Old Man

Re: The cranky thread So we got a quote from the vendor for three years of maintenance. We marked it up a couple points and passed it to the customer. They gave us a PO. We went back to the vendor to put through the maintenance order. Vendor says, "Sorry, that quote was for one year of the three years of maintenance. Even though the line item reads 'SA PREF AURA MAINT 3YR'. So you don't owe us $67k, you owe us $200k." Hilarity is underway.

Re: Quote of the Week From My Life. I dunno, I got involuntarily Peter Principled a few years back and have been pretty damn miserable ever since. Especially since I bought a mortgage with the higher income.

Re: Feeding a starship crew for a year Another way you could do it would be, instead of stocking food on board, just load up on redundant crewmembers. By the time the ship gets where it's going, the crew will be down to a more reasonable size...

Re: Make Your Own Motivational Poster

Re: Quote of the Week From My Life. Can you quantify that rage with Agility Index Measurements? Or the Agility Measurement Index? What is your project velocity?

Re: Planetary Resources So the announcement was announced today. Details: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/04/good-morning-everyone-im-chris-lewicki-and-im-an-asteroid-miner---planetary-resources-announces-aste.ars

Re: Musings on Random Musings And is she hot?

Re: Make Your Own Motivational Poster What ain't no place I ever heard of. Do they speak English in What?

Re: "Neat" Pictures Australia probably gives Cthulhu nightmares.

Re: Cool Guns for your Games That's an expensive reload. Don't those cost over a grand?

So several supervillains billionaires have joined forces to fund an asteroid mining venture. Discuss!

Re: "Neat" Pictures I believe it's a Golden Orb spider, in both cases. One guess as to which continent it's from.

Re: "Neat" Pictures Dubai is cooler.

Re: The cranky thread Or should we send out a search party?

Re: "Neat" Pictures

Re: I have a dream. (and MAN was it wierd!) I gripped the armrests of my airline seat as the winds of the hurricane lashed against the plane's thin outer skin. The plane shuddered and groaned as it descended through the chop, trying to find the airport, eliciting groans and occasional screams from my fellow passengers. I looked across the aisle at my coworkers, who were clearly terrified. One had her eyes shut, another was trying to scribble some kind of last-words note to his family. All of them were sweating bullets. I heard the engines spool up again--we'd missed another approach. There were more groans throughout the passenger compartment. I turned back to my other coworker, my favorite, who was sitting next to me; she was doing all right, but she was certainly concerned. "I'm going to see if I can help," I told her. "Will you be all right here?" She nodded. I unbuckled my seat belt and, firmly gripping the seat backs as I went, made my way forward to the cockpit door. I had to brace myself against the walls of the entryway as I knocked. A long minute went by, then the door opened, and I pulled myself into the flight deck. I didn't like what I saw there. The pilot and copilot were clearly exhausted and demoralized. I'd lost count of how many failed landing attempts we'd had. Four? Five? And they'd been fighting the storm all the way in, too. So when I said, "Let me take it," they only hesitated a moment before letting me have the pilot's seat. Once behind the controls I took stock of the situation. We were about 5000 feet up, getting kicked around by the wind, and checking the fuel gauge quickly, I realized we only had enough fuel left in the tank for one or maybe two more landing attempts. Great. I turned to make a annoyed comment to the pilots but they'd gone back into the passenger compartment. I was alone at the controls of a plane that had around three hundred people on board. In a hurricane. With no gas. I wasted no time bringing the plane around again for another approach. This time, though, I decided to try a new tactic. Rather than stay up high, in the wind, I decided to approach the runway at very low altitude, thinking that trees and terrain might reduce the wind's ferocity. If nothing else, we at least wouldn't crash from a great height. I descended until the altimeter read 100 feet and lined up where I thought the runway would be. The view out the windshield was a featureless gray for a while, but just as I was beginning to doubt my navigation, dark silhouettes of buildings and trees began to emerge out of it--at very high speed. I swore as I yanked the plane back and forth to avoid the obstacles, but as I did so, I realized that my strategy was working--the wind was much more manageable at this height. Suddenly the next shape to appear was the runway itself, again very quickly, and I swore again as I yanked back on the throttles, practically killing the engines. I barely remembered to mash the gear lever in time to get the wheels down before the plane dropped onto the pavement. We were down, but going way too fast, and I had to stand on the brakes with both feet, hard. The plane skimmed down the soaked runway, and very soon the end of the runway came rushing toward me. I mashed the brakes as hard as I could and swore even louder. That did the trick--the plane lurched to a stop about twenty yards from the edge of the pavement. I breathed a sigh of relief, but the plane had to be evacuated, and the storm still raged outside. I strode back into the passenger cabin, where my favorite coworker jumped up and gave me a hug; my other coworkers were elated. By then the mobile stairway had been rolled up to the door, so we got ready to evacuate. I gave some instructions to my coworkers to seek shelter wherever they could, and opened the door. I held my coworker's hand as we rushed down the stairs and out into the driving rain. Visibility was even worse than it had been in the airplane, and we basically just ran in one direction until we came to a one-story structure. It was a beach cabin--apparently we'd run onto some kind of resort. There was no sign of my other coworkers, but I wasn't worried; they'd find someplace to ride it out. Fortunately the door was unlocked, and we entered the cabin, which was little more than a large bedroom with an attached bathroom. We were completely soaked--it was time to strip and shower. I went first, then while she was cleaning up, I wrung out our sopping clothes as best I could and hung them up on hooks and hangers to dry as they might. It was a little awkward when she emerged, since she was wearing the one resort bathrobe, and I had nothing to wear but a towel. I resolved to be an adult about the situation, despite my persistent crush on her, so I climbed into the bed so as to hide my indecent body under the covers. I was surprised when she joined me--but the winds were still howling outside, hard enough for the walls to shudder. She was scared. I put my arm around her, in spite of our unspoken agreement to never act on our mutual attraction. When I did that, she looked up at me, and the vulnerability and longing in her eyes made me think--for an instant--that I'd made a mistake. And then she moved up and kissed me. I returned the kiss, emphatically, months of pent-up attraction finally released in her embrace. I dared to reach a hand into her bathrobe to hold her around her waist. She opened it completely, and rolled on top of me. Afterward, as we lay tightly embraced, she looked at me and asked, "What are we going to tell our coworkers?" I just shrugged, and her laughter put an end to the storm, and to our foolish attempts to repress our desire for each other.

Re: More space news!

Re: "Neat" Pictures Anyone want to tell me what the OCV penalty is for this?

Re: "Neat" Pictures Officially, we're the Aloha State. But we do get plenty of rainbows. I saw a double rainbow on my way to work the other day, in fact. No idea what it meant.

Re: "Neat" Pictures That is exactly what I mean. Otherwise it's actually a pretty nice shirt.

Re: "Neat" Pictures Pocket's not matched again.

Re: Cool Guns for your Games In other words, he's using New York reloads.

Re: The cranky thread Fixed! :biggrin:

Re: Some Strange Inventions I wonder what happened to the guy in the revolver cam pictures. And--93mph? By wearing bike tires?

Re: "Neat" Pictures Not bad--a little loud but not over the top. The pocket isn't matched, though.