Tag Archives: math

The To Do List

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2016-05-23ToDoList3884

The To Do list. Everybody’s got one. Even here at The World Renowned headquarters of *The Institute. Our time is usually spent investigating scientific mysteries, discovering new frontiers in Math, Geography, the Arts, building our own Hyperloop out near Cleartop Mesa, numbering the stars visible in our night sky with Roman Numerals for easier identification, discovering new facets of Origami, research of all types, publishing, finding out new ways to have fun with cast iron, the list is endless.

All of that activity takes a lot of  manpower, Man/woman power (NOTE: OK, this whole man/woman thing is getting awkward, we’re changing it to Manoman power for clarification. That means everyone, man, woman, or some combination of both whether they’re equal or not, are going to be under the heading of ‘manoman’. We had some flack from some our middle-aged female staff who were lobbying for WoMan power but The Director said no freaking way that sounded too much like runaway feminism, so Manoman it is. After all this is a benevolent dictatorship here, not some loosely run democracy. ) manoman power to get everything done. As all of our staff has some incredible responsibility they have to complete if they want to eat and can’t be excused to work on the To Do list, we have had to take steps. We have had to go outside our organization for the first time to find qualified To Do list completers. That’s why we brought back Aunt Pheeb and Uncle Skid.

Some of you may remember them from previous posts. We swore we would never again on this Earth have anything to do with Uncle Skid. Aunt Pheeb too, except she does have some redeeming qualities and is the only one who can control keep Uncle Skid in line. She has got this voodoo power over him and if things get too weird she will withhold her patented, free will offering monkey-love and that does the trick. Skid pops right back on the straight and narrow then. So they come as a package.

Uncle Skid just got out of seven years of rehab and seems ok, but if we know anything about him we know that he is a recidivist of the highest order. That’s why we have closed down the Buenos Noches Cantina on campus for the duration. This nearly caused a riot amongst our interns but we had to err on the side of safety. Because if Uncle Skid gets into the Everclear, ain’t nobody safe. Even Aunt Pheeb can’t do anything with him until the following Thursday.

Apparently Skid got some training in construction while he was away and consequently we assigned him the task of repairing the fire escape that leads out of the back entrance of the main campus area here at The Institute. The picture above is after Skid worked on it. Granted it looks a little rough at first glance but it is better than the rope that was hanging there before. Skid has been in the office every single day wanting funding for three 60′ aluminum ladders so you don’t have to scramble up the rock face to get to the bottom of the fire escape. Plus a little extra for the wire to lash the three together so they’re long enough. So far our cost and regulatory department has been reluctant to release the $2800 and change to do this. That and no one will sign off on Uncle Skid going off campus with that kind cash. We’ve had to up our insurance just to have him on the property as it is. So it looks as if we’ll have to use the rope again. Just to get to the bottom of the fire escape anyway.

Aunt Pheeb has been the rock of that family. If it wasn’t for her the whole bunch of them would have fallen on rack and ruin. She has supplemented the family income with her distillery and quilt repair business. And since she installed that brand new cigarette rolling machine her income has risen dramatically. That’s good because the 73% we skim receive off the top helps our coffers too. And what with times being like they are everything helps.

So far we’ve been proceeding with cautious optimism with Uncle Skid. Aunt Pheeb went out and purchased 37 of the newest strongest Abus 37RK/80 Granit Extreme Security Steel Padlocks made in Germany and available through Taylor Lock & Security Co. to add to the welded shut doors and windows of the Buenos Noches Cantina. These padlocks meet highest security standards and are considered to be among the most secure padlocks in the world. Their tensile resistance is over 6 tons. We thought that it was overkill but then she told us that Skid had also taken lock-picking classes while in rehab so we authorized her to get a few more just in case.

In the last four months we have been able to cross one item off our To Do list. Well half cross it off. We still have to deal with the aluminum ladder issue. We have had reports that maybe Aunt Pheeb has been a little free with the results of her distillery, selling small bottles of hooch out of the back door of her quilt repair store instead of to her regular customers in town. But we haven’t been able to catch her. The security people we set to watch the backdoor have told us through blurry eyes and slurred speech that they haven’t seen anything yet but then they were some of the biggest complainers when we took the campus dry. There’s always something.

Maybe, just maybe we’ll get some real productivity out of Uncle Skid. You never know. Seven years in rehab ought to have had some effect, but then you’re talking about Skid here, so we’ll wait and see. And keep our fingers and toes crossed. And our insurance paid up.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind.

 

Twin Suns : Planet Earth

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TwinSunsPlanetEarth2315click to enlarge

Every one has been complaining that this summer was one of the hottest on record and it was. We had drought, record temperatures, forest fires, unusual weather, irritated wildlife, irritated spouses, disgruntled outerwear manufacturers, happy soft drink purveyors, and just about every kind of social problem you could imagine. It was not a good year to be working on the chain gang under the hot Alabama sun. That blacktop just would not set up and the straw boss would only let you have so much water. Everyone blamed global warming.

