while the WHO says that anything over 2.11 is unhealthy) and those who thought the law was a delayed effect of the Mayan end of the world.
Second was the incident in Italy where two Russian resort workers were hauling a sled with six Russian passengers... at night... down an expert ski slope... and wiped out, killing six. Speculation is that alcohol may have led them to make a wrong turn onto the slope... and they just didn't happen to noticed that there was no lighting, like there was on the trail they SHOULD have been on.
Third brings us this story- two men in a Zorb (a big ball that you ride down a ski slope) went off the path (which should have been fenced in with a secure landing site- and wasn't), and down a gorge. One man suffered severe spinal injuries and died AFTER skiers drug him and the other guy up the hill (go figure) and the other is in the hospital. Hit the link and watch it happen, if you like.
ITEM: My daily reading in the Bible is taking on an overarching theme... tune in later for the results.
ITEM: I don't want to say much about the fatal accident that happened yesterday, which you can see here. But, this is a clear, unobstructed intersection, lots of visibility, and the trucker "never tried to stop" according to a trucker following. I sincerely hope this was a case of medical issues on the driver's part. I would hate to think that this was a) a case of brake failure, b) a case of being distracted, or c) a case of falling asleep at the wheel. Because if it was one of those three, somebody should be strung up.
ITEM: Back in Russia, Lokomotiv has picked up 2 more wins. The first was Sunday at home versus Vityaz. Alexander Chernikov tallied his 6th in the first period, and Alexei Kalyuznhy got his 8th in the second, and Curtis Sanford kept them off the scoreboard until early in the third for a 2-1 win.
Tuesday, it was a 4-1 home win against Minsk. A wild first period saw Alexander Guskov score #s 4 and 5, and Chernikov grabbing his 7th for a 3-1 lead. We outshot Minsk 19-9 in the first, but Minsk outshot Loko 28-13 the rest of the way. However, Sanford kept them off the board again; the only score the rest of the game was Yuri Petrov's 3rd in the second for us.
This is kind of a disturbing trend- two of our last three games, we've picked one period to really bomb the other guys, and proceeded to get outshot the other two. Still, that has led to 3 straight wins.
The league is starting to re- learn life without the locked-out NHL stars. All but two that I know of- SKA's Ilya Kovalchuk, and a dude from the NY Islanders who plays for Bratislava, Lubomir Visnovsky- have returned to North America. Kovalchuk is examining his contract to see if there's a way he can stay in St. Pete, and the other dude wants to stay with his family.
We host Severstal on Thursday.
ITEM: I have to go to work a half-hour early today. The regular VB plant meeting is today, and they want to thank everyone for the good job done over the holidays. So it's going to be a pizza meeting, and thus the Manpower people are "invited" as well. Ya wanna thank me? Sent me home a half-hour early!
Speaking of work, I gotta share this one. My job is "processing"- I get a box full of assorted product off the line, scan the box, scan the individual pieces, wrap them and box 'em. Sometimes the people downstream pick the wrong thing. Then I have to wait till the end of the box, find out (by computer) what the item was supposed to be, print out a container label for it which I give to a runner who go gets it. Then I look up the offending part and find its location number so I can put it away later.
But last night, I had one that went a bit awry. You see, I'm supposed to print out 2 container labels, one for me, and one for the runner, who brings it back to me with the part. Why two? In case something goes wrong, which doesn't happen 99 times out of 100.
Last night was #100.
First, the part was out of stock and the runner had to go to a forklift driver to get one from a way-up rack. The driver then took his sweet time getting around to looking for it. Then, when I tried to get the location for the bad part, it said the part # didn't exist. No problem, you can get it from the item description and color, too. So then, the runner came by and asked (about an hour later) if I wanted her to take the bad part away. I said sure, and where was the one I needed? She had to remember what it was, and then said that she'd check with the forklifter. Appartently she had told the driver to bring it to me. But he didn't show and didn't show- apparently because he lost the label with my location on it, and just decided to hang onto the part until she came back for it. Without the label, I couldn't process it, because I hadn't printed that extra ticket. But they were able to figure it out in the computer room, and it turns out that I had had the right part the whole time- but the part number had changed when the new season's version came in, and the tag on that part hadn't been changed (which explains why I couldn't find the location by #). After a slight scolding for my part in the fiasco, the runner and my super walked away, saying, "We're going around the corner to talk about you!" I laughed and said, "I don't blame you!"
ITEM: Blogger, are you EVER going to fix the picture uploads? It can be gotten around, but it's a pain in the a$$!
I hate to laugh at anyone's misfortunes but those goobs crashing on the ski slopes is pretty funny. Though I'm sad that some of them were injured and lost their lives. Always fun when you're part of the 100 isn't it??!! It's like dang why couldn't that have happened to someone else :)
ReplyDeleteAfter a week on that job, I asked a lead, "When does the 'things that only happen to me' stuff stop around here?" She told me, "Never."
DeleteSeveral officers from a Navy ship making a port call in Russia recently got themselves in a lot of trouble when they tried to go "drink for drink" with their Russian friends (oh, that was unwise). The Americans even held a party on their ship (which included alcohol-usually banned on US warships). The party got so out of hand that the authorities at the Russian base where they were docked told them to turn the music down because it was getting late.
ReplyDeleteGreat Googli Moogli, when the frikkin' RUSSIANS tell you to tone it down, you KNOW you have to be faced.
Yeah, I had heard about that a while back. They supposedly got in trouble for some "unprofessional conduct" as a result, but I couldn't find out what.
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