Unfortunately global warming was only part of the problem. This is going to be difficult to confess but we’ve always been straight with you, our readers, and if anyone needs to know the truth it is you. As you know we have many different research programs going on here at the Institute, what we may not have fully disclosed due to advice from our attorneys, was that we have a program that is experimenting with “Interdimensional Travel”. We always use capital letters when we refer to it because it is like really important and it can’t be confused with other stuff we do that is kind of important but not quite so hazardous for the human race.

“Interdimensional Travel” is really complicated and needs very smart people to work on it. You have to have graduated from an extremely intellectual college that does science and academics and stuff, not from a tech school or an online university, and have gotten at least C’s in all of your classes. This is important, we check. After all, a program that daily confronts the mysteries of Inter-dimensionality, Astral travel, time-warping, quantum mechanics, math, algebra, long division, Interdimensional Portal creating (remember that one because that one was pretty darn important) and other complicated stuff that is really hard to spell.

“Just what the hell happened?” you asked. Well it’s complicated. When you travel between dimensions you have to have a door, or more correctly, an “Interdimensional Portal” other wise how you gonna get over there, right.  Creating one is the tricky part, it’s where you use all that science and Math and stuff, and it has to be done very carefully and monitored constantly because if you make one little mistake it can end life on earth as we know it, so you need to pay attention. No taking breaks whenever you feel like it, no running off to the bathroom just because you have to go, no x-box, no sexting with your girlfriend, you’ve got to be on the ball and focused, above all focused.

One of the critical aspects of maintaining an “Interdimensional Portal” is that it is possible, no very likely, that if you can go through it, you can also come back through it, not just you but anything or anyone else that’s on the other side too. In other words its a two-way street, or door, so to speak. That’s why it is important to pick nice dimensions with friendly stuff in it when you open one of these cosmic doorways. We keep a list of all the dimensions that it is OK to go to and a list of all the ones that are bad. These lists need to be clearly marked on the top of the page in black highlighter, we use Bic ones for this, whether it is the good list or the bad list. These lists are then posted on the fridge where we keep the Red Bull so everyone knows what page we’re on.

The dimension we’ve been investigating lately is a close one proximity-wise, right next door to our dimension in fact, and it is very similar to ours with the exception that it is almost exactly 50 years behind us in comparative time. We labeled it dimension 23 left. So, no rap, no meth, lower taxes, lots of tie-dye, you only had three channels, all the usual stuff. The only kicker is that this dimension has two primary suns orbiting their earth. Yeah I know, cool huh? but the downside is it is a lot hotter over there, and that kind of brings us to the problem of our weather here in our dimension.

When you create your Interdimensional Portal you should only keep it open for as short a period as you can, after all its expensive and it creates a hell of a draft between the two places. Remember all those hurricanes we had last year? Due to lots of engineering and R&D we have been able to reduce our hardware needed to do all this stuff down to fit into a tuff-shed and a small storage unit. The machinery needed to create the Interdimensional Portal has been reduced to the size of a Sears 12v battery charger with an 11″ diameter cable running up over to a wall switch, similar to what you have in your home but about the size of a Volkswagen. It take two husky lads working together to throw this switch and it is a tough job. You need Pop-eye arms. Since this program is fairly new, only a few years old, we can’t pay much more than minimum wage to our researchers and occasionally a wimpy one sneaks through our extensive evaluation process. And that’s what happened.

It was a Friday night in early spring, there was free beer and all the burritos you could eat over at the dining room/mess hall and our people on duty were in a hurry to get over there before all the burritos were gone. The Portal had been open because we  had been ferrying over some hazardous waste and it needed to be closed. When you throw that switch that shuts the portal down you need to listen for the click it makes so you know it is completely closed. They didn’t listen for the click. The click didn’t happen. Since this click is about the same decibel level as a sonic boom it is hard to image how they missed it but they did. The portal was mostly closed but not all the way. This allowed what we call in the business, “leakage”. Unfortunately the leakage was in the form of the Electromagnetic Spectrum which is of course, X-ray ~ .01 μm, Ultraviolet ~ .1, μm, Infrared ~ 10 μm, Visible from .39 μm to .76 μm, Microwave ~ 100 μm’ and Radio wave >10 mm. In other  words, heat. And because there are two suns in that dimension that is why you are hearing everyone say “this summer is twice as hot as I remember from last year”.

I know, I know, don’t write me about this, the feds have been all over our butts constantly, like this is some big deal or something. We changed the switch, now a Girl Scout could throw it, a pair of brownies even, so that problem is not going to happen again. There’s a bill in Congress to raise the minimum wage again, that should help us recruit better people. Sometime stuff happens. The government does crap like this all the time and you don’t hear everyone jumping in their face. Anyway that’s why it’s been so hot lately. Sorry.